Indigenous girls and education in a changing colonial society : the Dutch East Indies, c. 1880-1942

Defence date: 28 October 2019Examining Board: Prof. Corinna Unger, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Laura Lee Downs, European University Institute; Prof. Rebecca Rogers, Université Paris Descartes; Dr. Alicia Schrikker, Leiden UniversitySo far, the history of Indonesian girls’ education in the colonial period has mainly been explored by historians who have focused on governmental policies, and by those interested in theories of emancipation and modernity. This has often resulted in narratives about education as either a pathway to anticolonial activism and the birth of the Indonesian nation state, or as a gateway to ‘modernity’ and women’s emancipation. This thesis, by contrast, argues that a focus on girls’ education can help us to shift the perspective away from such teleological frameworks. This research project reconsiders the topic of girls’ education by taking the diversity of the late-colonial Dutch East Indies as its starting point. In doing so, the thesis integrates four widely diverging regions – the sultanate of Yogyakarta, West Sumatra, Flores and Minahasa – in one comparative framework. This allows for a kaleidoscopic view on girls’ schooling from modernist Islamic initiatives to nationalist organizations and Christian missionary schools. The comparative framework enables an interrogation of the importance of local factors, while also doing justice to broader societal developments, such as the growing popular support for nationalist movements and the increasing labour market participation of Indonesian women. While the importance of the new colonial ideology represented by the early-twentieth-century ‘ethical policy’ should not be underestimated, this research supports the argument that this policy was far from the only driving force behind developments in female education. Throughout the chapters, the strikingly diverse and highly gendered educational landscape of the Dutch East Indies is moved into two recently developed historiographical fields. In the first place, following the approach of colonial childhood studies, there is a continuous attempt to explore the historical experiences of indigenous girls themselves. This allows for a glimpse of girls’ own agency and the historical subjectivity of a group that, in historiography, is usually framed as the ‘object’ of colonial civilizing missions. In the second place, this thesis precisely reconsiders the idea of colonial education as being driven by civilizing missions. Most importantly, the thesis argues that in most cases, their schooling encouraged indigenous girls to become agents of gendered civilizing missions in the context of a colonial society in flux.Chapter 2 ‘From indigenous girls to exemplary housewives? Education and domesticity in Christian schools for girls, c. 1880-1920' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Giving for girls : reconsidering colonial civilizing missions in the Dutch East Indies through charitable girls' education' (2018) in the journal ‘New global studies’Chapter 2 ‘From indigenous girls to exemplary housewives?' and Chapter 4 'Changing times. Indonesian girls, secondary education and the teaching profession, c. 1920-1942' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'An alternative family : an elite christian girls’ school on Java in a context of social change, c. 1907-1939' (2020) in the journal ‘BMGN : low countries historical review

Opportunistic infections in immunosuppressed patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis: Analysis by the Pharmachild Safety Adjudication Committee

Background: To derive a list of opportunistic infections (OI) through the analysis of the juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) patients in the Pharmachild registry by an independent Safety Adjudication Committee (SAC). Methods: The SAC (3 pediatric rheumatologists and 2 pediatric infectious disease specialists) elaborated and approved by consensus a provisional list of OI for use in JIA. Through a 5 step-procedure, all the severe and serious infections, classified as per MedDRA dictionary and retrieved in the Pharmachild registry, were evaluated by the SAC by answering six questions and adjudicated with the agreement of 3/5 specialists. A final evidence-based list of OI resulted by matching the adjudicated infections with the provisional list of OI. Results: A total of 772 infectious events in 572 eligible patients, of which 335 serious/severe/very severe non-OI and 437 OI (any intensity/severity), according to the provisional list, were retrieved. Six hundred eighty-two of 772 (88.3%) were adjudicated as infections, of them 603/682 (88.4%) as common and 119/682 (17.4%) as OI by the SAC. Matching these 119 opportunistic events with the provisional list, 106 were confirmed by the SAC as OI, and among them infections by herpes viruses were the most frequent (68%), followed by tuberculosis (27.4%). The remaining events were divided in the groups of non-OI and possible/patient and/or pathogen-related OI. Conclusions: We found a significant number of OI in JIA patients on immunosuppressive therapy. The proposed list of OI, created by consensus and validated in the Pharmachild cohort, could facilitate comparison among future pharmacovigilance studies. Trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT 01399281; ENCePP seal: awarded on 25 November 2011

Not your Average National Hero: Scattered Archives and the Women of the Indonesian Anticolonial Movement

In her captivating autobiographical novel Buiten het gareel [Out of Line], the Indonesian author Suwarsih Djojopuspito painted a vivid image of her experiences as an activist teacher during the last few years of Dutch rule in Indonesia. The book, published in Dutch in 1940, tells the story of Sulastri, an idealistic young teacher who runs a non-governmental school for Indonesian children together with her husband, Sugondo. In the 1930s, independent schools like theirs were a key site of..

Youth and empire : trans-colonial childhoods in British and French Asia

Published online: 07 April 201

Giving for girls : reconsidering colonial civilizing missions in the Dutch East Indies through charitable girls' education

Published Online: 2018-06-26This article compares two Protestant schools for elite indigenous girls in the Dutch East Indies. While both schools were financially supported by the colonial government, they emerged from Christian organizations and were partly dependent on voluntary gifts from the Netherlands and the colony. The article proposes to look at such philanthropic initiatives as integral parts of a larger colonial civilizing mission which was not limited to the colonial state. On the contrary, discourses about the implementation of “civilized” gender roles within indigenous families through girls’ education first emerged among philanthropists, and eventually influenced state-driven educational policies for girls. It is argued that philanthropical initiatives for girls’ education such as the two schools presented here are best understood as attempts to gain control over, and ultimately reform, the domestic lives of the indigenous population in the Dutch East Indies

An Alternative Family: An Elite Christian Girls’ School on Java in a Context of Social Change, c. 1907-1939

The Koningin Wilhelmina School was a prestigious Dutch-language Protestant school for the daughters of the Javanese nobility in Yogyakarta. Opened in 1907 through the efforts of a group of elite Protestant women in the Netherlands, supporters of the Dutch Reformed mission saw the school as a tool to reform the spiritual and moral lives of young Javanese girls. At the same time, the school presented local parents with an opportunity to anchor their daughters more firmly in the Javanese colonial elite. This article investigates how the Dutch teachers at the school tried to provide their Javanese students with a surrogate Christian family to create distance from their milieu of origin. An analysis of letters by Koningin Wilhelmina School graduates shows how this particular effort to partly remove children from their own culture opened the door for highly diverse life trajectories. De Koningin Wilhelmina School was een prestigieuze school voor de dochters van de Javaanse adel in Yogyakarta, met Nederlands als voertaal. De onderwijsinstelling, die in 1907 geopend was met hulp van een groep vrouwen uit de Nederlandse protestante elite, werd door de gereformeerde missie gezien als een instrument om het spirituele en morele karakter van Javaanse meisjes te hervormen. Tegelijkertijd gaf de school ouders uit de hogere Javaanse klasse de mogelijkheid om hun dochters deel uit te laten maken van de Nederlandstalige koloniale elite. In dit artikel wordt onderzocht hoe Nederlandse leraressen op deze school hun leerlingen van een alternatieve christelijke familie probeerden te voorzien, om zo afstand te creëren tussen de kinderen en hun oorspronkelijke milieu. Een analyse van brieven van oud-studenten van de Koningin Wilhelmina School laat zien hoe deze poging om kinderen deels van hun eigen cultuur te vervreemden uiteindelijk voor deze alumni mogelijkheden creëerde voor zeer uiteenlopende levenskeuzes

'The Javanese is soft and docile' : deconstructing masculinities in ethnography about the Netherlands Indies

This quote served as the motto to the 1907 book Java. Geographisch, Ethnologisch, Historisch, door Prof. P.J. Veth. Vierde Deel: Etnographie, and it is illustrative of the discourse about power, legitimacy and colonialism that is displayed throughout this work. However discordant a quote from the beginning of the twentieth century may come across in a journal dedicated to second-wave feminism, it is not out of place here. As will become evident from the next few pages, second-wave feminism was not only a social movement, but also an intellectual one that gave rise to academic developments that are still highly relevant today. As such, it provides historians of gender and colonialism with methodological tools. With the help of these approaches, I will turn to questions of gender in a specific Dutch ethnographic text about the Netherlands Indies, and take apart the notions of masculinity and colonial power relations that constitute it. As a case study I will use the aforementioned ethnographical work about the island of Java to demonstrate that the portrayal of native masculinity in this work can be interpreted as a legitimization of colonial power

Consumer attitudes toward mobile advertising : A study of the Dutch youth.

Purpose: To study the Dutch youth’s perceptions on and attitudes toward mobile advertising. Background: Consumers are living within a media saturated environment, which limits the effectiveness of advertising. This has led to advertising clutter, most prevalent in traditional mass media. The advertising clutter has resulted in marketers moving their advertising focus toward less cluttered mediums, such as mobile advertising. Mobile advertising allows companies to specifically target the right consumers by looking at age, gender and geographic regions etc. Being able to advertise to such a specified target group is an advantage for companies, however the question remaining is how consumers perceive this form of specific targeting advertising. Method: In this research the deductive approach has been implemented in order to answer the research questions. Both qualitative and quantitative data has been collected through a questionnaire and focus group. The statements used in the questionnaire are based on previous studies and theories. The data retrieved through the questionnaire has been analysed using SPSS. Conclusion: The results of this study showed the Dutch youth mainly sees the originality, interactivity and entertainment levels of mobile advertising as positive in comparison to traditional forms of advertising. Furthermore, message content was shown to be an important factor in order for the consumer to perceive the advertising as positive. The main aggravating attributes that come with mobile advertising are the perceived risks, like receiving too many advertising messages. Furthermore it was found that the more positive the attitude toward advertising in general is, and the more the consumer likes searching for product information, the more positive the attitude toward mobile advertising will be. The main purpose of this research was to find out what the attitudes of the Dutch youth are toward mobile advertising. The statistical results showed a negative attitude toward mobile advertising. However, the qualitative results showed that when mobile advertising is used in a proper way, consumers’ attitudes can be positive

Neighbourhood fast food exposure and consumption: the mediating role of neighbourhood social norms

The association between the residential fast food environment and diet has gained growing attention. However, why the food environment affects food consumption is under-examined. This study aimed to investigate neighbourhood social norms with respect to fast food consumption as a potential mediating pathway between residential fast food outlet exposure and residents’ fast food consumption