TY - JOUR TI - Fluid mobility DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3ZS2VV1 PY - 2011 AB - This dissertation explores how Dutch anxieties over the loss of imperial hegemony in Southeast Asia evolved into a transnational and transoceanic project of colonial control during a time of increasing political unrest and rapid cultural change within the Netherlands East Indies. The maritime world became a contested arena during the interwar years where the tensions of empire comingled with the liberating and transgressive possibilities of oceanic travel. Shipping companies enforced racial, class, gender, and religious hierarchies among a fluidly mobile population of increasingly resistant and outspoken colonial subjects. Dutch shipping companies used segregated and highly policed onboard spaces as colonial classrooms to instill the proper behavior expected of both colonial subjects and European travelers once ashore. The colonial government depended on maritime businesses to control the flow of anti-Western and anti-colonial ideas such as pan-Islamism and Communism across its colonial borders. Dutch Consulates in port cities such as Jeddah and Shanghai completed these transnational surveillance networks by collecting information on suspicious persons including Indonesian hajjis studying in Mecca and Cairo and seamen moving between Europe, China, and the Netherlands East Indies. This dissertation reveals the unique and vital role shipping companies played in expanding colonial politics, culture, and society across transoceanic spaces, reconceptualizing our geographic understanding of empire as inhabiting the vast overlooked spaces between metropole and colony. KW - History KW - Netherlands--History--20th century KW - East Indies--Commerce KW - Netherlands--Colonies--Commerce KW - Shipping--Netherlands LA - eng ER -