Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra's Plantation Belt, 1870 - 1979 is a fascinating ethnographic history that analyzes how popular resistance actively molded both the form of colonialism and the social, economic, and political experience of the Javanese laboring communities on Sumatra's plantation borders.

In a new preface to this edition, Ann Laura Stoler reflects on her book as a historical document, exploring its timing at the cusp of a more general shift in the anthropology of political economy and colonial studies. This volume will prove invaluable to students across a range of disciplines, including not only history and anthropology but political science and sociology.