G. Roger Knight – författare

Discusses the complexities of a trading network in this period, outling commodity chains, links between colonies and colonial centres, and tensions between local polities and competing empires.This book explores European mercantile activity in Southeast Asia at a time when trade in this part of the world was being transformed and extended much more widely. Based on extensive original research including in newly discovered archives, the book reveals, through the study of one particular merchant and his extensive network, how trade in the region worked. It outlines the activities of Gillian Maclaine, a young Scottish "adventurer" (his word) who came to the region in about 1816 and established an enduring business in Batavia (present day Jakarta), trading in cotton goods and coffee, and later in opium. It examines the multi-faceted nature of such a trading network, including the wide scope of commodity chains, the associated link between colony and colonial metropole, and the many tensions between colonial powers, in this case the Dutch and the British, and with local polities. The book demonstratesthat Southeast Asian maritime trade was every bit as important to European worldwide commercial networks as the trade with India and China, which have been much more extensively studied, and it contributes to current scholarly debates about western imperialism, colonialism and the nature of empire.G. Roger Knight is an Associate Professor in the School of History and Politics in the University of Adelaide. He has published three previous books and numerous journal articles on the economic and social history of Southeast Asia.

Sugar was the single most valuable bulk commodity traded internationally before oil became the world’s prime resource. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, cane sugar production was pre-eminent in the Atlantic Islands, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Subsequently, cane sugar industries in the Americas were transformed by a fusion of new and old forces of production, as the international sugar economy incorporated production areas in Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Sugar’s global economic importance and its intimate relationship with colonialism offer an important context for probing the nature of colonial societies. This book questions some major assumptions about the nexus between sugar production and colonial societies in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, especially in the second (post-1800) colonial era.

Sugar was the single most valuable bulk commodity traded internationally before oil became the world's prime resource. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, cane sugar production was pre-eminent in the Atlantic Islands, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Subsequently, cane sugar industries in the Americas were transformed by a fusion of new and old forces of production, as the international sugar economy incorporated production areas in Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Sugar's global economic importance and its intimate relationship with colonialism offer an important context for probing the nature of colonial societies. This book questions some major assumptions about the nexus between sugar production and colonial societies in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, especially in the second (post-1800) colonial era.

Scotland’s diaspora, reframed through the Dutch East Indies: the intertwined lives of Highland lairds, Islay farmers and metropolitan merchants who built fortunes, and families, on the island of Java.A vivid group portrait of Scots who embedded themselves in the Dutch colonial world. Centering on the Batavia firm of Maclaine Watson & Co., G. Roger Knight draws on letters, newspapers, government and family archives to trace how sugar, trade and marriage created trans-imperial networks from Mull and Islay to Java, Singapore, the Low Countries and Australia. A fresh, unromantic, sharply observed study of Scottish ambition, mobility and identity across imperial bounds in the long-nineteenth century.From masked balls in Batavia to deer-stalking on Mull, Kin, Kilts and Kolonie follows Scots who made their lives and livelihoods within another European empire. At its heart stands Maclaine Watson & Co., a Batavia merchant house linking Highland clans, Scots ‘glocalisers’, and trans imperial merchants, in a web of kin, capital and commerce.Through families such as the Maclaines, McNeills, Frasers and McLachlans, Knight charts the fortunes of sojourners – men and women who set out to return home richer, and largely did – leaving descendants and investments across Asia, Europe and the Antipodes. Blending intimate biography with incisive economic history, Knight shows how wealth, power and marriage shaped both the Dutch colony and the Scots who thrived within it. Erudite, humane and unsparing, Knight reveals how Scotland’s imperial fortunes were forged far from home – and how their legacies endured long after the ships returned.