Colonial education co-opted native elites to enforce divisive legal policy.

Evidence

But the project did not stop here. In a typical colonialist fashion, a new educational system was introduced to enhance the hegemony of the colonial project. Dutch schools at all levels numbered more than a thousand by the first decade of the twentieth century, giving the Javanese and other elites the means of education that prepared them to pursue their legal studies in Western institutions, whether these were located in Batavia or Leiden. It was from among this elite that students of the adatrecht, many of whom advocated the divisive and fragmenting reception theory, emerged. Indonesia, now reengineered into an institution and virtually into a subject, continues to struggle with the effect until this day. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 258

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the co-opted Javanese aristocracy theme and the general pattern in Things Fall Apart of colonial education reshaping native elites into collaborators.