The End as the Beginning: Health Administration in the Last Decades of the Netherlands East Indies

One of the important contributions of colonial studies has been to reveal manifestations of the colonial origins of the modernity, especially in terms of body-related governmental power.  Although many have agreed upon the existence of such power in the colonial setting, empires were also characterized by a peculiarly limited exercise of such power at the periphery.  To disentangle this paradox and better grasp the nature of the hierarchical global system, we need to understand the contributions of local actors through empirical observation on the ground.  My study on the definition and deployment of health administration in the late imperial Netherlands East Indies represents one such project.  From the 17^th through the 19^th centuries, Dutch interests in the Indonesian archipelago prioritized commercial gain and showed little political will to exercise modern governance, allowing the indigenous power structure to sustain.  Yet from the mid-19^th century on, the East Indies came to be more territorially and structurally consolidated. This was accompanied by the emergence of modern governance in the form of specialized administration and structured civil participation within it.  The colony’s final two decades witnessed the reorganization and decentralization of internal administration through councils. Health was one of the subjects to be decentralized and discussed.  Through an exploration of these events in several different settings, this presentation shows how a shared desire for modern health administration expressed itself among members of indigenous elites, and how the administrative parameters set by a centralized, specialized government and its global counterpart undermined the emancipatory potential of those councils, where only those who shared the language of governance could represent vast majorities of those who did not.  In this way, I argue that the last days of empire saw not the end but the intensified formation of a hierarchical global system of governance.