Leven(s) met objecten: De Europese elite van koloniaal Indonesië, haar verzamelingen en identificatie rond 1900

Many upper-class migrants from, and to, Dutch colonial Indonesia – often travelling back and forth – collected objects. By analysing the practice of collecting and the meaning these people ascribed to those artefacts, I will provide insight into the way personal, and eventually even collective, identities were formed. The manner in which objects were collected and displayed not only reflected the self-image of their owners in colonial and Dutch society, but may also have been active influences in those processes of (self)identification. The collection of objects, and the meaning ascribed to them, reflected the unequal power relations within colonial society, and simultaneously, was possible a strategy for marginalised people (such as European women) to liberate themselves from social inequality