Reading Information
A. L. Stoler, “Chapter Three: Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power” in Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power
Overview
In this chapter, Stoler investigates how sexual encouragements and prohibitions defined positions of power in society and “prescribed the personal and public boundaries of race.” (Stoler,42) The Dutch colonizers were worried about their identity and authority concerning the Javanese, particularly the ambiguous place of European women in the imperialist ideology of dominant colonial order and economic influence. The Dutch wanted to reconfigure the racial ideology to set themselves apart from the Javanese. However, interracial relations blurred the color line that the Dutch were trying to instill. The Dutch East Indies Company wanted Dutch men to be involved with concubines, because they believed that it was a cost efficient solution. However, by encouraging this kind of relationship, they allowed for lines of racial and economic boundary to be blurred, particularly when mixed-race “métissage children” became a part of society.The Dutch discouraged European women from permitting their children to intermingle with the Javanese. However, this was almost impossible to achieve as the European colonists often employed Javanese women in their homes.
Keywords
- Dutch East Indies Company
- métissage children
- sexual sancations
Argument
The Dutch created specific policies for sexual relations in the Java in order to maintain a certain racial line. The Dutch East Indies Company coordinated and controlled the (sexual) accessibility to European women in order to avoid salary increases and a development of a lower-class Europeans. By regulating relations, the Dutch East Indies Company could control the distribution of economic endeavors in Java, but by encouraging integrated relationships that led to mixed children, they were blurring a racial line that the Dutch tried very hard to maintain.
Evidence
“The very categories of ‘colonizer’ and ‘colonized’ were secured through forms of sexual control that defined the domestic arrangements of Europeans and the cultural investments by which they identified themselves.”(Stoler, 42)
“It is in these debates over matrimony and morality that trading and plantation company officials, missionaries, investment bankers/and agents of the colonial state confronted one another’s visions of empire…” (Stoler, 47)
Contribution to Our Understanding of Colonial Rule
This chapter reinforces the difficulties that come with maintaining economic and social control in a colony. The Dutch wanted to separate themselves from the colonized Javanese and did this through Eugenics-based scientific theory. These theories fortified the racial hierarchy that excluded racial groups like the Javanese and assumed the rights of the Dutch to rule. Although the Dutch wanted to keep the groups separate their interactions were almost impossible to avoid. Therefore, it became difficult to enforce policies of isolation between European children and the Javanese. European identity and supremacy became vulnerable.The Dutch seemed fixated with conserving a “pure” race, but were unable to achieve this goal.