Peter Boomgaard, born in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 1946. Ph.D. from the VU University, Amsterdam. Director of the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV) and Professor of Environmental and Economic History of Southeast Asia, at the University of Amsterdam. († 2017)
Fellow (1 February 2000 – 30 June 2000)
During my stay here I worked on four topics, namely:
Forest exploitation and management in Java, 1600-1950;
Comparative History and its Enemies;
Slavery in Indonesia;
Tigers and People in the Malay World, 1600-1950.
Regarding the first, I continued collecting data on the topic. I expect to have a manuscript by 2003 and a book by 2005. The second and the third topics were dealt with in papers, for which part of the research and all of the writing was carried out at NIAS. The final topic was dealt with in the final version of a book, accepted for publication by Yale University Press, entitled Frontiers of Fear: Tigers and People in the Malay World, 1600-1950, to be published in 2000 or 2001. The rewritten manuscript was sent off to the publishers on the very last day of my stay, which was a joyous moment.