Trying to live with history of Dutch colonial rule

Jim Schuurmans, The Netherlands

The VOC Dutch trade firm, is "a sore memory 400 years after" -- The Jakarta Post reported in March, nearly 200 years after the VOC was declared bankrupt according to Dutch law.

Four hundred years ago the Netherlands was fighting for its own independence against Spain, a war that lasted 80 years and that could only free half of the country, the other half nowadays being Belgium.

The reason for this war was freedom of religion. An agreement with the Pope had divided the world in two halves: One half would be Spanish if any new country was discovered, and the other half of the world would become Portuguese.

According to this agreement, Indonesia and Malaysia would be Portuguese and the Philippines would be Spanish. The Minahasa, in northern Sulawesi, was on the border and the population was so horrified by the atrocities of those Portuguese and Spanish, that they made an agreement with the VOC as an ally, not as a subdued area.

The independence war the Netherlands fought for its freedom of religion had a major consequence for Indonesia and Malaysia; because Islam could spread without any restrictions by the VOC or the Dutch government thereafter.

Meanwhile there are plenty of examples where the Dutch acted violently to establish or defend their trade contracts. Large numbers of victims were a result of this aggression in Maluku and still every Dutch student learns of murders, such as on the Banda Islands.

Still, how was it possible that a company of such a small country could conquer Indonesia? A return trip to and from both countries took one or two years, while technology in Indonesia and in the Netherlands were not too far away from each other. The building of homes, repair of sailing ships and manufacturing of guns, were all available technology in Indonesia.

But the VOC did not conquer Indonesians; they attacked right away any Portuguese or Spanish settlement of importance -- often with the support of Indonesian kings who wanted to get rid of them. Shortly thereafter, the Portuguese fortifications in particular were taken over together with trade. We should not blame those Indonesian kings that allowed such settlements to be built. In that period Java had hardly 2.5 million inhabitants and was as sparsely populated as Irian Jaya is now.

In Batavia, the Dutch were allowed to settle in an unhealthy swamp with the approval of the Sultan of Banten. The area was supervised by a Regent disliked by the Sultan. And then when the Dutch built their Batavia in the 17th century, they were attacked by Sultan Agung. This should be seen as an attack by a Javanese king on an area belonging to a Sundanese King. How did the Dutch win?

Historical records say the total number of inhabitants was only around 4,000 people, of which less than 600 were Dutch and the rest were Indonesians and Chinese. The army from Java was enormous but logistics were neglected. There were guns, but no food. A Javanese army just took the little food they could find.

But there was always another reason for fighting between the VOC and Indonesians. The major causes were the politics of expansion between the hundreds of local states. Always, the VOC was asked to participate in exchange for trade licenses. Such a war was only started when it promised to be profitable. Because a war is expensive, a Dutch governor that caused a financial loss, because of war, was always dismissed without pardon, sometimes even without notice.

At the end of the 18th century, Europe was in chaos, with the French Revolution, followed by the Napoleonic wars, going on all over the continent. The British occupied all Dutch settlements in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and of course Indonesia. The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands itself was occupied by Napoleon. The VOC was declared bankrupt in 1815. The Dutch government took over the depths and trading contracts, and colonialism begun.

In the same year the British left all the trade settlements, but not after smuggling clove and nutmeg seeds to their colonies, Zanzibar and Trinidad. After thousands of years, a monopoly was finished, and step by step Maluku became poor.

Since then the Dutch acted differently in Indonesia. After the chaos in Europe, Great Britain was the new colonial super power. Their takeover of Dutch settlements in Sri Lanka, India and Malaysia was quickly expanded to a Southeast Asian empire. The Netherlands also expanded and created the Netherlands East Indies. They did not want to give the British a second chance. Especially in Java and Sumatra, times were hard. Nobody would deny the suffering of the Indonesians and the exploitation, particularly of the farmers in Java and Sumatra.

By the end of the 19th century, the Dutch government started to realize this cruelty and ordered the colonial government to change their policy, and give the Indonesians more benefits from the money that was locally earned.

But Aceh, the powerful nation in North Sumatra that contested the Portuguese in Malacca, already had gained a guarantee of independence in the 17th century from the Dutch and the British in an "undercover" treaty. In the 19th century the U.S. developed a pepper trade with Aceh. This pepper was bought in Aceh and was sold in Europe.

In the second half of the 19th century, history reveals that at one point an American merchant ship was captured by Acehnese pirates. The American navy sent a navy ship to Aceh, and various coastal villages were destroyed by American firepower. At the end of that century the Americans bought the whole country of the Philippines from Spain. Now the Dutch and the British realized they had a rival in this part of the world.

The old independence agreement was deleted and the Aceh war was started by the Dutch and approved by the British Empire. At the end of the 19th century the Dutch occupied the Batak Lands. Such agreements between the Dutch and the British were also made for Bengkulu. The British handed over Bengkulu to the Dutch under the condition that they could remain in Singapore and that the Dutch would never hand over Bengkulu to a third party.

When Indonesia became internationally recognized in 1949 some British papers suggested that Great Britain could exercise a claim on Bengkulu.

So in the 18th and 19th century, colonialism was not easy to escape in certain parts of the world. If one power lost, another would come instead. For Indonesia it changed the map and created the fourth largest country in the world.

Maybe Indonesia can lose its "sore memory" of the VOC by identifying their potential and by remembering that the VOC officials only started a war when a trade contract was violated.

However, we can only live with history. The history of the VOC is entangled with Indonesian heritage. It is better to exploit it than to deny it. Take the Japanese who built a "VOC village" complete with a ship, or Australia, who built a "VOC ship" sailing to Europe via Indonesia. It would be a tourist attraction to transform Sunda Kelapa and its environment into a true VOC headquarters with duplicates of the original buildings.

Indonesians could also organize three phinisi (sailing ships) to travel to Amsterdam, just the other way around, to convince the world that Indonesia could have done the same in the 17th century.

The writer is a consultant who deals with Indonesian history as a personal interest. The National Committee to Defend Indonesia's Dignity (KNPMBI) comprising 10 non government organizations recently demanded that the Netherlands apologize for its rule and its "gross violation of human rights" towards Indonesians, particularly those after the proclamation of independence on Aug. 17, 1945.