Being 'European' in colonial Indonesia: Collectors and collections between Yogyakarta, Berlin, Dresden and Vienna in the late nineteenth century

Abstract

In this article, I use the trajectories and meanings of objects in the collections of two Eurasian men, George Lodewijk ('Louis') Weijnschenk (1847-1919) and Jacob Anthonie Dieduksman (1832-1901), to illustrate how juridically registered 'Europeans' in the Dutch colony of Indonesia used objects to negotiate their identities, their 'Europeanness' and hence their social status in the late nineteenth century. In response to the general increased demand to be socially and culturally European in colonial Indonesia, these men took advantage of both the growing enthusiasm among museums throughout Europe to obtain ethnographic artifacts, and of the European practice of collecting as a bourgeois pastime, to demonstrate their 'Europeanness'. By collecting and donating objects to European museums, they were able to widen their social networks, gain economic capital and perform their belonging to Europe, their unique knowledge and their cultural enterprises. These two micro-histories show the interconnectedness of countries, people and identities across European empires in both Asia and Europe in which demands and opportunities interacted, and reveal how colonial knowledge, violence, hierarchies and indigenous agency were an integral part of European history, culture and museum collections.