tempo doeloe

Etymology
Borrowed from or.

Proper noun

 * 1)  The period of the Dutch East Indies, the period of Dutch colonisation in Indonesia, in particular as a nostalgic construct in personal, familial or social history; even more specifically, the time between 1870 and the beginning of the First World War around 1914.

Usage notes

 * The term is chiefly used by Indo Dutch people (both Europeans and Eurasians) with a sense of nostalgia in reference to a bygone, semi-mythologised era. It is also used for a period before one's own life time. It is not well known outside the Indo Dutch demographic.
 * Its use for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is informed by a certain 'pioneer' romanticism, because this was a period of early modernisation before large-scale industrialisation, also a time when Dutch settlement increased but was still too small to form a wholly closed caste isolated from the native population.