ABSTRACT

This chapter covers the period from the late nineteenth century through to 1950, a time when anthropological ideas began to be adopted for the analysis of ethnographic data and for its possible use by colonial administrations. The relationship between anthropology and colonial administration was strengthened following the establishment of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures in 1926, which was to become the International African Institute. The Colonial Development and Welfare Act was passed in 1940 for the support and organization of social and economic development in the dependencies, and the Colonial Social Science Research Council, as a branch of the Colonial Research Committee, was established in 1944. The interrelationships between colonialism and the study of native cultures and societies are nowhere better illustrated than in the Dutch administration of the Indonesian archipelago. Ellen has argued that, unlike the origins of British anthropology, 'the Dutch tradition is very strongly rooted in a particular set of colonial relations'.