DANGEROUS COMPETITORS
The Dutch Ethical Policy (1901) and the Establishment of Craft Schools in East Java
by Marjolein van Pagee
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How can we understand the crafts education initiatives at the time of the Ethical Policy in Dutch-occupied Indonesia at the turn of the century? While the rhetoric of the Ethical Policy was aimed at the ëbettermentí of Indonesians through education, who was it that actually profited from education and at what scale? In this text, historian Marjolein van Pagee shows the importance of understanding the racialised apartheid system to gain a better understanding of the motivations to develop a labour force of craftsmen as well as the realization of these initiatives.
Marjolein van Pagee (1987) is a historian and writer from the Netherlands. She obtained a master in Colonial and Global History at Leiden University and is specialized in the history of the Dutch occupation of Indonesia. She is the author of Banda. De genocide van Jan Pieterszoon Coen (Banda. The Genocide of Jan Pieterszoon Coen, Omniboek, 2021) and Bung Tomo. De revolutie van 1945 (Bung Tomo. The Revolution of 1945, Omniboek, 2023). She is the founder of the Histori Bersama Foundation (www.historibersama.com) and of Media Mondo (www.media-mondo.com/en), an anti-imperialist news website on geopolitics from a historical perspective.
COLOPHON
AUTHORS
Marjolein van Asdonck
Raistiwar Pratanama
Saut Situmorang
Marjolein van Pagee
Rosa te Velde
READERS
Fitria Jelyta
Lisa Baumgarten
Esmee Schoutens
EDITING/PROOFREADING
Marjolein van Pagee
Harriet Foyster
IMAGE RESEARCH
Rosa te Velde
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Zuzana KostelanskáCC BY-NC-ND
This project is published under CC BY-NC-ND license, which enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
Some of the texts were published before by the Wereldmuseum (‘Ethical Imperialism’ and ‘A Firm Nudge: Politics of Reform through ‘inlandsche kunstnijverheid’ by Rosa te Velde and A rejuvenation cure?: Inventing Yogya Silver, ‘saving’ a perishing Javanese industry, by Marjolein van Asdonck)
2025
This project was funded by Het Stimuleringsfonds voor de Creatieve Industrie.