Nowhere is the clash of Dutch and their former servants' memories more
striking than in the contrast between the cozy images found in Dutch family albums
and former servants' remembrances of performing childcare tasks. In
Holland today, both nostalgia for and critiques of the colonial feed on a vast
archive of images from photo albums, calling cards and postcards sent home as
"proof" of the good life overseas (see figures 1-3).76 The volume of these images,
their material presence and "evidentiary force," give powerfill credence
to Dutch imaginings of themselves within a beneficent colonial regime. In these
private and public mementos of tenzpo doeloe (the [good] old days), household
servants play a key role