Recent Dutch Contributions to Modern Indonesian History

The limitation of this essay seems obvious if we take modern Indonesian history to have started in 1870 and consider the word “recent” in the above title adequately covered by the years since 1940. The date 1870 is the starting-point of Western modern imperialism — a world-wide phenomenon — as well as of the so-called Liberal Period in the restricted Indonesian context. Thus the heyday of Dutch colonialism, the emergence of Indonesian nationalism, the downfall of the Netherlands Indies and the first decades of Indonesian independence fall within the scope of this survey. The choice of 1940, too, can be explained easily: it is the first year of the period which ultimately led not only to the political separation of the Indies and the Netherlands but also to a new approach in Dutch history-writing on Indonesia. This is not to sav that opinions critical of colonialism had not found their way into Dutch literature on Indonesia before 1940, or that opposition to the so-called Europe-centric attitude is to be noticed only after the Second World War: Stokvis and Van Leur, to mention only one for each case, are evidence that this was not so. Nor is it true that colonial apologists are extinct since 1940. But the Second World War nevertheless contributed to a significant change in the general trend of Dutch history-writing on Indonesia.