A noted historian of Burma and a founder of the Burma Research Society, John Sydenham Furnivall (1878-1960) supported Burmese independence and freedom from colonial rule. However, he has been considered as Eurocentric and in favour of colonialism, in part because he saw it as a necessary stage in the improvement of certain societies. Stemming from a request in 1942 by the colonial government for Furnivall's views on reconstruction, this influential study was published in 1948. Using the Dutch East Indies as a case study for comparison, Furnivall assesses the effects of the different systems...