Ambachtsschool in Batak, Sumatra
Marjolein van Pagee

‘Dangerous Competitors’

‘Dangerous Competitors’: The Dutch Ethical Policy (1901) and the Establishment of Craft Schools in East Java

How to understand the establishment of craft schools in Dutch-occupied Indonesia at the turn of the twentieth century? The Dutch Ethical Policy formally promised to improve the welfare of Indonesians through education – the question is, however, whether Indonesians actually profited from it. In this text, Dutch historian Marjolein van Pagee shows how the racist apartheid system was a leading factor in the decision-making process regarding who received education and who did not. The colonial motivation behind crafts education was also to create a (limited) indigenous labour force that primarily served the interest of the colonial capitalist system.

About the author

Marjolein van Pagee (1987) is a historian and writer from the Netherlands. She obtained a master in Colonial and Global History at Leiden University and is specialized in the history of the Dutch occupation of Indonesia. She is the author of Banda. De genocide van Jan Pieterszoon Coen (Banda. The Genocide of Jan Pieterszoon Coen, Omniboek, 2021) and Bung Tomo. De revolutie van 1945 (Bung Tomo. The Revolution of 1945, Omniboek, 2023). She is the founder of the Histori Bersama Foundation and of Media Mondo, an anti-imperialist news website on geopolitics from a historical perspective.

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