Disciplining Geo-body of the Dutch Indies: Discourse Analysis on the Colonial School Textbooks of Geography

Abstract

Geography was one of the instruments the Dutch used to master the knowledge about their colonial possessions. In the Dutch Indies, geographical knowledge was developed by the Dutch colonial government and introduced to the natives through schools. The school textbooks in the Dutch colonial periods were important media for disseminating the modern geography knowledge to the natives. By analysing three geography textbooks from 1875 to 1920, this paper examines how was a new spatial mode portrayed and disseminate…