2 - The Enchantment of Cosmopolitan Science: Student Life at the Dutch East Indies Medical Colleges

Summary

Medical education in the Dutch East Indies commenced in 1902 when a two-year course for vaccinators was established in Batavia. In 1902, the school was renamed STOVIA (School for the Education of Native Physicians) and offered a nine year training program. At that time, student life was distinctly European. Students spoke Dutch, were instructed in the latest findings of Western medical science, and spent their spare time in a metropolitan city. They had busy extracurricular lives playing sports, participating in student associations, reading newspapers, and partying. They believed intensely in the power of medical science, which they saw as quintessentially rational and scientific, and were filled with pride in their school and in their future profession. The medical colleges were unusual colonial laboratories which blurred the boundaries between native and European, brown and white. During their education, students transgressed the distinctions which constituted colonial society. Medical students endlessly performed and celebrated their western and modern identities. Graduates emerged with hybrid identities and found it difficult to find their place in colonial society.