Dutch Royal couple in Jakarta: no apology for bad illusions

The Dutch King Willem Alexander and Queen Maxima are today in Jakarta for a lunch with President Jokowi in Bogor. The newspapers bring the news that Alexander has asked forgiveness and spoke about apology for the extreme violence by the Dutch against the young Indonesian Republic in 1945-1949. This was the first time that such excuses were uttered. Then King repeated his conviction that 1945 was the year of Indepence of Indonesia and he expressed his congratulations for the 75th anniversary of Independence this year. But it was still not an overall excuse for the warfare, the military actions against Indonesian Independence. The Dutch cherished in 1945-9 an impossible colonial illusion about the need for Indonesians to be steered, instructed and led by the Dutch administration in order to reach adulthood as a state. The colonial dream was continued, notwithstanding the fact that the Netherlands had lost independence between 1940 and 1945 and recently had received freedom again through help of American, Canadian, British, French and Polish soldiers.
Not everybody in the Netherlands was happy with this royal statement. Eurasians claimed that they had suffered much violence from Indonesian fighters for independence. Others saw this excuse for extreme violence as not enough.

Klaas van Berkel was today also in the media. He retired as professor of modern history in Groningen. His latest book is given the title: Een en al illusies (Only illusions) because he considerd the study of culture as a study of its illusions, dreams, impossible goals. Some illusions are functional: they may stimulate people to reach at least part of their ideals. But other ideals are only ways to cover up bad practices.
Karl Marx wrote about religion as the opium of the poor, the soothening product to create dreams. Jan van Baal, governor of colonial administration in Papua and anthropologist wrote about the three dreams: art, sport and religion. The colonial dream is rather an ideology, a system of thinking or political and social manipulation to sell bad practice overseas. Nevertheless, Professor van Berkel defined illusion as bouwsteen van de beschaving, illusion as the cornerstone of civilisation.