Issues of segregation and difference in early-modern Dutch Batavia prove harder to define once we move beyond the picture presented by colonial authorities and move away geographically from the centre of colonial knowledge production. Ethnic quarters were established in the colonial cities, but religious identities blurred strict racial boundary making. Three case studies demonstrate how new lines of identification and distinction emerged, which cut across formal ethnic classifiers. Colonial societies were extremely complex places, where race, occupation, religion, class, and legal status constantly interplayed and directed the definition of social boundaries. Instead of thinking in terms of ethnic segregation as presented in the colonial records, this contribution proposes to think in terms of ‘moral communities’. By so doing, we might be able to balance better between ‘Closeness and Proximity’ in colonial societies. We can thus try to visualise colonial society not primarily as a hierarchical order with fairly strict or at least distinctive internal boundaries as defined by the colonial authorities, but as a society of different and overlapping socio-cultural spheres and as circles of trust rather than of bounded ethnic communities.

中文翻译：

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殖民速记与历史知识：荷兰殖民社会中的隔离与本土化

一旦我们超越殖民当局所呈现的图景并在地理上远离殖民知识生产的中心，则证明早期现代荷兰巴达维亚的隔离和差异问题更难定义。殖民地城市建立了民族区，但宗教身份模糊了严格的种族界限。三个案例研究展示了新的识别和区分线是如何出现的，它们跨越了正式的种族分类。殖民地社会是极其复杂的地方，种族、职业、宗教、阶级和法律地位不断地相互影响并指导着社会边界的定义。与殖民记录中提出的种族隔离不同，这篇文章建议从“道德社区”的角度进行思考。通过这样做，我们或许能够在殖民社会中更好地平衡“亲近”和“亲近”之间的关系。因此，我们可以尝试将殖民社会想象成一个不仅是殖民当局定义的具有相当严格或至少是独特的内部边界的等级秩序，而是一个具有不同和重叠的社会文化领域的社会，以及信任的圈子，而不是相互信任的圈子。有界的民族社区。