Seeds Of Nationalism In Colonial Dutch East Indies

The introduction of modernity was having a profound effect in the Dutch East Indies at the time of Minke’s story. This modernity manifested itself through advanced learning, science, and technological advances. Minke considered his opportunity to experience modern learning and science a blessing whose beauty was beyond descript

Aside from installing Dutch as the supreme caste language, colonialism reinforced and strengthened caste distinctions in the Native language of Javanese as well. Javanese already operated on at least three different levels, each based upon the person to whom one was speaking or the person who was doing the speaking. Although Minke was native Javanese, he rarely spoke Javanese because he thought it was unbecoming of the status he had achieved.

Another dimension to the social caste system of the Dutch East Indies was the origin of one’s own blood. Throughout the story, the terms Native, Indo, and Pure, manifested how, in everyday life, race and caste dominated all of the Dutch Indies society. These categories were even given legal status. Both Minke and Nyai Ontosoroh were Native and thus had virtually no legal rights according to Dutch law governing the island. Annelies was an Indo, being the daughter of Nyai Ontosoroh and Herman Mellema, a pure-blood European. Because her father had legally recognized Annelies as his daughter in court, she therefore was considered to have the same rights as a European. Once Mr. Mellema had legally accepted his half-breed children, Nyai Ontosoroh, their birth mother no longer had any legal hold on them. Therefore after Mr. Mellema’s death, neither Nyai Ontosoroh, Annelies’s mother, nor Minke, her husband, could keep the Dutch court from granting a complete stranger in the Ne!

Because of his status as a native H.B.S student, Minke was not quite sure how he fit into the social structure around him. The use of language during that period of time was an important indicator of a person’s social caste. Dutch was the language of the governing caste, Javanese the native language of the Javanese, and Malay was the language of interracial, or inter-caste, communication; as well as the language used by many Eurasians. In situations in which the caste order needed to be emphasized, Natives were forbidden to use Dutch. This was most evident in the story when Nyai Ontosoroh, who spoke fluent Dutch, was forbidden from speaking Dutch during the trial of her murdered master.

therlands from taking her away from them.

Some topics in this essay:
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