Three-quarters of Dutch Indies people classed European had partial native ancestry

Evidence

For the European Pauperism Commission touched intimately on more than the dispositions of those clearly in distress. It also implicated those who preferred not to publicize that they were barely getting by or badly in debt, or, worse still, that the offspring of their unacknowledged intimacies lived in the native slums while they and their “proper families” were comfortably apart in their European enclaves and homes. How many family genealogies ran across these residential quarters and for how many generations is impossible to assess. Statistics collected during the 1930 Indies census estimated that three-quarters of those classified as European were of partial native origin. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 896

Categorization

• QUESTION: The author concedes the true number of severed mixed-race families is unassessable — worth chasing what demographers have since estimated.
• SHARE: A concrete demographic figure (3/4 of colonial European-classified population partially native) that would intrigue anyone working on colonial racial categories.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier material on colonial populations and classification systems; also to Ann Laura Stoler’s work on the Indies.