A Last Word: Amendments and Corrections to Indonesia’s Colonial Surplus 1880–1939

This article corrects and amends earlier calculations of Indonesia’s colonial surplus appearing in past issues of the Journal of Contemporary Asia. The final corrected total for 1880–1939, the period of domination by private enterprise, is now put at approximately 27 billion Netherlands guilders. The main reasons for the changes were two faulty methods of calculation used previously and the realisation of several sizeable omissions more from the balance of payments. The new methods of creating estimates of missing items are explained whilst the erroneous method of the balance of payments dealing with undistributed profits is discussed critically. The balance of payments specifies no data at all for undistributed profits although, clearly, they are large. It is also observed that almost all other discussions of the size of undistributed profits deal with the part not mentioned in the balance of payments and are unaware of the hidden element that is included. Our total is almost certainly an underestimate.     

Reviews

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Plantation colonialism,capitalism, and critics

Scholars have variously described the development experience of the Indian state of Kerala as a “model” or a “paradox” or an “enigma” and posited different meanings and significance to its developmental trajectory. Rather than following the usual one-dimensional accounting of Kerala's achievements and shortcomings, we present a historically informed social and political analysis to reveal the meaning and significance of the “Kerala model” of development. This article, thus, critically appraises Kerala's development experience since decolonization to show how the discourse on development and the discursive practices of the dominant actors involved in governance of Kerala diverge in recent years, especially after the second round of economic liberalizations at the national level in 1991, which coincidently corresponds to the beginning of the newest phase of economic globalization. Old lessons are reviewed based on the notion of replicability of the “Kerala model” and new lessons are analyzed within the contexts of sustainability and economic globalization.     

Comments on Doug Husak: The Low Cost of Recognizing (and of Ignoring) the Limited Relevance of Intentions to Permissibility

Doug Husak frames a worry that makes sense in the abstract, but in reality, there is not much to worry about. The thesis that intentions are irrelevant to permissibility (IIP) is a straw man. There are reasons to think that the moral significance of intentions is not properly registered in criminal law. But the moral basis for criticism is not nearly as extreme as the IIP, and the fixes are not that hard to make. Lastly, if they are not made, some people may not get the punishments they deserve, and there will be some extra inequities in the criminal law as a result. But these inequities are not so great that change must be made now. The moral categories that are used may be too crude, but they are also familiar and easy to work with, and that counts for something.