For example, if Europe was not invented out of whole cloth, but was shaped by its imperial relations, by the resources it provided, the settlement it fostered, the literary forms it inspired, how can we view histories of western civilization without asking how those were tied to that broader imperial history? Why in the study of colonialisms does it matter that we look at housekeeping manuals, breast feeding practices, servant child relations, and kindergartners and orphanages? Are these only the interests of contemporary feminists, or are colonial historians finding out more and more that these were the concerns of the very people who formulated racial and social policy in the nineteenth century?

What we know about fifteenth and sixteenth century imperial relations between colonizing men and indigenous women is they were never left to chance. In some colonies men were encouraged to take concubines or live with native women as a way of learning about local knowledge and culture. Not until later were the sexual and racial lines sharply drawn between colonized and colonizer.

People used to endorse the accepted colonial view that white women only came when a colony was considered medically and physically safe. In fact the recruitment of European women was by careful design. It was not white women who created racial discrimination as earlier historians once claimed, but they were themselves used to reaffirm those boundaries.

Colonial culture worked long and hard to make sure children knew on which side of the colonial divide they belonged. It mattered who your nursemaid was and who was considered to be contaminating or "clean" because these were the contexts in which one learned how to become different from those who served and where one learned to become European. Becoming European was something acquired in colonial contexts more often than in Europe itself. Having servants in the house made life easier but their constant proximity to European children was also considered a sexual and racial threat. As some Dutch colonials argued, such contact might allow children to metamorphize into Javanese: sitting on their haunches (as Javanese did) rather than chairs or going barefoot rather than wearing well heeled leather shoes.

Becoming European was something that had to be learned. Difference then was not something that came naturally; it was taught in the school, in the home, and in the streets. Understanding these sites in which racial affiliations were produced and perpetuated allows us to also appreciate why the intimacies of the home are not outside of politics and power relations. They were the very site of their construction.

Finally, then do different ways of remembering the history of colonialism and what counts as important to that history, serve certain kinds of political projects today?