Colonial authorities treated managing subject aspirations as vital to colony viability

Evidence

Van Deventer’s appraisal was more articulate than most and more detailed than many, but his basic premises were widely shared. The notion that children should be sent to the Netherlands, not just to learn a craft or trade, but to change the social environments in which they lived, to change “their thoughts about the world,” was based on a common contention: that the colony’s economic and political viability were contingent upon educating the hearts and minds of those who were a danger to it, on managing their aspirations in the Indies world. Van Deventer captured a sentiment that usually went unstated because it was colonial common sense. As he so clearly put it, youths sent to the Netherlands “must not [conceive of themselves as] heeren (bosses/masters). They must not be burdened with more skills than they need … but only practical knowhow for the tasks to which they are geared.” — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 720

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates ‘colonial common sense’ — the unstated assumptions undergirding policy — as a methodological concept central to this book.
• XREF: This premise — managing aspirations of a dangerous population through education — echoes the educational philosophy of Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee and the ‘uplift’ language the chapter later draws to.