The Architecture of Empire: Dutch Colonialism, the Built Environment, and Micro-Segregation

Martin Ruef, Duke University

How did the small Dutch Republic manage a far-flung empire, with colonial outposts in modern-day Indonesia, New Guinea, South Africa, and Suriname, to name a few, as well as thousands of vessels at sea? Historians have long recognized that the Dutch ‘colonial plan’ ceded considerable ground to commercial interests, based on trade and the need for water-borne transport of goods, rather than ideological principles of statecraft or the cooptation of local elites. In this talk, I argue that a crucial component of the Dutch colonial plan was the micro-segregation of diverse populations on the basis of occupational and ethnoracial characteristics. Micro-segregation imposed colonial domination through the built environment, segmented amorphous populations into (ostensibly) clear-cut status groups and classes, and marked the colonial function of places at a granular scale. Tracing the activities of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) from Europe to Southeast Asia, I document micro-segregation in three locales: the Dutch metropole, the ships of the VOC, and the colonial settlement of Batavia, which served as the central hub for the company’s Asian ports. Using cross-cultural data on diverse colonial and post-colonial contexts, I conclude by analyzing how distinctive the Dutch approach was compared to that deployed by other imperial powers.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 222. The Dutch in the World, 1500–Present: From Small Republic to Global Might, Then Fading Light?