AnnLStolerTense Tender Ties

Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post)
Colonial Studies
Author(s): Ann Laura Stoler
Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 88, No. 3 (Dec., 2001), pp. 829-865
Published by: Organization of American Historians
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ense and TenderTies:
The Politicsof Comparisonin
NorthAmericanHistoryand (Post)
Colonial Studies
Ann Laura Stoler
This essaytakesas its subjecttwo distinctive historiographies,one in postcolonial

studiesand the otherin NorthAmericanhistory, thatbothaddresshow intimate
domains-sex,sentiment, domesticarrangement, and childrearing-figure in the
makingofracialcategories and in themanagement ofimperialrule.It examinestwo
prevailingtrends:on the one hand,an analyticconvergence in treatmentsof,and
increasingattentionto, intimacy in themakingofempire;on theother,recognition
of thedistinctiveconceptualcommitments and politicalinvestments thatshapethe
as
fields separate disciplinaryventures and historiographicdomains.
I use the terms"postcolonialstudies"and "colonialstudies"interchangeably,
althoughthosewho identify themselves withone do not alwaysidentify withthe
other.Some scholarsuse theterm"postcolonial" to signala cross-disciplinary
politi-
akin
cal project,analytically to culturalstudies, that rejectscolonialcategoriesand
scholarshipthattakesthemforgranted.Othersretaintheterm"colonialstudies"to
underscore moreconcernforthelocal and laborhistoryof colonialsocietieswhile
similarlyacknowledging thecontinuing political,economic,and culturallandscape
in whichpopulationswho havebeen colonizedare subjugatedand now live.The
Ann Laura Stoleris professorof anthropology, and women'sstudiesat theUniversity
history, of Michigan,Ann
Arbor.
This papergrewout of a plenarypanel,"Intimaciesof Empire:ComparativePerspectives on Genderand
Colonialism,"at the Organizationof AmericanHistoriansmeetingin spring2000. I thankLinda Gordonfor
invitingme to put togetherthispanel and forher encouragement, alongwiththatof co-fellowsEd Ayersand
MichaelJohnsonat the CenterforAdvancedStudyin the BehavioralSciencesin Palo Alto, California.Julia
Adams,NancyCott, EstelleFreedman,LawrenceHirschfeld, GwennMiller,JulieSkurski,and AlexanderStern
pushedme to frameand broadenit fora widerconversation. I am also indebtedto audiencesat theGenderand
Historyseriesat theUniversity theDepartmentof Historyand AmericanStudiesat Yale Univer-
of Connecticut,
sity,the Social ScienceHistoryAssociationpresidential
panel "Rethinking the HistoricalSociologyProject,"the
FruchtMemorialLectureSeriesat theUniversity ofAlberta,and studentsin myhistory seminar,"Gender,Race,
and Empire:The Politicsof Knowledge,"at theUniversity of California-Berkeley,as well as two setsof anony-
mousreadersfortheJournalofAmerican Historywhosequeriesencouragedme to temperand refinemyargument.
I haveattendedcloselyto theirsuggestions drawnon theirlanguage.JoanneMeyerowitz's
and selectively exem-
plaryeditorialguidancesteeredme throughtheperilsofmyinterloper statusin sucha prolificfield.Associateedi-
torSusanArmenycopyeditedthe manuscript withunusualpatienceand finesse.What overgeneralizations and
misrepresentations remainareofmyowndoingand myresponsibility alone.
ReadersmaycontactStolerat <astoler@umich.edu>.
The Journal
ofAmericanHistory December2001 829
830 The Journal
ofAmericanHistory December2001
former tendto treatcolonialism as a history ofthepresent, to focuson theaftermath

ofempireand on contemporary hybridmetropolitan culturalformsthatfollowfrom
it.The latteris lessattentive to analyticorientation and morecentered on theperiod
offormal colonialrule.Here,I go backand forth betweenthetwoliteratures without
close concernforthosegradationsof difference, whichare neitherconsistent nor
alwayssubstantive.' Bothdesignations indicatea concern,albeitdifferently framed,
withthepoliticsofscholarship and knowledge.
For some two decades my work on Indonesia'sDutch colonial historyhas
addressed patterns ofgovernance thatwereparticular to thattimeand placebutreso-
nantwithpractices in a widerglobalfield.My perspective thusis thatofan outsider
to, butan acquisitiveconsumerof,NorthAmericanhistorical studiesand one long
struckwiththe disparateand congruent imperialprojectsin Asia,Africa,and the
Americas.2 This essayinvitesreflection on thosedomainsofoverlapand difference as
it registerstheprofusion ofnewinsights about"becomingcolonial"thatstudents of
NorthAmericanhistoryand colonialstudiesincreasingly share.It looks to the
mutualrelevance of thetwohistoriographies and thegroundsforfurther conversa-
tion.
My concernis not to recommend the initiationof a projectalreadyunderway.
Comprehensive reviews ofhistorians' treatment ofempireand efforts to internation-
alizeUnitedStateshistory and to traceitstransnational linkageshavebeenhighon
theagendaofstudents ofNorthAmericanhistory overthelastdecade:theyarenot
my taskhere.3 This is not an essayagainstnotionsofexceptionalism, thoughit sub-
stantiatesthereasoning of thosewho havearguedthatUnitedStateshistory is not
unique.Nor is thisa reviewofthevastrangeof research on genderand colonialism
thatcutsacrossbothfields.
My interest is morespecifically in whatAlbertHurtadorefers to as "theintimate
frontiers" of empire,a social and culturalspace whereracialclassifications were
' On thisissue,see Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Postcolonialityand theArtifice ofHistory:Who Speaksfor'Indian'

Pasts?,"Representations,
37 (Winter1992), 1-26; Anne McClintock,"Pitfallsof the Postcolonial,"in Imperial
Leather:Race,Gender, and Sexualityin theColonialConquest(New York,1995), 9-17; and ArifDirlik,"The Post-
colonialAura:ThirdWorldCriticismin theAge ofGlobal Capitalism,"CriticalInquiry, 20 (Winter1994), 328-
56. On the lack of historicalspecificity
in postcolonialtheory, see Dane Kennedy,"ImperialHistoryand Post-
ColonialTheory," JournalofImperialand Commonwealth History, 24 (May 1996), 345-63.
2 See, forexample, Ann Laura Stolerand Frederick Cooper,"BetweenMetropoleand Colony:Rethinking a
ResearchAgenda,"in Tensions ofEmpire:ColonialCultures in a BourgeoisWorld,ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann
LauraStoler(Berkeley, 1997), 1-56. Motivationfortakingon thistaskderivesfrommyown pedagogic,political,
and archivaltrajectories.
On myresearch in thelate 1970s in NorthSumatra's multinational plantationbelt(now
the home of Reebokand Nike shoe factories), see Ann Laura Stoler,Capitalismand Confrontation in Sumatra's
PlantationBelt,1870-1979 (New Haven, 1985). For a reappraisal of thatwork,see Ann Laura Stoler,"Preface,"
in AnnLauraStoler,Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra'sPlantationBelt,1870-1979 (AnnArbor,1995).
3Readers ofJournalofAmerican History arefamiliarwiththe numerousissuesoverthelastdecade thathave
explicitlyurgedand exploreda broadertransnational perspective forUnitedStateshistorians. See, forexample,
David Thelen,ed., "Interpreting the Declarationof Independenceby Translation: A Round Table,"Journalof
AmericanHistory, 85 (March 1999), 1279-460; David Thelen,ed., "Rethinking Historyand the Nation-State:
Mexico and the United Statesas a Case Study,a Special Issue,"ibid., 86 (Sept. 1999), 439-697; and David
Thelen,ed., "The Nationand Beyond:Transnational Perspectives on UnitedStatesHistory,"ibid. (Dec. 1999),
965-1307. See also Ian Tyrrell,"AHR Forum:AmericanExceptionalism in an Age ofInternational History,"
Amer-
icanHistoricalReview, 96 (Oct. 1991), 1031-55; andJaneC. Desmondand VirginiaR. Dominguez,"Resituating
AmericanStudiesin a CriticalInternationalism," AmericanQuarterly, 48 (Sept. 1996), 475-9 1.
ComparisoninAmericanHistoryand Postcolonial
Studies 831
definedand defied,whererelationsbetweencolonizerand colonizedcould power-

fullyconfoundor confirmthe strictures of governance and the categories of rule.
Some twodecadesago, thehistorian Sylviavan Kirkurgeda focuson such"tender
ties"as a wayto explorethe"humandimension"of thecolonialencounter. As she
showedso well,whatMichel Foucaulthas calledthe "densetransfer point[s]"of
powerthatgeneratesuch tiesweresitesof productionof colonialinequitiesand
therefore oftensetiesas well.Amongstudents ofcolonialisms in thelastdecade,the
intimacies ofempirehavebeena richand well-articulated research domain.A more
sustained focuson therelationship betweenwhatFoucaultreferred to as "theregimes
of truth"of imperialsystems(the waysof knowingand establishing truthclaims
aboutraceand difference on whichmacropolities rely)and thosemicrosites ofgover-
nancemayrevealhowNorthAmerican andthoseofempireselsewhere
histories com-
pareand converge.4 Pursuingconnections betweenthebroad-scale dynamicsofrule
and theintimate domainsofimplementation maysuggestmorelinesofoverlapping
inquiryand a rethinking ofourrespective frames.5
looksbriefly
This essayis in threeparts.The first at recentattention to theintima-
ciesofempirein colonialstudiesand in research on NorthAmerica.Part2 turnsto
fourcolonialmomentsin UnitedStateshistory and Europeanexpansionthathave
been extensively comparedon some fronts-andthatcould be on others.Part3
focuseson comparisons thatboth reinforce recentclaimsabout the limitations of
nationallyfocusedcomparative historyand pointto circuitsof knowledgeproduc-
tionand strategies withwideresonance.
ofracialdifferentiation The examplesin part
3 are of threedifferent kinds:(1) an analysisof mid- to late-nineteenth-century
debatesaboutnurseries thataddressedthemakingofsensibilities, citizens, and race;
(2) a comparison ofvocationalschoolsin thenineteenth-century Dutch East Indies
and thosedesignedforNativeAmericans; and (3) a tracingoftheexpertknowledge
thatwentintotheSouthAfricanCarnegieCommissionofthelate1920s.I drawon
themto illustrate thevalueoflookingcomparatively at circuitsofknowledge produc-
tion,governing practices,and indirectas wellas directconnections in thepolitical
rationalities
thatinformed imperialrule.Each raisesquestionsaboutwhatcategories
aretakento be commensurable in historical
analysis.Throughout thepaperI callfor
morereflection on the historyand politicsof comparison,on the importanceof
doinga certainkindof comparative culturalhistory,and urgeattention to practices
ofcolonialcomparison bycolonialgovernments themselves.
4AlbertL. Hurtado,IntimateFrontiers:Sex,Gender, (Albuquerque,1993); Sylvia

and Culturein Old California
Van Kirk,Many TenderTies: Womenin theFur-TradeSocietyin Western Canada, 1670-1870 (Norman,1983);
MichelFoucault,TheHistory ofSexuality,vol. I: An Introduction,trans.RobertHurley(New York,1980), 103. On
"regimesof truth"(and "gridsof intelligibility"), see HubertL. Dreyfusand Paul Rabinow,MichelFoucault:
BeyondStructuralismand Hermeneutics (Chicago,1982), 120-21. Sexualand affective intimaciesarenottheonly
micrositesof governancefromwhich to explorethe relationship betweenmetropolitan and colonialhistories.
Studiesin publichealthand historiesof deportment, labor,communication, and transportprovideothernodal
points.I thankJamesVernonformakingthispoint.Still,I would arguethatsexualand affective intimaciesarea
privilegedsiteon whichthoseothersitesinvariably turnbackand converge.
I Forrelatedarguments withdifferentemphases,seeArjunAppadurai,Modernity at Large:CulturalDimensions
ofGlobalization(Minneapolis,1996), 48-65; and Antoinette Burton,"Introduction: The Unfinished Businessof
ColonialModernities,"in Gender, andColonialModernities,
Sexuality, ed.AntoinetteBurton(NewYork,1999), 1-16.
832 ofAmericanHistory
The Journal December2001
The examplessketchwaysintimatematters and narratives aboutthemfigured in

defining theracialcoordinates and socialdiscriminationsofempire.Commonto all
wasa fashioning ofmoralpoliciesthatshapedtheboundaries ofrace.Each pointsto
strategiesof exclusionon the basis of social credentials, sensibility,and cultural
knowledge. Foucaultdefinedsuch technologies of ruleas "biopolitics"-aspartof
thepoliticalanatomyofstates,governing techniquesthatreliedon "thedisciplining
ofindividual bodiesand theregulations ofthelifeprocessofaggregate humanpopu-
lations."6Forthoseimpatient withFoucault,letus saytheyjoinedthemakingofan
imperialbodypoliticto themakingofsexualizedand racialized selves.
Colonialstateprojects, suchas thosein thenineteenth- and early-twentieth-cen-
turyDutch East Indies,attendedminutely to thedistribution of appropriate affect
(whatsentiments couldbe showntoward,and sharedwith, whom), to the relations
in whichcarnaldesirescould be safelydirected,to prescriptions forcomportment
thatcould distinguish colonizerfromcolonized-and, as important, to thosethat
finely gradedthedistinctions ofprivilegeand classamongcolonizers themselves. My
owninterest has been in therelationbetween and
prescription practice, in those fre-
quently-entered-into domesticarrangements thatcouldblurdistinctions ofcolorand
culturebutalso thosethatreiterated relations of dominancein kitchens, bedrooms,
and nurseries-andbehindthebarelyscreened ofthecolonialarmy's
partitions "fam-
ily"barracks.7
Butthereis stillmuchmoreto askabouthowcivility and racialmembership were
measuredlessbywhatpeopledid in publicthanin theirprivatelives-withwhom
theycohabited; whosleptwithwhom,whenandwhere;whosuckledwhichchildren;
how childrenwererearedand by whom;what languagewas spokento servants,
friends,and familymembersat home.When Dutch childrenin thecolonialIndies
wereforbidden to playwiththechildrenof servants lesttheybecometoo comfort-
able "babblingand thinkingin Javanese"or when Javanesenursemaidswere
instructed to holdtheirchargesawayfromtheirbodiesso thattheinfants wouldnot
"smelloftheirsweat,"morewas goingon thanpeevishsquabblesoverculturalstyle.
Such standardsweredesignedto ensurethat Europeanchildrenin the colonies
learnedtherightsocialaffiliations and did not "metamorphize" intoJavanese. They
werepartofthecolonialstate'sinvestment in knowledge aboutthecarnal,aboutsen-
andfamiliarities,
sibilities itspreoccupying commitment towhatI call"theeducation
ofdesire."8
6 On "biopower" as a politicaltechnology focusedon individualand aggregate bodies,see Foucault,History

of
Sexuality,I, trans.Hurley,139-46. For a helpfulexplicationof his historicaltreatment of biopower,see Dreyfus
and Rabinow,MichelFoucault, 133-42.
7 See, forexample, HannekeMing, "Barracks-Concubinage in the Indies,1887-1920," Indonesia,35 (April
1983), 65-93; KarenTranberg Hansen,DistantCompanions: Servants and Employersin Zambia, 1900-1985 (Ith-
aca, 1989); Luise White,The Comforts ofHome:Prostitution in ColonialNairobi(Chicago, 1990); JuliaClancy-
Smithand FrancesGouda, ed.,Domesticating theEmpire:Race,Gender, and FamilyLifein Frenchand DutchColo-
nialism(Charlottesville, 1998); and PhilippaLevine,"Orientalist Sociologyand theCreationofColonial Sexuali-
ties,"Feminist Review,65 (Summer2000), 5-21.
8 On theprescriptions placedon Javanesenursemaids in Dutch colonialhomes,and how thoseformer nurse-
maidsnow remember them,see Ann LauraStolerand KarenStrassler, "CastingsfortheColonial:MemoryWork
in 'New-Order'Java,"Comparative and History,
Studiesin Society 42 (Jan.2000), 4-48.
Studies
Comparisonin AmericanHistoryand Postcolonial 833
Historiansof Europeanexpansionin NorthAmericaas distinctfromAsia and

conceptualvocabulary
Africaoftensubscribeto a different to describeculturaland
mixture,
racial the sexual afforded
opportunities to colonizingmen,thewaysnative
womenparlayedtheirservicesintoprivateadvantage, and thecategoriesdesignating
thechildrentheyproduced.In turn,myFoucauldianidentification ofthisdomainas
partof the"microphysics of rule"maybe verydifferentfromvocabulary currentin
NorthAmericanscholarship, whether GaryNash's"intimate contactzones"orvaria-
tionson RichardWhite'srichlyevocative"middleground."9 Butthosedifferences in
lexiconshouldnotgetin theway.Bothfieldsareconcerned withthenatureof this
contestedterrain,withfundamental sitesof powerin the makingand unmaking.
Bothareattentive to thefixity ofracialtaxonomies
and fluidity and thosesexualand
affective
transgressionsthatformedand refiguredthedistinctionsbetweenrulerand
ruled.
in ColonialStudiesandAmericanHistory
PartI: Crosscurrents
Studentsof colonialismmightall agreethatgenderand racehavebeenhighon the
agendaofhistorians studying theUnitedStates.We mightalsoall agreethatWilliam
ApplemanWilliams's1955 observation thatAmericanempireis absentfromAmeri-
canhistoriography no longerfitsthecase.FewwouldarguethatAmericanexception-
alismwithrespectto colonialismremainsa prevailing paradigm.Nevertheless, many
UnitedStateshistorians arestillunfamiliar withthenewcurrents in scholarship
that
haveanimatedcolonialstudiesoverthelastfifteen years.Studentsofcolonialism,for
theirpart,stillpayinsufficientattention to earlyAmericanhistory and to thework
on "tensionsofempire"thatAmerican historianshavelongproduced.10
Some reasonsforthisdisjuncture aresuggested in theintroduction theAmerican
studiesscholarAmyKaplanprovided for Culturesof UnitedStatesImperialism,pub-
lishedin 1993. As she thendescribedit, a "resilient paradigm"of UnitedStates
domesticand foreign scholarship of the 1950s and 1960s cordonedoffempireas a
"mereepisode"inAmerican history,littlemorethana twenty-year blipon thedemo-
craticand domesticnational horizon. In her formulation, the denial derivedfrom
threephenomena: an absenceofculturefromthestudyofUnitedStatesimperialism,
an absenceof empirefromthe studyof Americanculture,and an absenceof the
UnitedStatesfrompostcolonial studiesofempire.11 WhilesomeAmerican historians
9 See AnnLauraStoler,Raceand theEducationofDesire:Foucault's History and theColonialOrderof
ofSexuality
Things(Durham,1995); and Ann Laura Stoler,CarnalKnowledge and ImperialPower:Race and theIntimatein
ColonialRule(Berkeley, forthcoming).RichardWhite,TheMiddleGround:Indians,Empires, in the
and Republics
GreatLakesRegion,1650-1815 (Cambridge,Eng., 1991); GaryNash, "The Hidden Historyof MestizoAmer-
ica,"JournalofAmerican 82 (Dec. 1995), 941-62.
History,
10WilliamApplemanWilliams,"The Frontier Thesisand AmericanForeignPolicy,"PacificHistoricalReview,
24 (Nov. 1955), 379-95. For the contraryargumentthatexceptionalism was "presentat the verycreationof
America,"nottheimpositionoflaterhistorians, seeJackP. Greene,TheIntellectualConstruction Excep-
ofAmerica:
tionalism from1492 to1800 (ChapelHill, 1993), 6. As good an exampleas anyofa colonialreaderin
and Identity
whichUnitedStateshistory ofEmpire.
does notfigureis Cooper and Stoler,eds., Tensions
11AmyKaplan,"'LeftAlonewithAmerica':The Absenceof Empirein the Studyof AmericanCulture,"in
CulturesofUnitedStatesImperialism,ed. AmyKaplanand Donald E. Pease (Durham,1993), 3-21. As she put it,
theabsenceoftheUnitedStatesfrompostcolonialstudies"reproduces Americanexceptionalism fromwithout"-
adamantly disagreed,Kaplan'spointwas instructive and productively at

disquieting
thetime.Her citations werefroman earlierUnitedStateshistoriography thatoften
conceivedAmericanempireas a short-lived momentand a containedproject.For
thatearliergeneration, the Philippines,Fiji, Cuba, PuertoRico, and certainly the
informal empirethatgaveUnitedStatescapital,products,and personnela strong
presencethroughoutthe European colonial world of Indonesia,Malaysia,and
IndochinawereoutsideUnitedStateshistory proper,unregisteredin publicmemory,
and offthepopularized map.
But Kaplan'stimelyassessment was of anothermoment.A wholegeneration of
socialhistorians, anthropologists,
historical and studentsof Americanculturehave
begunto reconsider whatin UnitedStatesdomestichistory relatesto itsexpansionist
strategiesofempire,wherestudiesofempirespeakto theconcernsofUnitedStates
history, and-not least-whatis colonialabout"colonialAmerica."'12 StudentsofFil-
ipinohistory aredemonstrating theparallelsbetween Americanempirein thePhilip-
pinesand withinUnitedStatesbordersand betweentheUnitedStatesand British
empires, bridgingwhattheydescribeas a sustainedseparation betweenhistoriogra-
phyon thePhilippinesand on mainstream America.Editedvolumessuchas Close
Encounters ofEmpirehaveturnedawayfromhowUnitedStatesimperialism "consoli-
dated"NorthAmericaand howempireinfluenced domesticpolicytoviewAmerican
racialpoliticsfromtheregionsthatwerecolonized.Theylookto the"representation
machines"to whichcolonizedpopulations weresubject,thatis,to thewayscoloniz-
ing populationsdepictedand categorized them,withemphasis"on the ground."
Othershavefoundcolonialinflections elsewhere: on theborderlands ofMexicoorin
regionsofwesternexpansion,in thesexualizedcontactzonesofTexasand Arizona
wherepoorwhites,NativeAmericans, and African Americans met,producingwhat
Jeremy Adelmanand StephenAronhavereferred to,in a recentessayin theAmerican
Historical
Review,as "hybrid oftheseencounters."
residuals 13
GaryNash'spresidential addressto the Organization AmericanHistoriansin
of
1995, "The HiddenHistoryofMestizoAmerica," marksa cusp,themomentofrec-
ognitionofa "zoneofdeep intercultural contacts"understood as a spaceof cultural
treatsit as a phenomenonseparatefromimperialexpansionratherthanan interrelated formofit. See ibid.,17.

12
For recentstatements, see Nicholas Canny,"WritingAtlanticHistory;or, Reconfiguring the Historyof
Colonial BritishAmerica,"JournalofAmericanHistory, 86 (Dec. 1999), 1093-114; RobertBlair St. George,
"Introduction," in PossiblePasts:BecomingColonialin EarlyAmerica,ed. RobertBlairSt. George(Ithaca,2000),
1-29; and MichaelWarner,"What's ColonialaboutColonialAmerica,"ibid.,49-70.
13 Vincente L. Rafael,WhiteLoveand OtherEventsinFilipinoHistory (Durham,2000); MatthewFryeJacobson,
BarbarianVirtues: TheUnitedStatesEncounters ForeignPeoplesat HomeandAbroad,1876-1917 (NewYork,2000);
PaulKramer, "The Pragmatic Empire:U.S. Anthropology and ColonialPoliticsintheOccupiedPhilippines, 1898-
1924" (Ph.D. diss.,Princeton University, 1998); GilbertM. Joseph,CatherineC. LeGrand,RicardoD. Salvatore,
eds.,CloseEncounters ofEmpire: Writing theCulturalHistory ofU.S.-LatinAmerican (Durham,1998); Neil
Relations
Foley,TheWhiteScourge: Mexicans, Blacks,andPoorWhites in TexasCottonCulture (Berkeley,
1997); LindaGordon,
The GreatArizonaOrphanAbduction(Cambridge,Mass., 1999); AlexanderStern,"Buildings,Boundaries,and
Blood: Medicalizationand Nation-Building on theU.S. MexicanBorder,1910-1930," HispanicAmerican Histor-
ical Review, 79 (Feb. 1999), 41-8 1; Jeremy Adelmanand StephenAron,"FromBorderlands to Borders:Empires,
Nation-States, andthePeoplesin BetweeninNorthAmericanHistory," American Historical
Review, 86 (June1999),
814-41, esp.815. PatriciaNelsonLimerickcallsformorecomparative focuson theWestas a wayto "casta spotlight
on boththecommoncharacteristics ofcoloniesand thedistinctivestylesofparticularempires."See PatriciaNelson
Limerick,Something in theSoil: Legaciesand Reckoningsin theNew West(New York,2000), esp. 101, 355-56.
Studies 835
merging and conjugalrelations morethana battleground. But it is thequantityand

qualityofeditedvolumeson theintimacies ofempireappearingin thelastfewyears
thatis staggering. All attestto theactivityofscholars-boththoseofa newgenera-
tionand thosealreadyestablished-whoarerefraining theirquestionsto consideras
fundamental the propositionthatif race mattersto the historyof UnitedStates
empire,then,as JohnD'Emilio and EstelleB. Freedmaninsisteda decadeearlier,
intimaciesmustmatteras well.Americanhistorians acrossa wide spectrumhave
soughtto understand howpoliticalauthority wassecuredandhowit workedthrough
themanagement ofmarriage, domesticity,childrearing,
and paid-for and unpaid-for
sex.Moretellingstill,eveninvolumesnotexplicitly devotedto intimacies, a focuson
domesticlife,miscegenation, and family signalsbotha broadening trendand a new
understanding ofwhyand howthosesitesarepolitical.14
Still,whatis striking fromtheperspective ofcolonialstudiesis thecircumscribed
purviewofevensomeofthebestofthenewhistorical scholarship. Nash'selegantand
sweeping surveyof UnitedStateshistoriography, whichplacesmixingat theheartof
Americanhistory and recognizes raceand theaffective as a potentpoliticalterrain,
has a veryclearpoliticalagenda-directedmoreat the presentthanat thepast.It
readsas an originary narrative ofthedeeprootedness ofmulticulturalism, ratherthan
biracialism,on the NorthAmericanlandscape.Despite his reference to Salman
Rushdieand obliquelyto ethnicdislocations elsewherein theworld,Nash'sstoryof
crossingracialboundaries remains of"hybridity"
a celebration as a sourceofnational
redemption and of"mixedness" in themakingofthecontemporary UnitedStates.
To an outsiderlookingin,Nash'sluminousessayinvitesmorethana genealogical
reworking of the nationalnarrative of the UnitedStates.It invitesinquiriesthat
engageboththehistorical ofmixedness
specificity and itswidelyvariedand changing
politicalmeanings.Suchapproachesmustworkproductively offthedistortions ofa
closeupand wide-angle lens,reachingfordistantand counterintuitive transnational
comparisons as wellas thosemoreobviousand obliqueto nationalborders.It invites
a widertreatment ofmixedness, showingdebatesaboutmestizos, metis,"Indos,"and
"half-bloods" as sitesof imperialanxietiesin colonialcontextsmuchfarther afield
thantheSpanishAmericas:in Dutch-ruledIndonesia,in BritishIndia,in French-
ruledVietnamand Reunion.15
14 Nash, "Hidden Historyof MestizoAmerica,"941-62. See CatherineLintonand MicheleGillespie,eds.,
TheDevils Lane: Sexand Racein theEarlySouth(New York,1997); NancyShoemaker, ed.,NegotiatorsofChange:

onNativeAmericanWomen(New York,1997); ElizabethJamesonand SusanArmitage,
Perspectives
Historical eds.,
Writing theRange:Race, Class,and Culturein theWomen's West(Norman,1997); and MarthaHodes, ed., Sex,
Love,Race:CrossingBoundaries in NorthAmerican History (New York,1999). JohnD'Emilio and EstelleB. Freed-
man,Intimate A History
Matters: inAmerica(NewYork,1988). Evencriticalreviewsconfirm
ofSexuality thattheir
workcenteredtheintimatein a newkindofhistory See Ann duCille,"'Othered'Mat-
and politicalconversation.
ters:ReconceptualizingDominanceand Difference in theHistoryofSexualityin America,"JournaloftheHistory
ofSexuality,1 (Jan.1990), 102-27; and JohnD'Emilio and EstelleB. Freedman,"Commentary: A Responseto
AnnduCille's"'Othered"Matters,"'ibid.,128-30. Foran effort to puttheintimatebackintothemakingofU.S.
foreignpolicy,see FrankCostigliola,"'UnceasingPressureforPenetration': Gender,Pathology, and Emotionin
GeorgeKennan'sFormationof the Cold War,"JournalofAmericanHistory, 83 (March 1997), 1309-39; and
FrankCostigliola,"'MixedUp' and 'Contact':Cultureand EmotionamongtheAlliesin theSecondWorldWar,"
InternationalHistoryReview,20 (Dec. 1998), 791-805. See ValerieJ.Matsumotoand BlakeAllmendinger, eds.,
OvertheEdge:Remapping theAmericanWest(Berkeley, 1999).
15 On mixedness, in othercontexts,
and mestizaje
metissage, seeJeanGelmanTaylor,TheSocial WorldofBata-
836 The Journal
ofAmericanHistory December2001
FromtheIndiesto SouthAfrica, mixedunionsnotsanctified bythestateas wellas

thoselegallysanctionedin marriage werecondonedand actively encouragedas part
of the strategic tacticsof conquest.Only laterweretheycondemnedas encroach-
mentsupon,and threatsto theprivileges of,an overseascolonizingsettlerpopula-
tion.How beingmestizoplayedout elsewhere raisesotherquestions:mixingcould
provideaccessto some privileges while it sharplyblockedaccess to others.Carl
Degler'snotionthata "mulattoescapehatch"markedthe difference betweenthe
racialpoliticsofBrazil(whereit existed)and theUnitedStates(whereitdid not)not
onlydownplays a morecomplicated setofracializedpractices It
and representations.
also flattensout colonialhistories in whichclaimingto be of "mixed"originat one
historicalmomentand beingdesignated as "mixed"by thosewho ruledat another
momentproduceda rangeof different politicalpractices.In thosehistoriesmixed-
nessitselfwasa movingand strategic category.16
Sumptuary lawstella taleof theirown: Laws in thecolonialSpanishAmericas,
wherebeingmestizowasoftenequatedwithillegitimate birth,legallyexcludedthose
who weremixedfromholdingpublicoffice,owningproperty, and adoptingelite
formsoftransport and dress.In theIndies,on thecontrary, seventeenth- and eigh-
teenth-century sumptuary laws "standardized personalvanity"by regulating visible
symbolsof wealththatvalorizedtheJavanesemarkers of statusof the Dutch East
IndiaCompany'smestizoelite.17
This is not to maketheobviouspointthatmixedness meantdifferent thingsin
placesat different
different times.As CraigJ.Calhounwarnsin a studyofcontempo-
rarysocialtheory, "translationadequateto comparative analysisrequiresan interpre-
tationof a whole organization of activity,not just the matchingof vocabulary."
Rather,itis to arguethatshifts in thedensity, frequency,and sequenceofstateatten-
via: Europeanand Eurasianin DutchAsia (Madison,1983); FrancoiseVerges,Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colo-
nial FamilyRomanceand Metissage(Durham, 1999); Ann Laura Stoler,"SexualAffronts and Racial Frontiers:
EuropeanIdentitiesand the CulturalPoliticsof Exclusionin Colonial SoutheastAsia," Comparative Studiesin
Society and History,34 (Oct. 1992), 514-5 1; Marisolde la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos:ThePoliticsofRaceand
Culturein Cuzco,Peru,1919-1991 (Durham,2000); RonaldStutzman,"El Mestizaje:An All-Inclusive Ideology
ofExclusion,"in CulturalTransformations and Ethnicityin ModernEcuador,ed. NormanE. WhittenJr.(Urbana,
1981),45-94; andJ.JorgeKlorde Alva,"ThePostcolonization ofthe(Latin)AmericanExperience: A Reconsider-
ationof 'Colonialism,''Postcolonialism,'and 'Mestizaje,"'in AfterColonialism:
ImperialHistories and Postcolonial
Displacements, ed. GyanPrakash(Princeton,1997), 241-78.
16 See Ann Laura Stoler,"CarnalKnowledgeand ImperialPower,"in Gender at theCrossroads ofKnowledge:
FeministAnthropology in a PostmodernEra,ed. Micaela di Leonardo(Berkeley, 1991), 55-10 1. But contrast Anto-
nia I. Castaneda'sargumentthatsexualviolence,ratherthannoncoercedunions,"functioned as an institutional-
ized mechanismforensuringsubordination and compliance"byAmerindian womenin theseventeenth-century
SpanishcolonizationofCalifornia.See AntoniaI. Castaneda,"SexualViolencein thePoliticsand PoliciesofCon-
quest,"in BuildingwithOur Hands: New Directionsin ChicanaStudies,ed. Adela de la Torreand BeatrizM.
Pesquera(Berkeley, 1993), 33. CarlN. Degler,NeitherBlacknorWhite:Slavery and RaceRelations in Braziland the
UnitedStates(Madison, 1971). For the classicstudyof how,when,and whereracesdid and did not mixin the
United States,see JoelWilliamson,New People:Miscegenation and Mulattoesin the UnitedStates(New York,
1980). ForLatinAmerica,see MagnusMorner,RaceMixturein theHistory ofLatinAmerica(Boston,1967). Fora
more recenttreatment (and an excellentbibliographicessayon mestizaje),see StuartB. Schwartzand Frank
Salomon,"New Peoplesand New KindsofPeople:Adaptation,Readjustment, and Ethnogenesis in SouthAmeri-
can IndigenousSocieties(Colonial Era)," in The Cambridge HistoryoftheNativePeoplesoftheAmericas, vol. III:
SouthAmerica,PartII, ed. FrankSalomonand StuartSchwartz(Cambridge,Eng., 1996), 443-501; and Stuart
Schwartz,"Spaniards,Pardos,and the MissingMestizos:Identitiesand Racial Categoriesin the EarlyHispanic
Caribbean,"New WestIndianGuide,71 (nos. 1 and 2, 1997), 5-20.
17 Taylor,
Social WorldofBatavia,66-68.
Studies
ComparisoninAmericanHistoryand Postcolonial 837
tionto mixedunionsshouldturnus to thehistorical ofa socialcategory's

specificities
occurrence, therulesthatgoverned itsappearance, thewaysa setofrelations and dis-
coursesaboutthemcould"arouseopposingstrategies" and makeit possible,"witha
particularsetofconcepts,to playdifferent games."'8In somecolonialcontexts, such
as BritishIndia,mixedness was conceivedas a threatto thestate'sracialtaxonomies
and was heavilypoliced.Elsewhere,as in the early-twentieth-century Netherlands
Indies,discourses aboutthedangersofmixingprovidedthecontexts in whichmixed
unionscontinuedto thrive.Clearly,discourses aboutthepoliticalhazardsofmixing
did not necessarily havethe same effects. As in the profusion of scientific
debates
abouttheperilsofmixingin FrenchIndochina,suchdebatescouldserveas forceful
reminders ofthevalidity andpurity ofthoseracialized categories ofpersonswhowere
clearly"native" and firmly "white"and knew where they belonged.
But discoursesabout mixedness wererequisitioned to morethanthe serviceof
colonialregimes,theiragents,and thosewho producedtheirexpertknowledge.
Scholarshave placedan ideologyof mestizaje at thecoreof LatinAmerica's varied
nationalist narratives,withelitesembracingmixedness to rendernationalist rheto-
rics-whichwereostensibly inclusionary,equalizing,and popularizing-asprojects
thattargeted indigenousIndianpopulationsforexclusion.Doris Sommerand Vera
M. Kutzinski morespecifically regardthesexualand eroticdimensions ofmestizaje
as
at theheartofLatinAmerica's nationalparadigms."9
My pointis notthatNash'sargument aboutmixingwas amiss.The moreinterest-
ingissueraisedbyhispiecehasto do withthebreadthofcomparison. Whenhistori-
ans oftheUnitedStateslookin a transnational direction,it oftentendsto be south,
to LatinAmericaand to bordercrossings at thehistoricaland contemporary frontiers
oftheUnitedStates.20 But comparisons withhistorical studiesfromelsewhere high-
lightotherfeatures of mixingand of discourses aboutit thatemphasizethetactical
mobility ofconcepts, howmixedmarriages and unionswereusedin strategies ofgov-
ernancethatjoined sexualconquestwith otherforms domination. North
of As
American history is becomingmoreinternational, theimperialpoliticsofintimacies
begsforbroadercomparisons as well.
18 CraigCalhoun,Critical History,
Social Theoiy:Culture, and theChallengeofDifference(Oxford,Eng., 1995),
59; MichelFoucault,TheArchaeology ofKnowledge; and, TheDiscourseon Language,trans.A. M. Sheridan(New
York,1972), 36-37.
19 Not a smallpartof thatexpert knowledgeelaboratedthedangersof "racialhybridization," moststarkly in
eugenicistresearch.See Andre-Pierre La forceduprejuge:Essaisurle racismeetsesdoubles(The forceof
Taguieff,
prejudice:On racismand itsdoubles)(Paris,1988); and Verges,Monsters Eugenicsfiguredin
and Revolutionaries.
debatesaboutArgentinian nationalidentity to theidea ofLa-
in the 1920s and 1930s to give"biologicalcurrency
tinityand thereby racism,"accordingto NancyStepan,"TheHourofEugenics":
newlifeto scientific Race,Gender,
and Nationin LatinAmerica(Ithaca,1991), 141. See also AlexandraStern,"ResponsibleMothersand Normal
Children:Eugenics,Nationalism,and Welfarein Post-revolutionary Mexico,"JournalofHistoricalSociology, 12
(Dec. 1999), 369-97, See JulieSkurski,"The Ambiguities ofAuthenticity and NationalIdeologyin LatinAmer-
ica,"in Becoming National:A Reader,ed. RonyGrigorSunyand Geoffrey Eley(New York,1996), 371-402. Doris
Sommer,FoundationalFictions:TheNationalRomancesofLatinAmerica(Berkeley,1991); Vera M. Kutzinski,
Sugar'sSecrets: Raceand theEroticsofCubanNationalism(Charlottesville, 1993), 13.
20 See, forexample,JoseDavid Saldivar,ed., BorderMatters:Remapping AmericanCulturalStudies(Berkeley,
1997); and JoseE. Limon,American Greater
Encounters: Mexico,theUnitedStates,and theEroticsofCulture(Bos-
ton,1998).
838 History
TheJournalofAmerican December2001
Feministscholarship has made important movesin thatdirection.Despite the

bracketings that Kaplan noted in earlierscholarship-ofcultureout of empire,
empireoutofhistory, and UnitedStatesempireoutofpostcolonial studies-feminist
scholarshavesoughtto documentthe interlocking of sexualand racialpatterns of
dominancethatcrisscross historicalfields.The insistence thatthe"personalis politi-
cal" has informed efforts to addresshow specificcolonialconditionsmade thatso.
The directionset by VerenaMartinez-Alier's researchon interracial marriagein
Cuba's nineteenth-century slave society,like that of PatriciaSeed's on marriage
choicesin eighteenth-century colonialMexico,helpedthoseworkingin othercolo-
nialcontexts appreciate howregulations on maritalchoiceweretransformed as those
societiesbecameincreasingly raciallyorganizedand raciallydiverse.Recentwork,
suchas SharonBlock'son comparative sexualcoercionin earlyAmerica,doeswhat
we need moreof: She questionswhat countedas sexualcoercionby examining
accountsofsuchactsand thediscursive categories ofaccusation.She treatsthecoer-
cionofslavesand servants, thatis,ofAfrican Americanandwhitewomen,in a com-
parativeframethattellsmorethaneitherinstancecould alone aboutthehistorical
relationshipsbetweensocialand sexualpower.2'
Butevenin feminist scholarship, borrowings haveoftenbeenofa particular kind.
Studentsof Americanhistorymay avidlyreference postcolonialtheory(that of
EdwardSaid, BenedictAnderson,Homi Bhabha,and GayatriChakravorty Spivak,
to nameonlytheluminaries) and itsfounding fathers(FrantzFanon,AimeCesaire,
AlbertMemmi),buttheyseemto considerlessrelevant thespecific colonialhistories
in whichcolonialrelationships and theirgenderdynamics wereproduced.Similarly,
historians ofsexualityand racein theUnitedStates,althoughawareoftheory, do not
seemconversant withthestudiesofwhiteness thatfeminist historians ofthePacific
and Southeast Asiancolonialcontexts havebeencarrying out forsometime.22
But borrowing in theotherdirectioncan be similarly selectiveand problematic.
Whenstudents ofcolonialstudies,myself included,havedrawnon Jacquelyn Dowd
Hall'swork on racialviolence and white women's quest for suffrage, Patricia
Grim-
shaw'son Hawaii'snineteenth-century missionaries, or MaryP. Ryan'sand NancyF.
Cott'son domesticity, we haveoftendoneso fortheconceptualformrather thanthe
historical contentof theiranalyses.Postcolonialscholarsof Britishempirein India
avidlyreadUnitedStatesscholarship on whiteness, but theystilltreatNorthAmer-
ica'sracialhistoryas a case apart.Feministscholarsmaypushsharedanalyticcon-
ceptsup againstgendered in othertimesand places,butthehistory
politicalrelations
ofAmericanimperialexpansionusuallyremainsanotherstory.23
21 VerenaMartinez-Alier, Marriage,Class,and Colourin Nineteenth-CenturyCuba:A StudyofRacialAttitudes
and Sexual Valuesin a SlaveSociety(London, 1974); PatriciaSeed, ToLove,Honor,and Obeyin ColonialMexico:
ConflictsoverMarriageChoice,1574-1821 (Stanford,1982); SharonBlock,"Lines of Color,Sex, and Service:
ComparativeSexualCoercionin EarlyAmerica,"in Sex,Love,Race,ed. Hodes, 141-63.
22 For a conceptual comparison,
in othercontextsthatdoes notpursuea historical
use of me'tissage seeJennifer
Spear,"'They Need Wives':Metissage and theRegulationof Sexualityin FrenchLouisiana,1699-1730," in Sex,
Love,Race,ed. Hodes, 35-59.
23 See AmirahInglis,The WhiteWomen's Ordinance:SexualAnxiety
Protection and Politicsin Papua (London,
1975); and Claudia Knapman,WhiteWomenin Fiji, 1835-1930. TheRuinofEmpire(Boston,1986). Jacquelyn
Dowd Hall, RevoltagainstChivalry: JessieDaniel Amesand theWomensCampaignagainstLynching (New York,
ComparisoninAmericanHistoryand Postcoloniat
Studies 839
Still,theexceptions LauraWexler'sanalysisof photographs

areinstructive. taken
bymiddle-class whitewomenduringthewarin thePhilippines placestheviolenceof
UnitedStatesempireup againsttheshapingof a gendereddomesticspaceoverseas
and in the racializedspace of the UnitedStates.Transnational historiesof social
movements, workon missionaries
suchas Ian Tyrrell's and culturalimperialism or
SusanThorne'son "missionary-imperial feminism," havedemonstrated withstriking
consistency thatsuch transnational globalventures"restedon the existenceof a
degradedfemaleOtherin thecoloniesand at home."Donna Guy'sexamination of
thediscourses about"whiteslavery" inArgentinashowshowperceptions ofemigrant
womenas "loose,"and theirownpractices, therightsand inherent
"affected restric-
tionsofcitizenshipbeyondnationalfrontiers." Sometimes connections emergefrom
unlikelyplaces.Elizabethvan Heyningen's interpretationof thecontagiousdiseases
actsin SouthAfrica's Cape Colonyin thelatenineteenth century as imperiallegisla-
tion movesher to look to the unexpectedagentsof theirimplementation: local
branchesoftheYoungMen'sChristian the
Association, Salvation Army, and institu-
tionsstaffed by Americanwomenand affiliated withthe Mount HolyokeFemale
Seminary in Massachusetts.So whatdissuadesmorearchivalventures in suchdirec-
tions?Is it because archivalsourcesmake such connectionsdifficult to pursue,
becausedisciplinary convention them,
ignores or becauseour paradigms renderthese
historiesas noncommensurable nation-making projects?24
PartII: ColonialComparisons;or,What's"Colonial"aboutNorthAmerica?
The taskof comparing theracialand sexualentanglements thatpreoccupy students
ofcolonialstudiesand thosethatpreoccupy historiansofNorthAmericaraisesques-
tionsaboutwhatis "colonial."One issueis clear:dependingon how"thecolonial"is
defined,boththepossibletermsofcomparison andtheissuesaredifferent.Bywayof
we can lookbriefly
illustration, at fourmomentsin UnitedStateshistory. Therehas
beenextensive comparative as colonialin
workon all four,and all couldbe construed
thattheyinvolvedEuropeansettlement, exploitation, and dominanceof separate
"others"thattransformed socialorganization, culturalconvention,and privatelife.
All suggestwhatStuartHall has called"structuresofdominance," relationsofpower
1979); PatriciaGrimshaw, PathsofDuty:AmericanMissionary Wivesin Nineteenth-Century Hawaii (Honolulu,
1989); MaryP. Ryan,TheEmpireoftheMother:AmericanWriting aboutDomesticity, 1830 to 1860 (New York,
1982); Nancy F. Cott, TheBondsof Womanhood: "Woman'Sphere"in New England,1780-1835 (New Haven,
thatgestures
1978). For scholarship towardcolonialand postcolonialhistoriesthatmightbe shared,see Leonore
Mandersonand MargaretJolly, eds., SitesofDesire/EconomiesofPleasure:Sexualitiesin Asia and thePacific(Chi-
cago, 1997).
24 LauraWexler, TenderViolence:DomesticVisionsin theAgeofU.S. Imperialism (Chapel Hill, 2000); Ian Tyr-
rell,Woman's World!Womans Empire:The Woman's ChristianTemperance Unionin International 1880-
Perspective,
1930 (Chapel Hill, 1991); Susan Thorne,"Missionary-Imperial Feminism,"in Gendered Missions:Womenand
Men inMissionary Discourseand Practice, ed. MaryT Huberand NancyC. Lutkehaus(AnnArbor,1999), 39-66,
esp. 60. JaneHunterarguesthat"imperialevangelism's" entreatiesto Chinesewomen to obey theirhusbands
"tendedto enhancemissionary authority instead."See JaneHunter,TheGospelofGentility: AmericanWomen Mis-
China (New Haven, 1984), 177. Donna Guy,"'WhiteSlavery,'
sionariesin Turn-of-the-Century Citizenship,and
Nationalityin Argentina,"in Nationalisms ed. PatriciaYaeger,Doris Sommer,and AndrewParker
and Sexualities,
(New York,1992), 201-17; Elizabethvan Heyningen, "The SocialEvilin theCape Colony,1868-1902: Prostitu-
tionand theContagiousDiseasesActs,"JournalofSouthern AfricanStudies,10 (April1984), 170-97.
840 The Journal
ofAmerican
History December2001
thatdependedon themanagement ofsexin themakingof racializedformsof rule.

Suchstructures figured
prominently in bothNorthAmerican historyand in Europe's
AsianandAfrican colonialexpansions.25
An obviouspointof departure is thefirstof thefourmoments,"colonialAmer-
ica."Thereis no periodforwhichhistorians havemorethoroughly detailedthecon-
vergent and competing strategiesthatpittedFrench,British, and Dutch in distinct
waysagainstNativeAmericanpopulations,againsteach other,and amongthem-
selves.Similarly, theSpanishrootsofcolonialAmericanpolicyhavebeenrichlydoc-
umented.Still,the culturalcriticMichaelWarnerblamesthe disjuncture between
thathistoryand postcolonialscholarship on "theold Imperialschool" (whichhe
identifies withCharlesAndrewsand GeorgeLouis Beer,amongothers)whosecom-
mitment to teleologies
of nationalistnarrativesrendered whatwas colonialin colo-
nialAmericairrelevant to thosestudying thecolonialelsewhere. In Warner'stelling,
the conflicting agendasof historiansof "colonialAmerica"concerneda "future
nation"ratherthanthe characteristics of a historicallyspecific"colonialculture."
Instead,he urgesa rethinking ofBritishcolonialism in thebroadercontextofall the
Europeanempires,an approachthatwouldbe "attentive to theculturalpatterns by
whichsuchdisparate ventures wereableto elaborate, forall theirdifferences,
a Euro-
peancolonialproject,distinct fromeachofitsmanifestations butnecessary to each."
Indeed,Warnerpointsto commonimperialconcernsoverreproduction, domestic
space,and identities forgedin the processof settlement (suggesting parallelswith
AnneMcClintocksworkand myown)thatcoulddrawstudents ofNorthAmerican
history beyondthenationto a broadercolonizing world.26
Still,theonusofrethinking thescopeofanalysisshouldnotfallon NorthAmeri-
canistsalone.StudentsofSoutheast Asia,SouthAsia,andAfricatoo havesubscribed
to modelsthatprivilege metropolitan-colony exchangesratherthancircuitsof peo-
ple,produce,and narrations thatmighttrackcommongendered ofgover-
principles
nancethrough thisbroaderglobalframe.IftheyignoreNorthAmerica,it is certainly
not becausecolonialAmericais not resonantwith othercolonial contexts,nor
becausetheconcernsofAmericanhistorians areso differently posed.The sheervol-
ume of workon sexuality and race relationsin earlyAmerica,the richsourceson
domesticarrangements and on mixed-marriage and slavehouseholdsat theveryleast
invitemutualrecognition.
25 See the definitionsof colonialismin CatherineHall, ed., CulturesofEmpire:Colonizers in Britainand the

Empirein theNineteenth and Twentieth A Reader(Manchester,
Centuries: 2000), 1-36. J.Jorgede Alva notesa
"profound shift"in theconceptof colonialismsincethelate 1970s,froma "structural" focuson economicsand
politicsto one highlighting"cultural,discursive
and powerformation in everydaylife."But themoreproductive
shifthas recognized how economicand politicalstructures aretransformed in thepowerrelationsofeveryday life.
See de Alva,"Postcolonization of the (Latin)AmericanExperience,"263. StuartHall, "Race,Articulation, and
SocietiesStructured in Dominance,"in SociologicalTheories:Raceand Colonialism,ed. UNESCO (Paris,1980), 341.
26 Bernard Bailynand PhilipD. Morgan,eds.,Strangers withintheRealm:CulturalMarginsoftheFirstBritish
Empire(ChapelHill, 1991); JackP. GreeneandJ.R. Pole,eds., ColonialBritish America:Essaysin theNewHistory
oftheEarlyModernEra (Baltimore,1984); GordonS. Wood, "The Relevanceand Irrelevance ofAmericanColo-
nial History,"in ImaginedHistories: AmericanHistorians InterpretthePast,ed. AnthonyMolho and Gordon S.
Wood (Princeton,1998), 144-63; and MartinDaunton and Rick Halpern,eds., Empireand Others:British
Encounters withIndigenous Peoples,1600-1850 (Philadelphia,1999); Warner,"What'sColonial about Colonial
America?," 57; McClintock,ImperialLeather.
Studies
For theseearlyperiods,RamonA. Gutierrez has shownus how marriage struc-

turedracialinequalities in New Mexico,as Jennifer L. Morgan,in hersurveyofsix-
teenth-century has detailedhowgenderwas imbricated
travelliterature, in theracial
ideologiesandstrategies ofrule.Suchstudiesas KathleenM. Brown's on gender,race,
and powerin colonialVirginiaspeakdirectly to JeanGelmanTaylor'sethnographic
history of thesameissuesin seventeenth-century colonialJava,halfway aroundthe
world.27 Both documentthe centrality of womenin shapingthe contactzones of
colonialcultures thatbecameincreasingly distinguishedbyrace.Tracinggenealogies
of kithand kinfivegenerations deep,Taylorshowedhow thepoliticalalliancesof
Dutch rule were forgedby men throughfemalenetworksthatplaced domestic
arrangements, parenting and educationat thecenterofadministrative
styles, efforts
to shapeculturalnormsand secureauthority. Taylor'sfocuson thedislocations that
colonialismimposedon bothcolonizersand colonizedis a forceful reminder that
innovationand improvisation, ratherthan the mereimportof Europeannorms,
characterized theculturalgroundon whichracialdifferences wereconsolidated and
thetermson whichpeoplemet.
Parallelpatternsof colonialintimaciesin earlyAmericaare well documented.
Those thatproduced"tenderties"betweenfurtraders and NativeAmerican women
in theCanadiannorthwest and thosethatproduceda vastmestizopopulationunder
Spanishruleto thesouthsuggestmanipulations of sexualaccessthatresonatewith
thewayscolonialadministrations in SouthAfricaand SoutheastAsia watchedover
thoseintimacies-andthewayscolonizedwomenturnedthemto theirown ends.
An olderhistoriography thatsustainedthe myththatNew Englandcolonistsand
NativeAmericans did notmixhaslittlecurrency today,as scholarshavedetailedtheir
sexualarrangements, thechildren theyproduced,and theaffections and disaffections
thatgrewoutofthoseintimate encounters.28
Ifcomparisons betweenearlyAmerican contactsand otherEuropeancolonialcon-
tactsarestillto be made,a largerliteratureaddressesthesecondmoment,comparing
theeighteenth- and nineteenth-century plantationsocietiesofthe"Old South"with
plantationsocietiesin British,French,and Dutch coloniesofAsia,Africa,and the
27
RamonA. Gutierrez, WhenJesusCame,theCornMothersWent Away:Marriage,Sexuality, and Powerin New
Mexico,1500-1846 (Stanford,1991); Jennifer L. Morgan,"'Some Could SuckleoverTheir Shoulders':Male
Travelers,FemaleBodies,and the Genderingof Racial Ideology,1500-1700," Williamand Mary Quarterly, 54
(Jan.1997), 167-92. See also RichardC. Trexler, Sex and Conquest:GenderedViolence, PoliticalOrder,and the
EuropeanConquestoftheAmericas(Ithaca,1995). See Taylor,Social WorldofBatavia;and KathleenM. Brown,
Good Wives,NastyWenches, and AnxiousPatriarchs:Gender, Race,and Powerin ColonialVirginia(Chapel Hill,
1997).
28 Van Kirk,Many Tender Ties.For the argumentthatlegitimacy playeda centralrole in disputesbetween
NativeAmericansand colonistsoverland rightsin earlyNew England,see Ann Marie Plane, "Legitimacies,
IndianIdentities,and the Law: The Politicsof Sex and the Creationof Historyin Colonial New England,"in
Empireand Others,ed. Daunton and Halpern,217-37. See also Ann Marie Plane, ColonialIntimacies: Indian
Marriagein EarlyNew England(Ithaca,2000). For the argumentthat"collisions"overnotionsof propriety and
property betweenIndiansand Englishpredominated overmixing,see JeanM. O'Brien,Dispossession byDegrees:
Indian Land and Identityin Natick,Massachusetts, 1650-1790 (New York,1997). See also David D. Smits,
"'AbominableMixture':TowardRepudiationof Anglo-IndianIntermarriage in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,"
VirginiaMagazineofHistory, 95 (April1987); and RichardGodbeer,"EroticizingtheMiddle Ground:Anglo-
Indian Sexual Relationsalong the Eighteenth-Century in Sex,Love,Race,ed. Hodes, 91-111. For a
Frontier,"
laterperiod,see Daniel R. Mandell,"ShiftingBoundariesof Race and Ethnicity: Indian-BlackIntermarriagein
SouthernNew England,1760-1880,"JournalofAmerican 85 (Sept. 1998), 466-501.
History,
842 The Journal
ofAmerican
History December2001
Caribbean.As EugeneD. Genovese,amongothers,has shown,plantationhouse-

holdsin Georgiaand South Carolinaweresimilarto thosein theWestIndieson
whichtheywereinitially modeled.29
Indeed, United Stateseconomicand social historianssuch as Genovesehave
clearlysoughtto writeagainstAmericanexceptionalism in comparisons withthe
WestIndiesand SpanishAmerica.But thelaborprocessesthatcreatedsuchplanta-
tion households,as a generation of scholarsdevotedto world-systems analysishas
shown,wererealizedin congruent waysin otherpartsof theworld.The long-dis-
tancedisplacements ofpeoplethatsplitup families and tookpersonsas property in
thepursuitofwhiteprofits werenotunlikethelaterforcedrecruitments ofworkers
fromJavaand China to Malaysiaand Sumatra,of indentured workersfromsouth
Indiato Fiji,and ofworkers fromJamaicato Costa Rica,to namebut a few.Much
dependedon managingthe domainof the domestic,on adoptingdifferential pay
scalesforwomenand men,on encouraging concubinageand paid-forsex,on con-
doningsexualcoercions, on policingsexualaccessand intimate encounters.Workers
responded withdespairand desertion and violencetowardEuropeans,otherpopula-
tionsagainstwhomtheywerepitted,oreventheirownfamilies.30 Womenwerecom-
pelledto selltheirbodiesand giveup theirchildren.Othersused illicitunionswith
Europeanmenin exchangeformoreeducational opportunities fortheirchildrenand
economicsecurity forthemselves. Racializedassessmentsof abilityand worthstruc-
turedtheseplantation societiesacrosstheboard.
Althoughthe plantationhouseholdsof the Old Southdependedon slavelabor
and the colonialhouseholdsof the Dutch, French,and Britishin Asia employed
"contract coolies"and wagelabor,anxieties withinEuropeancolonialcommunities
overintimacies and fearofcontaminations bythosewho performed domesticservice
werestrikingly thesame.Those who workedas nursemaids, cooks,and houseboys
wereobjectsofboth fearand desire.3'In thevulnerable domesticsphere,theywere
seento transgress
theprotected boundaries oftheverywhitehomeswheretheirpres-
enceallowedfortheproduction ofa particular
kindofcultural space:theleisures,
ail-
ments,and sensibilitiesthatdefinedclassprivilegeand distinctionsofrace.
Representations of, and reactionsto, thosedomesticsubversions and transgres-
sionsderivedfromlocal tensionsand producedverydifferent historical
effects.
But
local explanationsalone mayoccludethepowerful parallelsexpressedin discourses
EugeneD. Genovese,Roll,Jordan,
29 Roll:The WorldtheSlavesMade (New York,1974).
30 For a
reworking of theveryunitof analysisforstudying Americanculturaland racialhistories,generating
newkindsof non-nation-based see Paul Gilroy,TheBlackAtlantic:Modernity
histories, and Double Consciousness
(Cambridge,Mass., 1993). On the Indian plantationlaborforceof Fiji, see JohnD. Kelly,A Politicsof Virtue:
Hinduism,Sexuality,and Countercolonial
Discoursein Fiji (Chicago, 1991). On therecruitment ofJavaneseand
Chineseworkersto Sumatra,see Stoler,Capitalismand Confrontation. On colonialMalaya,see JohnG. Butcher,
TheBritishinMalaya,1880-1941: TheSocialHistory ofa EuropeanCommunity in ColonialSouth-EastAsia (Kuala
Lumpur,1976). For theCaribbean,see Lara Putnam,"PublicWomenand One-PantMen: Migration,Kinship,
and thePoliticsofGenderin CaribbeanCosta Rica, 1870-1960" (Ph.D. diss.,University ofMichigan,2000). See
EileenJ.SuarezFinlay,ImposingDecency:ThePoliticsofSexuality and Race in PuertoRico,1870-1920 (Durham,
1999).
31 Comparethe sexualeconomyof domesticserviceand the racializedrepresentation of servantsin Lillian
Smith,KillersoftheDream (1949; New York,1961); FerdinandOyono,Houseboy, trans.JohnReed (1960; Lon-
don, 1987); and McClintock,ImperialLeather,75-13 1.
Studies 843
aroundsex,contamination, and colonialvulnerabilitiesthatfearsabout racialized

intimacies shared.The domesticmorality thatAmericanslaveholders saw as so tied
to thesubjectof sex,describedby theAmericanhistorian WillieLee Rose,was the
objectofvigilantattention in the Dutch East Indiesand SouthAfricain thesame
period.Nor was the "cultureof dissemblance"-DarleneClarkHine's term,bor-
rowedbythehistorian MichelleMitchellto describethe"codeofsilencearoundinti-
matematters" thatAfrican AmericanwomendevelopedduringReconstruction-so
different fromJavanese women'spracticeof recounting theirmemoriesof domestic
workin Dutchcolonialhomesinwaysthat"protected their'innerlivesandselves."'32
Whitemen used the protection of whitewomenas a defenseagainstimagined
threats-"thered peril,""theblackperil"(in Africa),the "yellowperil"(in Asia).
Theyimposed-and womenactively participatedin-protectivemodelsofwoman-
hood and motherhood and prescriptions
fordomesticrelations thatconstrained both
thewomenand men in servitude and thosewho ostensibly ruled.Nor weresuch
"perils"abstractfears.Invocationsofthethreatofsexualassaultson whitewomenby
nativemenin BritishIndia,SouthAfrica,and New Guinearepeatedly returned to
incidents of male servants-washermen, sweepers,cooks,and houseboys-poisedat
bedroomdoorways, at thresholds
ofEuropeanhomes,intruders intotheverydomes-
tic spaceswheretheyworked,wherewomenwereconfined,and wherewhitechil-
drenwerereared.At issuewereservants who did notknowtheir"places"and white
(oftenyoungor working-class) womenwho did notknowthestandards forkeeping
theirs.All confirm AlbertMemmi'sinsistence thatcolonialism producedbothitscol-
onizersand itscolonizedin thebanaland humbleintimacies oftheeveryday.33 Such
siteswereneither metaphors forempirewritlargenormetonymic ofbroaderpatterns
of rule.The politicsof intimacyis wherecolonialregimesof truthwereimposed,
workedaround,andworkedout.
A thirdmomentinviting furthercomparison is highlighted in themodelofinter-
nal colonialismused to describethecontactzonesof theNativeAmericancolonial
encounter. WhilesomeAmericanscholarsmarkthe"imperialist epoch"as spanning
theperiodfrom1870 to 1920, othersnotethatas earlyas the 1850s,"evidenceof
empirewas widelyapparentin manyforms."Others,suchas FrancisJennings, set
NorthAmerica's "empire of fortune"earlier.
Indeed, such scholars as theanthropolo-
gistEleanorLeacockand thehistorian Theda Perduehavelongtreatedthedisloca-
tionsof NativeAmericansand the warpingof theirdomesticarrangements as a
32 CompareWillie Lee Rose, "The Domesticof DomesticSlavery," in Slaveryand Freedom, ed. WilliamW.
Freehling(New York,1982); withStoler,Race and theEducationofDesire,137-64. AfricanAmericanwomen
engagedin "a selectiverevelationofthepersonalthat'createdtheappearanceofdisclosure,"' accordingto Michelle
Mitchell,"SilencesBroken,SilencesKept: Genderand Sexualityin African-American History,"Genderand His-
tory, 11 (Nov. 1999), 433-44. Cf. Stolerand Strassler,
"Castingforthe Colonial,"14-17.
33 Compare the frequency withwhich accountsfromthe late nineteenthand earlytwentieth centuriesof
allegedattacksmentionAfrican, Asian,and Papuanmaleservants foundin a bedroom,bathingarea,or closetofa
Europeanhome.See MrinaliniSinha,ColonialMasculinity: The 'ManlyEnglishman'and the'Effeminate Bengali'in
theLate Nineteenth-Century (Manchester,1995), 52-54; Hansen, DistantCompanions, esp. 98-105; Norman
Etherington, "Natal'sBlackRape Scareofthe 1870s,"JournalofSouthern AfricanStudies,15 (Oct. 1988), 37-53;
and Inglis, WhiteWomensProtection Ordinance.AlbertMemmi, The Colonizerand Colonized,trans.Howard
Greenfeld (Boston,1991).
colonization processin whichwomenhaveplayeda keyrole.The "internal colonial-

ism"modelhasbeenappliedbroadlyto describemodesofinteraction betweenMex-
ican farmworkers and Anglosin thecottoncultureof Texas,Mexicanminersand
Anglosin thecoppertownsofArizona,and blacksharecroppers and thedominant
whiteculturein theSouth.34
Ifthedebateoverwhether theUnitedStatescouldbe characterized as a contextof
internalcolonialismwanedby the 1990s,attention to thepoliticalimportof com-
paringthecolonialism oftheUnitedStatesto thatofothercolonialregimes has not.
LindaGordon'streatment of the Arizona orphan trainscandal in thefirst decade of
the twentieth century-a struggleoverwhichwomenof whichcolorweremore
appropriate fostermothers-reflects anxietiesoverrearingand race thatresonate
withconcurrent discoursesin a widercolonialfield.35The struggles weremuchlike
thosein theDutchEastIndies,whichturnedon family life,sexualaccess,and mixed-
racechildrenwho wereabandoned,abscondedwith,or adoptedor who remained
precariously perchedon societies'racialdivides.Whitewomenwereagaincharged
withmaintaining theprestige oftheirracewhilewomenofdifferent huewereseenas
a threatto it.
MaryP. Ryan'sobservations about genderin nineteenth-century urbanAmerica
applyequallywellto manyEuropeancolonies.Gender"suppliedthesexualprohibi-
tions,codesofsegregation and rhetorical powerwithwhichto mortartherisingwall
of racialsegregation."Whitewomenweresubjectto, and jointwardensover,stric-
turesthatmadeinvestments in racialupliftand reform-rather thansocialequality
betweenraces-the principleof theiracceptanceand participation in social life.
Indeed,in thenineteenth-century Netherlands Indies,whitewomencouldlosetheir
legalrights to Europeanstatusiftheymarriednativemen,on theargument ofcolo-
nial lawyersthattheirfeelings (ratherthanacts)betrayed culturaldispositions that
werelessDutchthanJavanese.36
Elaboratecodesofconductthataffirmed manliness andvirility arosefromcolonial
culturesof fear-whitemen makingvulnerableclaimsto legitimate rulesaw their
manhoodbolsteredby perceptions and practicesbased on theirracialsuperiority.
The displaysofmanliness in FrenchIndochina,theDutchEastIndies,andVictorian
34 For reviews of thisdebate,see RobertJ. Hind, "The InternalColonial Concept,"Comparative Studiesin

Societyand History,26 (July1984), 543-68; FredCervantes, "Chicanosas a PostColonialMinority:Some Ques-
tionsConcerningtheAdequacyof theParadigmof InternalColonialism,"in Perspectives in ChicanoStudies,ed.
ReynaldoFlores(Los Angeles,1977), 123-35; and Michael Hechter,InternalColonialism:The CelticFringein
NationalDevelopment
Britain's (New Brunswick,1999). For a studyof genderand internalcolonialismwithout
use of the latterterm,see Sarah Deutsch,No SeparateRefuge:Culture,Class,and Genderon an Anglo-Hispanic
Frontierin theAmerican Southwest,1880-1940 (New York,1987). D. W Meinig,TheShapingofAmerica: A Geo-
graphicalPerspectiveon 500 YearsofHistory, America,1800-1867 (New Haven, 1993), 170;
vol. II: Continental
FrancisJennings, The CreationofAmerica:Through Revolutionto Empire(New York,2000); EleanorLeacock,
"MontagnaisWomenand theJesuitProgramforColonization,"in Womenand Colonization: Per-
Anthropological
ed. EleanorLeacockand Mona Etienne(New York,1980), 25-42; Diane Rothenberg,
spectives, "The Mothersof
theNation:SenecaResistanceto QuakerIntervention," ibid.,63-87; Theda Perdue,Cherokee Women:Genderand
CultureChange,1700-1835 (Lincoln,1998). Forotherusesoftheinternalcolonialismmodel,see note 13 above.
35 Gordon,GreatArizona OrphanAbduction.
36 Mary P. Ryan,Civic Wars:Democracy and PublicLifein theAmericanCityduringtheNineteenth Century
(Berkeley,1997), 296. On racialmembership and mixed-marriage colonial
legislationin late-nineteenth-century
ofEmpire,198-237.
Indonesia,see Stoler,Tensions
Studies
Historyand Postcolonial
ComparisoninAmerican 845
Indiahad features similarto thosedescribed byGail BedermanfortheUnitedStates

and byKristinL. Hogansonin heraccountofthegenderpoliticsthat"provoked" the
Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars.17
Butthereweredifferences. Whenwhitemenin BritishNew Guineapromulgated
a WhiteWomen'sProtection Ordinancein 1926 to guardtheirwomenagainstthe
threatof sexualassaultby nativemen,therewas no Ida B. Wellsto mounta cam-
paignthatturnedthediscourse ofmanliness Norwastherea movement
againstitself.
ofwhitewomenin theIndiesor New Guineato galvanizerevoltagainsttheduplici-
touschivalry oftheirprotective,insecure, and raciallyfretful men.On thecontrary,
in India,whentheAnglo-Indian pressreported rumorsofnativeassaults(and more
often"attempted" ones)on whitewomen,middle-class whitewomensuccessfully led
theboycottof a bill thatwouldhaveallowedsuchcasesto be triedby high-placed
functionaries who werenativemen. Similarly, in colonialSumatra,whena Dutch
planter'swifewas murdered "witha butcher's knife"by a Javanese workerin 1929,
the167 planters'wiveswhosignedand dispatched a letterto thequeenoftheNeth-
erlandscalled upon their"Womanlyinstincts"to beseech her to "changethe
regime"-notto investigate laborabusesbutto tighten thereinofa "laboringpeople
... on theroadto unruliness and insubordination."38
If some comparisonsentaila stretch,the fourthmoment,the conventionally
defined"age of Americanimperialism" startingwiththe Spanish-American War,
lendsitselfto moreobviouscommensurability. Between1898 and 1914, theUnited
in Cuba, PuertoRico,Hawaii,Guam,thePhilippines,
Statesacquiredterritories and
EasternSamoa. In the Pacific,Micronesia,Palau, and the CarolineIslandswere
broughtintotheAmericanempirethirty yearslater.This was theheydayof Euro-
peancolonialventures, ifsomewhat longerthanEricHobsbawm's"AgeofEmpire."39
The British, Dutch,French,and Germanempiresweremovingrapidlyin twoseem-
inglycontrary towardmoresocialreform,
directions: education,and philanthropy
(as in the Dutch Indies"EthicalPolicy"and the French"civilizing mission")and
towardincreasing attentivenessto racialdistinctions and socialpoliciesthatconsoli-
datedthosedistinctions.Racialdiscrimination and socialreform, as studentsbothof
colonial studiesand of "benevolentcolonialism"in United States historyhave
learned,werenot contradictions but complementary politicalimpulses,createdout
ofthesamecloth.
the Decline of Middle-ClassManliness,and Ida B. Wells'sAntilynching

37 Gail Bederman,"'Civilization,'
Campaign(1892-94)," RadicalHistory Review,52 (Winter1992), 5-30; KristinL. Hoganson,FightingforAmer-
icanManhood:How GenderPoliticsProvoked theSpanish-American Wars(New Haven,
and Philippine-American
1998).
38 Inglis,WhiteWomens Ordinance.
Protection thebreadthof thewhitewomen'santi-
This is notto exaggerate
lynching movement or to ignorethefactthata muchlargerpopulationofthewhitewomenin theU.S. virulently
upheldracistpractice.Sinha, ColonialMasculinity52-63; "PoliticalReportNo. 6," July16, 1929, American
Consulate,Medan,Sumatra(microfilm: roll51, M 682), RecordsRelatingto theInternalAffairs of theNether-
lands,1919-1929, Recordsof the Departmentof State,RG 59 (NationalArchives, Washington, D.C.). I thank
FrancesGouda forcallingmyattention to thisdocument.
culturalnarratives
39 On theconflicting fromthe 1920s aboutwhethertheUnitedStateswas "imperialistic,"
see EmilyS. Rosenberg, FinancialMissionaries to theWorld:ThePoliticsand CultureofDollar Diplomacy,1900-
1930 (Cambridge,Mass., 1999), esp. 131-37. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age ofEmpire,1875-1914 (New York,
1987).
846 TheJournalofAmericanHistory December2001
Not unliketheAmericanRepublicat thetimeofitsmaking,as EdmundS. Mor-

gan describedit, nineteenth-century Europeancolonialisms celebratedinclusionary
visions that were realizedthroughexclusionary As colonial states
practices.40
expandedthescope of theirmoralizing worriedover
missions,theiradministrators
theincreasing numbersof impoverished Europeansin thecoloniesand particularly
in thecivilserviceranks.Emergentdebatesoverthestate'sresponsibility forsocial
welfare reworked themid-nineteenth-century discoursethatmarkedoffthe"deserv-
ing"fromthe"undeserving" poor.Now,however, thegoalwas to distinguish"sub-
jects"from"citizens," the"real"Dutchand Frenchfromtheir"fabricated" variantsof
localorigin,and poornativesfrompauperizedEuropeans.
Forsomehistorians, thetacticsof rulethathaveconcernedpostcolonialscholars
becomerelevant to theUnitedStatesonlywiththewinningoftheSpanish-American
War.Forothers, theparallelsseemapparent overa longerperiodand suggestcompar-
isonsof a longerdure'e.BothAmericanand Europeanempiresnot onlyproduced
theiroverseasothersbut also carefullymonitored thebordersthattheGermanphi-
losopherJohannGottliebFichtesaw as thesiteof nation-making whathe
projects,
called the nation's"interiorfrontiers."Those sitesof affiliationmakingallowed
"enclosureand contactas wellas passageand exchange."The discriminations made
byagentsofempiredrewon assessments ofmoralattitude, culturalcompetence, and
racialdispositionto determine who shouldbe grantedcitizenship and who should
not. Both Americanand Europeanimperialdiscoursessubscribedto universalist
principlesand particularistic
practices.In theIndies,Dutch administrators rejected
theprincipleofracialinequality,buttheymadeaccessto legalEuropeanequivalency
dependenton whetherapplicants"feltat home" in a Europeanmilieu.Entrance
examsforEuropeanschoolsin theIndiesdid notdiscriminate byracebutbycultural
and linguistic What thestudentof FrenchcolonialpolicyGaryWilder
proficiency.
callsthe"colonialhumanism"of thelatenineteenth centurywas not an oxymoron,
buta defining feature ofimperialrule.41
PartIII: ThinkingthroughConnectionsand Comparisons

A comparative topicsofcomparison
projectshouldidentify and criteria
ofcommen-
Should we, forexample,be comparingthe manipulationof domestic
surability.
arrangementsin themakingofrace?Wouldit be morefruitfulto comparethegov-
ofcolonialregimes
erningstrategies or "theregimes
oftruth"thatinformedcolonial
40 Edmund S. Morgan,AmericanSlavery, AmericanFreedom:The Ordealof ColonialVirginia(New York,

1975). On liberalism see UdayMehta,"LiberalStrategies
and itsexclusions, ofExclusions,"in TensionsofEmpire,
ed. Cooper and Stoler,59-86. For a fulleraccount,see Uday SinghMehta,Liberalism and Empire:A Studyin
Nineteenth-CenturyBritishLiberalThought (Chicago,1999).
41 On theexclusionary of "interior
effects see EtienneBalibar,Masses,Classes,
frontiers," Ideas:StudiesonPoli-
ticsand Philosophybeforeand afterMarx,trans.JamesSwenson(New York,1994), 61-87, esp. 64. GaryWilder,
PopularFrontColonial Policyin FrenchWestAfrica,"in FrenchColonial
"The Politicsof Failure:Historicising
Empireand thePopularFront:Hopeand Disillusion, ed. TonyChaferand AmandaSackur(New York,1999), 33-
55.
Studies 847
culturesin different
timesand places?Shouldwe consideronlymoments whena spe-
coloniallanguagewas usedor a formaltaxonomy
cifically ofracewasoperative?42
Criticsof thecomparative methodhavelongsuggested thatmethodological and
analyticproblemslie in theveryassumptions ofcomparison. RaymondGrew,a his-
torianofmodernFrance,argued,and morerecentcriticshaveagreed,thattheprob-
lem maybe in "a tendencyto makethe nation(and thenationas definedby the
state)the ultimateunitof analysis."Such comparisons preservethe notionof "the
[discrete] oftheemergent
case,"takethepoliticalterritoriality nationor full-fledged
stateas the historiographic and privilegenation-making
directive, priorities and
projects.The historianRobertGreggmakestheappealyetagain,urgingthatwe "go
beyondtheboundaries ofthenation-stateto understand thelargerdimensions ofthe
imperialsystem."43
The challengeis of severalkinds:First,to acknowledgecolonialstateprojects
withoutwriting histories
shapedonlybystate-bound archivalproduction, statelegal
preoccupations, and realizedstateprojects;second,to use comparison,as thehisto-
rian FrederickCooper and othershave advocated,as a window onto specific
exchanges, and connectionsthatcut acrossnationalborderswithout
interactions,
ignoringwhat stateactorsdo and what mattersabout what theysay.44Refocusingon
an imperialfieldhighlightsthecontradictionsbetweenuniversal principlesand the
differentiated waysin whichtheywereapplied.
imperialspacesand particularistic
Butitmayalsodo something more,helpingidentify unexpected pointsofcongru-
ofdiscourse
enceand similarities in seemingly sites.It mayprompta search
disparate
forcommonstrategies ofruleand thesequenceoftheiroccurrence thatquestionsthe
betweenimperialexpansionand nationbuildingand thataskswhysex
relationship
was a politically
charged"transferpoint"forracismsof the state.It maypointto
techniquesformanagingtheintimatethatspannedcolonyand metropoleand that
constrainedor enabledbothcolonizerand colonized.Not least,suchan exercisemay
challengecherished betweenthedynamicsofAmericaninternalempire
distinctions
andEuropeanoverseas ones-or undothosedistinctions altogether.
Anotherpotentially informative comparisonturnson colonialstudies'insights
abouttherelationship ofcoreand periphery-arelationship bythat
pre-interpreted
skewedanalyticlanguage.Increasingly, workin colonialstudieshas recognizeda
richerset of transnational
connections.Transnationalism,however, of
as historians
earlyempireshaveshown,is neithera postmodern phenomenonnora postmodern
42 On the legalsystem as a productivesiteof racialideologies,see PeggyPascoe,"MiscegenationLaw, Court
Cases,and Ideologiesof'Race,"'in Sex,Love,Race,ed. Hodes, 464-90.
43 Ronald T. Takaki,Iron Cages:Race and Culture in Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica(New York,1979); Philip
McMichael, "Incorporating Comparisonwithina World HistoricalPerspective: An AlternativeComparative
Method,"AmericanSociological Review,55 (June1990), 385-97; MargaretR. Somers,"'We'reNo Angels':Real-
ism,RationalChoice,and Relationality in Social Science,"American 104 (Nov. 1998), 722-
JournalofSociology,
84, esp.758; RaymondGrew,"The Comparative WeaknessofAmericanHistory," His-
JournalofInterdisciplinary
tory,16 (Summer1985), 87-101, esp. 93; RobertGregg,InsideOut, OutsideIn: Essaysin Comparative History
(New York,2000), 6.
Cooper,"ReviewEssay:Race,Ideology,and thePerilsofComparative
44 See Frederick History,"American His-
toricalReview,101 (Oct. 1996), 1122-38; and Frederick Cooper,"Le conceptde mondialisationsert-ila quelque
chose?Un point de vue d'historien"(Is the conceptof globalizationgood foranything? A historian'spoint of
view),CritiqueInternationale,10 (Jan.2001), 101-24.
discovery.Colonialismsof the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries

drewupon and animatedcircuitsof movementthatcrisscrossed metropolesand
peripheries,that disregarded officialhistoriesand nationalborders.Akira Iriye
describestheAsia-Pacific regionin thefirsthalfof thetwentieth century as replete
withcross-nationalfigures-moving betweencultures as journalists,students,artists,
scholars,and musicians-whoforgednotionsofinternationalism thatexistedalong-
betweengovernments
side,and despite,hostilerelations and nations.Similarly, colo-
nial regimesrecruitedand dismissedcolonizerswho saw themselvesas "world
citizens,"who followedcareeritineraries and personaltrajectories thatled themin
and out of explicitlyracializedcontexts,fromimperialto domesticmissionizing
projects,throughlocationswheremodernity was differentlyconceivedand across
imperialmaps.45
Growingattempts in colonialstudiesto treatmetropole and colonyas one analytic
field,as FrantzFanon,GeorgeBalandier, and BernardS. Cohn each urgeddecades
ago,haveyieldednewwaysofimagining and documenting howknowledge was pro-
ducedalongpathsthatwentfrommetropoleto colonyand theotherwayaround.
Arguingthatthecolonieswere"laboratories of modernity,"Gwendolyn Wrighthas
suggestedthatthe principles of Frenchurbanplanningwerefirstplayedout on a
colonial"experimental terrain."ElizabethvanHeyningen hasmadea strongcasethat
the BritishContagiousDiseases Acts were "pre-eminently imperiallegislation,"
implemented moredirectly in SouthAfrica,India,and Malta thanin Britainitself.
Othershaveemphasizedotheraspectsof theexchangebetweencolonyand metro-
pole. MaryLouise Pratt'sworkdisruptscommitments to unidirectional historical
framing by showinghow eighteenth-century bourgeoisnotionsof socialdiscipline
mayhavefirstdevelopedin seventeenth-century imperialventures. I have
Similarly,
soughtto identifythecolonialetiologiesof Europeanbourgeoisnotionsofsexuality
and socialreform.A newgeneration ofstudents ofcolonialismarebenton showing
thatinnovationsin politicalform,socialreform, and modernity itselfwerenotEuro-
peanexports and inventions buttraveled as oftentheotherwayaround.46
"AmericanHistoriansin the Contextof Empire,"JournalofAmerican

45 For a relatedpoint,see Ian Tyrrell,
History, 86 (Dec. 1999), 1015-44. See, forexample,MaryLouisePratt,ImperialEyes:TravelWriting and Transcul-
turation (London,1992). On scienceand cross-imperial circuitsofknowledgeproduction, see RichardH. Grove,
GreenImperialism: ColonialExpansion,TropicalIslandEdens,and the OriginsofEnvironmentalism, 1600-1800
(New York, 1995). Akira Iriye,CulturalInternationalism and WorldOrder(Baltimore,1997). For example,
Johannes van den Bosch'shand appearsin theadministration of poverty bothin theNetherlands and in colonial
Indonesia:see AlbertSchrauwer, "The 'Benevolent'ColoniesofJohannes van den Bosch,"Comparative Studiesin
Society and History (forthcoming).
46 FrantzFanon,Black Skin, WhiteMasks,trans.CharlesLam Markmann(1952; London, 1986); George
Balandier,"'La SituationColoniale':Approchetheorique"(The colonialsituation:Theoreticalapproaches),Cah-
iersInternationaux 11 (1951), 44-79; BernardS. Cohn,An Anthropologist
de Sociologie, amongtheHistorians and
OtherEssays(Delhi, 1987); GwendolynWright,"Traditionin theServiceofModernity: Architectureand Urban-
ismin FrenchColonial Policy,1900-1930," in Tensions ofEmpire,ed. Cooper and Stoler,322-45; van Heynin-
gen,"Social Evil in theCape Colony,"170-97; Pratt,ImperialEyes,36; Stoler,Raceand theEducationofDesire,
95-135; EdwardW Said, Cultureand Imperialism (New York,1993), 32. On the politicaloriginsof modern
Englishstudiesin the colonial educationsystemdesignedfornativesin nineteenth-century India, see Gauri
Viswanathan, MasksofConquest: Studyand British
Literary Rulein India (New York,1989). Fortheargument that
colonialismis the "undersideof modernity" in LatinAmerica,see EnriqueDussel, The Underside ofModernity:
Apel,Ricoeur, Rorty, and thePhilosophy
Taylor, ed. and trans.EduardoMendieta(AtlanticHighlands,
ofLiberation,
N.J.,1996).
ComparisoninAmerican Studies
Historyand Postcolonial 849
Those postcolonialinsights travelwell,addressing similarquestionsaboutetiolo-

gies of race in NorthAmerica.Althoughnot all Americanhistoriansagreewith
Kaplan'sstatement "thatforeign do nottakeplaceoutsidetheboundaries
relations of
America,butinsteadconstitute Americannationality," fewdenythatshe has raised
pressing questionsabouthowbestto studytherelationship betweennationmaking
and empirebuildingand whatscope and levelof comparisonwithothercolonial
contextsenableone to do so. Some,suchas Hazel M. McFerson,havearguedthat
theUnitedStates"exported to overseasterritories at home."Others,
racialattitudes
suchas RobertW. Rydell,haveportrayed therampantracismsofworld'sfairexposi-
tionsin Chicago and St. Louis as instrumental in assuagingclass tensionsin the
UnitedStates.47 Despitethedifferent emphases,bothretaina mythof theUnited
Statessteeredbyitsownpoliticalrudderand on itsownracialcourse.
Othersdisagree.Models of racerelationsin earlyAmericasuggestthattheytoo
wenttheotherwayaround.PeterH. Wood'sobservation thattheCarolinalowlands
werea "colonyof a colony,"modeledon Barbadosin thelate seventeenth century,
resonates withotherscholars'suggestions thatNew Orleansbe construed as a colony
of St. Domingue.EdwardL. Ayersalso doubtsthatdomesticracerelationsin the
UnitedStateswerea template forAmerica's overseasracialpolicy.Rather,thecharac-
terof UnitedStatesracerelationstrackedothercolonialmodels,firstof Spain and
post-Restoration England,laterofVictorianBritainand thesocialreform policiesof
colonialFrance.Ayerswrites:"in the 1850s, whiteSouthernnationalists eagerly
poredoverthenewspapers, journalsand booksofBritainand Europe,finding there
rawmaterialwithwhichto createa visionof theSouthas a misunderstood place.
The foundersof the Confederacy saw themselves as participatingin a widespread
Europeanmovement, theself-determination ofa people."In Ayers's view,thesegre-
gationpolicyforgedduringReconstruction tookits preceptsfromBritishcolonial
ruleand itsruleoflaw.Local struggles to retainsouthern powerin thefaceofthose
benton increasing northernprofits wereonlypartofthestory. Thosepatterns ofseg-
regation wereproduced,as WinthropD. Jordan arguedforan earlierperiod,through
notionsofservitude and strategiesofracialdomination fromelsewhere.
refracted But
sometimes therefractions werein directions we havenot been schooledto expect.
Jennifer Pittslooksto Alexisde Tocqueville'slettersand essaysofthe1830s on Alge-
riato showthathe considered Americaa "model"fortheimperialprojectin French
Algeria.48
47 Kaplan,"'LeftAlonewithAmerica,"'17; Hazel M. McFerson,TheRacial Dimension ofAmerican Overseas

1997). Fortheargument
ColonialPolicy(Westport, thatpolicytowardNativeAmericans "servedas a precedent for
dominationoverthe Philippines,"see WalterWilliam,"UnitedStatesIndian Policyand the Debate
imperialist
overPhilippineAnnexation:ImplicationsfortheOriginsofAmericanImperialism," JournalofAmericanHistory,
66 (March1980), 810-31, esp. 810. RobertW. Rydell,All theWorldsa Fair: VisionsofEmpire atAmerican Inter-
1876-1916 (Chicago,1984).
nationalExpositions,
48 PeterH. Wood, BlackMajority: Negroesin ColonialSouthCarolinafrom1670 through theStonoRebellion
(New York,1974). Ayersidentifies a strikingpatternin U.S. historiographyon race: the racialthinkingof an
momentis seen as borrowedand imported;the racialperceptions
early-seventeenth-century and practicesof an
eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-centuryperiodare seen as autonomously"American," internallyinducedand
home-grown; America's "ageofimperialism"
domesticracialsystemin thethird,early-twentieth-century is seenas
exportedoverseas.See EdwardL. Ayers,"WhatWe Talk aboutWhen We Talk abouttheSouth,"in All overthe
Map: RethinkingAmerican Regions,ed. EdwardL. Ayerset al. (Baltimore,1997), 62-82. Ibid.,76. WinthropD.
850 The Journal History
ofAmerican December2001
Suchlinesofinquirysuggestthatcircuits ofknowledge production and racialized

formsof governance spanneda globalfield.The sectionthatfollowsturnsto three
registers
ofcomparison thatinvolvetwodifferent sortsofconnections:one,concern-
ingchildcare,has elements ofbothdirectand indirect connection;thesecond,con-
cerningvocationalschools,suggestsno directconnection; whilethefinalcase,thatof
theSouthAfrican CarnegieCommission, entailsthemostsustained convergence. All
the comparisonsinviteattentionto parallelprinciplesand modes of governance.
Each invitescloserreadingsof the relationshipbetweenracialcategories and state
interventionin intimatepractices.Each suggeststhat the power and authority
wieldedbymacropolities arenotlodgedin abstract butin theirmanage-
institutions
mentofmeanings, theirconstructionofsocialcategories,andtheirmicrositesofrule.
ofRace
and theCultivation
On Empire,Nurseries,
Wouldnotsucha nursery schoolbe a heavenon earthforthechildoftheIndies'
and dogsin a villagehuttended-
amidstchickens
popularclasswhooftenvegetates
notraised-bya mother,who doesnotknowwhatrearing is?
Dr. D. W. Horst,190049
Colonialregimes basedon overseassettlements did morethanproducetheiroverseas
others.Theyalsopolicedthecultural protocolsand competenciesthatboundedtheir
"interior In monitoring
frontiers." thoseboundaries, theyproducedpenaland peda-
gogic institutionsthat were often indistinguishable-orphanages, workhouses,
orphantrains, boardingschools,children's colonies-to rescueyoungcit-
agricultural
izensand subjectsin themaking.Suchcolonialinstitutions, designedto shapeyoung
bodiesand minds,werecentralto imperialpoliciesand theirself-fashioned rationali-
ties.Colonialstateshad an abidinginterest education,in therearing
in a sentimental
of theyoungand affective politics.AntonioGramsciwas onlypartlyrightwhenhe
definedthefunction ofthestateas theeducationofconsent.To educateconsentto a
colonialruleof law,to educatecolonialand colonizedwomenand men to accept,
conform to,and collaboratewiththecolonialorderofthings, thestatehad firstand
foremost to schooltheirdesires.50
Nowherewas thisconcernfortheschoolingof desiresand thelearningof social
placemorebaldlystatedthanin thenineteenth-century debatesthatsurrounded the
creationand failureofnurseries forchildrenofEuropeandescentin theDutch East
Indies. Strictsurveillanceof domesticservantswas one way to protectchildren;
Jordan,WhiteoverBlack: AmericanAttitudestowardtheNegro,1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968); Alexis de
Tocqueville,Writings Pitts(Baltimore,
ed. and trans.Jennifer
onEmpireand Slavery, 2001).
49Dr. D. W. Horst,"Opvoedingen onderwijsvan kinderenvan Europeanenen Indo-Europeanen in Indies"
(Raisingand educatingchildrenofEuropeansand Indo-Europeansin theIndies),IndischeGids,11(1900), 989.
50See NancyHunt,"'Le Re'beF EuropeanWomen,AfricanBirth-Spacing,
enBrousse: and ColonialIntervention
in Breastfeeding in the BelgianCongo," 1988, in TensionsofEmpire,ed. Cooper and Stoler,287-321; Anna
Davin, "Imperialism and Motherhood,"1978, ibid.,87-151; and JeanComaroffand JohnComaroff, Ethnogra-
phyand theHistoricalImagination(Boulder,1992), 265-96. AntonioGramsci,Selections fromPrisonNotebooks
(London, 1971), 259. These pointsare developedmorefullyin Ann Laura Stoler,"A Sentimental Education:
NativeServantsand theCultivationofEuropeanChildrenin theNetherlands theFeminine
Indies,"in Fantasizing
in Indonesia,ed. LaurieJ. Sears(Durham,1997), 71-9 1; Stoler,Race and theEducationofDesire,151-64; and
AnnLauraStoler,AlongtheArchivalGrain:ColonialCultures and TheirAffectiveStates(Princeton,forthcoming).
Comparison
inAmerican andPostcolonial
History Studies 851
removalof themfromthehomewas another.In theIndies,concernsforchildren's

moralenvironments and fortheirsenseof racialaffiliation weredeeplymeshed.To
tracetheembeddedness ofracein discourses aboutmorality, sentiment, and sensibil-
ity,prescriptive
child-rearing manualsarea usefulplaceto turn.As EmileDurkheim
argued,"moralmaximsareactuallylivingsentiments."51 If to be whiteand respect-
able meantto acquirebehaviorsthatprescribed restraintand civility,theyalso pro-
scribedsomething else; racialand class"lower-orders" did not sharetheprescribed
attributes. Becomingadultand bourgeoismeantdistinguishing oneselffromwhat
was uncivilized,lowerclass,and non-European.
The socialanxietiesoverEuropeanidentity wereamplified in anxietiesaboutthe
young.In the Indies,the debatewas politically charged,takingplace in classified
statedocuments, publicaddresses, and scientificproceedings. It was dominated, not
by women,but by men.The nurseries werenot unlikeones in the UnitedStates
designedto eradicateprostitution and crime.Bothwereabouthowto makesubjects
of a particular kind.Debates about bothcan be read,as NancyE Cott suggested
aboutantebellum child-rearing manualsand I havesuggested aboutsuchmanualsin
colonialJava,as prescriptive textsdirectedat schoolingyoungcitizensin a senseof
moralityand a propertempering of theirdesires.52What seemsdifferent is the
emphasisin theIndieson thedeleterious ofnativenursemaids
effects on thesexuality
of children,on the contaminations thatthoseservantsmightconvey,and thusa
stronginflectionon race.Buthowdifferent werethey?
In the Indies,therewas an unremitting refrain:
"thedamaginginfluenceof the
nativenursemaid." One colonialdoctor,in an 1898 handbookforEuropeanmothers
in theIndies,warnedofthe"extremely pernicious"moralinfluence ofnativenurse-
maidsand advisedthat"children underno circumstance shouldbe brought to bedby
themand shouldneverbe permitted to sleepwiththemin thesameroom."But "the
threatof irreparable damage[done] to the child"by servants-incanted in Dutch
colonialchild care manuals-was a centralthemeof contemporaneous American
childcaremanualsthatwarnedagainst"badhandling." WhentheAmericanobserver
LewisHoughwrotein 1849 that"thecoarsehugging, kissing, etc.whichthechildren
aresureto receivein greatabundancefromignorant and low-minded domesticsare
certainto developa blindprecocioussexualism offeelingand action,"howdifferent
werehisconcerns?53
At issuewerenot onlythe problemand definition of "parentalneglect."When
CharlesLoringBracewrotein 1880 in TheDangerousClassesofNew Yorkaboutthe
orphanchildren ofIrishand Germanimmigrants, comparing themto children at the
5' PhilipCorrigan,SocialForms/Human EssaysinAuthority
Capacities: and Difference(London,1990), 110.
52 Nancy F. Cott, "Notes towardan Interpretation of AntebellumChildrearing," Review,7
Psychohistory
(Spring1978), 4-20; Stoler,"SentimentalEducation,"71-91.
53 J.J. Pigeaud,Jets Raadgevingen
overkinderopvoeding: voormoeders in Indie(Somethingon raisingchildren:
Adviceformothersin theIndies) (Semarang,1898); AnthonySynnott,"LittleAngels,LittleDevils:A Sociology
of Children,"ReviewofCanadianSociology andAnthropology,20 (Jan.1983), 88. For LewisHough's1849 state-
ment,see RobertSunley,"EarlyNineteenth-Century AmericanLiterature on Childrearing," in Con-
in Childhood
temporary ed. MargaretMead and MarthaWolfenstein
Cultures, (Chicago,1955), 158. BernardWishyalso notes
thebeliefthatmasturbation was due to "thelow and depravedcharacter of nursesand 'licentiousdomestic[s]."'
See BernardWishy,TheChildand theRepublic:TheDawn ofAmerican ChildNurture(Philadelphia,1967), 40.
852 History
ofAmerican
TheJournal 2001
December
Frenchreformatory ofMettray, he notedthatthemajority weretheprogeny of"con-

cubinage"and that"thetendencies and qualitiesof theirparents"encouragedthem
towardmoraldestitution and crime.Child-saving reformers in theUnitedStatesheld
thattheworkingclassesdid notknow"whatlovereallyis" muchas reformers in the
Indiesthoughtmixed-bloodand nativemothersdid not know"whatrearingis."
Childsaversofwhatever name,in metropole and colony,in theIndies,England,the
UnitedStates,and France,worriedloudlyoverinadequateparenting, fearedthe
of
desires theiryoung,and distrusted the influence of class and racialotherson
them.54
Suchconcerns werenotnewto thenineteenth century norlimitedto Europe.On
SouthAfrica's Cape of Good Hope in the eighteenth century, new modelsof the
domesticfamily dictatedthatthe widespread use ofslavewetnursesbe replacedby
mothers'nursingtheirchildrenthemselves. As in upper-classEngland,"it was
claimedthatthenurseimprinted herpersonality on thechildand won hisstrongest
affection."55Nurseriesweredesignedto protectthesexualinnocenceof smallchil-
drenfromtheimmoralinfluence and possiblepredations of domesticservants but
thatunderwrote
sensibilities
also to cultivate theiridentification as whiteand privi-
legedand, in theIndies,to ensuretheirdistanceand disaffection fromthoseonce
chargedwiththeircare.
theoriesof childdevelopment
Class-specific wereexemplified in thefirstkinder-
gartens and nurseriesthatemerged in Germany and Englandin thelate1820s and in
theNetherlands in the 1850s.As distinctfromthefirstnurseries forworking-class
children, calledbewaarscholen,thekindergartens developedby Friedrich Froebelin
the1830sappealedto thepatriotic of
sensibilities the middle classand had a strong
nationalistbent.Spurredbytheconviction thatbourgeoishouseholds wereproviding
"poorchildmanagement," theFroebelmovementrecommended thattoddlersand
eveninfants werebetteroffin kindergartens thanin an unschoolednursemaid's or
servant'scare.Kindergartens wereenvisionedas "microcosms of the liberalstate,"
stressingnot onlyindependence but also self-discipline,citizenship, and "voluntary
obedienceto generallaws"-qualitiesthatlower-class servants couldnotbe expected
tovalue,nurture, or protect.56
Experiments in socialreform and childwelfare wereplayedout acrossa transna-
tionaland imperialfield.Nor did theynecessarily followtheadministrative channels
thatjoinedmetropole and colony.Some followedcircuitsof knowledge production
and exchangecarvedout by philanthropic organizations, othersmovedalong the
shippinglinesthatroundedtheCape ofGood Hope in SouthAfrica.Somefollowed
54 CharlesLoringBrace,TheDangerous ClassesofNew Yorkand Twenty AmongThem(1880; Mont-

Years'Work
clair,1967), 36, 43; BruceBellingham,"Waifsand Strays:ChildAbandonment, FosterCare,and Familiesin Mid-
Nineteenth CenturyNew York,"in The UsesofCharity:ThePooronReliefin theNineteenth Century ed.
Metropolis,
PeterMandler(Philadelphia,1990), 127-28.
55KirstenMcKenzie, The Makingofan EnglishSlave-Owner:SamuelEusebiusHudsonat theCape of Good
Hope,1796-1807 (Cape Town,1993), 76.
56 MichaelStevenShapiro,Child'sGarden:TheKindergarten Movement fromFroebeltoDewey(University Park,
1983); Ann TaylorAllen,"Gardensof Children,Gardensof God: Kindergarten and DaycareCentersin Nine-
teenth-Century Germany," JournalofSocialHistory,19 (Springl986), 437.
Studies 853
mail boats thatcollectednewson what transpired in 1848 in Francewhen they

dockedin Marseilles.The Frenchgovernment educationofficial
JosephChailley-Bert
culledhislessonson howto dealwith"lesmetis"in IndochinafromDutchcounter-
partsin Bataviaand bypassedthe metropolealtogether.57 Agentsof empirewere
themselves rarely
stationary.
Theymovedbetweenpostsin AfricaandAsia,schooled
Swissboardingschools,readavidlyaboutothercolo-
theirchildrenin international
nies,visitedcolonialexpositions
in Parisand Provence,cametogetherin colonialhill
stationsaroundtheglobe,and had a passionforinternational wheretheir
congresses
racialtaxonomies werehonedand theircommonsense categories
wereexchanged.
Educatingfor Empireand thePoliticsofRace: NativeAmericanBoardingSchools

and VocationalSchoolsin theIndies
WereI to fixthedateofcompletion ofthecarceral system,I wouldchoosenot
1810andthepenalcode,noreven1844,whenthelawlaying downtheprinciple
ofcellularinternmentwaspassed.... thedateI wouldchoosewouldbe22 January
1840,thedateoftheofficial openingofMettray. Or better
still, thatglori-
perhaps,
ousday,unremarked andunrecorded, whena childinMettray remarked
as helay
dying: "Whata pityI leftthecolonyso soon.". . .
... inthearrangement ofa power-knowledge overindividuals,
Mettrayand
itsschoolmarked a newera.
-Michel Foucault,197758
Some "cases"seemso striking thattheymakeone askwhytheyhavenotbeencom-
pared.Butmoreelusivecircuits ofknowledge production as well.Suc-
areinstructive
cessivestatecommissionson Europeanpoverty in theIndiesin thesecondhalfofthe
nineteenth centurylookedto one ofEurope'smostacclaimedexperiments withagri-
culturalpoor colonies,thatinstitutedin the 1840s in Franceand theNetherlands
andwidelyknownas Mettray. In thismodelofreform, a ruralsetting
and a disciplin-
arystructure and layoutemphasizing moraland physicalsurveillance playeda key
role.59
As partof a widercampaignto rescuechildren who wereorphanedor subjectto
"parentalneglect,"Mettrayresembledthe new reformatory ruralinstitutions that
were appearingin Germany,England,the Netherlands, France,and the United
States.ButMettray standsout as thequintessential
examplein itsdetaileddisciplin-
arydesign.Foucaultsingledout Mettrayas thebeginningof the"carceralarchipel-
57 ArmandSeville,"Les MetisPariasde l'Indo-Chine:Appel au PeupleFrancais"(The pariahmetisof Indo-
china:An appeal to theFrenchpeople),AnnalesDiplomatiques March5, 1905, pp. 228-31, 244-

et Consulaires,
50, 261-63.
58 MichelFoucault, Disciplineand Punish:TheBirthofthePrison,trans.Alan Sheridan(New York,1977), 293,
296.
59 On theEurope-wide development of the Mettraymodel,see Ceri Corssley,"Usingand Transforming the
FrenchCountryside: The 'Colonies (1820-1850)," FrenchStudies,45 (Jan.1991), 36-54. On Mettray
Agricoles'
seeJeroenJ.H. Dekker,Straffen,
visionsand disciplines, Reddenen Opvoeden: Het onstaanen de ontwikkeling
van
de residentiele
heropvoedingin West-Europa, 1814-1914, metbijzondere aandachtvoor"Nederlandsche Mettray"(To
punish,save,and raise:The genesisand development of residential in WesternEurope,withspecial
re-education
attentionto "Dutch Mettray")(Assen,1985). On disagreements overthismodel in the Indies,see Ann Laura
Stoler,"DevelopingHistoricalNegatives:Race and theModernistVisionsof a Colonial State,"in FromtheMar-
gins:New Directionsin HistoricalAnthropology,ed. BrianAxel(Durham,forthcoming).
854 ofAmerican
The Journal History December2001
ago" of disciplineand punishmentin its modernEuropeanform.Similarly, in

EnglandtheRed Hill reformatory was said to bringruralreform intothe"modern
age,"and themanynew reformatory and industrial schoolswereenvisionedto be
amongthe"truest and noblestgloriesof [theUnitedKingdom's] islandempire."60
As in Europe'scolonies,debatesabout the need forand management of such
schoolsrevealedspecificconcerns.The debateswereabout mentalcapabilityand
moralworth,abouttempering aspirations,aboutwhichclasses,ethnicgroups,and
racesshouldbe schooledto workwiththeirhands.The frameof reference was
Lamarckian notionsofrace,environment, and character. The focuswason themoral
benefitsof schoolingyoungmen forcraftand artisanworkthatrequiredlimited
industrialknow-how and ofschoolingyounggirlsin domesticscience-to sew,cook,
and careforhomes.
The Dutch sociologist Abramde Swaan'sobservation thatmanyindustrial and
artisanschoolsin the eighteenth centuryfailedbecausetheirpurposewas "notso
muchto preparechildren forthelabormarket, butto renderthemvirtuous, patient
and industrious through thepracticeoftraditional arts"takeson a differentpolitical
meaningin relationto nineteenth-century reformist projects.6'Theywerelessabout
the productionof labor marketsthanabout disciplining desiresand policingthe
boundaries ofrace.
The parallelsbetweenthedebatesaboutvocationalschoolsfortheimpoverished
mixed-blood populationin theIndiesin the 1870s and 1880s and thoseaboutthe
establishment of boardingschoolsforNativeAmericangirlsand boysin the same
periodarestriking. As Dutch colonialofficials so clearlyargued,whatthecolonies
neededwere"notimitation Europeans,butperfected natives"-thecreation, outofa
mixed-blood populationmiredin poverty, of one whosemembers wouldno longer
be objectsof pityand agentsof threat.62 Underadverseconditions, theyloomedas
"whitehaters"(blanken-haters); underpropertutelagetheywouldbe thefuture van-
guardofa modernizing colonialrule.
Decadesofdebateaboutcreating ambachtscholen schools)tied
(artisan/vocational
to theIndies'orphanages centeredon recurrent themes:theinherent of
capabilities
such a populationand what could be expectedof its members.Lodged within
detaileddiscussionsof curriculum, foodexpenditures, buildingcosts,and thepre-
paredness oftheprospective pupilswerethecalibrations ofother"costs."Atissuewas
theracialscope of socialreform (who shouldbe included),the moralscope of the
state(whomitshouldassist),and,notleast,themanagement and distributionofsen-
timentsas a partofsocialpolicy.Participants in thedebateshareda notionthatindo-
lenceand insolencehad to be checked,thatrespectable, skilledmanuallaborcould
craftrespectable subjectsand transform politicalbeings.Reformers wereconvinced
thata "desireto work"was theingredient lacking;it was sentiment thathad to be
kindledand redirected, notopportunity thatneededto be changed.
Reddenen Opvoeden,
Dekker,Straffen,
60 55, 76.
Abramde Swaan,In CareoftheState:HealthCare,Education,and Welfare
61 in Europeand theUSA duringthe
ModernEra (London,1988), 57.
62 The Hague, Netherlands).
Letter,KV March28, 1874, no. 47, inv.no. 2668 (GeneralStateArchives,
inAmerican
Comparison History
andPostcolonial
Studies 855
But the "desireto work"had to be of a specifickind.Efforts to teachcraftsor

tradeswerebasedon a commoncontention thatthecolony'seconomicand political
viabilitydependedon educatingtheheartsand mindsofthosewhowerea dangerto
it, on managingtheiraspirations in an Indiesworld.As thedirectorof the Indies
department ofeducationputit in 1869,theimpoverished "mixed-bloods" whowere
partialdescendantsof Europeans"mustnot [conceiveof themselves] as heeren
(bosses/masters),theymustnot be burdenedwithmoreskillsthantheyneed,but
onlypractical know-how forthetaskstowhichtheyaregeared."63 Whetherthispop-
ulationshouldbe providedtheoretical knowledgeand practicalinstruction divided
policyplanners who adheredto theartisanromancefromthosewho did not.But in
all cases,thedebatesreturned to an unresolved question:Could theybe incorporated
intotheDutch foldwithoutgranting themothercostlypoliticaland economicenti-
tlements? Could theybe offered economicincentives and participation in a modern-
izing economywithoutpoliticalrightsin it? Self-worth in labor and political
independence wereseento go dangerously handin hand.
What is strikingin theseconflicting and confusedarguments is how muchthey
changed.Over a fifty-year periodbetweenthe 1840s and 1890s, appraisalsvaried
widelyas towhether orphanedandabandonedmixed-blood youthscouldbecomean
artisanclass. Craftschools,heraldedin the 1860s as the solutionto pauperism
amongtheindigentmixed-blood population,wereseenas badlymisguidedtwenty
yearslater.Bythe1880s,bothartisanand industrial visionsweresidelinedbydesigns
fordisciplinethatlooked moreto agricultural coloniesforboysand girls.Those
visionsfocusedlesson remolding therecalcitrant thanon shapingchildrenin their
tenderer years.
It was theinstitutions
ofthe 1880s thatweremodeledon Mettray and guidedby
thenotionthatyoungvagrants and urbandelinquentscould be taughtrespectfor
religionand family bydoingagricultural and domesticwork.Suchworkwouldallow
themto developtheirskillsand character, to learnself-discipline,
and spartancondi-
tionsof laborand livingwouldconstrain Again,not everyone
expectations. agreed.
One Indiesdirectorof educationthoughtthe planslooked morelike thosefora
penalcolony,a "depotfordelinquents," thananything else.64
Debatesoverfederal policytoward Native American educationin thesameperiod
weremarkedby similarprinciples if by differentlyframedconcerns.Manual labor
schoolswereenvisioned as partofa moralizing mission,policiesofupliftthatwould
wed citizensin themakingto the "virtueof industry and theabilityof theskillful
hand." As in thepoliciesdirected at the Indies'mixed-blood population,thefocus
was lesson laborthanon instilling a desireto perform it. As thecommissioner of
Indianaffairs,JohnH. Oberly, wrotein 1888,theIndian"shouldnotonlybe taught
howto work,butalso thatit is hisduty[todo so]."As theanthropologist JanetFinn
notes, fearsof the girls'"moral delinquency"occupied an inordinate amount of
administrativetime.Solutionsweresimilarin partbecausetheproblemwas seenas
63 IndiesDepartmentofEducationto Governor-General,
KV March 13, 1869, ibid.
64 Letter,KV March28, 1874, ibid.
856 History
ofAmerican
largelythesame.In theIndiesand amongtheNativeAmericanpopulation, boarding

schools,craftschools,and agricultural colonieswerea meansto removechildren
fromtheinfluence of theirintimateenvironments-families on thereservations in
theone case,servants and theirnatalfamilies in theother.65
School routinesaimedto instilldisciplineof sundrykinds.As RichardTennert
writesoftheboardingschoolsforNativeAmericangirls,schoolroutines wereorga-
nizedin "martialfashion," withstricttimetables. Nor werethesimilarities to penal
institutions, as noted by the Indies directorof education,coincidental.Richard
HenryPratt,founder oftheboardingschoolsystem, wasa military wardenforIndian
prisoners at FortMarionfrom1875 to 1878.66
Debatesthatmadea "loveforwork,"in theone case,and "werklust" (a desirefor
work),in theother,thetestofinnatecapacity, constitution, and preparedness forcit-
izenshipjoin thesedistantprojectsas congruent strategiesof reform. But theircon-
clusionsand outcomewerenot the same. In the Indies,girlsweretrainedto be
competent marriage partners and mothers on modestfamily farmsdevotedto "agri-
culture,animal raising,butterand cheese production,and the tendingof
orchards"-avisionwildlyout of syncwiththereality of theIndieseconomy.The
NativeAmericangirlstrainedin theboardingschoolsofArizona,Pennsylvania, and
Oklahomaweresimilarly educatedfordomesticity and trainedforsubservience but
destinedfora different fate:to use theirskillsas servants in Anglohouseholds,as
employees oftheIndianBureau.67
The differencesbetweenthecasesareas important as thesimilarities.One could
arguethatone was a colonybasedon theextraction of laborand produceand the
otherone ofsettlement or thatthereservation system in theUnitedStatesattempted
to obliteratean entireculturewhiletheDutch East Indiesvariantdid not.Still,the
comparison warrants consideration.Bothpolicieswereelements ofpoliticaltechnol-
ogiesthatcrafted microenvironments to carryout publicpolicyon race.Bothrein-
forcedinequitiesbasedon assessments ofinnatecapacityand disposition. Bothmade
childrentemporary wardsof the state,removingthemfromtheirhome environ-
mentswhile offering high doses of disciplineand limitedindustrialskills.Both
embracedreformist efforts fortheremaking ofracializedselvesand thetempering of
Not
desires.68 least, both suggestcolonial genealogies of social welfarethat were
groundedin imperialconcernsoverthedistinctions ofrace.
65
JohnH. Oberly,"IndianCommissioners' Reports,"in TheAmericanIndianand theUnitedStates:A Docu-
mentary ed. WilcombE. Washburn(New York,1973), 422. I thankJanetFinnforpointingme to this
History,
document.JanetFinn,"BoardingSchoolsand theAmericanIndian EducationExperience:Lessonsof Culture,
Power,and History,"Oct. 2000 (in Ann Laura Stoler'spossession).I thankherforsharingthismanuscript in
progress withme. On thecoercivemeasuresusedto recruit Indianchildrenfortheboardingschools,see BrendaJ.
Child,BoardingSchoolSeasons:American IndianFamilies,1900-1940 (Lincoln,1998), 13-15.
66 RichardTennert, "EducatingIndianGirlson Nonreservation BoardingSchools,1878-1920," Western His-
13 (July1982), 276; Finn,"BoardingSchoolsand theAmericanIndianEducationExperience,"
toricalQuarterly, 6.
67 TsianinaLomawaima,TheyCalledIt PrairieLight:TheStory ofChiloccoIndianSchool(Lincoln,1994). But
Devon A. Mihesuahdescribesa differentiated "classsystem"in theschoolthatdistinguished betweengirlsfrom
familiesand thosewho were from"progressive,"
"indigent,""traditionalist" "mixed-blood"backgrounds.See
Devon A. Mihesuah,Cultivating theRosebuds:TheEducationof Womenat theCherokee FemaleSeminary, 1851-
1909 (Urbana,1993).
forsuccesswerenot embracedonlyby federalbureausand colonialpolicymakersbut
68 Such prescriptions
Studies
in SouthAfrica
on Poor Whites:LogicsofDifferentiation
The CarnegieCommission
and theUnitedStates
If circuitsof knowledge productionconnecting boardingschoolsforNativeAmeri-
cansandvocationalschoolsin theIndies seem to trace,thosethatshapedthe
difficult
studyof poorwhitesin theUnitedStatesand SouthAfricabetweenthe 1880s and
1930s are farclearer.Comparative workfromtheearly1980s treatedthedevelop-
mentofracializedsocialformations in SouthAfricaand theUnitedStatesas discrete
cases,if highlyrelevantnationalstories,appropriate to compare.I thinkhereof
GeorgeM. Fredrickson's important comparativeprojecton whitesupremacy and the
essaysthatappearedin a volumeeditedbyHowardLamarand LeonardThompson,
TheFrontier in History.As morerecentworkremindsus, the stateracismsof the
UnitedStatesand SouthAfricabothproducedformsof resistance thatcut across
theirborders.69 What has been lessnotedis how muchthosestateracismsin the
makingproducedtheirpolicy,expertknowledge, and racializedpracticesin dialogue.
The discoursesused,thepoliciespursued,and thedefinitions of thepoorwhite
problemwereintimately tiedthroughexpertson race.Socialscientists employedby
and workingforgovernment agenciesin theUnitedStatesand SouthAfricacom-
paredand equatedthetwosituations. The SouthAfricanCarnegieCommissionon
theproblemof poorwhitesof thelate 1920s was a multiyear projectfashionedby
American-trained and fundedwithAmericandollars.Financedby
social scientists
AndrewCarnegie's CarnegieCorporation, in 1913,thecommission
established drew
on theDominionsand ColoniesFundearmarked foreducationaland socialresearch
in Britishdependencies. Exactlyhow and wheretheparticular fundwas to be used
was not specifiedat thestart.But thefactthatthecorporation alreadyfundedthe
EugenicsRecordOfficein Cold SpringHarbor,New York,betweenthe 191Os and
1939, endorsedtheracistviewsof MadisonGrant,and overtly soughtto "preserve
theracialpurity ofAmericansociety"shapeditsscientific and socialpolicy.
priorities
Chargedwiththefund'sproperuse, Carnegie'spresident Frederick Keppel(former
dean of ColumbiaCollege) and laterJamesRussell(dean of TeachersCollege at
also by some reformers withinsubordinated groups.See Lee Polansky, "I CertainlyHope You Will Be Able to
TrainHer: Reformers and the GeorgiaTrainingSchool forGirls,"in BeforetheNew Deal: Social Welfare in the
South,1830-1930, ed. Elna C. Green(Athens,Ga., 1999), 149; BookerT. Washington,Tuskegee 6- ItsPeople:
TheirIdealsandAchievements (New York,1905), 21; and JamesDouglasAnderson,"EducationforServitude: The
SocialPurposesofSchoolin theBlackSouth,1870-1930" (Ph.D. diss.,University ofIllinois,1973).
69 GeorgeM. Fredrickson, WhiteSupremacy: A Comparative StudyinAmerican and SouthAfrican History (New
York,1981); and HowardLamarand LeonardThompson,eds., TheFrontier NorthAmericaand South-
in History:
ernAfricaCompared(New Haven, 1981). Even a studyof segregation in SouthAfricaand theAmericanSouth
thatopenswiththeobservations ofMauriceEvans,a SouthAfricanwhowroteaboutAmericanracerelations, sets
asidethefactthatEvans,likemanyofthesocialscientists depictedthere,traveledbackand forthbetweenthetwo
locales.See JohnW. Cell, TheHighestStageofWhiteSupremacy: TheOriginsofSegregation in SouthAfricaand the
American South(New York,1982). See also Gregg,InsideOut,OutsideIn, 1-26. Ifmanyearlystudiesapproached
thesecasesas two-column entries,otherswerealreadychallenging thatframe:StanleyB. Greenberg treatedracial
formations in thetwosocietiesas theproductofexpandingcapitalistprocess,producingsimilarpracticesand pri-
orities.See StanleyB. Greenberg, Raceand Statein Capitalist
Development: Comparative (New Haven,
Perspectives
1980). On the circuitsof knowledgeproductionin SouthAfricaand theUnitedStates,see GregCuthbertson,
"RacialAttraction: TracingtheHistoriographical AlliancesbetweenSouthAfricaand theUnitedStates,"Journal
ofAmerican 81 (Dec. 1994), 1123-36. See also JamesT. Campbell,SongsofZion: TheAfrican
History, Methodist
EpiscopalChurchin theUnitedStatesand SouthAfrica(New York,1995).
858 History
TheJournalofAmerican December2001
ColumbiaUniversity) madeseveralreconnaissance New Zealand,

visitsto Australia,
and SouthAfricain themid-1920s.WhenRussellmetone ofhisformer E.
students,
G. Malherbe,who had alreadywrittenon SouthAfrica'spoor whiteproblemin
1921, thecommission beganto takeshapewithMalherbeas one ofitsprimearchi-
tects.70
ButitwasnotonlyMalherbewhoseunderstanding ofthepoorwhiteproblemwas
framedby hisAmericancontacts.The commission was staffed withAmericanuni-
versitysocialscientists.SouthAfricanpsychologists in itsemploymadevisitsto the
psychology laboratoriesat Harvardand Yale universities. Most had receivedtheir
Ph.D.'s or,at theveryleast,studiedin Britainor theUnitedStates.Advisersto the
CarnegieCorporation suchas KenyonL. Butterfield, who spentseveralweekswith
thecommissionin 1929, identified "thePoorWhitequestion"as one of the "key
problems"of SouthAfricaand as an "economicmenace,"withan estimatedthree
hundredthousandwhiteswho fellintothecategory of the"verypoor."To Butter-
fieldthemainissuewas clear:"therecan be littledoubtthatifthenativesweregiven
fulleconomicopportunity, the morecompetentamongthemwould soon outstrip
thelesscompetent whites."The recommendations oftheCarnegieCommission were
partofa broadersetofplansto ensurethatthatdid nothappen.71
The commission was presentedas a SouthAfricaninitiative oflocaloriginwhose
concerns werelocalized.Butitsscientific werenotlocal,norwereitspoints
resources
ofreference Cape TownBoersand SouthAfrican Bantusalone.Itsrecommendations
weredrawnfromstudiesof"feeblemindedness" in Appalachia,itsexperts fromNew
Mexico,Georgia,and Tennessee.Its "intelligence surveys," basedon eugenictesting
honed in the UnitedStates,concluded"thatthe averageintelligence of the poor
whiteswas lowerthanthatoftheEuropeanpopulation as a whole" and that"mental
defectwasan inborncondition."Itwas a studygroundedin theproduction ofracial-
izedknowledge in theUnitedStatesand reflected efforts to identifycommensurable
kindsof personswho could be compared,differentiated, and thensingledout for
policyand prevention. Designedto dealwiththepoorwhiteproblemin ruralSouth
Africa,thecommission's workdisplayed principles,
priorities, andsolutionsthatgrew
out of a joint-ventureprojecton segregation-outofproductionof knowledgeand
70 Waldemar A. Nielsen,TheBigFoundations (New York,1972), 32-33; EllenCondliffe Lagemann,ThePoli-

ticsofKnowledge: TheCarnegieCorporation, Philanthropy,and PublicPolicy(Middletown,1992), 30, 81. The Car-
negie Corporationretractedits fundingof the Eugenic Records Board in 1939 because of increasing
condemnation oftheboard'sovertracism,especiallythatofitssuperintendent, HarryLaughlin.I thankAlexander
Sternformakingthispointto me. This sectionis based on the publishedCarnegieCommissionreportsfrom
South Africa,the CarnegieCorporationarchivesat the Rare Book and ManuscriptLibrary,ButlerLibrary,
ColumbiaUniversity, New York;and theKenyonButterfield Papers,LibraryofCongress,Washington, D.C.
to Americansocialscienceis particularly
71 The relationship clearin thecase ofHendrikFrenschVerwoerd, a
psychologist who receivedhisPh.D. fromtheUniversity ofStellenbosch and workedcloselywithmembersofthe
CarnegieCommission.See RobertaBalstadMiller,"Scienceand Societyin theEarlyCareerof H. F. Verwoerd,"
JournalofSouthern AfricanStudies,19 (Dec. 1993), 634-61. I thankGraceDavie forpointingme to thisarticle.
KenyonL. Butterfield, ReportofDr. KenyonL. Butterfield on RuralConditions Problems
and Sociological in South
Africa(New York,1929),9. The recommendations oftheCarnegieCommissionwereaimednotsimplyat "replac-
ingunskilled'Native'workers with'poorWhites'but at establishing employment forwhiteworkers."
sanctuaries
See AdamAshforth, Discoursein Twentieth-Century
ThePoliticsofOfficial SouthAfrica(Oxford,Eng., 1990), 105.
Studies 859
distribution
of resources of stateracismin the
thatwerepartof the consolidation
United States.72
The CarnegieCommissionoffersa windowonto the transnational currency of
racialreformthatcirculatedbetweensuch unlikelyparticipants as officials
in the
Kimberley miningregionof SouthAfrica,theCommissionon Interracial Coopera-
tioninAtlanta,Georgia,and thestateinspector ofhighschoolsin Nashville,Tennes-
see. But it also presagesthe conditionsof possibility fora racializedwelfarestate.
Prescriptions forfamily life,childrearing,and educationwerecriticalto it.The poor
whiteproblemwas fundamental to themakingof apartheid, and thecommission's
recommendations laid itsconcretefoundations. At theheartoftheinvestigation was
one finding:"unrestricted competition on thelabourmarketbetweentheunskilled
non-European and thepoorwhitecreatesconditions ofpoverty whichhavea demor-
alisingeffect on thelatter.Measuresforrestricting suchcompetition shouldaim at
counteracting thisdemoralisation." On theargument thatthepoorwhite"couldnot
livelikea whitemanwithoutcharitable aid" and withouta built-instructureofdif-
ferentialaccessto employment, land,and socialservices,fundamental of
hierarchies
personhood and basicelements ofa discriminatory welfarestatewereborn.73
But as virtually everymemberof the commissionnoted,the problemof poor
whiteismwas poor whitesthemselves. R. W. Wilcocks,one of the commission's
authors,concludedthat"isolation"and the consequent"frequent intermarriageof
blood-relatives" with"deleterious mentaland physicaleffects amongtheoffspring"
werecommondenominators amongpoorwhitesin theOzarksand Appalachiaand
constituted one "causeof poor whiteism"in SouthAfricaand the UnitedStates.
Commissioner M. E. Rothman'sdetailedreport,TheMotherand Daughterin the
PoorFamily, notedthat"muchcan be learnedfromtheorderor disorder in a home,
fromtheattitudes offamilymembers to eachother,fromthebehaviorofchildren."
Psychological assessments tookup muchofthecommission's time.Poorwhiteswere
not competitive withSouthAfrica's nativepopulations.They displayeda "lackof
industriousness and ambition"and a "lackof self-reliance." Their"irresponsibility,"
"The Intelligence
72 See L. R. Wheeler, ofEastTennesseeMountainChildren," JournalofEducationalPsychol-
ogy,23 (May 1932), 351-70; R. W. Wilcocks,"Psychological Observations on theRelationbetweenPoorWhites
and Non-Europeans," Socialand Industrial Relations,50 (May 1930), 3941-50; R. W. Wilcocks,"On theDistri-
butionand Growthof Intelligence," Journalof GeneralPsychology, 6 (April1932), 233-75. (Wilcockswas an
investigator fortheCarnegieCommission,but thissubsequentresearch was carriedout at theUniversityof Stel-
lenboschand fundedby theSouthAfricangovernment.) On theprominenceof "racialthinking... in theearly
yearsofCarnegieCorporationgrant-making," see Lagemann,PoliticsofKnowledge, 30.
73 The Carnegiegrantforthepoorwhitestudyprovidedforparticipation by expertsfromtheUnitedStates,
and thestudywas laterdisseminated to educationalfacilitiesthroughout theUnitedStates.Studiesof"racecross-
ing"weresimultaneously carriedout bytheCarnegieInstitutein Jamaicaand CentralAmerica.See C. B. Daven-
port and MorrisSteggerda, Race Crossing in Jamaica(Washington,1929); MorrisSteggerda, Anthropometry of
AdultMaya Indians:A StudyofTheirPhysicaland Physiological Characteristics
(Washington, 1932). I thankAlex-
anderSternforprovidingthesereferences and thoseto theWeb sitebelow.For studiescarriedout by the Car-
negie-funded EugenicsRecordsOffice,see Dolan DNA LearningCenter,ImageArchiveon theAmericanEugenics
Movement <http://vector.cshl.org/eugenics>(July17, 2001). This is notto suggestthatcentralpremisesof apart-
heidpolicywerenotformulated earlier.See MartinLegassick,"BritishHegemonyand theOriginsofSegregation
in SouthAfrica,1901-1914," in Segregation andApartheid in Twentieth-Century SouthAfrica,ed. WilliamBeinart
and Saul DuBow (London,1995), 43. CarnegieCommission, JointFindingsand Recommendations oftheCommis-
sion,ReportoftheCarnegieCommision ofInvestigationon thePoor WhiteQuestionin SouthAfrica(Stellenbosch,
1932), xix.
860 ofAmerican
The Journal History December2001
"untruthfulnessand lackof a senseof duty"wereconstantrefrains. In thecommis-

sion'slanguage,racialdemoralization and whiteimmorality wenthandin hand.As
theSouthAfrican Saul DuBow hasnoted,"poorwhiteism
historian cameto function
as an important comparative sitefortheexpression
discursive ofracialanxietiesand
thetesting ofracialtheories."Butthesewereneither genericnorabstract assessments
of race,as thelinkingof "feeble-mindedness" to the incidence of masturbation by
poorwhitechildren attests.
Repeatedly, architectsofnationallaborandwelfare policy
soughtto do whatFoucaulthas arguedall raciststatesdo, "defendsocietyagainst
itself'byremaking thedomestic,byregulating appropriateintimacies, and by care-
fullymonitoring thecareand culturalgrooming oftheyoung.74
The commission returned againand againto theuplifting of"ignorant" womenin
poorwhitehouseholds whowereunableto equip"theirchildren witha normalhome
and social training."In detailedanalysesof "home conditions,"schoolgirls were
coded as "listless"and "fatigued,"with"sagging"and "distended"abdomensfrom
malnourishment causedbytheirmothers' ignorance ofthesimplest rulesofhygiene.
Children's health,commission members believed, wasmadeworsebythenativepop-
ulationon whompoorwhitefamilies weredependent andwithwhomtheylived.As
the Carnegiecommissioner W. A. Murray, seniorassistantin the HealthOfficein
Pretoria,
reported, manyofthehomeremedies in suchfamilies"borethehallmark of
thebarbarism withwhichthesepeoplewerein dailycontactin thepersonsof their
raw nativeservants."75
The commission's conclusionwas notthattropicalclimatecreatedpoorwhites,a
popularhypothesis thatMalherbedisputed.Rather,it was due to competition with
nativelaborand to contactwithnatives.To ensurethemoralintegrity ofpoorwhite
youngwomen,thecommission made threestrongrecommendations: (1) introduc-
tion of "specialtrainingin home-making" on the argumentthatit was a "good
investment forthestate";(2) establishment ofboardinghouses forindigents to pro-
motetheir"socialeducation"and domesticskills,culminating in a "nationalhouse-
whentheycompletedthecourse;and (3) encouragement
wifecertificate" offactory
workin conditions setbyCape Town's"leadingfirms," "applyinga wiseand fairseg-
regationof Europeanand non-European femalelabour."Whites'willingness to live
"cheekbyjowl" withSouthAfrica's blackpopulationand worse,to engagein inti-
materelations withthem,weretakenas "a clearindicationofabsenceor lossofself-
respecton theirpart."76
74 R. W. Wilcocks,"RuralPoverty amongWhitesin SouthAfricaand in theSouthoftheUnitedStates,"April
5, 1933, KenyonButterfield Papers(ManuscriptDivision,LibraryofCongress,Washington, D.C.); M. E. Roth-
man, TheMotherand Daughterin thePoorFamily,Part V Sociological ReportofthePoor WhiteProblemin South
Africa,ReportoftheCarnegieCommission (Stellenbosch,1932), 151; CarnegieCommission,JointFindingsand
Recommendations oftheCommission, x, xvii,xi; Saul DuBow, Scientific Racismin ModernSouthAfrica(New York,
1995), 172, 173n20. See MichelFoucault'sfinal1976 Collegede Francelectureon thebirthof modernracism:
MichelFoucault,"Fairevivreet laissermourir:La naissancedu racisme"(To makeliveand to letdie:The birthof
racism),TempsModernes (no. 535, Feb. 1991), 37-61.
75Wilcocks,"RuralPoverty amongWhitesin SouthAfricaand in theSouthoftheUnitedStates,"xvi;W. A.
Murray, HealthFactorsin thePoorWhiteProblem, PartIV HealthReportofthePoorWhiteProblemin SouthAfrica,
ReportoftheCarnegieCommission (Stellenbosch, 1932), 7, 34.
76 Rothman, Motherand Daughterin thePoorFamily, xxiii,206-7, 212. R. W. Wilcocks,ThePoorWhite,Part
ReportofthePoorWhiteProblemin SouthAfrica(Stellenbosch,
II. Psychological 1932), 62.
Historyand Postcolonial
ComparisoninAmerican Studies 861
Built into the culturalmachinery of empirein the 1920s wereparadigmsof

progressthatreverberated acrossa globalfield.Justas UnitedStatespsychologists
studying poorwhitesin theAmericanSouthoffered expertcounselto the British
SouthAfricancolonialstate,theAmericanmanagersof Uniroyal's and Goodyear's
rubberestatesworkedwithmembersof the Dutch colonialadministration in the
Indiesto modernize estatemanagement and to developraciallyrationalized
systems
of labor control.As the historianFrancesGouda has noted,UnitedStatesState
Department filesfromthe1920sdocumentexchanges betweentheAmericanconsul
generalin theIndiesand theUnitedStatessecretary ofstateover"half-caste girls,"as
bothworriedthattheyposeda threatto raciallybifurcated principles ofgovernance.
Gouda refers to a floridcommentary on thebeautyofEurasiangirlsas an "undiplo-
maticflight of fancy,"butas shewouldundoubtedly agree,in generalsuchremarks
werenotoutsidediplomats'ken.Discoursesaroundracialaesthetics, mixedunions,
and peopleofmixedraceappeartoo oftento be considered aberrant or
indiscretions
archivalasides.In high-levelcommunications betweengovernors-general and minis-
tersofcoloniesand betweenministers ofcoloniesandwhoeveroccupiedtheNether-
lands' throne,theyappearwitha consistency thatsuggeststheywerethe gristof
and an integralelementin the lexiconof rule.77
governance,a site of vulnerability,
Connections
Comparative and thePoliticsofComparison
Politically,
theAmericans keepalooffromlocalissuesand sociallytheyareinclined
to keepto themselves.Americais too youngin overseasenterpriseand too fullof
opportunity at home to have developeda classwiththe trueoverseaspoint of
view-such as theBritishhave.The Americans all keepone eyeon homeand feel
themselves temporarilyin a strange
land.
-Consul GeneralCoertdu Bois,192878
The breezydismissal ofAmerican in intervention

interest bytheUnitedStatesconsul
generalinJavareadseffortlesslyas conventionalwisdomand commonsense.Indeed,
his reportof October1928 expresses twowidelysharedsentiments: (1) theUnited
in an empirenotitsown;and (2) neithertheUnited
Stateswas a passiveparticipant
Statesnoritsagentswereimperial. ButConsulGeneralCoertdu Bois'sdescription of
that"universalaim oftheDutchbusinessgroup,"namely,"tocleanup a fortune in
thefewestpossibleyearsand retire"home,was not so different fromthatof their
Americancounterparts agentsin otherpartsoftheworld.As Albert
and colonialism's
Memminotedin The Colonizer and Colonized,writtenon the cusp of theAlgeria
war,theprevailing of a colonyforFrenchnationalsin NorthAfricawas
definition
clear:"a placewhereone earnsmoreand spendsless,"a placewere"jobsare
strikingly
77 On the RockefellerFoundation'shookwormprojectin the colonialPhilippines,see WarwickAnderson,

"Going throughthe Motions:MicrobialColonies,Germ Cultures,and an Unfaithful Imitationof American
Hygiene,"2001 (in Stoler'spossession).FrancesGouda, "Nyonyason theColonialDivide," Genderand History,
5
(Nov. 1993), 335-36.
78 Consul GeneralCoertdu Bois, "The Problemof the Half Caste,"Oct. 9, 1928 (microfilm: 856d.00-.40,
roll33, M 682), RecordsRelatingto theInternalAffairs 1919-1929, RecordsoftheDepart-
oftheNetherlands,
mentofState.
862 The Journal History
ofAmerican December2001
guaranteed, wageshigh,careersmorerapidand businessmoreprofitable."79 Profits

and privilegecamefaster and in largermeasuresthanin Akron,Delft,Toulouse,or
Colmar.
The vocabulary was drawnfromeconomics, buttheculturalcoordinates and inti-
mateinterventions thatalloweditwerenot.It is no accidentthatConsulGeneraldu
Bois'scommentson "American aloofness"camein a classified reportto theUnited
Statessecretaryof stateon "theProblemof theHalf Castes,"whichassertedthatit
was "theacutelyraceconscious. . . Dutch half-caste thatconstitutes a problem."80
ButUnitedStatesagribusiness was "acutelyraceconscious"as well.Forracemattered
to Goodyear,Uniroyal,and the twenty-five thousandIndonesianswhosejobs on
theirestateswereraciallyscaled.Carefully monitoreddomesticarrangements and
genderdemographics werewrittenintoplantationstrategies of laborcontrolfrom
the start.Labor and social policyfixedthe lower,differential wages forJavanese
womenwho werethen forcedto "choose"prostitution and concubinageas not
unreasonable options.Specificrelationsof dominancewereworkedthrougha capi-
talistworldeconomyand colonialtechnologies ofrule.Boththateconomyand those
technologieswerefoundedand thrivedon racialdifferences and a sexualeconomy
thatdependedon thelearning ofplaceand raceand on thedistribution ofdesires.
Suchconnections arelessevidentifwe buyintocolonialscriptsthemselves, ifwe
abidebythestrictures ofnationalarchives, stateprojects,
and theirhistoriographies.
Indeed,research thatbeginswithpeople'smovements ratherthanwithfixedpolities
opensup to moreorganichistories thatare not compelledby originary narratives
designedto showthe"natural" teleologyoffuture nations,laterrepublics,
and future
states.We mightinsteadwantto think,as Frederick Cooper and I havesuggested
elsewhere,aboutcolonialism's modularqualities,howdifferent regimes builtprojects
withblocksofone earliermodeland thenanother, projectsthatwerethenreworked
by the colonizedpopulationsthatthosemodelscould nevercompletely masteror
contain.RatherthancompareUnitedStatesempire with a host of others,we might
imaginenineteenth-century historyas made up, not of nation-building projects
alone,butofcompoundedcolonialisms and as shapedby multinational philanthro-
pies,missionary movements, discoursesof socialwelfareand reform, and trafficsin
people(womenin particular) thatranacrossand athwartstate-archivedpaper trails.8'
If comparison ofdiscrete"cases"is so problematic,anotherlineof inquirymight
treatcomparison, not as a methodological problem,but as a historicalobject.We
mighthistoricizethepoliticsofcomparison, tracingthe changingstakesforpolities
and theirbureaucraticapparatuses.Whatdid agentsofempirethinkto compareand
whatpoliticalprojectsmade themdo so? What did comparisonas a stateproject
entail?Scholarswho haveattempted to writeagainstcolonialhistories havenoted
how our concernshave been containedby statisthistoriography, shaped by the
79 Consul GeneralCoert du Bois, "The EuropeanPopulationof Netherland India,"Aug. 25, 1929, p. 12
(856d, roll33, M 682), ibid.;Memmi,Colonizerand theColonized,4.
80 Coertdu Bois, "ProblemoftheHalf Caste,"3.
81 On thismodularquality, see Cooper and Stoler,"BetweenMetropoleand Colony,"1-58. RobertGregg,
too,arguesthattheinternational in womenbetweenLondon,SouthAfrica,and theNew YorkBoweryis a
traffic
primesubjectforstudying intersecting See Gregg,InsideOut,OutsideIn, 9-18.
histories.
Studies 863
archived groovesthatcolonialstatescarvedoutforthemselves. Someofourproblems

withcomparison mayderivefromthefactthatselective comparison wasitselfpartof
colonialprojectsthatalsoservedto securerelationsof power.
Colonial regimeswerenot hegemonicinstitutions but uneven,imperfect, and
even indifferent knowledge-acquiring machines.Omniscienceand omnipotence
werenot,as is so oftenassumed,theirdefining goals.I referto themas "taxonomic
states"whose administrations were chargedwithdefiningand interpreting racial
membership, requirementsforcitizenship,actsofpoliticalsubversion,and,notleast,
withdetermining whatintimatepracticesand whatsortsof personsconfirmed or
threatened Europeannotionsof morality. Such statesas thatof the Dutch in the
Indiesdemandedthattheiragentsmasternot onlyethnographic detailsbut also
broadsociologicalgeneralizations,encouraging theiragentsto pay lessattention to
detailand moreto gross-grain codes.In theIndies,socialcategories providedsocio-
logicalshorthands thatpareddownwhatcolonialrecruits and residents
thought they
neededto master-whatinformation and howmuchone neededto know.
Colonialbureaucracies werethereforeinvestedin selectivecomparison withother
polities:withhighlighting to some and difference
theirsimilarities fromothers.A
casein pointis thecommensurabilitiestheyfoundin such"folk"categories as "white
prestige," "mixed-bloods,"and "poorwhites."Such categorymakingwas, as Ian
Hackingwroteofstatistics, partofthemoralscienceofstatecraft, ofthetechnology
thatcreatedcensusesand theircommensurabilities in theeighteenthand nineteenth
Categorymakingproduced cross-colonialequivalenciesthat allowed for
centuries.82
international and convincedtheirparticipants-doctors,
conferences lawyers,policy
makers, and reformers-that theywerein thesameconversation, ifnotalwaystalk-
ingaboutthesamething.
Iftheaboveis granted,historiansofthecolonialmightmovein anotherdirection.
Not to askwhether (mixing)wassimilarin theIndies,India,theCaribbean,
metissage
and theAmericanSouthwest butto askwhatdistinctive worksucha designation did
in narrationsofempireand nation,howand whypeoplecouldtalkaboutwhatmes-
tizo-nessentailedwithoutagreeing on whowas includedin thatcategory. We might
treatthosecomparisons as partof the politicsof knowledge, as ethnographic evi-
dence of historically
shifting of rulethatjoined sexualarrangements
strategies to
racialformations.We mighttreatthe comparisons as technologies thatproduced
truthclaimsaboutnormalcy and racethatwerepredicated on whatMichelFoucault
calleda "willto knowledge"-thatNietzscheannotionthattheweaponsof reason
wereforgedas elementsof thetacticsof rule.83 Such comparisons thenwerepartof
theculturalworksustaining colonialism'sreformist The focus
and raciststrategies.
would be on thepoliticaltaskof comparingas much as-or more than-on what
wascompared. We mightask,notaboutthesimilarities ofparticular(racialized)enti-
ties,but abouttherelationships
(ofpower,sexuality, and race)theysharedand that
madesuchcomparisons pertinent and possible.
Ian Hacking,The TamingofChance(Cambridge,Eng., 1990).
82
83On betweenFriedrich
therelationship Nietzsche'sconceptof a "willto knowledge"and Foucault'srework-
ingofit,seeAlan Sheridan,MichelFoucault:The Willto Truth(New York,1980), 118-23.
Therearestillotherquestionsto ask.How do we acknowledge similarconfigura-

tionsofrulewithoutundermining thehistorical specificityoftheircontent? Should
we be comparingvariedcolonialprojectsin the same place, or similarcolonial
projectsat different points in time?What about comparisonsfromdisparate
momentsandwithoutcommonvocabulary thatnevertheless speakto commontech-
nologiesofintervention and commonanxieties ofrule?Shouldit be similarrhythms
ofruletowhichwe attendorsimilarsequencesin howsexuality waspoliticized in the
makingofrace,in howassessments ofsexualmorality weretiedto racialworth?
To arguethatmanagement of the intimatedefinedthescope of colonialgover-
nanceand itsspecifictechnologies is notto suggestthatinterventions werecarried
outwithuniform intensity or uniform It
effects. is to suggest that we focus on those
politicaltechnologies thatjoinedthecultivation ofa socialbodyto thecultivation of
a selfto rethinktheboundaries ofouranalytic and historical maps.A questionposed
by one skepticalreader,"Werethe intimaciesvastlydifferent outsideof imperial
domainsat similarpointsin time?,"pointsto another:Was therean "outsideof
empire"? Ifcolonialism is the"underside ofmodernity," as theLatinAmericansocial
theorist EnriqueDusselheld,and iftheepistemic and politicalfieldhasbeenshaped
by an imaginary of theOccidentsincethesixteenth century, as FernandoCoronil
and WalterD. Mignolohaveseparately in
argued studies of Latin America's colonial
history,thencolonialdifferences and theirsexualand affective entailments mustper-
vadea farbroadersetofculturaland politicalpractices thanthosecapturedbycolo-
nialism'smostdirectencounters.84 Evenunlikely comparisons maybe instructive, for
theypromptus to askwhether disciplinary conventions, sheerirrelevance, or differ-
entnotionsofempireand colonialism explainthesilence.
Thereareseveralchoices,as I havearguedhere:to do bettercomparisons, to pur-
sue the politicsand historyof comparison,or to reachforconnectionsthatgo
beyondcomparison altogether. These arenot mutuallyexclusive, but theydo place
the analyticemphasison different historiographic zones and archivalplaces.One
thingis increasinglyclearas colonialstudiesreconsiders thebreadthof itslocations
and itsanalyticframes. It was notonlyempiresthatreshapedthe"interior frontiers"
of thenation;peoplewho movedwithin,between,and outsideof imperialbound-
arieswerealso reshapingthem.Womenmayhave been the boundarymarkersof
empire,as AnneMcClintockhas argued.85 But it was in thegenderedand racialized
intimacies oftheeveryday thatwomen,men,and children wereturnedintosubjects
ofparticular kinds,as domination was routinized and rerouted in intimacies thatthe
statesoughtto knowbutcouldnevercompletely masterorworkout.
84 See Dussel, UndersideofModernity, ed. and trans.Mendieta;FernandoCoronil,"BeyondOccidentalism:
TowardNonimperialGeopoliticalCategories,"CulturalAnthropology, 11 (Jan. 1996), 51-87; and WalterD.
Mignolo,LocalHistories/Global Designs:Coloniality: Knowledges
Subaltern and BorderThinking (Princeton,
2000).
EventhoughSiam was a noncolonizedregion,its"geopolitical" historyas a nationwas shapedby impingements
of European imperialexpansionand colonial discoursesof race, accordingto ThongchaiWinichakul,Siam
Mapped:A History oftheGeo-Body ofa Nation(Honolulu,1994).
85 McClintock, 24. On themovementof somewomenbetweenthepositionsof concubine,
ImperialLeather,
wife,trader,mother,and slaveholder, see IndraniChatterjee,"ColouringSubalternity: Slaves,Concubines,and
Social Orphansin EarlyColonial India,"in SubalternStudiesX: Writings on SouthAsianHistory and Society,
ed.
GautamBhadra,GyanPrakash,and SusieTharu (New Delhi, 1999), 49-97.
Studies
The colonieslocatedin Asia and Africaweresitesforexperiments in urbanism,

hygiene, and socialreform butalso siteswherethevulnerabilities ofimperialprojects
werein sharpreliefand wherebourgeoisprescriptions forfamily life,morality,
and
sexualprotocolwerechallengedand rejected.In theDutch East Indiesin theearly
twentieth century, creoleDutch, Indos (mixedbloods), Chinese,Javanesewere
appropriating discourses,compartments, and communication networks-railways,
telegraphs,telephones,and radios-to rework theirpossibilities forthemselves. What
was modernwasnotonlyexportedfromEuropenorinvented in thecoloniallabora-
toriesof publichousingand estateslandscapedby Europeancolonialadministra-
tions.As studentsof colonialismare learning,it was inventedoutsideof those
laboratoriesand in contradistinctionto them.86
The incommensurabilitiesbetweenNorthAmericanempireand Europeancolo-
nial historydiminishwhentheintimacies of empireareat centerstage.Sexualvio-
lence was fundamental to conquest,as was colonizingthe heartsand mindsof
women,children, and men.A newgeneration ofscholarsin themaking,ifwe attend
closelyto theirbibliographies, citations,archivaltrajectories, and the multi-sited
fashionin whichtheychooseto work,arewellawareofit.A scholarship lookingto
thetenseand tendertiesofempireand to sex-who withwhom,where,andwhen-
opensin tworelateddirections: to rethink whatpoliticalnarratives inform ourcom-
parisonsand to reassesswhatquestionsaboutthemanagement of theintimate will
allowformoreeffective ofempire'sracialpolitics.The taskis notto figure
histories
out who was colonizerand who was colonized,nor to ask what the difference
betweenmetropolitan and colonialpolicywas;rather, it is to askwhatpoliticalratio-
nalitieshavemadethosedistinctions and categories viable,enduring, and relevant.
ofModernity
SocialWorldofBatavia,155. See TimothyMitchell,ed., Questions
86 Taylor, (Minneapolis,2000);
RudolfMrazek,"'Let Us BecomeRadio Mechanics':Technologyand NationalIdentityin Late-ColonialNether-
landsEast Indies,"Comparative and History,
Studiesin Society Provin-
39 (Jan.1997), 3-33; Dipesh Chakrabarty,
cializingEurope:PostrolonialThoughtand HistoricalDifference(Princeton,2000); and Carole McGranahan,
"ArrestedHistories:BetweenEmpireand Exilein ModernTibet"(Ph.D. diss.,University ofMichigan,2001).

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Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post)

Ann Laura Stoler

This essaytakesas its subjecttwo distinctive historiographies,one in postcolonial

former tendto treatcolonialism as a history ofthepresent, to focuson theaftermath

' On thisissue,see Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Postcolonialityand theArtifice ofHistory:Who Speaksfor'Indian'

definedand defied,whererelationsbetweencolonizerand colonizedcould power-

4AlbertL. Hurtado,IntimateFrontiers:Sex,Gender, (Albuquerque,1993); Sylvia

The examplessketchwaysintimatematters and narratives aboutthemfigured in

6 On "biopower" as a politicaltechnology focusedon individualand aggregate bodies,see Foucault,History

Historiansof Europeanexpansionin NorthAmericaas distinctfromAsia and

adamantly disagreed,Kaplan'spointwas instructive and productively at

treatsit as a phenomenonseparatefromimperialexpansionratherthanan interrelated formofit. See ibid.,17.

merging and conjugalrelations morethana battleground. But it is thequantityand

TheDevils Lane: Sexand Racein theEarlySouth(New York,1997); NancyShoemaker, ed.,NegotiatorsofChange:

FromtheIndiesto SouthAfrica, mixedunionsnotsanctified bythestateas wellas

tionto mixedunionsshouldturnus to thehistorical ofa socialcategory's

Feministscholarship has made important movesin thatdirection.Despite the

Still,theexceptions LauraWexler'sanalysisof photographs

thatdependedon themanagement ofsexin themakingof racializedformsof rule.

25 See the definitionsof colonialismin CatherineHall, ed., CulturesofEmpire:Colonizers in Britainand the

For theseearlyperiods,RamonA. Gutierrez has shownus how marriage struc-

Caribbean.As EugeneD. Genovese,amongothers,has shown,plantationhouse-

aroundsex,contamination, and colonialvulnerabilitiesthatfearsabout racialized

colonization processin whichwomenhaveplayeda keyrole.The "internal colonial-

34 For reviews of thisdebate,see RobertJ. Hind, "The InternalColonial Concept,"Comparative Studiesin

Indiahad features similarto thosedescribed byGail BedermanfortheUnitedStates

the Decline of Middle-ClassManliness,and Ida B. Wells'sAntilynching

Not unliketheAmericanRepublicat thetimeofitsmaking,as EdmundS. Mor-

PartIII: ThinkingthroughConnectionsand Comparisons

40 Edmund S. Morgan,AmericanSlavery, AmericanFreedom:The Ordealof ColonialVirginia(New York,

discovery.Colonialismsof the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries

"AmericanHistoriansin the Contextof Empire,"JournalofAmerican

Those postcolonialinsights travelwell,addressing similarquestionsaboutetiolo-

47 Kaplan,"'LeftAlonewithAmerica,"'17; Hazel M. McFerson,TheRacial Dimension ofAmerican Overseas

Suchlinesofinquirysuggestthatcircuits ofknowledge production and racialized

removalof themfromthehomewas another.In theIndies,concernsforchildren's

Frenchreformatory ofMettray, he notedthatthemajority weretheprogeny of"con-

54 CharlesLoringBrace,TheDangerous ClassesofNew Yorkand Twenty AmongThem(1880; Mont-

mail boats thatcollectednewson what transpired in 1848 in Francewhen they

Educatingfor Empireand thePoliticsofRace: NativeAmericanBoardingSchools

china:An appeal to theFrenchpeople),AnnalesDiplomatiques March5, 1905, pp. 228-31, 244-

ago" of disciplineand punishmentin its modernEuropeanform.Similarly, in

But the "desireto work"had to be of a specifickind.Efforts to teachcraftsor

largelythesame.In theIndiesand amongtheNativeAmericanpopulation, boarding

ColumbiaUniversity) madeseveralreconnaissance New Zealand,

70 Waldemar A. Nielsen,TheBigFoundations (New York,1972), 32-33; EllenCondliffe Lagemann,ThePoli-

"untruthfulnessand lackof a senseof duty"wereconstantrefrains. In thecommis-

Built into the culturalmachinery of empirein the 1920s wereparadigmsof

The breezydismissal ofAmerican in intervention

77 On the RockefellerFoundation'shookwormprojectin the colonialPhilippines,see WarwickAnderson,

guaranteed, wageshigh,careersmorerapidand businessmoreprofitable."79 Profits

archived groovesthatcolonialstatescarvedoutforthemselves. Someofourproblems

Therearestillotherquestionsto ask.How do we acknowledge similarconfigura-

The colonieslocatedin Asia and Africaweresitesforexperiments in urbanism,

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