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Fabio Crimaldi (s4733266)

Colonialism in
the
East-Indies
(Indonesia)

1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction (page 3)
Geography of the archipelago (page 3)
Dutch first settling and colonization of the archipelago (page 4)
English-French parenthesis (1795-1814) (page 5)
Dutch second colonization period (1815 - 1947) (page 6)
Dutch influence on the malay language (page 7)
Dutch colonists feelings towards locals (page 8)
Conclusion (page 8)
Bibliography (page 9)

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INTRODUCTION
Colonialism by the east indies company is very often not emphasized as it is, instead, the one
perpetrated by the west indies company. The phenomenon, that saw Indonesia practically
being under dutch dominance for circa 300 years (from 1677 to 1947), is very interesting and
yielded some mix between very tribal societies as they were in Indonesia and a very
technically advanced society as it was the dutch one at the time.
Apart from the incredible cultural melting pot that this phenomenon brought (with even
some linguistic sides that will be faced in the on-topic chapter), it makes us also face the
culturally relevant of the good savage so much emphasized by the colonial literature
and sometimes shadowed by the naturally subsequent xenofobia that comes once a brand new
environment is encountered by people that are not really ready to accept it.
Furthermore what is interesting is that, at least for the first part of it, the dutch control on the
archipelago was not aiming to contaminate the culture of the place. As we can see de facto in
the colonization of the west side of the globe too, dutch people were not really concerned
about spreading their lifestyle across the world, neither were they concerned about imposing
their religion to indigenous tribes: money makes the world go round, in this case literally,
thing that will be deepened in the on-topic chapter anyways.
Finally the colonialism done by Dutch people through the action of the East-Indies company
has been largely water-boarded during the years right after the decolonization, especially
during the last years of control that saw an outstanding indonesian nationalistic wave,
since the extirpation of the dutch control on the archipelago was not really as easy as one
could think.
Long story short the dutch colonization of the east indies was a phenomenon that embraced
a plenty of cultural factors and that changed and signed the countrys colonial history forever.

GEOGRAPHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO1


Indonesia is an archipelago located in the southern east part of the globe and consists of
70.000 different isles most of which are now not inhabited. The most important ones are
surely Java (from which dutch colonists were always managing their traffic and business) ,
Sumatra (often place in which war was fought amongst the tribes and the european occupiers,
especially in the zone of Aceh) together with Borneo (the biggest island in the archipelago,
currently split amongst Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei).
The land is full of volcanoes and obviously this yields the fertility of the island that was the
main reason why european colonists approached it. Its main products under the dutch
colonial era (1677-1945) were tobacco,sugar, gum, indigo, palm oil, coffee and tea;
obviously the framework left by european colonization is still on and even though the
agriculture does not constitute the main part of the GDP, it is still source of the most of the
exportations and involves still quite a considerable part of the workforce (44.5 %)2 .Its
richness in agricultural resources made it a perfect objective for european colonists who

1
encyclopaedia britannica online https://www.britannica.com/place/Indonesia#toc22833

2
wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia
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wanted to merely exploit the archipelago. Furthermore the impressive variety of ethnic
groups made it very easy to conquer following the norm of dividi et impera , very well
known from Roman times but that was successfully applied by Dutch in this instance. As we
can see indeed Indonesia for its plethora of islands and natural barriers presents the ideal
setting for ethnographic diversity; in plenty of cases even villages very close to one another
were completely untouched and unknown reciprocally. This created lots of tribal languages
and, as we can see even today, in Indonesia the majority of people still speaks his tribal
languages a native language and just then, in order to communicate with others, learns
Indonesian Malay (a cleaned up version of the language free from the most of the dutch
linguistic influence).
Indonesia is an utterly biodiverse country since its rainforest gives the perfect habitat to live
to lots of species.

DUTCH FIRST SETTLING AND COLONIZATION OF THE ARCHIPELAGO


Even though the Dutch people were not the first ones to discover Indonesia and not even the
first ones to start commercing, they had by far the most significant influence on this
archipelago amongst european countries.3
In circa the late 15th century century Portuguese merchants were already there trading, even
though they were not really motivated to explore more completely the isles and its
possibilities of profit since they were at time focusing their resources on more immediately
profitable tracks (such as slave or diamond trade in Africa). 4
In circa the late of the 16th century a huge interest sprung from the Dutch and British empire,
that via their respective east indies company started to settle in trades and commerces with
the aboriginal people.
Even though at the start there was some competition amongst european colonial powers to
have the islands, naught happened until the fall of the 17th century in which Jan Pieterszoon
Coen and his fellow governor successors Anthony van Diemen (163645) and Joan
Maetsuyker (165378) took basically control of the main island Batavia (now called Java)
and established their dominance forcing Portugueses in Malacca and Britons in Bengkulu to
succumb and to leave the archipelago. Formal colonization was stated in 1677 from the dutch
royal family and the administration on behalf of the royal family was assigned to the East
Indies Company.5
In that moment Dutch people had the monopoly on the main island of the archipelago that
was bearer of potentially infinite resources and richnesses. Theirs was not a direct leadership,
since they aimed to and obtained cooperation from the local princes, whose power would
have been untouched.
This was not a simple process though, dutch people, indeed, had to face a strong inner
resistance from some of the local rulers. The most relevant war with the local princes is the

3
encyclopaedia britannica online under Expansion of the European Influence
4
wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Portugal#Age_of_Discovery
5
encyclopaedia britannica online
https://www.britannica.com/place/Indonesia/Growth-and-impact-of-the-Dutch-East-India-Company#toc22813
4
so-called Baten war. This conflict started off in the 1620 when sultan Agung, ruler of the
Mataram empire, located in the southern part of Java, wanted to expand its lands and so went
colliding with the dutch influence territory. Even though the war concluded in favor of the
Dutch people, both fronts, once the war was over, stayed in wary caution from the strength of
the other side. Anyways the dispute was solved 50 years later with a bilateral agreement with
which the Pringer regions were ceded to the east indies company; this occurred due to various
internal succession wars once the sultan Agung died and so left a succession void. The further
administration was helped by dutch governors that put into control a very weak man,
Pakubuwono I, that gradually gave in its empire becoming basically a dutch puppet. Thence
dutch fully colonized Java in the early 18th century.
Once the dutch people utterly colonized Java and turned it into their headquarter of the
operations to be held in the archipelago, the importance of the european colonists started to
grow; no particular administrative constraints were applied to local nobility. Basically the
East Indies Company did not want to eradicate and dramatically change the administration of
the land, neither the balance or the status quo present. They just wanted to make money, in
doing so they essentially gave the princes the right to collect the taxes on behalf of the
Company so that no incredible and completely misleading change in the social pyramid
was made; everything was as it used to be, with the only difference that dutch people were
managing it all.6

ENGLISH-FRENCH PARENTHESIS (1795-1814)


At the start of the 19th century East Indies Company failed (1800) and had to shut down ;
Netherlands succumbed to the french army in the post-revolutionary wars and so the
dominance of the archipelago passed under french jurisdiction, that changed the name of the
land from batavian republic to new dutch kingdom. Under the french managing it was
experienced a centralization of the power and a development in the condition of
infrastructures in Java. Herman Willem Daendels was one of the most important governors
in this sense since it built roads (of which one of the chief ones was the so-called Grand
Postal Road that connected for the first time the western and the eastern part of Java),
improved internal administration of Java and strengthened its defences: a real colonization
was starting, under the french administration an actual penetration and change in the ways
things were done was experienced.[5]
The zone involved in the construction of this Grand Postal Road by the French included some
area of the Prince Diponegro, who was really upset with the european administration for not
having chosen him as next sultan of Yogakarta, a principality of the island; thus building a
huge road in his territory did not seem the best strategical move since it was assessed as the
casus belli of the so-called Java War (1825-1830) that saw an exhausting military
campaign from Diponegro prince essentially based on the guerrilla technique. The war was
seen by the locals and by the prince himself as a holy war, de facto the dutch influence was

6
encyclopaedia britannica online
https://www.britannica.com/place/Indonesia/Growth-and-impact-of-the-Dutch-East-India-Company#toc22813

5
going too beyond their control and so this deed of rebellion against european colonists was
seen as legitimated by Allah; aside from this no dutch was muslim and so this colonization,
that was actually solely driven by the money god, was seen as a gradual attempt to convert
the archipelago to their faith. Dutch here still applied the precept that made them successful
beforehand, id est dividi et impera. Peasants were promised lower taxes and so due to this
strategy of buying off the resistance, the dutch army managed to make Diponegro succumb
after five years of land-burning war (in the sense that the strategy applied by both the lines
was to completely annihilate the food and water resources of the enemy, forcing him to
surrender eventually).
Diponegro was seized in 1830, during the negotiations and was exiled in the Celebs.7
In 1811 Java passed under english rule and specifically under the lieutenant Raffles rule.
The lieutenant had a past as student of Malay language and indonesian culture. He redesigned
utterly the administrative structure of Java: every piece of land was now of the government
and peasants had to pay a rent tax to it. This yielded an obvious centralization of the whole
thing. [5]

DUTCH SECOND COLONIZATION PERIOD (1815-1947)


Once the dutch administration got back Indonesia in 1815, due to the succumbing of
Napoleone, it started with decentralizing the power, not putting it under so much
bureaucratization as the French and the Britons did. It essentially had some influence on the
local leaders, that seconded in every action or decision they took.
This dichotomy and this impromptu decentralization of the power led to some attrites.
Padri war (1821-1837) is one example of that. Islamic leaders (called Padris) and local
customary law (also called Adat) leaders, found themselves in a war to decide what law to
actually follow: whether the one of the european colonizers or the one of Islam. Dutch won
the war and their concern grew for the administration in Sumatra.[5]
The progressive dutch crave for the control of more and more lands got also colliding with
the Aceh territory in north Sumatra, Dutch army seized the palace of the sultan, this made
clear right away their dominance in the area in 1873. Even though a resolution was found
forthwith, the war went on in the countryside until 1904, characterized by a the guerrilla
technique, with ad-lib raids in dutch and acehtian military headquarters. The ignorance of the
land played an important role in favor of the acehtian army that could surprise dutch people
in the dense tropical forest.8
For what regards the economic system applied on the archipelago by the dutch there were
various ones starting from the so-called Culture System (Cultuurstelsel) proposed by van
Den Bosch. It stated how local villages had to pay a rent tax for their agricultural activity in
the archipelago. The amount of resources given to the dutch for exportation was one fifth of
the whole production. The real news here was that villages were the ones which were taxed
and not local producers individually. Every taxation quota was collected by local regents

7
http://home.iae.nl/users/arcengel/NedIndie/diponegoroengels.htm
8
Encyclopaedia britannica online https://www.britannica.com/event/Acehnese-War

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that soon ended having a lot of power, abusing the local villages and asking them even more
in order to gain more profit.[5]
The Culture System gave its fruits and in less than a decade Indonesia was constituting one
third of the whole income of the Netherlands.
Anyhow the real twist came when there was the reform of the 1870 that enabled private
europeans entrepreneurs to buy land either from locals or from the dutch government, in case
the land was not yet occupied. This reform was really wanted by the more liberal side of the
dutch society that was not happy with the exclusivity of a restricted group of people to exploit
the richness of a land that now was more important than ever.
This increased the economy of Indonesia tenfold and brought dutch people to move to
Indonesia; once they arrived they also were happy about it and did not want to leave soon.
This dutch immigration wave brought to the extension of the cities and created a whole
new indonesian societal system based on a caste racially organized, in which at the top were
european colonists and at the bottom locals.
The reclusion of the locals to just humble positions in the pyramid scale and the
impossibility to make their way out of that yielded sharp criticism especially amongst dutch
intellectuals of the time (van Deventer spoke of a debt of honour or Ereschuld that dutch
had towards Indonesia9). All the protests brought to the ethical policy(applied in 1901) in
the colony. It aimed to heighten the status of the locals and to create a society in which the
western and the eastern influences could blend. This meant literacy teaching to the locals as
well as institution of dutch schools for them. Anyhow this policy had quite a bland effect
since the resources that were given could not satisfy the goals set. The only repercussion it
had on the life of indonesian people was the literacy rate that boosted to the 6% of the
population; obviously it also gave some help in the sense of a brand new group of educated
indonesians that would have had an incredible effect in the decolonization deed.
Nationalism raised in Indonesia in the early 20th century. Various were the parties and the
groups that were present; just to name some : BUDI UTOMO, SAREKAT and INDISCHE
PARTIJ.
This nationalistic feel eventually, perpetrated and grown during the periods of the WWI and
the WWII brought to the Indonesian independence in 1945, formally recognized by the
Netherlands in 1949.10

DUTCH INFLUENCE ON THE MALAY LANGUAGE


During the period of dutch colonization of the archipelago Malay was the lingua franca of
it. Dutch were taught Malay in order to communicate with the locals, it would have been too
expensive to do the contrary, given also the low will and intellectual possibility of indonesian
indigenous inhabitants. The dutch language was definitely the lite language and was spoken
by a minority of people, even after the ethical policy.
Obviously dutch language influenced largely Malay language and even after the
dedutchificationof the language, that happened when Sukarno became the leader of

9
wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Theodor_van_Deventer (under early political carreer)
10
Netherlands in a nutshell page 90.
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Indonesia, lots of loanwords are still used today in the everyday spoken Indonesian (a variant
of Malay) as well as in the very technical fields of law and medicine in which almost every
term used is dutch.11
Furthermore words as cigarette are referred to as rokok (from the dutch roken) and
risk is referred to as risiko (from the dutch risico)12; it can still also be found somewhere
in the indonesian cities on old signs dutch spelling system graphemes, like: oe, tj and so on.13
In Indonesia dutch learning was eradicated from the school system in 1950. So in Indonesia
at the moment it can actually be found some dutch speaker amongst the older generation.

DUTCH COLONISTS FEELINGS TOWARDS LOCALS 14


Dutch colonists were very eager to help and to give a hand to the locals. It is reported of
dutch soldiers that went on their own to islands completely out of the aims of the dutch crown
just to bring food and medical assistance. Some even got back to Indonesia once the
occupation was over. Others were simply very fascinated by their lifestyle and were really
eager to learn from these people.
Obviously a lot of this testimonies were brought up since they were positive and dutch after
their horrific behaviour there, especially during the painful war for the independence, wanted
to show that, instead they always had good relationships with the locals. Finally the sources
are inevitably biased by the dutch propaganda.

CONCLUSION
We can see how the colonization of Indonesia left a huge scar on the country, basically
super-specializing its economy and making it dependant on a monocultural agricultural
system that is, also environmentally speaking, unsustainable.
As long as we can state that it brought progress to the country we should really wonder what
was the cost of it. Furthermore for the vast part of the colonization, it did not aim to any
developing of the life condition of the indigenous people and actually instilled social
inequality even in tribal societies that still had not known the collective burden of capitalism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

11
as stated by Danu Adityia, current indonesian doctor, in here :
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-many-Indonesians-speak-Dutch

12
wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_loanwords_in_Malay

13
as stated by Regita Hikmatuz Zakia in here
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-many-Indonesians-speak-Dutch
14
This part was all taken from the egodocument study of the scholar Michel Staplers called Dutch veterans and
their views of the local population of Indonesia and the enemy 1945-1950: an egodocument study of individual
Dutch veterans attitudes issued by the university of Utrecht and findable on academia.edu
8
The realization of this essay took as sources for its content:

wikipedia.com
encyclopaedia britannica online
http://home.iae.nl/users/arcengel/index.html , website held by Richard Engelfriet
Netherlands in a nutshell, Frits van Oostrom, Hubert Slings , published in 2011.
The forum quora.com
Dutch veterans and their views of the local population of Indonesia and the enemy
1945-1950: an egodocument study of individual Dutch veterans attitudes, Micheal
Staplers, University of Utrecht, found in academia.edu

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