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

"“This book, yet another outstanding contribution by Michael Dove, provides a fascinating account that brings the local together with the global, simultaneously setting present realities within their historical context."—Carol Colfer, Agricultural History" - Agricultural History

"Winner of the 2011 Julian Steward Award as given by the Anthropology and Environment Section of the American Anthropological Association" - American Anthropological Association

"The depth of the historical excursus and the systemic interpretation of cultural, agro-ecological, and resistance practices of the Kantu in West Kalimantan take the readers well beyond the gate and the outer limits of their world into the complex transactions, both practical and symbolic, of the economies and lives of the Dayak peoples in this part of Indonesian Borneo over time."—Cristina Eghenter, Human Ecology - Human Ecology

"Though this book details the centuries of unequal terms of trade between the marginalized Kantu' Dayak peoples of Indonesian Borneo and the rest of the world, Dove does it in a way that highlights the resilience of the people as opposed to their victimhood." Kelly Heber, The Monthly Review - The Monthly Review