Associate Professor Roger Knight

Biography/ Background

A Shropshire lad, Roger tore himself away from the countryside to spend his formative years at the University of London, acquiring tastes for opera and nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indonesia/ Southeast Asia. Since coming to Adelaide he has continued to develop both areas, as his frequent contributions to the Adelaide Review and various learned journals amply demonstrate. Besides exploring the social, economic and cultural dimensions of the Javanese sugar industry, he teaches modern European and South-East Asian history.

Publications

1. G. Roger Knight, "A Sugar Factory and its Swimming Pool: Incorporation and Differentiation in Colonial Java", Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24 (3), 2001, pp. 451-471.
2. G. Roger Knight and Arthur van Schaik, "State and Capital in Late Colonial Indonesia ", Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, 157 (4), 2001, pp. 831-859.
3. G. Roger Knight, "A Case of Mistaken Identity? Suikerlords and Ladies, Tempo Doeloe and the Dutch Colonial Communities in Nineteenth Century Java", Social Identities 7 (3), 2001, pp.379-391.
4. G. Roger Knight, "The Contractor as Suikerlord and Entrepreneur: Otto Carel Holmberg de Beckfelt (1794-1857)', in J. Thomas Lindblad & Willem van der Molen (eds), Macht en Majestiet. Leiden: Opleiding Talen en Culturen van Zuidoost-Azie en Oceanie, 2002, pp. 190-205.
5. G. Roger Knight, "Colonial Communities in Africa and Asia: Towards a Comparative Research Agenda on the European Communities in the Cape and Java", in Pal Ahluwalia & Abe Zegeye (eds), African Identities, Ashgate: 2002, pp. 12-27
6. G. Roger Knight, "Apakah 'Ketergantungan' Sungguh-sungguh Salah? Industrie Gula Indonesia, 1880-1942", in Thomas Lindblad (ed.), Fondasi Historis Ekonomi Indonesia, Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar, 2002, pp. 181-203.
7. G. Roger Knight & Ulbe Bosma, "Global Factory and Local Field: Convergence and Divergence in the International Sugar Cane Industry", International Review of Social History, 49, 2004, pp. 1-25
8. G. Roger Knight, "The Blind Eye and the Strong-Arm: the Colonial Archive and the Imbrication of Knowledge and Power in Mid-Nineteenth Century Java", Asian Journal of Social Science, 33 (3), 2005, pp. 544-568.
9. G. Roger Knight & Lesley Abell, " 'So Like Home': Angus Maclaine (1799-1877), Sheep Farmer and Sojourner in South Australia," Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, 33 (2005), pp. 40-56.
10. G Roger Knight & Lesley Abell, " Three Countries, Two Brothers, Sugar and Sheep", in Susan Magarey & Kerrie Round (eds), Living History. Essays on History as Biography, Unley SA, Australian Humanities Press, 2005, pp. 57-79.
11. G. Roger Knight, "A Precocious Appetite: Industrial Agriculture & the Fertiliser Revolution in Java's Colonial Cane Fields, c. 1880-1914," The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 37 (1), 2006, pp. 43-64.
12. G. Roger Knight, "Sugar and Servility: Themes of Forced Labor, Resistance and Accommodation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Java", in Edward Alpers, Gwyn Campbell and Michael Salman (eds), Resisting Bondage in Indian Ocean, Africa and Asia, London & New York, Routledge, 2006, pp. 69-81.

13. “Technology, Technicians and Bourgeoisie: Thomas Jeoffries Edwards and the Industrial Project in Sugar in Mid-Nineteenth Century Java,” pp. 31-52 in Ulbe Bosma, Juan Giusti & G. Roger Knight (eds), Sugarlandia Revisited: Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800 to 1940 (with a preface by Sydney W. Mintz), International Studies in Social History, Berghahn Publishers, London and New York, 2007

14.  “Sugarlandia Revisited:  Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800 to 1940,” pp. 5-30 (With Ulbe Bosma and Juan Giusti) in  Ulbe Bosma, Juan Giusti & G. Roger Knight (eds), Sugarlandia Revisited: Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800 to 1940 (with a preface by Sydney W. Mintz), International Studies in Social History, Berghahn Publishers, London and New York, 2007 

15. “An Anatomy of Sugarlandia: Local Dutch Communities and the Colonial Sugar Industry in Mid-Nineteenth Century Java,” pp. 53-72 (with Arthur van Schaik) in  Ulbe Bosma, Juan Giusti & G. Roger Knight (eds), Sugarlandia Revisited: Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800 to 1940 (with a preface by Sydney W. Mintz), International Studies in Social History, Berghahn Publishers, London and New York, 2007

16. G. Roger Knight, “Descrying the Bourgeoisie: Sugar, Capital and the State in the Netherlands Indies, c. 1840-1884”, Bijdragen tot de Taal-,Land- en Volkenkunde, 163, 1 (2007), pp. 52-83.

17. “ Paradoxical White: Imperial and Postcolonial Sugar “,   in Leigh Boucher, Jane Carey & Katherine  Ellinghaus (eds),  Historicising Whiteness: Transnational Perspectives on the Construction of Identity,  Melbourne, RMIT Publishing in Association with the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne, 2007, pp. 346-354.

18. G. Roger Knight, “A House of Honey: White sugar, Brown Sugar and the Taste for Modernity in Colonial and Postcolonial Indonesia,” Food & Foodways, 17, 4 (2009)

19. G. Roger Kinght, “Exogenous Colonialism: Java Sugar between Nippon and Taikoo before and during the Inter-war Depression, c. 1920-1940,” Modern Asian Studies, 44:2 (March 2010) forthcoming.

     

Entry last updated: Tuesday, 16 Oct 2012