Lecture by Assistant Professor Dr. Xu Guanmian in the twenty-sixth talk of the “Tan Lark Sye Lecture Series”
The 26th session of the "Tan Lark Sye Lecture Series," organized by the Institute of International Education, New Era University College (IIE, NEUC) and the Tan Lark Sye Institute, was held on 31 January. The guest speakers for this event was Assistant Professor Dr. Xu Guanmian from Peking University. It was attended by more than 120 people.
Dr. Xu, obtained his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in history from Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of History at Peking University. His main research areas include colonial history, global history, and material cultural history, with a focus on the early modern Dutch colonial empire, Southeast Asia, and overseas Chinese communities.
This lecture was titled “Homeless Countryside: The Making of a Nanyang Plantation Society, 1684-1740”. The speaker utilized archival materials from the East India Company to excavate a segment of Asian plantation labor history, analyzing how an early modern plantation society in Nanyang was formed. He discussed why this society did not evolve into the smallholder society we are familiar with but instead adopted a plantation model. The lecture shared insights on why production, rather than reproduction, became the primary issue in this plantation society, and how this led to the emergence of a rural society that was not based on the family as the fundamental unit of production. The event was moderated by Assistant Professor Dr. Lew Siew Boon from NEUC. It received enthusiastic feedback, with the audience actively participating in the Q&A session and eagerly engaging in discussions.