Kartini

Raden Adjeng Kartini, also known as Raden Ayu Kartini (21 April 1879 – 17 September 1904), was a prominent Indonesian activist who advocated for women's rights and female education. She was born into an aristocratic Javanese family in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). After attending a Dutch-language primary school, she wanted to pursue further education, but Javanese women at the time were barred from higher education. Instead, Kartini entered a period of seclusion mandated for teenage girls until they married. She acquired knowledge by reading books and by corresponding with Indonesian and Dutch people. Her father allowed her to go into the community beginning in 1896, although she remained an unmarried single woman. She met various officials and influential people, including J.H. Abendanon. She began the tradition amongst three of her sisters to found and operate schools. After she died, schools were established by a foundation founded in the Netherlands. Some of her Indonesian friends also established Kartini Schools. After her death, her sisters continued her advocacy of educating girls and women. Kartini's letters were published in a Dutch magazine and eventually, in 1911, as the works: Door Duisternis tot Licht (From Dark Comes Light) and an English version, Letters of a Javanese Princess. Her birthday is now celebrated in Indonesia as Kartini Day in her honor. She opposed the Purdah-like seclusion of teenage girls and polygamy. Kartini is a National Hero of Indonesia. During Kartini's life, Indonesia became an important Dutch colony with natural resources of rubber and oil and the production of tobacco that attracted Dutch immigrants. The colony had the largest population of Dutch immigrants than other possessions of Holland. The Dutch sought to control the entire Indonesian archipelago, which it did by the 20th century. In the meantime, there were technological advancements with the opening of the Suez Canal, the establishment of telegraph lines, and the installation of railroads, which brought the colony into the modern age.