The Dutch curve: The introduction and reception of intelligence testing in the Netherlands, 1908–1940

In the Netherlands, intelligence testing has been pragmatic and has not generated the heated controversies found in other cultures. Four historical reasons are presented for this paradoxical development. First, the Binet test was used mainly as a diagnostic instrument for professional judgments about admission to special education. Second, the eugenic use of IQ tests was moderated by the marginal position of eugenics in Dutch society. Third, the process of “pillarization” gave considerable power to denominational groups in Dutch society, and they strongly criticized deterministic ideas about the heredity of intelligence. Fourth, the educational scientist, cognitive psychologist, philosopher, and government adviser, Philip Kohnstamm, was very influential in Dutch science and politics. He rejected intelligence testing and its deterministic connotations in favor of the idea of the educability of cognitive capacities. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The development of anthropology and colonial policy in the Netherlands: 1800–1960

Although there have been studies of both Dutch colonial policy in the Indies and the development of anthropology in the Netherlands, there has been no systematic examination of the historical relations between them. This paper attempts this for a period of 160 years from the collapse of the Dutch East India Company to the birth of an independent Indonesian state. During this time, the need of successive governments for information on subject peoples was matched by the requirements of scholars for suitable conditions and locations for their work. As Dutch anthropology emerged in the nineteenth century and developed in the twentieth, it was closely related to the prevailing political climate—state capitalism, liberal, and ethical policies. The analysis shows how there is a “fit” between these and certain dominant anthropological styles and interests, principally in the form of empiricism, customary law studies, “Leiden” structuralism, and functionalism.