The Collapse of a Colonial Society: The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War (review)

In the first week of March 1942, Japanese forces attacked and occupied the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. Dutch colonial power rapidly collapsed under the Japanese onslaught and a three-year occupation of the Indonesian archipelago began. This occupation ushered in the end of Dutch colonialism in Asia, although after the Japanese capitulation in 1945, the Dutch briefly returned to the Archipelago to fight the Indonesian freedom movement. This was to no avail, and by the end of 1949, Indonesia had become a free and independent republic.

This study deals with the effects of the Japanese occupation on the Dutch and on colonial society at large. It is a translation from the Dutch original. It forms part of the magnum opus of Dr. Louis de Jong (b. Amsterdam, 1914), probably the most famous living Dutch historian (and without doubt the most widely read). In 1955, Dr. De Jong was commissioned by the government to write a comprehensive history of the Second World War in the Netherlands and its colonies. Thirty five years later, in 1988, the author concluded what had become a gargantuan, impressive, widely admired series of books: thirteen parts published in twenty-seven volumes (15,000 pages). Part of this series are six volumes which deal with the Second World War (and its aftermath) in the Dutch colonies, mainly in Indonesia, published between 1984 and 1988. The present book contains a translation of six chapters taken from these volumes.

What is the topic of these chapters? The first gives a survey of what is called "the elimination of the Netherlands." It deals with the way in which the Japanese military authorities removed the Dutch, the Dutch language and all manifestations and symbols of the Dutch presence from the public domain and started to intern Dutch civilians. The second chapter deals with the—admittedly—small-scale resistance against Japanese rule. Then follows a chapter on the economic effect of Japanse rule on Indonesian society, more in particular with respect to the so-called romusha, Indonesian indigenous labourers who were recruited by the Japanese and so horribly treated that many hundreds of thousands of them died. In all, probably two and a half million Javanese died during the Japanese occupation. Two chapters deal with the internment camps for prisoners of war (the former colonial army, 42,000 persons in all) and for the European civilian population (ca. 100,000). Finally, a chapter is devoted to the Eur-Asian population which stayed out of the camps (160,000), but had to live under constant pressure and increasing poverty during the war years. In all, these chapters form a coherent and fascinating study which sheds much light on the bitter war years in Indonesia.

Why these chapters in particular, why were they selected? Are these chapters really still of interest to the reader after so many years in which new research has been done by Dutch and other historians and much new information has been produced? The argument for translating these chapters seems to me a convincing one. The publishers point to the absence of English-language studies about these events in particular. While many English-language studies exist about Indonesian nationalism and the struggle for freedom, no such a study exists for the years of occupation. And the second question must also be answered in the affirmative. De Jong's text solidly holds up; it is still the best general, comprehensive treatment of the war experiences of the Dutch and Eur-Asian population and of the Japanese internment camps for prisoners of war and civilians in the Netherlands Indies.

This book can be recommended to the reader who wants to get informed about the experiences of the Dutch and Eur-Asian (and to a small extent also of the indigenous population) of the Indonesian archipelago during...