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2019 | Book

Introduction: Women’s Work in the Netherlands and Java, 1830–1940 Read chapter Read first chapter

Women, Work and Colonialism in the Netherlands and Java

Comparisons, Contrasts, and Connections, 1830–1940

Author: Prof. Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Palgrave Studies in Economic History

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

‘This book makes an important contribution to the history of household labour relations in two contrasting societies. It deserves a wide readership.’
—Anne Booth, SOAS University of London, UK

‘By exploring how colonialism affected women’s work in the Dutch Empire this carefully researched book urges us to rethink the momentous implications of colonial exploitation on gender roles both in periphery and metropolis.’
—Ulbe Bosma, the Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

‘In this exciting and original book, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk exposes how colonial connections helped determine the status and position of women in both the Netherlands and Java. The effects of these connections continue to shape women’s lives in both colony and metropole today.’
—Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, UK

Recent postcolonial studies have stressed the importance of the mutual influences of colonialism on both colony and metropole. This book studies such colonial entanglements and their effects by focusing on developments in household labour in the Dutch Empire in the period 1830-1940. The changing role of households’, and particularly women’s, economic activities in the Netherlands and Java, one of the most important Dutch colonies, forms an excellent case study to help understand the connections and disparities between colony and metropole.

The author contends that colonial entanglements certainly existed, and influenced developments in women’s economic role to an extent, both in Java and the Netherlands. However, during the nineteenth century, more and more distinctions in the visions and policies towards Dutch working class and Javanese peasant households emerged. Accordingly, a more sophisticated framework is needed to explain how and why such connections were – both intentionally and unintentionally – severed over time.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
1. Introduction: Women’s Work in the Netherlands and Java, 1830–1940
Abstract
This chapter introduces the theme of our study: how colonial connections impacted women’s work and household living standards in two parts of the Dutch Empire—the Netherlands and Java—in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It provides an overview of the relevant debates in the international economic history literature and introduces several important concepts, along with the sources and methods this study has employed. This chapter also sets the stage for the rest of this book by illustrating how the metropole and the colony were in many ways similar at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but diverged notably in the course of the colonial period.
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
2. An Exceptional Empire? Dutch Colonialism in Comparative Perspective
Abstract
This chapter compares developments in Dutch colonialism with other imperial powers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is argued that, while following trends occurring in other empires, Dutch imperialism stood out in various ways. First, colonial taxation was highly diversified and organised in ways that were quite effective for revenue extraction, as well as adaptive to new circumstances. Second, the Dutch set up an extraordinarily extractive system of forced cultivation in 1830, admired by many imperial states at the time and copied by some. Moreover, other forms of coerced labour continued to exist (corvée labour), or emerged (indentured labour), due to a continuous shortage of labour; these were practised on a relatively large scale and sometimes followed by other empires. Third, Dutch aspirations to improve the well-being of the indigenous populations around 1900 onwards resembled civilising missions in other empires, but stood out in terms of their relatively programmatic organisation, as well as in their disappointing results over time. All this nuances the traditional perception of Dutch imperialism as relatively indirect and benign, thus contextualising colonial influences on women’s work in the chapters to come.
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
3. Industrious Women in an Imperial Economy: The Cultivation System and Its Consequences
Abstract
The Cultivation System that was imposed by the Dutch on the East Indies between 1830 and 1870 constituted a classic piece of colonial exploitation. Javanese peasants were forced to employ part of their land and their labour for the cultivation of cash crops such as sugar, coffee and indigo for the European market. While the consequences of this system—both for Java and the Netherlands—have been much debated, the effects of the Cultivation System on women’s work have seldom been investigated. This chapter argues that Javanese women’s work was crucial for fulfilling the increasing labour demands of the system. Moreover, it contends that the Cultivation System not only drastically influenced women’s work in Java, it also, through the vast remittances from the colony to the metropole, impacted—although more indirectly—gender-specific work patterns in the Netherlands. All in all, colonialism shaped, and was shaped by, women’s participation in the household economy in both parts of the Dutch Empire, albeit in increasingly contrasting ways.
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
4. Industrialisation, De-industrialisation and Women’s Work: Textile Production in the Dutch Empire
Abstract
This chapter studies the relationships between the processes of industrialisation and de-industrialisation and women’s work within a colonial context. It does so by investigating textile production in the Netherlands, as well as in its overseas colony Java. The important position of women in the textile industry—the forerunner of mechanisation in the nineteenth century—has been understudied by economic historians, because their work generally remains unrecorded in the statistical sources. By including women’s work, I challenge two common claims in the historiography: first, that Java would have de-industrialised due to Dutch colonial economic policies, and, second, that new colonial markets for textiles in Java directly boosted the lagged industrialisation in the Netherlands. To this end, this chapter first highlights more general developments in industrial policies in the Dutch Empire. It then focuses on textile production in Java and the Netherlands, with a specific emphasis on women’s work and the evolution of gender-specific divisions of labour.
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
5. Contrasting Consumption: Household Income and Living Standards in the Netherlands and Java, 1870–1940
Abstract
This chapter aims to bring together developments in living standards in the Netherlands and Java by highlighting the role of the contribution of women and children to household income and by scrutinising changing consumption patterns. While some historians have hinted at connections between the standard of living in metropole and colony, few studies to date have based such assumptions on firm empirical evidence. Moreover, changes in consumption patterns as well as in household income (as opposed to male wages) have seldom been systematically integrated into debates on living standards. Bringing in consumption as well as the earnings of women and children is highly relevant, because it gives a much more accurate picture of household income and thus of the standard of living. Furthermore, investigating colonial connections in combination with a move away from an exclusive focus on male wage incomes offers an important new impulse to the wider debate on living standards in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
6. Norms and Social Policies: Women’s and Child Labour Legislation and Education
Abstract
This chapter compares changing contemporary debates and ideologies pertaining to the work of women and children in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. A particular political culture emerged in which Christian notions of “good guardianship” and the “civilisation” of the population legitimised a degree of state intervention in their welfare—in both the mother country and the colonies. The role of women and children in this process of “moral uplifting” was pivotal. Also, the initiatives taken (or omitted) by the state to implement social provisions in both parts of the empire are investigated, with a particular focus on labour legislation and general education between 1870 and 1940. In this period, measures for labour protection and investments in general education drastically increased in the metropole, but lagged seriously in the colony. Whereas the sociopolitical context led to concerns underpinned by similar ideologies, in the course of the late colonial period rhetoric diverged more and more in order to legitimise these differences.
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
7. Conclusions: Women’s Work and Divergent Development in the Dutch Empire
Abstract
This concluding chapter argues that the divergence in women’s work patterns in the Netherlands and Java related largely to increasingly varying standards of living in both parts of the empire. These developments partly resulted from intentional colonial policies, but many changes were unforeseen, and perhaps even undesired, consequences of how colonial relations evolved. Also, it is evident that links with colonialism were much more direct and influential in Java, and much more indirect in the Netherlands. Still, to understand why in the Netherlands the participation of married women in the labour market declined much faster than in Java, and also notably faster than in other West European countries, it is vital to study the role and particular character of Dutch colonialism. The Dutch managed to implement a relatively extractive colonial regime, in terms of taxation and labour services (most prominently through the Cultivation System). This had implications not only for changes in women’s work in Java and the rest of the Dutch East Indies, but also for developments in the metropole.
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Women, Work and Colonialism in the Netherlands and Java
Author
Prof. Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
Copyright Year
2019
Electronic ISBN
978-3-030-10528-0
Print ISBN
978-3-030-10527-3
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10528-0