I want to know if anyone here can suggest me some journal articles and book chapters that talk about the situation of corvée labor (unpaid and unfree labor) in Southeast Asia. Was it widespread? Were there differences in the labor situation between territories under European control and free non-colonized states like Thailand?
Most of the books about forced labor might be biased.
I'm Indonesian, so i probably recommend you to read The Buru Quartet by Pramoedya A. Toer. It was a history roman books, the characters itself is half-fiction but he did wrote about forced labor in early 1900 Indonesia factualy. How the worker condition at the plantation, how their land was taken by the europeans plantations, etc.