Being White in Tropical Asia: Racial Discourses in the Dutch and Australian Colonies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

In the recent debates gripping the Australian national psyche regarding the ‘Stolen Children’ (the often forcible removal of Aboriginal children of mixed European descent from their Aboriginal mothers practiced for most of the twentieth century under Australian Federal law) little credence is given to now outdated notion of ‘half-caste’ which inspired the original legislation. Today, self-identification, regardless of colour and heritage, determines Aboriginal ethnicity. But ‘half-caste-ness’ constituted a powerful concept in the process of nation formation in colonial Australia and in other colonial contexts.