Dutch officials blamed Javanese wet-nursing for corrupting European children raised in the Indies

Evidence

Raising and educating Europeans in the Indies will stand in the way of a desirable civilizing of the native and this upbringing will have the result that these children so frequently suckled with the breast milk of Javanese wet nurses along with their own native children, at a more advanced age, will lack any sense of unity with Europeans. They become haughty, imperious, lazy and lascivious. They will learn from their youth to mistreat and denigrate servants; they become, in male adulthood, still greater despots than now is the case with the native rulers themselves. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 571

Categorization

• SEED: The wet-nurse panic as a colonial anxiety about the body as a site where race is transmitted through milk — a potential essay angle on biological metaphors of racial contamination via caregiving.
• XREF: Connects to colonial anxiety research on how proximity and caregiving were thought to transmit race; parallels sexual-racial anxieties in other colonies. — connects to: Epistemic confusion itself characterized colonial governance across the Indies; Dutch colonial rule required the Indies never become settlers’ home; Factory managers contradicted official claims that Indies children were lazy and incompetent (+4 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 571

Broader Connections

• Epistemic confusion itself characterized colonial governance across the Indies #complicates (0.40)
• Dutch colonial rule required the Indies never become settlers’ home #expands (0.40)
• Factory managers contradicted official claims that Indies children were lazy and incompetent #contradicts (0.30)