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. ‘John Palmer and Plantation Development in Western Java during the Early Nineteenth Century', Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde,131 (1975), pp. 309-337. 
  2. From Plantation to Padi-Field: The Origins of the Nineteenth Century Transformation of Java's Sugar Industry, Modern Asian Studies, 14 (2),1980, pp. 177-204.
  3. ‘Capitalism and Commodity Production in Java', in Hamza Alavi et al, Capitalism and Colonial Production, London:Croom Helm, 1982, pp. 119-159.
  4. ‘The People's Own Cultivations: Rice and Second Crops in Pekalongan Residency, North Java, 1800-1870', Review of Malay and Indonesian Affairs 19 (2) 1985, pp.1-38.
  5. Peasant Labour and Capitalist Production in Late Colonial Indonesia: The Campaign at a North Java Sugar Factory 1840-1870', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 19 (2) 1988, 245-265.
  6. Sugar, Peasants and Proletarians: Colonial Southeast Asia, 1830-1940', Critique of Anthropology 9 (2), 1989, pp. 39-63.
  7. ‘The Peasantry and the Cultivation of Cane in Nineteenth Century Java', in A. Booth, W.J. O'Malley & Anna Weidemann (eds), Indonesian economic History in the Dutch Colonial Era, New Haven, Yale University Southeast Asian Series, 1990, pp. 49-66.
  8. ‘The Java Sugar Industry as a Capitalist Plantation: A Re-appraisal', Journal of Peasant Studies, 19, 3&4 (1992) pp. 68-86 and in E. Valentine Daniel, Henry Bernstein & Tom Brass (eds), Plantations, Peasants and Proletarians in Colonial Asia, London: Frank Cass 1992, pp. 68-86.
  9. Colonial Production in Provincial Java: The Sugar Industry in Pekalongan-Tegal, 1800-1942, Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1993.
  10. 'Gully Coolies, Weed-Women and Snijvolk: the Sugar Industry Workers of North Java in the Early Twentieth Century' Modern Asian Studies, 28 (1). 1994, pp. 51-76.
  11. ‘Village Java under the Cultivation System: Review Article', Journal of Contemporary Asia, 26 (1) 1996, pp. 118-123.
  12. ‘Did Dependency really get it Wrong: the Indonesian Sugar Industry 1880-1942', in J.T. Lindblad (ed.) The Historical Foundations of a National Economy in Indonesia, Amsterdam: North Holland 1996, pp. 155-174.
  13. ‘Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: Review Article', Postcolonial Studies, 1(3) 1998. pp. 435-440.
  14. ‘The Visible Hand in Tempo Doeloe: The Culture of Management and the Organisation of Business in Java's Colonial Sugar Industry', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 30 (1) 1999, pp. 74-98.
  15. ‘Sugar, Technology and Colonial Encounters: Refashioning the Industry in the Netherlands Indies, 1800-1942', Journal of Historical Sociology 12 (3) 1999, pp. 247-278.
  16.  ‘Coolie or Worker? Crossing the Lines in Colonial Java, 1780-1942', Itinerario: European Journal of Overseas History, 23 (1) 1999, pp. 62-77.
  17. (with Pal Ahluwalia and Bill Ashcroft) ‘Introduction' in White and Deadly: Sugar and Colonialism, New York: Nova 1999, pp. 1-20.
  18. Narratives of Colonialism. Sugar, Java and the Dutch, New York: Nova, 2000.
  19. ‘The Sugar Industry of Colonial Java and its Global Trajectory', South East Asia Research 8 (3), 2000, pp. 249-274.
  20. ‘Kulikuli Parit, Wanita Penyiang dan Snijvolk Pekerja-pekerja Industri Gula Jawa Ultara Abad ke-20', in J. Thomas Lindblad (ed.), Sejarah Ekonomi Modern Indonesia, Jakarta: LP3ES, 2000, pp. 99-128.
  21. (With Arthur van Schaik) ‘Cane's Struggle for Hegemony in Colonial Java. The Braakhuur Question in Pekalongan-Tegal, 1900-1942', Lembaran Sejarah, [Yogyakarta] 3 (1), 2000, pp. 85-101.
  22. ‘A Sugar Factory and its Swimming Pool: Incorporation and Differentiation in Colonial Java', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24 (3) 2001, pp. 451-471.
  23. (With Arthur van Schaik) ‘State and Capital in Late Colonial Indonesia', Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, 157 (4), 2001, pp. 831-859.
  24. ‘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.
  25.  ‘The Contractor as Suikerlord and Entrepreneur: Otto Carel Holmberg de Beckfelt (1794-1857)', in Lindblad, J. Thomas & Willem van der Molen (eds), Macht en Majestiet, Leiden, Opleiding Talen en Culturen van Zuidoost-Azie en Oceanie, 2002, pp. 190-205.
  26.  ‘Colonial Communities in Africa and Asia: Towards a Comparative Research Agenda on the European Communities in the Cape and Java', in Ahluwalia, Pal & Abe Zegeye (eds), African Identities, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002, pp. 12-27.
  27. ‘Apakah ‘Ketergantungan' Sungguh-sungguh Salah? Industrie Gula Indonesia, 1880-1942', in J. Thomas Lindblad (ed.), Fondasi Historis Ekonomi Indonesia, Yogyakarta, Pustaka Pelajar [ISBN 979-9483-76-X], 2002, pp. 181-203.
  28. (With 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.
  29. ‘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.
  30. (With 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.
  31.  (With Lesley Abell), ‘Three Countries, Two Brothers, Sugar and Sheep', in Magarey, Susan & Kerrie Round (eds), Living History. Essays on History as Biography, Unley SA, Australian Humanities Press, 2005, pp. 57-79.
  32. ‘A Precocious Appetite: Industrial Agriculture & the Fertiliser Revolution in Java's Colonial Cane Fields, c. 1880-1914', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 37 (1), 2006, pp. 43-64.
  33. ‘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.
  34. (With Ulbe Bosma and Juan Giusti). ‘Sugarlandia Revisited: Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800 to 1940', pp. 5-30, ‘Technology, Technicians and Bourgeoisie: Thomas Jeoffries Edwards and the Industrial Project in Sugar in Mid-Nineteenth Century Java, pp. 31-52, and (with Arthur van Schaik) ‘An Anatomy of Sugarlandia: Local Dutch Communities and the Colonial Sugar Industry in Mid-Nineteenth Century Java,' pp. 53-72 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.
  35. ‘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.
  36. ‘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.
  37. ‘A House of Honey: White Sugar, Brown Sugar, and the Taste for Modernity in Colonial and Postcolonial Indonesia', Food & Foodways: History & Culture of Human Nourishment, 17, 4 (2009) pp. 197-214
  38. ‘Exogenous Colonialism: Java Sugar between Nippon and Taikoo before and during the Inter-war Depression, c. 1920-1940,' Modern Asian Studies, 44, (2010), pp. 477-515.
  39. ‘Indenture, Grand Narratives and Fragmented Histories: The Dutch East Indies, c. 1880-1940', in Marcel van der Linden (ed.), Humanitarian Intervention and Changing Labour Relations. The Long-Term Consequences of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Leiden & Boston, Brill, 2011, pp. 419-432.
  40. ‘From Mereka! to Massacre: The Politics of Sugar in the Early Years of the Indonesian Republic', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 43, 3 (2012), pp. 402-421.
  41. ‘East of the Cape in 1832: The Old Indies World, Empire Families and ‘Colonial Women' in Nineteenth Century Java', Itinerario, 36,1 (2012), pp.22-48.
  42. Commodities and Colonialism. The Story of Big Sugar in Colonial Indonesia, 1880-1942, Leiden & Boston, Brill, 2013. 

Entry last updated: Thursday, 4 Jul 2013