Dutch racial categories changed with law, not biology

Evidence

The convoluted racial classifications of the Dutch East Indies are one of the strongest testaments to the quixotic and nonbiological basis of colonial racial taxonomies. Europeans “and their equivalents” (the latter referred to as “Official Europeans,” since European status was conferred by ordinance) was based on Artikel 109 of the Regeeringsreglement (the Indies government regulations) of 1854 that excluded native Christians from the category, thereby removing the religious criterium that had been used earlier. By the time of the ordinance of 1883 requests for European equivalence could only be made by those who were in legal possession of a “family name” (geslachtsnaam) “or who had taken a [European] family name with the consent of the Governor-General.” Not surprisingly, there were very few persons who requested and received that consent. The descendants of Europeans with European fathers were included as “equivalents” in 1854, but this was short-lived. By 1898 the new mixed-marriage regulations reassigned children of European fathers and native mothers to the legal status of their mothers. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 952

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes Lake & Reynolds’ and other works showing colonial racial paternity laws hinging on marriage and status.
• SEED: A near-documentary list of porous racial boundary rules any colonial-worldbuilding essay could mine.