From Headhunting to Head Taxes
Violence, Taxation and Colonial Governance on Seram, c. 1860-1920
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2846695 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maarten Manse (0000-0001-5906-3135, Leiden University The Netherlands Leiden, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 177 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 524-558 |
| Publication date | 2021-11-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0006-2294 • E-ISSN: 2213-4379 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1163/22134379-bja10023 |
| OpenAlex | W3214017786 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 17 |
This article investigates Dutch colonial practices on the Moluccan island of Seram in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Seram's mountainous interior was the domain of ungoverned, peripatetic Alfurs who engaged in headhunting. For a long time, they were rendered untouched by colonialism and administered through coastal intermediaries. After 1900, renewed imperial-civilizational vigour demanded the direct incorporation and 'civilization' of Seram's stateless spaces. A series of expeditions subjected the Alfurs to registration, categorization, and taxation, which this article argues were seen as pivotal, moralizing tools of colonial social-engineering, used to inscribe subjected people into the state and instil compliant and 'productive' behaviour. However, rather than a replacement of indigenous orders with European modernity, colonization produced a hybrid fusion of colonial strategies of domination with indigenous cultural practices of state-evasion. This article demonstrates that colonial governance was a site of interaction, in which colonial developmentalism and modernity were actively negotiated and challenged
Archaeology · Civilization · Colonialism · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Ethnology · Indigenous · Modernity · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science · Asian Studies and History · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Ecology · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law
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| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,75 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |