MISSIONARIES OF MODERNITY: TECHNOCRATIC IDEALS OF COLONIAL ENGINEERS IN THE NETHERLANDS INDIES AND THE PHILIPPINES, 1900-1920 BY JAN-JACOB BLUSSÉ VAN OUD-ALBLAS A thesis submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Graduate Program in History written under the direction of Michael Adas and approved by _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey January 2012 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS MISSIONARIES OF MODERNITY: TECHNOCRATIC IDEALS OF COLONIAL ENGINEERS IN THE NETHERLANDS INDIES AND THE PHILIPPINES, 1900-1920 By JAN-JACOB BLUSSÉ VAN OUD-ALBLAS Thesis Director: Michael Adas This study compares the role played by Dutch and American engineers in the colonial governments of the Netherlands Indies and the American-controlled Philippines in the 1900-1920 timeframe. It contends that these colonial engineers extensively influenced the practical implementation of the civilizing missions of that were formulated in the United States and the Netherlands around 1900. Through the use of a sustained comparison between the activities of the engineers in these two Western countries and their tropical colonies the unique aspects of the American policy of ―benevolent assimilation‖ and the Dutch ―ethical policy‖ will be drawn into focus. This study makes use of the technocracy heuristic to analyze the behavior and ambitions of the engineers. Technocracy in this case refers to rule by experts, a goal that many members of the engineering profession that had emerged in both countries in the 1890s strove for. Such a political system could not be implemented in the Dutch and American metropoles, but in the colonies the engineers faced fewer obstacles to their ii political agenda. The technocratic ambitions of the engineers are reconstructed here by analyzing the rhetoric they used and the discourses they drew upon in their journals. In the first part of this study the emergence of the engineering profession in the Netherlands Indies and the United States is compared. The rhetoric of the engineers on either side of the Atlantic evinces important similarities, as does the receptiveness of politicians and public to their ideas. The new mode of imperialism and the civilizing missions that either country articulated concurrently also bear close resemblance. A series of vignettes in the second part of this study describing the practices and ideology of the colonial engineers working in the Netherlands Indies and the Philippines reveals how the meanings of the technologies they used were socially constructed. They show that the Americans possessed a unique willingness to have the Filipinos participate in their developmental strategy, whereas the Dutch did not cross the ethnographic separation from the Indonesians. This finding to an extent confirms the ―exceptionalism‖ of American empire in this period. iii Acknowledgements This project began three years ago when my father Leonard recommended that I delve into the old issues of De Ingenieur in Nederlandsch-Indië, the periodical of the Dutch colonial engineers in the Netherlands Indies, in search of a topic for my Master‘s thesis. I had always had an interest in technology and the exact sciences, although my hopes of pursuing them professionally were soon dashed. Lacking a knack for mathematics, my enrollment at the physics department of Leiden University lasted only two weeks, when I traded it for a spot in the classrooms of the history department. There I would find my academic home. In the years that followed, I gradually discovered that the separation between what C.P. Snow called the ‗two cultures‘ – scientists on the one hand, and literary intellectuals on the other – was not nearly as wide as it is often made out to be. Using cultural history and science and technology studies, I could combine my affection for technology with my interest in historiography. Now, after three years of reading and writing, the long road towards completing this thesis has come to an end. Along the way I built up many intellectual debts, which I hope I will someday be able to repay. Until then, I can only hope that my expressions of gratitude for the support I received during my academic journey will suffice. First and foremost I would like to thank my parents, Leonard and Madelon, for their unwavering expressions of support. With myself being more of a talker than a writer, they witnessed firsthand my grueling labors when I tried to commit my thoughts to paper over the course of these years. Their steady supply of comments, corrections, suggestions, and additional literature helped me ground my ideas and put them in writing. iv I want to express my heartfelt thanks to the instructors at Rutgers University, where I spent a year from 2009 to 2010. Michael Adas has been an enormous source of inspiration for me, both through his books and the many hours I spent in his class and at his house talking and thinking about the historical practice. At his home in Highland Park I met him and Jane regularly to discuss the direction my research was taking and the possibilities of continuing a career in academics. His patience, and his confidence that I could make my ideas work, were of immeasurable value at those times when my anxieties about grappling with the difficulties of my studies threatened to get the better of me. I could not have wished for a better supervisor for my thesis. Bonnie Smith, Paul Israel, and Seth Koven have also had a tremendous influence on the direction my studies would take—a path that has served me well, and I thank them for their contributions to shaping my ideas. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Thomas Lindblad, who supervised my thesis in the Netherlands and watched it steadily develop in directions very un-Leiden-esque. The intellectual legacy of my year in the United States is clearly reflected in my writings, and Thomas gave me the freedom to keep developing my thesis in that direction. His positive evaluations of my work motivated me to make the most of the intellectual perspective I gained at Rutgers. Finally, I would like to thank two other, though unwitting, contributors to Missionaries of Modernity. First, Miles Davis for his record Kind of Blue, which over the course of the hundreds of times that I played it, helped me sharpen my wits and focus on the task at hand during the lonely hours behind the computer screen. Second, David Sedaris, whose writings about the curious aspects of human nature helped put my mind to v rest after burning the midnight oil. They were pleasant companions in the final leg of my journey. Having arrived at my destination, I must emphasize that, naturally, any mistakes in the work that lies before you are only my own. vi Table of contents ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IV TABLE OF CONTENTS VII INTRODUCTION 1 ―Java‖ 1 Rhetoric, ambition, technocracy 7 PART 1: ENGINEERING AND CIVILIZING 21 1. Engineering: metropolitan origins 21 1.1. Years of Progressivism: the United States 23 1.2. Ideology, profession, ―efficiency‖ 26 1.3. The Netherlands: de maakbare samenleving 37 1.4. Delft, and beyond 39 1.5. Transatlantic fraternity: inspiration, emulation, and cooperation 47 2. “Civilizing” 51 2.1. America‘s mission in the Philippines: ‗benevolent assimilation‘ 53 2.2. The Dutch mission in the Indies: Ethische Politiek 65 2.3. Similar civilizing 76 vii PART 2: DAEDALUS IN THE TROPICS 80 3. Method and vignettes 80 3.1. Or Icarus? The failure of the Solo works in the Netherlands Indies 84 3.2. Defalcations and trust in the Philippines 92 3.3. Developmental strategies compared 101 3.4. Additional developmental strategies 119 3.5. Shortages of personnel: only vigorous men need apply 124 3.6. Relations with the Filipinos and Indonesians 144 CONCLUSION 161 APPENDIX 171 A. Cast of characters 171 B. Directors of public works in the Netherlands Indies and the Philippines, 1900- 1920 176 C. Sites of interest 177 Sources 178 Bibliography 181 viii 1 Introduction “Java” In June of 1916 G.G. Stroebe, hydraulic engineer of the Bureau of Public Works in Manila, traveled to the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies on a short trip. Upon his return to the American colony he submitted a ten-page trip report to the Bureau‘s Quarterly Bulletin in which he presented its readers with his impressions of the island. He covered topics such as the broadening of education by the Dutch colonial authorities to a small but growing share of the indigenous population and more technical matters such as the construction methods used for the new deepwater port at Soerabaia. But he was most impressed by the vistas afforded him when he traveled through the countryside, and he supposed that many would agree with him: travelers, he thought, could not help but be amazed by the intensive tilling of the soil and the wide variety of cultures grown— ranging from sugar, tobacco, and rice, to hemp, kapok, and rubber. In fact, the exemplary state of agricultural activity on Java was what drove him to submit his article to the Bulletin. As he put it, the island‘s ―object lessons, especially in agriculture and irrigation, […] for the traveler are so evident and numerous that a recital of some of the impressions created by the journey may be of benefit to readers residing in other tropical lands.‖1 He approvingly cited the title used by the celebrated contributor to the National Geographic Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore for her 1897 travelogue Java: Garden of the East, finding it an apt description for the source of the island‘s wealth.