Ann L.

Stoler, “Making empire respectable: the politics of race and sexual morality in twentieth-
century colonial cultures”

 essay is about sexual control and racial tension in the Indies

 a tracing of the history of European women in the colonies or of the regulation of sexual
relations in the colonies

Phase I – Concubinage
 1600s Sumatra
 cohabitation outside of marriage between European men and Asian women
 native women were simply to keep European men fit for work and happy – without
distracting them or imposing burdens on them the way families might
 this was meant to be an emotionally unfettered convenience – where also the risk of disease
was low
 but there eventually emerged two problems with the arrangement: (1) the lines were thin
between prostitution and concubinage; (2) the progeny the arrangement produced was of
mixed blood – whose presence in the colonial order blurred the distinction between colonizer
and colonized
 even so, the marriage restriction would become a political issue only until much later (18-
1900s)
 families were still considered financial burdens and distractions, and concubinage was
actively encouraged and promoted
 the reason for this probably has to do with the fact that colonial authorities did not want to
create a class of sub-elites, who may themselves become threats to elite power in the colonies
 this worked until the supremacy of “Homo Europeanus” was clear: until the position of the
colonial authorities faced little or no threat from mixed-bloods or the lower ranks
 once there was a sense of vulnerability, “colonial elites reponded by clarifying the cultural
criteria of privilege and the moral premises of their unity” (379)
 one important way to do this was to allow the entry of European women

 Phase II – the arrival of European women

 for the arrival of European women meant that the boundaries between colonizer and
colonized would have to be redefined and reinforced
 European women were in large measure a tool of this process
 Residential compounds had to be re-designed (segregated), servant relations formalized, dress
codes altered, food/social taboos made more strict
 In short something of the “cult of domesticity” had to be imported into the administrative and
social culture of the colonies
 Women supposedly required more amenities than just men – therefore their arrival meant also
that the structure of the market had to change
 The incoming European women were thought to be jealous of their husbands’ relations with
local women –
 They became, as a result, the ‘true’ racists of the time (their primary objection to the male
double standard ignored of course)
 And they carried the responsibility for the decline of concubinage

 Policing the boundaries of race and class

 the assumption of course was that native men had primitive sexual urges from which
European women had to be protected
 there was a dominant fear of a latent native sexual threat (Black peril in parts of Africa, for
instance)
 these fears and the accusations that followed them were not tied to facts (predictably), but
still all colonized men became potential aggressors
 the result: increased surveillance of native men, new laws stipulating punishment for the
transgression of social boundaries, the creation of off-limits segregated areas
 the flip side of this was that European women were seen as provoking these desires in native
men: being too lax or familiar with servants, being indecorous in dress
 it even became an offence to ‘make an indecent suggestion to a male native’ for which
European women were punishable
 the result was a system of surveillance and laws directed at controlling European women and
native men

 European women were properly guardians of family welfare and respectability (they put an
end to concubinage, didn’t they?)
 But there were also other women around, who worked, or who did not have the requisite
family backgrounds (widows): women who fell outside the moral boundaries drawn by the
colonial states
 These women were often regarded as being on par with prostitutes
 The presence of these women of another class was another level of threat to the colonial order
 If threats to the system could come from without (native men) this was acknowledgement that
they could equally come from a class-degeneration within
 (385) officials were aged at 55 so that no native could ever see a representative of colonial
power degenerate!
 And degeneracy was measured both morally and physically of course

 Phase III – Concubinage again

 by the 20th century, concubinage was being denounced for precisely the same reasons it was
promoted years before:
 the very local women who were to have protected European men and kept them happy were
now the bearers of ill health and low moralities
 men who kept native women were seen as passing into an enemy camp (387)
 concubine children at this point were proving more of a burden than originally imagined
 native women had no rights over them but European men were not obligated to provide for
them – children became wards of the state, a community caught between the colonizers and
those colonized
 the fear of concubinage was the fear of this growing group of people, who may at any
moment demand economic access and political rights by virtue of their mixed parentage