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Exploring Exploitation: The Netherlands and Colonial Indonesia 1870–1940

Studies of the economic relations between Great Britain and its colonies, such as Hopkins (1988) and O'Brien (1988), have revitalised controversy about the relevance of economic factors in the history of imperialism. Some have denigrated the relevance of the Hobson-Lenin thesis that capitalists required new overseas investment opportunities to postpone the collapse of capitalism, and the argument that colonies were a paying proposition. This article assesses the economic relations between the Netherlands and its colony Indonesia. It aims to raise the profile of this connexion in the controversy mentioned above, and to explore whether and to what extent the economic relationship may be crucial to explaining «metropolitan» economic development and «peripheral» underdevelopment.