Maarten Jonker
Maarten Jonker is a PhD student in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, with expertise on the trans-imperial nature of European colonialism in twentieth century Asia. He completed his undergraduate degree in history at St Peter’s College Oxford and holds an MA and MSc in International and World History from Columbia University and the LSE, respectively.
Maarten’s PhD research focuses on the trans-imperial networks that extended Dutch imperial influence across twentieth century Asia. His research investigates corporate, consular, and diasporic networks across Asian port cities beyond the Netherlands East Indies. Maarten aims to demonstrate how such trans-imperial networks and agents laid the foundation for continued European mobility and colonial exploitation after political decolonization.
London School of Economics and Political Science
Session
My paper explores the trans-imperial nature of interwar Asian port cities through the colonial culture of a network of Dutch expatriate communities in Manila, Kobe, Shanghai, and Singapore. Their formation of a ‘Cosmopolitan Dutchness’ serves as a case study of how the experience of global (dis)connectivity between empires can help elucidate histories of race and colonial identity.
Interwar Asia was characterized by an interconnected web of mobility and exchange through port cities. Within the global circuits of European imperialism, these cities were key localities of cultural transformation across imperial jurisdictions. Yet, by the interwar period, Asian port-cities were also key sites in the rise of anti-colonial nationalism and economic autarky.
Dutch consular and corporate archives reveal the operations of an informal imperial network across these port cities. Employees of Dutch colonial companies and their families migrated to further and represent Dutch imperial interests far beyond the boundaries of the Netherlands Indies but found this exercise increasingly difficult. Their ego-documents show how the experience of life in trans-imperial port cities led this diaspora to constitute a particular colonial ‘Dutchness’ through frequent exposure to different imperial cultures and increasing economic and nationalist opposition.
A study of their daily lives, community institutions and domestic life helps supersede the tired question of Dutch colonial identity as determined by class versus race. By examining colonial identity through the lens of global (dis)connectivity, it becomes clear that colonial identities were crucially shaped by globalized forms of European racial identities mediated through the trans-imperial Asian port city.