The Tooth of Time, or Taking a Look at the “Look” of Clothing in Late Nineteenth-Century Aru

At the height of its power and imperial glory ¹ —a moment that some in Holland still like to recall as a time in which “something great was done” (er wérd wat groots vericht) ² —the former Netherlands East Indies came to be refered to with increasing familiarity by the Dutch as an “emerald girdle” (gordel van smaragd). Although the immediate referent of this precious chain was the glittering band of glassy green islands that trace out an arch(ipelago) across the great Malay Sea, a more fitting description could hardly have been found for the close link between conquest, clothing, and booty, or between the fashioning of gendered subjects and imperial design. In studies of colonialism, sexuality, and subject formation, much has been made of the capacity of cloth to embrace, shape, and subjugate persons and populations—with special attention usually paid to the so-called “civilizing” import of European forms of dress and comportment (Cohn 1989; Murra 1989).