But this was not where we began. The project was initiated to engage a specific
archive on the colonial domestic order, namely, that documented and celebrated
in personal memoirs and public records of Europeans, and particularly
Dutch, who lived and worked in what was then the Netherlands Indies at the
close of colonial rule. We sought to address the two tenacious forms in which
servants are cast in Dutch renderings: one, that threatening image offered in
colonial housekeeping guides, childrearing manuals and medical handbooks
that warn against the contaminating influence of servants on European children4;
and two, in stark contrast, that favored image of servants which is recurrent
in colonial memoirs laced with the touch and smell of the servants in
whose company childhoods were spent-accounts devoted to fond reminiscences
of affections c ha red.^ What resonances did these castings have in people's
lives? What was remembered by those whose touch, smell and gestures
were the very objects of such aroused recollection^?^ Over a period of nearly
two years, we talked with Indonesian women and men who had worked as gardeners,
gofers, kitchen helpers, nursemaids, cooks, housekeepers, and watchmen
in Dutch colonial homes