#and then they lumped him in with people from another very specific region in indonesia

[onceuponanaromantic]

yknow what, in hindsight I’m really grateful that when I took a course on the history of colonialism in Southeast Asia, the teacher drilled the exact geography of Indonesia into our collective heads before he even got to like the impacts of Dutch existence in Indonesia and the stages of it.

Like, now that I’m looking at the global focus on colonialism right, and its depictions in art in post-colonial societies and the construction of race and other identity categories within said societies, it’s actually really useful to have that basic understanding that most colonial societies were kind of cobbled together for ease of governance and do not have a monolithic understanding of the impacts of colonialism? Like, esp now that it’s Back with Lizzie’s death right like, it’s really really useful to have that understanding of how exactly colonial administration and military ventures went about grouping wildly disparate communities under the same categories for ease of governance and the economic impacts of colonialism.

And I’m just thinking about it because yes, it makes so much sense when you think about the different islands and the problems with governance today right and the ways the colonial powers continued to exert influence over their ex-colonies (and the way their methods of knowledge production and control remained) but you have to understand, first of all, where all the islands are and that geological basis forms a very good understanding of how people understand language and community and society at all.