TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON WAR
History is mostly written by the victors, often leaving doubts and questions about whether what we have learned about the past is true
Change Size
History is mostly written by the victors, often leaving doubts and questions about whether what we have learned about the past is true.
In the history of Indonesia and the Netherlands, the two nations fought in war from the era of medieval European colonization until the end of World War II.
The undeniable fact is that Indonesia came out victorious in its war against its former colonist, the Netherlands.
The decisive war that Indonesia won to claim its status as a free nation from the Netherlands was the one that took place from 1945 to 1949. This is the period in which the Netherlands launched a military operation to reclaim Indonesia after the latter proclaimed its independence on Aug. 17, 1945.
Being a victor of this war, the narration used by Indonesia in its history has always been delivered in the tone of patriotism and nationalism.
Since 1949, the year in which the Netherlands finally decided to recognize Indonesia’s sovereignty as a free independent state, Indonesian children learning about the history of the war against its former colonizer have been served a very black and white narrative – with Indonesia being the good side and the Netherlands being the bad imperialist.
On the other hand, the Netherlands, since losing the war, decided to completely forget about it and has been relatively silent in terms of discussing it in public.
Due to this, for decades the public has mostly only had one perspective on how the war was written in history and that is the narration of the victors.
Gert Oostindie (Courtesy of KITLV)
Histories of the war from the perspective of the Netherlands and its people have been a rarity but thankfully, a book titled Serdadu Belanda Di Indonesia 1945-1950 (Dutch Soldiers In Indonesia 1945-1950) written by Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) Director Gert Oostindie tries to fill this historical hole.
The book was originally published in the Netherlands and according to Oostindie, the response from Dutch society was very positive. Recently, publisher Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia translated the book into Indonesian and made it available for contemporary Indonesians who might be interested in new perspectives on the war.
“It is a puzzling question why my fellow historians in the Netherlands have not studied and have not tried to bring other perspectives on the declaration of war to their studies of Indonesia,” Oostindie, who has actually spent most of his career researching the history of South America countries, said during the launch of the Indonesian version of the book at Erasmus Huis in Jakarta.
Oostindie said the book would provide insight about why the Dutch government and Dutch people saw the declaration of war against Indonesia as the right thing to do in the beginning and how their perception and sentiment toward the decision changed following their defeat.
The book, Oostindie added, also takes a much more critical stance regarding the Dutch government’s political stance over casualties on the Indonesian side during its aggression toward a nation that had already declared its independence.
“This book provides the more critical perspective on how the Dutch government and army behaved during the war. There is far more openness today in Dutch society to talk about it,” Oostindie said.
“One very clear point has been the way the Dutch today think whether this war was right or not. The answer is very clear that the general sentiments think the war was on the wrong side of history.”
Historian Anhar Gonggong said the book, which was made based on letters and memoirs written by Dutch army veterans who were directly involved in the war, provided final closure to one of the darkest chapters in the relationship between Indonesia and the Netherlands.
“This book basically admits that the Netherlands, with its decision to declare war against an independent Indonesia, conducted war crimes,” Anhar said.
