The Banana Tree at the Gate; A History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo

by Michael R. Dove

• ISBN13: 9780300153217
• ISBN10: 030015321X
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2011-03-08
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

The "Hikayat Banjar," a native court chronicle from Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as "the banana tree at the gate." Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world system. In analyzing production and trade in forest products, pepper, and especially natural rubber, Dove shows that the involvement of Borneo's native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful and that processes of globalization began millennia ago. Dove's analysis replaces the image of the isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into the global system with the reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Introduction
The Study of Smallholder Commodity Producers	p. 3
The Challenges of the Colonial Trade in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries
A Native Court's Warning about Involvement in Commodity Production	p. 45
The Antecedent to Cultivating Exotic Rubber: Gathering Native Forest Rubbers	p. 73
Coping with the Contradictions of Capitalism in the Early Twentieth Century
The Construction of Rubber Knowledge in Southeast Asia	p. 101
Depression-Era Responses to Smallholder Rubber Development by Tribesmen and Governments	p. 122
The Indigenous Resolution of the Subsistence/Market Tension
The Dual Economy of Cultivating Rubber and Rice	p. 149
Living Rubber, Dead Land, and Persisting Systems: Indigenous Representations of Sustainability	p. 169
The Conundrum of Resource Wealth versus Political Power
Material Wealth and Political Powerlessness: A Parable from South Kalimantan	p. 197
Plantations and Representations in Indonesia	p. 218
Conclusion
Smallholders and Globalization	p. 247
Notes	p. 259
References	p. 287
General Index	p. 317
Index of Plant Names	p. 330
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