The Dutch East Indies was a colony of the Dutch Empire, established in 1800 when the Batavian Republic took control of the Dutch East India Company. In 1824, Dutch Malacca was ceded to Britain, and is now part of modern Malaysia, with most of the rest becoming Indonesia in August 1945. During the 19th century, Dutch forces fought a series of wars against indigenous states which greatly expanded the Dutch East Indies. Dutch rule reached its greatest territorial extent in the early 20th century with the occupation of Western New Guinea.
The colony contributed to Dutch global prominence in spice and cash crop trade in the 19th century, and coal and oil exploration in the 20th century.Booth, Anne, et al. Indonesian Economic History in the Dutch Colonial Era (1990), Ch 8 The colonial social order was rigidly racial with the Dutch elite living separately from but linked to their native subjects.R.B. Cribb and A. Kahin, p. 118 The term Indonesia was used for the geographical location after 1880. In the early 20th century, local intellectuals conceived Indonesia as a nation state, setting the stage for an independence movement.Robert Elson, The idea of Indonesia: A history (2008) pp 1–12
Japan's World War II occupation dismantled much of the Dutch colonial state and economy. Following the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945, Indonesian nationalist leaders Sukarno and Hatta declared independence, instigating the Indonesian National Revolution. The Dutch, aiming to re-establish control of the archipelago, responded by deploying roughly 220,000 troops, who fought a counterinsurgency campaign against Indonesian nationalists. The United States threatened to terminate financial aid for the Netherlands under the Marshall Plan if they did not agree to transfer sovereignty to Indonesia, leading to Dutch recognition of Indonesian sovereignty at the 1949 Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference. During the revolution and after Indonesian independence, almost all Dutch citizens repatriated to the Netherlands.
In 1962, the Dutch turned over their last possession in Southeast Asia, Dutch New Guinea (Western New Guinea), to Indonesia under the provisions of the New York Agreement. At that point, the entirety of the colony ceased to exist.
Etymology The word Indies comes from (Names for India). The original name Dutch Indies () was translated by the English as the Dutch East Indies, to keep it distinct from the Dutch West Indies. The name Dutch Indies is recorded in the Dutch East India Company's documents of the early 1620s.
Scholars writing in English use the terms Indië, Indies, the Dutch East Indies, the Netherlands Indies, and colonial Indonesia interchangeably.
History
Before the Dutch
At the time when Europeans arrived, the Indonesian archipelago supported various states, including commercially oriented coastal trading states and inland agrarian states (the most important were Srivijaya and Majapahit).Taylor (2003) Since centuries BCE the islands were part of migratory and commercial exchange within Southeast Asia, India, Arabian peninsula and east-Africa. From classical antiquity onwards the archipelago was also a major part of the global spice trade. For centuries Hindu-Buddhist civilizations were dominant; however, increasing trade links instigated the spread of Islam. By the 16th century, a large part of the archipelago was ruled under Islamic kingdoms, except Bali that retained a Hindu majority. Sultanates, city states, local kingdoms and tribes were all connected through trade, creating a mixed Hindu-Buddhist-Islamic culture, and Malay as a lingua franca throughout the region. The islands were known to the Europeans and were sporadically visited by expeditions such as that of Italians Marco Polo in 1292 and Odoric of Pordenone in 1321. The first Europeans to establish themselves in Indonesia were the Portuguese in 1512 who established a network of trading posts and fortresses throughout the region, including at the Spice Islands of the Maluku Islands. In 1580, Portugal formed a union with Spain, and therewith entered the war with the Dutch Republic.
Dutch East Indies Company rule
Following disruption of Dutch access to spices,Ricklefs (1991), p. 27 the first Dutch expedition set sail to reach the East Indies in 1595 to access spices directly from Asia. After many skirmishes and hardships, only one third of the original crew made it back to Holland and other Dutch expeditions soon followed. Recognising the potential of the East Indies trade, the Dutch government amalgamated the competing companies into the United East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC).
In March 1602, the VOC was granted a charter to wage war, build fortresses, and make treaties across Asia. A capital was established in Batavia (now Jakarta), which became the centre of the VOC's Asian trading network.Vickers (2005), p. 10 To their original monopolies on nutmeg, peppers, cloves and cinnamon, the company and later colonial administrations introduced non-indigenous cash crops like coffee, tea, cacao, tobacco, rubber, sugar and opium, and safeguarded their commercial interests by taking over surrounding territory. Smuggling, the ongoing expense of war, corruption, and mismanagement led to bankruptcy by the end of the 18th century. The company was formally dissolved in 1800 and its colonial possessions in the Indonesian archipelago (including much of Java, parts of Sumatra, much of Maluku, and the hinterlands of ports such as Makasar, Manado and Kupang) were nationalized under the Dutch Republic as the Dutch East Indies.Ricklefs (1991), p. 110; Vickers (2005), p. 10
Slavery
When the VOC arrived in the Indonesian archipelago, they started to use and expand upon the then-existing indigenous system of slavery. In certain places, slaves were used on plantations such as on the Maluku islands, namely the Banda islands where most of the local population had been deported or exterminated by the VOC to be replaced with slaves. Dutch slaves worked in agriculture, manufacturing, and services, but most were used as domestic servants including housemaids and houseboys, cooks, seamstresses, musicians, and concubines.
Slaves could be acquired through trade at indigenous slave markets or captured on raids. In certain cases, the VOC stirred up ethnic tensions between rivalling populations in the hope they could cheaply buy war captives at slave markets after the conflict. Slaves were transported from islands in Indonesia itself, or from other countries such as India and China. Estimates of the scale of the slave trade in the Dutch East Indies are scant, but it is suggested that around 1 million slaves were active during its peak in the 17th and 18th century.
Punishments for slaves could be extremely harsh— for instance, runaway slaves and their accomplices could be subject to whipping, chain gangs, or death. Other punishments included the cutting of hands, ears, breasts and noses, forms of scaphism, being burned alive and the breaking wheel.R. Baay(2021), Daar werd wat gruwelijks verricht: Slavernij in Nederlands-Indië, Athenaeum, 4de editie, page 13, 104, 109, 110,113 In theory, slave masters did not have free rein to punish their own slaves as they wished. Punishments of slaves had to be decided in court, and certain punishments could only be applied when the slave was found guilty in an official court case. In reality, however, abuse of slaves by their masters was rampant and often went unpunished. Beatings and whippings were a commonplace punishment for disobedient slaves. Rape of female slaves by their masters was a common occurrence as well, as these women and girls were obliged to provide sexual services for their masters. Refusing to do so could result in severe physical punishment.R. Baay(2021), Daar werd wat gruwelijks verricht: Slavernij in Nederlands-Indië, Athenaeum, 4de editie, Slavery and its excesses did not end with the bankruptcy of the VOC in 1798, but continued under Dutch state rule. Due to growing international criticism slavery was eventually abolished in the Dutch East Indies in 1860. In reality, this was mostly limited to the slaves present on Java and Madura, whose masters were financially compensated for the loss of their workforce. However, on many other islands where slave masters were more often indigenous rulers, little changed. The main reason for this was financial, as the Dutch state at that time did not want to spend the money necessary to free the slaves on the more distant islands. Another reason was to appease local rulers and to prevent political turmoil. Due to the lax policy of the Dutch state slavery persisted in parts of the Dutch East Indies well into the 20th century.
Dutch conquests
From the arrival of the first Dutch ships in the late 16th century, to the declaration of independence in 1945, Dutch control over the Indonesian archipelago was always tenuous. Although Java was dominated by the Dutch,Luc Nagtegaal, Riding the Dutch Tiger: The Dutch East Indies Company and the Northeast Coast of Java, 1680–1743 (1996) many areas remained independent throughout much of this time, including Aceh, Bali, Lombok and Borneo.* There were numerous wars and disturbances across the archipelago as various indigenous groups resisted efforts to establish Dutch hegemony, which weakened Dutch control and tied up its military forces. Piracy remained a problem until the mid-19th century. Finally, in the early 20th century, imperial dominance was extended across what was to become the territory of modern-day Indonesia.
In 1806, with the Netherlands under Imperial French domination, Emperor Napoleon I appointed his brother Louis Bonaparte to the Dutch throne, which led to the 1808 appointment of Marshal Herman Willem Daendels as Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. In 1811 Daendels was replaced by Governor-General Jan Willem Janssens, but shortly after his arrival, British forces occupied several Dutch East Indies ports including the Maluku Islands in 1810 and Java in 1811, leading to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles becoming Lieutenant Governor. Following Napoleon's defeat at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna, independent Dutch control was restored in 1816 on the basis of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814.Ricklefs (1991), pp. 111–114 The Commissioners-General of the Dutch East Indies reformed the public finances of the colony and drew up a new Regeringsreglement that would define the government of the colony for a century. Under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 the Dutch received the Kepaksian Pernong Sekala Brak and all British settlements in Sumatra while Britain received Dutch possessions in the Malay Peninsula and India as well as acknowledgement of British control over Singapore. The resulting borders between former British and Dutch possessions remain today between modern Malaysia and Indonesia.
Since the establishment of the VOC in the 17th century, the expansion of Dutch territory had been a business matter. Graaf van den Bosch's governor-generalship (1830–1835) confirmed profitability as the foundation of official policy, restricting its attention to Java, Sumatra and Bangka. However, from about 1840, Dutch national expansionism saw them wage a series of wars to enlarge and consolidate their possessions in the outer islands.Vickers (2005), p. 10; Ricklefs (1991), p. 131 Motivations included the protection of areas already held, the intervention of Dutch officials ambitious for glory or promotion, and the aim to establish Dutch claims throughout the archipelago to prevent intervention from other Western powers during the European push for colonial possessions.Ricklefs (1991), p. 131 As exploitation of Indonesian resources expanded off Java, most of the outer islands came under direct Dutch government control or influence.