Purse or Principle: Dutch Colonial Policy in the 1860s and the Decline of the Cultivation System

1991 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Fasseur
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Cultivation System ◽  
Annual Series ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Flaw ◽  
Dutch Colonial

In 1976 I published an article in the Acta Historiae Neerlandicae (an annual series of publications in English on the history of The Netherlands, alas abruptly discontinued in 1982 for financial reasons) in which I tried to summarize the main causes of the decline of the cultivation system in Java (Fasseur, 1976, 143–62). Being then a young and ambitious historian with little respect for the big names in the field of Indonesian sciences, I stated that the literature on the cultivation system contained many misunderstandings as to the origins of the ‘decay’ of the system. In this connection I mentioned in particular Wertheim's well-known study on Indonesian Society in Transition and Clifford Geertz's stimulating essay on Agricultural Involution (1963). Although this latter book is certainly not without its shortcomings, it has greatly obliged all historians by reviving the interest in the role played by the cultivation system in the development of Java during the last century and a half. The period of the cultivation system, in the words of Geertz, was ‘the classic stage’ of colonial history, ‘the most decisive of the Dutch era’. Although I did not realize that fully in 1975, it was thus an opportune moment to publish, twelve years after Geertz's provocative study, a doctoral dissertation on the history of the system. The main flaw of Geertz's work was its weak historical component. The only ‘historical’ data Agricultural Involution provided, were borrowed from an agricultural atlas ofJava published in 1926.

scholarly journals De postkoloniale geschiedenis in polyfonie

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 159-164
Author(s):  
Judyta Kuznik
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dutch Colonial

This article focuses on the book Het andere postkoloniale oog, edited by Michiel van Kempen and published in 2020 by the publishing house Verloren. This book had the goal to present never before mentioned aspects of the colonial history of the Netherlands and its influence on cultural practices of the colonised cultures within the last four centuries. Because of the numerous contributions amassed there, the article discusses in depth only a few. These contributions distinguished themselves either through an original academic approach to the topic or the positioning with regard to postcolonial theories usage. The first part of this book involves the need for the re-evaluation of the Dutch colonial history in many parts of the world, to name Suriname as an example. This re-evaluation is highly relevant, as is comes in a time when recent social movements push the mostly unknown parts of the Dutch colonial history into the spotlight. In the second part, this is followed by an attempt to answer the question whether postcolonial theories are essential for the writing bound to the colonial history of the Dutch. As is shown by some contributions, postcolonial theories can stimulate new discussions, especially in cases which do not fit the existing theoretical schemes. And yet, it seems that they are not crucial in discussions about the influence between colonised cultures, though their use might prove fruitful. The article closes with an evaluation of the analysed texts.

scholarly journals Dutch Colonial Anthropology in Indonesia

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-369
Author(s):  
Jean Kommers ◽  
Léon Buskens
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
History Of Anthropology ◽  
Colonial Studies ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
Essential Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comprehensive History ◽  
Dutch Colonial

AbstractAttempts to assess the results of colonial anthropology in Indonesia faced some problems, which, until recently, have not been dealt with properly. Therefore, in a newly published comprehensive history of anthropology in the Netherlands, several studies focused on the character, rather than on the substance of colonial anthropology. In the case of Dutch colonial representations of Indonesia, 'colonial anthropology' appears to be an assemblage of various disciplines that constituted a fragmented whole (Indologie; Dutch Indies Studies) from which today's Dutch academic anthropology emerged. However, projection of current conceptions of anthropology into the colonial past resulted in a tendency to neglect some major characteristics of early representations that are imperative for the interpretation of these representations. Besides, a rather limited familiarity amongst present-day anthropologists with the way in which Dutch colonial politics became immersed in international discourses resulted in misappraisal of an essential change in colonial knowledge: the shift from local to analytical representations, deeply affecting the portrayal of Indonesian cultures. In colonial knowledge production, emphasis moved from ethnographic particularism to essentialist conceptions like 'Knowledge of the Native'. This shift also had serious consequences for the academic position of ethnology amongst other colonial disciplines. Until recently, this misappraisal could escape notice because students of Dutch colonial anthropology were insufficiently aware of the effects on interpretation of the great variety of disciplinary discourses, so characteristic for Dutch colonial studies. Therefore, we will here concentrate on these effects and on the growing intertwinement of knowledge and politics which was directly related to the international orientation of colonial policy that became increasingly prominent after the mid-nineteenth century.

Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje In Memory of the Centennial of His Birth

1957 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert van Niel
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
English Reading ◽  
The World ◽  
Dutch Colonial

This year academic circles in the Netherlands are celebrating the centennial of the birth of C. Snouck Hurgronje; Arabist, scholar of Indonesian affairs, and formateur of Dutch colonial policy. Most Dutch scholars and many students of Indonesian affairs would readily agree that few men have had as intimate acquaintance with the Indonesian archipelago and its people and have had as wide a reputation as an expert on this part of the world as the late Snouck Hurgronje. Unfortunately his writings and policies are known to English-reading scholars only at second hand. Except for a few brief articles, only his books, Mekka and The Achehnese, and his lectures in Mohammedanism have appeared in English. Other important writings have appeared in German and French, but the great bulk are in Dutch. There are presently plans to translate some parts of Snouck Hurgronje's collected works and also to make available certain writings which were done after the collected works were published, but the publication plans for these translations and reprints are still indefinite.

New Publications in 1998

Itinerario ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 97-121
Author(s):  
Jaap de Moor
Keyword(s):  
New Guinea ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Economic Expansion ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
History Of ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Dutch Colonial

The year 1998 saw the publication of a new and impressive handbook on the history of Dutch economic expansion and political domination in Asia and the Indonesian Archipelago in particular: J.J.P. de Jong's De waaier van het fortuin (The fan of fortune). Its almost seven hundred pages are packed with information about the Dutch in the Indonesian archipelago in the period between 1595, when the first Dutch ships departed for Asia, and 1950, when the Dutch colonial presence in Indonesia (with the exception of Dutch New Guinea) came to an end. De Jong, an official at the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs, who obtained his doctorate with a thesis on the Indonesian decolonisation in 1988, has undoubtedly delivered his magnum opus with this new study. The book does not only tell the story of the Dutch expansion in Indonesia, it also gives a number of new or partly new interpretations of Dutch colonial history in the archipelago. It is divided into five parts: I: The Era of the Dutch East India Company; II: ‘Plantation Java’; III: The Era of Changes, 1870–1918; IV: The Modern Colony, 1918–1942; and V: ‘Denouement’, 1942–1950.

‘A Conglomeration of […] often Conflicting Ideas’: Resolving the ‘Native Question’ in Java and the Outer Islands in the Dutch East Indies, 1900-1925

Itinerario ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 160-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joost Coté
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dutch East Indies ◽  
Dutch Colonial

This paper examines Dutch colonial discourse as it was developing at the beginning of the twentieth century. I argue that colonial circumstances were changing at the beginning of the twentieth century in many aspects - economic, political, social - and that these changes required new policy and administrative responses. I take as examples of these changing colonial conditions and responses, two episodes in the history of ‘the late colonial state’, which I argue are both representative of and formative in shaping, colonial policy in the last decades of Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia.

The Colonial History of Burkina Faso

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Royer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Burkina Faso ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
World War ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Military ◽  
Upper Volta

Burkina Faso has a remarkable history owing to repeated dissolution and reunification of its territory. Following the French colonial conquest in 1896, a military territory was established over a large part of what would become Upper Volta. In 1905, the military territory was integrated in the civilian colony of Upper Senegal and Niger with headquarters in Bamako. Following a major anticolonial war in 1915–16, the colony of Upper Volta with Ouagadougou as its capital was created in 1919, for security reasons and as a labor reservoir for neighboring colonies. Dismantled in 1932, Upper Volta was partitioned among neighboring colonies. It was recreated after World War II as an Overseas Territory (Territoire d’Outre-mer) within the newly created French Union (Union française). In 1960, Upper Volta gained its independence, but the nation experienced a new beginning in 1983 when it was renamed Burkina Faso by the revolutionary government of Thomas Sankara. The policies and debates that shaped the colonial history of Burkina Faso, while important in themselves, are a reflection of the larger West African history and French colonial policy.

scholarly journals New Zealand’s ‘Critics of Empire’: Domestic Opposition to New Zealand’s Pacific Empire, 1883-1948

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Nicholas Hoare
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Social Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
The Public ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of

<p>The recent resurgence of interest in the ‘other side’ of New Zealand’s colonial history has reaffirmed the need to view the nation’s history in its Pacific context. This historiographical turn has involved taking seriously the fact that as well as being a colony of Britain, New Zealand was an empire-state and metropole in its own right, possessing a tropical, Oceanic empire. What has yet to have been attempted however is a history of the ‘other side’ of the imperial debate. Thus far the historiography has been weighted towards New Zealand’s imperial and colonial agents. By mapping metropolitan critiques of New Zealand’s imperialism and colonialism in the Pacific (1883-1948), this thesis seeks to rebalance the historiographical ledger. This research adds to our understanding of New Zealand’s involvement in the colonial Pacific by demonstrating that anticolonial struggles were not only confined to the colonies, they were also fought on the metropolitan front by colonial critics at once sympathetic to the claims of the colonised populations, and scathing of their own Government’s colonial policy. These critics were, by virtue of their status as white, metropolitan citizens, afforded greater rights and freedoms than indigenous colonial subjects, and so were able to challenge colonial policy in the public domain. At the same time this thesis demonstrates how colonial criticism reflected national anxieties. The grounds for criticism generally depended on the wider social context. In the nineteenth-century in particular, critiques often contained concerns that New Zealand’s Pacific imperialism would disrupt the sanctity of ‘White New Zealand’, however as the twentieth-century wore on criticism bore the imprint of anti-racism and increasingly supported indigenous claims for self-government. By examining a seventy year period of change, this thesis shows that at every stage of the ‘imperial process’, New Zealand’s imperialism in the Pacific was a subject open to persistent public debate.</p>

Major Dutch collections of Permian fossils from Timor Amalgamated

2009 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanneke J. M. Meijer ◽  
Stephen K. Donovan ◽  
Willem Renema
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Upper Cretaceous ◽  
Marine Invertebrates ◽  
The Other ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Type Section ◽  
Sedimentary Sequences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Surface Geology ◽  
West Timor

Ninety-five percent of the surface geology of The Netherlands consists of various Pleistocene sedimentary sequences. Of the other five percent, the principal area of ‘solid’ geology is in the south around Maastricht, in the province of Limburg, justifiably famous for its highly fossiliferous Upper Cretaceous succession, including the type section of the Maastrichtian Stage. Paleozoic exposures are very rare and, most relevant to the discussion herein, there is no exposed Permian succession. Yet the colonial history of The Netherlands makes it a haven for Permian researchers. The purpose of this brief communication is to alert interested researchers to the amalgamation of the Dutch Timor collections by the recent acquisition by the Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum - Naturalis, Leiden (NNM), of more than 10,000 specimens of Permian fossils, mainly marine invertebrates, from West Timor, Indonesia. Together with the collections already present at Naturalis, this easily forms the largest concentration of fossils from Timor in any museum.

scholarly journals New Zealand’s ‘Critics of Empire’: Domestic Opposition to New Zealand’s Pacific Empire, 1883-1948

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Nicholas Hoare
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Social Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
The Public ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of

<p>The recent resurgence of interest in the ‘other side’ of New Zealand’s colonial history has reaffirmed the need to view the nation’s history in its Pacific context. This historiographical turn has involved taking seriously the fact that as well as being a colony of Britain, New Zealand was an empire-state and metropole in its own right, possessing a tropical, Oceanic empire. What has yet to have been attempted however is a history of the ‘other side’ of the imperial debate. Thus far the historiography has been weighted towards New Zealand’s imperial and colonial agents. By mapping metropolitan critiques of New Zealand’s imperialism and colonialism in the Pacific (1883-1948), this thesis seeks to rebalance the historiographical ledger. This research adds to our understanding of New Zealand’s involvement in the colonial Pacific by demonstrating that anticolonial struggles were not only confined to the colonies, they were also fought on the metropolitan front by colonial critics at once sympathetic to the claims of the colonised populations, and scathing of their own Government’s colonial policy. These critics were, by virtue of their status as white, metropolitan citizens, afforded greater rights and freedoms than indigenous colonial subjects, and so were able to challenge colonial policy in the public domain. At the same time this thesis demonstrates how colonial criticism reflected national anxieties. The grounds for criticism generally depended on the wider social context. In the nineteenth-century in particular, critiques often contained concerns that New Zealand’s Pacific imperialism would disrupt the sanctity of ‘White New Zealand’, however as the twentieth-century wore on criticism bore the imprint of anti-racism and increasingly supported indigenous claims for self-government. By examining a seventy year period of change, this thesis shows that at every stage of the ‘imperial process’, New Zealand’s imperialism in the Pacific was a subject open to persistent public debate.</p>

The Private Papers of Artus Gijsels as Source for the History of East Asia

1969 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 540-559
Author(s):  
M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
General State ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Comprehensive Collection ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Asian History ◽  
The Government ◽  
State Archives

The General State Archives in The Hague are gradually becoming famous, even outside Europe, for the wealth of documentary material on Asian history deposited there. Moreover, this institution endeavours to supplement the Company archives with microfilms of documents stored in less obvious places, whether public or private, at home or abroad. Now such documents, written in Dutch and pertaining to subjects which usually fall outside the scope of other groups of archives in such institutions, attract little attention locally and so are insufficiently utilised. It is therefore very gratifying that the General State Archives recently acquired the microfilms of a comprehensive collection of documents deposited in the Badische Landesbiliothek in Karlsruhe in the German Federal Republic. This collection derives from Artus or Arnoud Gijsels, official of the Dutch East Indies Company, and only at the end of the century became known in the Netherlands. Then the German Dr. E. F. Kossmann, Germanic scholar who later settled in the Netherlands, father and grandfather of renowned Dutch scholars, drew up a brief guide to its contents. He published this guide in “De Nederlandsche Spectator” (1888), a now almost forgotten cultural periodical published in the Netherlands. Colonial history was not Kossmann's special line, but the way he summarised this guide demands our respect. Thanks to his article, this collection received the attention both of the editors of the “Bouwstoffen voor de geschiedenis van de Maleise Archipel” (Material for the history of the Malayan Archipelago), P. A. Tiele and J. G. Heeres and of the editors of the journal of Batavia, H. T. Colenbrander, later professor of Colonial History at the University of Leyden. One gets the impression, however, that they did not personally investigate the entire collection in Karlsruhe. Tiele and Heeres mention it only in passing. Colenbrander's interest was directed mainly towards two reports drawn up by the Governor-General Van Diemen in 1636 and 1637. The report of 1636 was also deposited in the General State Archives, and this example differed only on minor details from that of Karlsruhe. But neither the General State Archives nor the Government Archives of Batavia had a copy of the 1637 report. This report, spanning merely the period from 1 January to 27 May 1637, was published by Colenbrander in his series of journals, supplemented by two other documents dating from after 27 May 1637. Van Diemen's journal of his voyage to Amboina was also lacking in The Hague and Batavia, and of it he had manuscript copies made — it was still the pre-technical age —. These copies are now preserved in the General State Archives' collection of accessions.

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