De Moderne Tijd - Current Issue

A tourist totok in the tropics. Justus van Maurik on a journey in the Dutch East Indies

In 1896, the Amsterdam cigar trader and writer Justus van Maurik embarked on a trip to the Dutch East Indies to pursue his business interests and to promote his cigar brand. In addition, he also intended to recite from his literary work in the colony. After his return, Van Maurik published the humorous travelogue Indrukken van een ‘Tòtòk’ (1897). This work deserves more attention, because it contains an early tourist perspective from the end of the nineteenth century. This article examines how that perspective is expressed by focusing on Van Maurik’s representation of the Indies as a tourist destination, his use of a travel guide and his fascination for dark places.

‘A Hand Book relative to the Straits and Java’. An early British tourist perspective on the Dutch East Indies (1853)

In 1853, Charles Walter Kinloch, a judge in Bengal, British India, published an account of his trip to the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies: De zieke reiziger; or, Rambles in Java and the Straits in 1852. This can be considered one of the first guidebooks for English tourists visiting Java. Drawing on Elleke Boehmer’s concept of colonialist discourse, I trace how the advice passed on by Kinloch to his readers relates to British imperial ambitions in the mid-nineteenth century, and to the function of literature as a means of forging and consolidating colonial power hierarchies more generally.

Recreational bicycle tours in the tropics. Cycle tourism in the former Dutch East Indies at the end of the nineteenth century

This article examines the early days of recreational cycling in the former Dutch East Indies (1884-1900). The central questions are: What did tourist colonial cycling cultures look like in ‘the Indies’ at the end of the nineteenth century? And what were the ideological foundations underlying these cultures? By analyzing the issues of De Kampioen - the magazine of the Dutch bicycle association ANWB - from this period, it is shown that tourist cycling was already prevalent in many forms in the Dutch East Indies at the time. Although the ANWB had some Asian members at the end of the nineteenth century, episodes of De Kampioen from the nineteenth century extol almost exclusively the physical achievements of European and Australian men. In doing so, these issues underscore the patriarchy and racial hierarchy that supported Dutch colonialism in Southeast Asia.