Dutch social anthropologist known for his critical analyses of early Indonesian economic and social history, cultural change, and foreign relations.

His doctoral dissertation for the University of Leiden, The Netherlands (1916), considered the influences that led to the establishment of Islām in the Indonesian archipelago. Professor of sociology at the University of Batavia, Java (now Jakarta, Indon.), from 1924 to 1929, Schrieke was also an adviser to the Netherlands Indies government on Indonesian and Arab affairs. He planned to write a sociological study of the Sumatran peoples but completed only a portion of the introduction. This segment, the “Prolegomena” (1925), with other of his writings, appeared in English translation in Indonesian Sociological Studies: Selected Writings of B. Schrieke, 2 vol. (1955–57).

While professor at the University of Amsterdam (1936–45) and head of ethnology for the Royal Colonial Institute (now the Royal Tropical Institute), Amsterdam, he advocated social scientific research in The Netherlands Caribbean lands and Indonesia. His other writings include Alien Americans (1936), a study of race relations in the United States.