Tussen belofte en bedreiging

De Achttiende Eeuw, vol. 58, pp. 133–151

Abstract

This article examines how the Age of Revolutions shaped thinking about colonial autonomy in the Dutch East Indies between c. 1780 and 1830, with particular attention to the American Revolution as a global reference point. It analyses two domains in which tensions between autonomy and metropolitan control became most visible: the ecclesiastical crisis in Batavia during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War and political-economic debates among colonial officials in the decades that followed. The article argues that Dutch authorities directed their anxieties primarily toward the European colonial community itself, seeking to limit its institutional and economic independence in order to prevent the emergence of autonomous colonial interests. While the American precedent was sometimes invoked explicitly, it more often operated as part of a broader repertoire of ideas about colonial autonomy circulating across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds.

Authors 2

1. Alexander Van der Meer Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Universiteit Leiden

2. Philip Post Aachen

   Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam · Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies

   Affiliation as printed

   KITLV / Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam