Dutch colonial social visions were situated, recursive relays over a shared referential field

Evidence

Like those sentiments discussed in the preceding chapter, these colonial romances were relational, dependent on situated knowledge, and thus have histories of their own. Three stand out, not because they are wholly distinct in vision or chronology (they, in fact, work around and through one another’s visions in recursive rather than linear ways), but because they refract different referents with respect to what served for each as precedent, context, and relevant model. One could be called an “artisanal romance,” dating from the 1840s. Promoted during a moment of expanding social reform in the Netherlands, it coincided in the Indies with the consolidation of the European colonial community and its administrative apparatus. Its advocates imagined the making of European foremen, craftsmen, and artisans who would meet the demand for competent craft labor and serve as a dependable lower-middle class (middenstand). — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 640

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the three ‘romances’ (artisanal, industrial, rural) as organizing categories for analyzing colonial social policy discourse.