Colonial SE Asia: Social Control & Racial Hierarchy

Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers

• Focused on the ambiguities and threats posed by individuals who crossed imperial divides, specifically in Colonial Southeast Asia.
• Explores the cultural politics of exclusion through the lens of métissage (interracial unions) in French Indochina and the Netherlands Indies.
• Examines how the issue of mixed-race individuals challenged colonial categories and national identities.

Métissage as a Point of Contention

• Métissage, the creation of mixed-race populations, became a key point of debate in colonial societies.
• Debates centered on the issue of race, morality, and national identity.
• This was seen as a threat to white prestige and symbolised European decay.
• The handling of métissage reveals tensions between inclusionary and exclusionary practices within colonial rule.

Contrasting Colonial Policies

• French Indochina had a small métis population, French policy focused on assimilation.
• The Netherlands Indies, with a large mixed-race population, had a distinct Indische mestizo culture.
• Both colonies reveal similar concerns about racial boundaries and European identity, despite differing approaches.

Interior Frontiers

• Métissage challenged the concept of "Europeanness" and national identity by blurring the distinction between foreign enemies and "interior frontiers".
• Etienne Balibar's concept of interior frontier refers to internal divisions within a territory or empire that affect an individual's national identity.
• Métissage became a symbol of internal contamination.
• The politics of cultural difference intensified.

Securing European Superiority

• Early Vietnamese and Indonesian nationalist movements revealed new sources of colonial vulnerability.
• Discourses about métissage dangers continued even during periods of calm, not just during crises.
• Securing moral unity, cultural lineage, and language was crucial for envisioning European communities.
• Family and domestic life became central.

Social Welfare and National Identity

• Social welfare, representation, and protective laws were aimed at creating responsible citizens by focusing on the environment to encourage civic responsibility.
• Education and upbringing became national projects, tied more to the European core rather than the colony and metropole.
• Concerns about national identity and decline were widespread in France.
• Debates included the assimilation of Algerian Jews and the management of internal aliens and pseudo-patriots.

Dutch Responses

• Dutch social reform converged with colonial policies, particularly regarding child welfare and moral reform.
• Targeted the "dangerous classes" in both Holland and the Indies, focusing on child welfare.
• "Extreme nationalism" focused on preventing educational failure and the interaction of poor whites with colonized groups.

Questions of Belonging

• The question of who was truly French or Dutch resonated in both colony and core.
• In the Indies and Indochina, upbringing and education were crucial in determining the political status of the children and its future place in society of métis children.
• Preserving colonial boundaries and regenerating the nation were the main aims.

Exclusionary vs Inclusionary

• Discourses surrounding métissage revealed a core contradiction: dominating by both incorporating and distancing peoples.
• Some métis were considered for inclusion.
• The decision could not be made only on race as those of European descent, but on cultural competency.

Legal Exclusion

• Cultural and gender markers served to negate privileges.
• Class distinctions, gender roles, knowledge and traditions strategically used.
• Children had to be educated on where and with whom they could live or play.
• There was a shift from the racial and national identity driven by genealogy to identity as the focus of colonial authority.

Cultural Competence

• The ability to carry out the cultural traits of morality and emotional susceptibility shape whether or not one is suitable and considered for nationality.
• The legal and social debate was linked to a particular style of parenting.
• In 1898 French Indochina, when a 19-year-old was being charged for assault, being métis was central.
• Icard was the father defending his son for a crime against a German, when it became known the family were not sympathetic to Germans and a case brought to light when cultural identity played a key role.

Defining Abandonment

• A social death-a severing from society, a lack of influence from society.
• The concern wasn't about death, it was the abandonment to the native atmosphere.
• A proper French father not allow his children to live amongst the natives and a low-class native mother would only choose to use her children.
• In actuality, some mothers refused to give up their children to state institutions, while in reverse, some children rejected the conditions that the Society for the protection of Métis Youths could offer.

Legal Standing

• In 1901 Joseph Chailley-Bert sent on a government mission to Java to report of the standing of what it means to be métis.
• The debate over whether or not there should be a special legal status for métis and his notes led to the conclusion that one should not segregate to the standards of culture.
• One should adopt Dutch, by being the European standing of children as long as proof and filiation made.
• At the time, what it meant to assimilate, caused a cultural shift with much larger implications.
• The civil registers were inflated by low-life citizens.

Colonial Wrestling.

• Concerns were addressed concerning the ever growing population of people of colour.
• Racial thinking remained the bedrock for cultural expression in the way women should dress their métisse daughters.
• Colonial practice contradicted the moral code.
• With much debate and deliberation, native women of wealth or social influence were given less power in the eyes of the colonial code.

In civilised world.

• A principal architect, Engaged in question of national identity, membership more directly than contemporaries.
• Believes racial purity, was made more important by destroying Jus soli and sanguinis.
• Nation those who shared culture and traits which impossible by someone's birth right.

The Indies.

• The European population became increasingly smaller.
• Many now living in the borders of the European society in styles that now have the potential to signify the potential to reject it.
• Caused by Subatern European barring from marriage.
• Government and Politics. Concerns the rise of the European community in the is what created the need for political concerns to be at.
• At a time when nationalism is a very strong tool against the Dutch in the colonial state.

Explore how European colonizers in Southeast Asia used social and cultural norms to control the population and reinforce racial hierarchies. It also looks at JSTOR's role as a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students.