From Headhunting to Head Taxes

What is it about?

Colonial governance is seen as a process in which European colonizers attempted to exert influence over and extract from colonized subjects. This article shows that on the Moluccan island of Seram, this process also worked the other way around. Seram was seen as an impenetrable island filled with 'dangerous head-hunter’s who had never lived under a state before. The Dutch conquered the island in the early twentieth century, and, as this article demonstrates, attempted to impose taxes and a fiscal administration which they thought had the power to 'civilize' the people of Seram, and which they claimed would improve the wellbeing and prosperity of these people. However, because no profitable resources had been found on the island yet, and its people were seen as 'ungovernable' and dangerous, the Dutch only colonized the island so that they could claim to have 'brought civilization'. In reality, they handed over the administration of the state to the local chiefs that were already in power. Neither these chiefs nor the Dutch seemed to have cared very much for the actual well-being of the colonized population. Colonialism, this article thereby shows, was sometimes just a claim of Europeans over territory and people, while in reality these people remained quite independent.

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