Peter Boomgaard, born in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 1946. Ph.D. from the VU University, Amsterdam. Senior Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and Professor of Environmental and Economic History of Southeast Asia at the University of Amsterdam. († 2017)
Fellow (1 September 2003 – 30 June 2004)
ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF INDONESIA, 1500-2000
I worked on two projects during my stay at NIAS: the Environmental History of Indonesia, 1500-2000 and the Environmental History of Southeast Asia. During my stay here I focused on the latter project and wrote three chapters of a book I was commissioned to write (on the environmental history of Southeast Asia), to be published by ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, California. The chapters are entitled: “Before and after the arrival of humans”; “Early agriculture and the Metal Ages”; and “The era of state formation, fifth to fifteenth centuries”.
I was also the convener of the nucleus Environmental History of Southeast Asia, 1500-2000 (see separate report) and the main convener of a workshop organized around the activities of this nucleus. The workshop, held at NIAS, was entitled The Wealth of Nature: How Natural Resources Have Shaped Asian History, 1600-2000. The title of the paper I wrote for this workshop is “From rice to riches? Rice Production and Trade in (Southeast) Asia, particularly Indonesia, 1500-1950”. The result of the workshop will be a collective volume, to be edited by Greg Bankoff (another member of the nucleus) and myself.