Seeds_Of_Nationalism_In_Colonial_Dutch_East_Indies

Seeds Of Nationalism In Colonial Dutch East Indies I’d like to start this paper by saying that I loved This Earth of Mankind, both for the story line and for the history lessons it contained. I now own the rest of the quartet and am half way through Child of All Nation. This Earth of Mankind addressed the struggle between the Javan native with oppressive colonial rule as well as the search for a new national identity by educated Javans. I thought that Pramoedya was successful in presenting the interrelated themes of social, cultural, and political life in the Dutch East Indies. He described the struggles of two different types of Native Javanese. Minke’s struggle was against himself and integration into, and identification with colonial civilization. Nyai’s struggle the brutalizing effects of Western civilization in her life. In the story the two struggles come together and both Minke and Nyai challenge the inhumanity of colonial justice. The introduction of modernity was having a profound effect in the Dutch East Indies at the time of Minke’s story. This modernity manifested itself through advanced learning, science, and technological advances. Minke considered his opportunity to experience modern learning and science a blessing whose dutch, minke, javanese, native, nyai, indies, story, time, minke’s, even, east, through, social, own, language, java, caste, ontosoroh, mr, mellema, colonial, before, because, annelies, system, school, priyayi, people, new, natives, mother, made, life, legal, european