The Banana Tree at the Gate: A History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo

Abstract

The Hikayat Banjar, a native court chronicle from Borneo, characterizes irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as the banana tree at gate. Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame history of resource relations between indigenous peoples of Borneo and world system. In analyzing production and trade in forest products, pepper, and especially natural rubber, Dove shows that involvement of Borneo's native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful and that processes of globalization began millennia ago. Dove's analysis replaces image of isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into global system with reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out.

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