When then-Dutch prime minister J.P. Balkenende urged the Parliament in 2006 to recall the Golden Age of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), there was some indignant booing. “[We need] VOC mentality!” the PM replied angrily. That was a moment that fed into the narrative of the “pride and shame, emancipation and humiliation, hope and violence” of Dutch history, the Belgian historian David van Reybrouck wrote. The VOC, after all, was responsible for genocide there. Van Reybrouck’s new book Revolusi, Indonesie en het ontstaan van de moderne wereld (Revolution, Indonesia and the emergence of the modern world) has been widely praised in the Netherlands – much as his earlier work on the Congo. The book (637 pages) is an attempt to review Indonesian history by exploring how Dutch colonialism was more disastrous than other European powers elsew...