An Exceptional Empire? Dutch Colonialism in Comparative Perspective

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.