A Jaunt in the Highlands of Java: Family Networks and the Scots Diaspora in Colonial Indonesia, c.1820–1942

Abstract

Absent from recent discussion of the Scots diaspora in Asia, the case of colonial Indonesia—the erstwhile Netherlands Indies—is nonetheless an important one that both complicates and expands our understanding of the phenomenon. As will be argued, there were significant differences between the Scots experience there and the situations that they encountered in the British colonial or quasi-colonial possessions on the China coast, the Malay peninsula, Singapore and the Indian subcontinent. These differences related to the avenues of employment open to Scots arrivals in the ‘Indies’ (as the Dutch invariably referred to their sprawling South-East Asian colony) and, more fundamentally, to the colonial social and cultural milieu in which they found themselves there. Though taking full cognisance of the need to address the wider global patterns that gave coherence to the Scots diaspora, the paper also argues that the local and the particular highlight the fluidly and historical context of Scots identity.