The “Benevolent” Colonies of Johannes van den Bosch: Continuities in the Administration of Poverty in the Netherlands and Indonesia

Schrauwers, Albert

doi:10.1017/s0010417501003504

Cited by 48 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(11 reference statements)

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“…Identifying eighteenth-century Holland/Belgium as the temporal and geographical origin of domestic colonialism is common in the academic literature (Toth, 2006; Schrauwers, 2001, 2020; Arneil, 2017). They are also recognized as the original model in the international community; indeed, the Dutch and Belgian governments have built their bid to have UNESCO recognize these colonies as world cultural heritage sites on the argument that exactly because they are a point of origin for domestic colonies created in Europe throughout the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, they are worthy of being recognized as original by the UN (Kingdom of the Netherlands and Kingdom of Belgium, 2017).…”

Section: Origins Of Domestic Colonialismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Origins: Colonies and Statistics

Arneil

2020

Can J Pol Sci

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In this address, I examine the lexical, geographic, temporal and philosophical origins of two key concepts in modern political thought: colonies and statistics. Beginning with the Latin word colonia, I argue that the modern ideology of settler colonialism is anchored in the claim of “improvement” of both people and land via agrarian labour in John Locke's labour theory of property in seventeenth-century America, through which he sought to provide an ideological justification for both the assimilation and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. This same ideology of colonialism was turned inward a century later by Sir John Sinclair to justify domestic colonies on “waste” land in Scotland—specifically Caithness (the county within which my own grandparents were tenant farmers). Domestic colonialism understood as “improvement” of people (the “idle” poor and mentally ill and disabled) through engagement in agrarian labour on waste land inside explicitly named colonies within the borders of one's own country was first championed not only by Sinclair but also his famous correspondent, Jeremy Bentham, in England. Sinclair simultaneously coined the word statistics and was the first to use it in the English language. He defined it as the scientific gathering of mass survey data to shape state policies. Bentham embraced statistics as well. In both cases, statistics were developed and deployed to support their domestic colony schemes by creating a benchmark and roadmap for the improvement of people and land as well as a tool to measure the colony's capacity to achieve both over time. I conclude that settler colonialism along with the intertwined origins of domestic colonies and statistics have important implications for the study of political science in Canada, the history of colonialism as distinct from imperialism in modern political thought and the role played by intersecting colonialisms in the Canadian polity.

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Section: Origins Of Domestic Colonialismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Origins: Colonies and Statistics

Arneil

2020

Can J Pol Sci

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“…This expanding body of work has profited from historical scholarship and other anthropological work, drawing in particular on studies of religious subjectivities. With respect to the former, transformations in practices of religious charity, whether Buddhist or Islamic, are becoming more of a direct concern for historians of South East Asia, with Ingleson (2012), Nguyen-Marshall (2008) and Fauzia (2013) joining forces with historically inclined social scientists (Brown, 2008, 2014; Retsikas, 2014, 2015; Schrawers, 2001, 2011). In question is not only the ways in which the advent of modernity changed the manner in which value was recognised and transferred, especially with regards to matters of institutionalisation, rationalisation and accountability (Fauzia, 2013), but also the extent to which colonialism was predicated on the application in the colonies of charitable projects first conceived and executed by imperial powers in European metropolises for the management of their own domestic population of paupers (Schrawers, 2001, 2011).…”

Section: Charity Religion Subjectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Value transfers in South East Asia

Retsikas

2017

South East Asia Research

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The special volume sets out to explore the complexities arising from contemporary intersections of religion and the economy as the later apply to public projects of transferring value to the poor for the purpose of alleviating their suffering, and improving their condition. It provides evidence of the new significance that religious interventions in the field of poverty alleviation are assuming in that part of the world in the era of neoliberal reform, with its case studies drawing upon ethnographic materials from Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand in the north, to Malaysia and Indonesia in the south.

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“…In addition to the use of coercion, it was the system of replacing the market with internal company accounts that was passed on from the Priangan to the Cultivation System in the rest of Java in 1830. As Albert Schrauwers (, ) shows, the designer of the Cultivation System Johannes van den Bosch made calculated use of incentives not only to keep the production machine running, but to ‘improve’ populations in the Netherlands and the Indies. He recognized that these populations were insufficiently motivated by market logics, for the reasons outlined above: knowing that any surplus would be removed from them, they had little incentive to work.…”

Section: Why Was Labour Coerced?mentioning

confidence: 99%