Dutch colonial poverty among Europeans reached 24 to 31 percent in some areas

Evidence

According to the commission’s final report, out of a total of 53,584 Europeans “and their equivalents,” there were 9,381 disadvantaged, or 17.5 percent of the European population. Of these 5,935 were paupers, 3,234 of whom were children. These were large numbers for any colony, but especially for a nonsettler one. In some residencies the broader category of “the disadvantaged” made up only 10 percent, but in Madiun it reached 24 percent and in Preanger 31 percent. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 950