Colonial modernization stalled over fear of educated mixed-blood labor

Evidence

In an angry article on the “Indo question” and “racial hatred” (rassenhaat) published by one of Java’s noted European newspapers, an anonymous writer snidely noted that the Indo half-bloods might well serve as “uplifted gobetweens of European capital” but they were no more than foremen and they were to remain that nonetheless. Racialized understandings were imminently “modern” but how those discriminations would be mobilized was unclear in a colony where racial categories had been muddied all along. Demands for a skilled labor force in a modernizing economy were defeated by fears that a well-educated mixed blood labor force would press for more than a colonial situation could and should ever allow. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 801