Ulbe Bosma is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History, the Netherlands, and Professor of International Comparative Social History at VU University, the Netherlands. His main fields of interest are the histories of labour and commodity production and international labour migration. His most recent monograph is The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia: Industrial Production, 1770-2010 (2013).

Anthony Webster is Professor in History at Northumbria University, UK. His main fields of interest are British business history in Asia in the 19th century, and the history of the British and global co-operative movements. His most recent publications are The Twilight of the East India Company (2009) and Building Co-operation (2013) with John Wilson and Rachael Vorberg-Rugh.