1. Pramoedya Ananta Toer, House of Glass (New York: 1997 [1988]), p. 62. STOVIA stands for School ter Opleding van Inlansche Artsen, the School for the Education of Indigenous Physicians. The ‘I’ in the quote is the character of Pangemanann, member of the Algemeene Secretariaat, who collects intelligence and monitors the nationalist movements in the Dutch East Indies. Pangemanann made a special study of Tirto Ady Suryo, who was a student at the STOVIA for a few years and who became one of the first nationalist leaders of Indonesia. Toer’s Buru Quarter is a literary rendition of Tirto’s biography.
2. See Frances Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900–1942 (Amsterdam: 1995), pp. 24–27. The principles of the ethical policy were most clearly outlined in Conrad Theodor van Deventer, ‘Een Ereschuld [A Debt of Honour],’ Indische Gids, 3 (1899) 205–57.
3. Robert van Niel, The Emergence of the Modern Indonesian Elite (The Hague: 1960), places the demise of the ethical culture in 1920.
4. For the STOVIA, see A.M. Luyendijk-Elshout, ed., Dutch Medicine in the Malay Archipelago, 1816–1942 (Amsterdam: 1989);
5. A. de Knecht-van Eekelen, ‘Tropische Geneeskunde in Nederland en Koloniale Geneeskunde in Nederland-Indie,’ Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 105, 3 (1992) 407–28;