Several Indonesian Dutch scholars, as well as contemporary Dutch observers, have examined aspects of Javanese government during the Later Mataram period, but few studies are at present available in the English language. The outstanding exception, to which Mr. Moertono pays tribute, is the late Professor Schrieke's Indonesian Sociological Studies, Volume II, The Hague, 1957, which is a translation of some of Professor Schrieke's unpublished manuscripts.

In addition to published Dutch sources, Mr. Moertono has used his own substantial knowledge of Javanese literature, and, as a result, the reader of this study has the sensation that he is being helped to see the situation in Later Mataram from within. The reader will become aware of the rich contents of the Javanese sources, for which Dr. Th. G. Th. Pigeaud has recently provided a valuable survey in the first volume of his Literature of Java, The Hague, 1967. Perhaps students will be attracted to the study of the almost entirely unexplored Javanese context of Dutch activities in Java.

Students of contemporary and near-contemporary Java will certainly wish to take into account the background of political ideas which Mr. Moertono has reconstructed and analyzed.