Dutch colonial reform targeted poor light-skinned mixed-blood people, not the indigenous

Evidence

The above statement captures both the arrogance of Dutch colonial authorities and a delusional confidence in their projects. Who made up the “we” went easily unstated, just as the possibility of social engineering was assumed. But to whom did this slip between the mimetic and the perfected apply? To whom was this contempt for the ersatz attached? It was not to the indigenous population, as students of colonialism might expect—not to the Indies’ Javanese, Batak, or Balinese. This scrutinizing gaze of reform was cast elsewhere, across the dimly discerned outlines of another population— those who occupied the racial corridors of Indies society—who were poor and light skinned, and most often mixed blood descendants of Europeans. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 616

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘we do not want imitation Europeans, just perfected natives’ slip is a vivid archival moment — useful for a piece on the mimetic anxiety of colonial reform.
• XREF: The contempt for the ‘ersatz’ and mimetic anxiety connects to Bhabha’s mimicry and to the general literature on colonial hybridity the reader will know.