The subject of this study has been the Dutch public consciousness vis-à-vis the Dutch colonial empire during the time of modern imperialism, roughly spanning the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. This collective mentality is usually referred to with the term public imperialism, and its relevance as an object of study was established by British historians who held the assumption that, in order to administratively maintain the British Empire, a large pool of imperially minded citizens was needed from which to draw the workforce needed to do so. Scaling down both the colonizing nation and the empire in question, the case of the Netherlands provides a similar problematique, bringing to the fore the questions how this conquering of the metropolitan mind worked, how ‘steeped in empire’ Dutch society was, and what the limits of this cultural permeation were. But, as valid as these questions are, they also assume a monolithic public consciousness and provide a restraining binary logic of successful permeation or the lack thereof. In order to address these shortcomings, and in an attempt to render visible public ignorance and indifference to empire, I have approached Dutch imperial culture as fragmented by investigating other shades of empire-mindedness, such as anti-colonialism, and hitherto left-out narratives of Indonesians in the metropole.