Abstract:

In the wake of  increasing interest in contemporary human mobilities, including in migration, a resurgence of global labor history is underway. The basis for labor mobilization and non-free labor regimes under conditions of globalization was laid during colonialism. In this talk, I review the migration history of Javanese indentured labor beyond the borders of current Indonesia into Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Scrutinizing archival data on the Javanese allows for the drafting of a transnational history of connective labor mobility that highlights entanglements and comparabilities.

About the speaker:

Vincent J.H. Houben has been professor of Southeast Asian History and Society at Humboldt University Berlin since 2001. He was trained in history and Southeast Asian languages at Leiden University. There he obtained his Ph.D. in 1987 on the basis of a study of indirect rule in Central Java in the nineteenth century. After ten years of lecturing in Indonesian history at the same university, he moved to Germany to become a professor of Southeast Asian studies in Passau (1997-2001). Vincent Houben was  director of the Institute of Asian and African studies at Humboldt University from 2004 until 2011 and has written extensively on different themes in Southeast Asian history, society, economy and culture.