Blad 8 uit Stamboek van de leerlingen der Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage deel I (1921-1929) Possibly 1922 - 1927

Curator: This page from the registry of the Colonial School for Girls and Women in The Hague seems so…mundane on the surface, doesn't it? Just names and addresses and signatures. But I find it deeply unsettling. Editor: It's interesting – this page, dated between 1921 and 1929, seems to record young women and their “betrothals”. But there's something rather impersonal and bureaucratic about it. How would you interpret the weight of this record? Curator: Look at the columns. "Temporary Destination," "Remarks." What do these choices reveal? It's as if these young women are being processed, their lives reduced to a series of bureaucratic checkpoints. Given this school aimed to train women to become wives of colonizers, what does that imply? Editor: So, their identities were almost…secondary to their role within the colonial structure? The focus on marriage destination almost strips these individuals of their own narratives. It seems a way of cataloging women by their marital prospects. Curator: Exactly. Consider the handwritten signatures. They’re the only unique assertion of self. But how much power did these women truly have, signing a document that dictated so much of their future within that structure? Isn’t there a haunting absence there? Editor: Absolutely. Each carefully inscribed name and signature represents a life caught in a complex web of societal expectation, colonial ambition, and personal dreams, leaving you questioning about the degree of autonomy of those signing in that ledger. It’s strangely powerful for such a document. Curator: It's a potent reminder that history often hides in plain sight. The devil, so to speak, is truly in the details of institutional structures, their language, and their silences. What seems ordinary may harbor the most disturbing truths about a given time. Editor: It gives such a completely different significance to records like this – they speak to the lives of individuals at a specific intersection in history, who contributed, in known and unknown ways, to its continuity. Thanks for helping me appreciate the historical depth in front of me!