Epilogue. Colonial Distances: Dutch Intellectual Images of Global Trade and Conquest in the Colonial and Postcolonial Age

Abstract

Raben offers a wide-ranging, longue durée interpretation of the historical development of visions of the Dutch empire. First, he explores a recurring series of tensions, if not outright contradictions, between metropolitan visions of empires and imperial praxis abroad. In part, these tensions could exist and continue to exist, Raben explains, by the filtering and muting of information about the colonial empire that was made available for ‘home consumption’. Second, he points to the notion of ‘distance’—geographical, mental as well as intellectual—as a structuring condition for the emergence of imperial visions. Lastly, Raben argues that the counter voices of ‘the colonized’ have always been there, but have been systematically muted, neglected, and repressed throughout Dutch colonial and postcolonial history.