With his latest book, The Making of a Periphery, Ulbe Bosma makes a successful attempt to “decompress history”. Apart from praising his work, I want to offer two critical comments and a suggestion for global comparison. First, I argue that the role of colonialism/imperialism is somewhat downplayed in the book. Second, although I am impressed by the vast body of literature cited, I believe that at several instances the book might have benefited from its arguments being underpinned by more solid empirical quantitative data. Finally, I raise the question how unique the “plantation economies” of Island South East Asia actually were, which also implies a suggestion for further research along the lines of Bosma's impressive monograph.

中文翻译：

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命运的逆转还是持续的苦难？乌尔贝·博斯马（Ulbe Bosma）的外围制作审查

凭借他的最新著作，外围的制作，乌尔贝·博斯马成功尝试“解压历史”。除了赞扬他的工作，我想提出两点批评和全球比较的建议。首先，我认为殖民主义/帝国主义的作用在本书中被淡化了。其次，尽管引用的大量文献给我留下了深刻的印象，但我相信在某些情况下，这本书可能受益于其论点得到更可靠的经验定量数据的支持。最后，我提出了一个问题，即东南亚岛屿的“种植园经济”实际上有多么独特，这也暗示了按照博斯马令人印象深刻的专着进行进一步研究的建议。