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Modernity and cultural citizenship in the Netherlands Indies: An illustrated hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2011

Henk Schulte Nordholt
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Abstract

Conventional historiography presumes a linear development from urbanisation, the rise of indigenous middle classes and the spread of modernity towards nationalism as the logical outcome of this process. This article aims to disconnect modernity from nationalism by focusing on the role of cultural citizens in the late colonial period for whom modernity was a desirable lifestyle. The extent to which their desires and the interests of the colonial regime coincided is illustrated by a variety of advertisements and school posters, which invited members of the indigenous urban middle class to become cultural citizens of the colony.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , October 2011 , pp. 435 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2011

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25 I would like to thank Abdul Wahid for his assistance in investigating the content of several women's magazines and Willem van der Molen for translating the text of Illustration 8.

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