NAVIGATING COLONIAL POLITICS: DEWI SARTIKA’S SCHOOL FOR NATIVE GIRLS IN BANDUNG

by Raistiwar Pratama and Marjolein van Pagee







In 1904, Raden Dewi Sartika opened the first school for native girls in Bandung, teaching ‘domestic sciences’, including crafts such as batik, sewing, and lacemaking. This essay explores the ways in which Sartika’s efforts, knowingly or unknowingly, aligned with the ethical agenda of ‘elevating’ the native women. Authors Raistiwar Pratama and Marjolein van Pagee first look at the ‘Mindere Welvaart Report’ of 1914, to which Sartika contributed, after which her educational vision is explored. How did Sartika negotiate the ethical agenda? What are the ways in which her school became a tool of ‘imperialist feminism’? 

Marjolein van Pagee (1987) is a historian and writer from the Netherlands. She obtained a master in Colonial and Global History at Leiden University and is specialized in the history of the Dutch occupation of Indonesia. She is the author of Banda. De genocide van Jan Pieterszoon Coen (Banda. The Genocide of Jan Pieterszoon Coen, Omniboek, 2021) and Bung Tomo. De revolutie van 1945 (Bung Tomo. The Revolution of 1945, Omniboek, 2023). She is the founder of the Histori Bersama Foundation (www.historibersama.com) and of Media Mondo (www.media-mondo.com/en), an anti-imperialist news website on geopolitics from a historical perspective.  

RAISTIWAR PRATAMA (1981) is a historian, working as an archivist at the National Archives of Indonesia and teaching records and archives subjects at several public and private universities in Indonesia. He earned two BA's in History from Padjadjaran University and University of Leiden, and an MA in Archival Studies from the University of Leiden. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory, and Material Culture University of Amsterdam.






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COLOPHON

AUTHORS
Marjolein van Asdonck
Raistiwar Pratama
Saut Situmorang
Marjolein van Pagee
Rosa te Velde

READERS
Fitria Jelyta
Lisa Baumgarten
Mark Oomen

EDITING/PROOFREADING
Harriet Foyster
Iris Pissaride
Marjolein van Pagee

IMAGE RESEARCH
Rosa te Velde

GRAPHIC DESIGN
Zuzana KostelanskáCC BY-NC-ND

This project is published under CC BY-NC-ND license, which enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. 

Some of the texts were published before by the Wereldmuseum (02 ‘Yes, but...’; 03 A Firm Nudge & 06 A Rejuvenation Cure?).

Questions/corrections/suggestions? Contact us at
recallrecalibrate (at) gmail.com 2025

This project was funded by Het Stimuleringsfonds voor de Creatieve Industrie.




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