From hero to criminal and the other way round: De Kock/Diponegoro and Van Mook/Soekarno

 Concluding his great work on rise and fall of Dutch colonialism, Bossenbroek writes that 'in the 21st century heroes of colonialism like  General De Kock and Governor-General Van Mook once were considered as heroes in their country, The Netherlands, but now they are blamed as criminals. On the other side, also in Dutch perspective, Diponegoro and Soekarno are now seen as great fighters for independence of their country. That is the inevitable fate of writing (and reading) history.

Writing now about the second part of the book by Bossenbroek, the period 1925-1950 (pp. 329-682), I feel it as a strange exercise. The outcome of the historical struggle is clear: the Dutch did not like to allow and acknowledge independence for the Indonesians, but the final result is clear: independence recognised by the international community, finally also accepted by the Dutch. Many smaller aspects in this history were not yet known and they are mentioned, elucidated here. On 1 and 2 December 1930 Soekarno defended his political work in a famous speech in court: Indonesia menggugat! (= Indonesia accuses, Dutch translation Indonesië klaagt aan.) The Dutch translation has on its front page the harsh general Van Heutz with a number of coffins and a prison showing the fate of his enemies. This was published in 1931 by a Dutch Socialist Party! Bossenbroek writes in a vivid style, but has no images or pictures in his book.

Colijn is in this book the personification of the dream of Dutch politicians opposing Indonesian independence. The Indonesian organization, strongly defending contnuation of Dutch presence was the Vaderlandsche Club. Governor General De Jonge (1931-6): 'we have ruled here for 300 years and will continue this for another 300 years'. They receive also much attention, besides the Indonesian protagonists for independence, as well as some Dutch supporters. The anti-hero here is Hubertus van Mook, high official from 1920-1942 and Lieutenant Governor General 1945-8: he started as a progressive man, willing to give Indonesians more responsibility. But he remained someone who wanted to remain the deciding leader. He was the architect of the idea of a federal Indonesia, with strong states in Borneo and East Indonesia.

Hatta, Sjahrir are here sometimes depicted as the 'rivals' of Soekarno (501-2), but very few attention is given to opposition from Muslim side (Kartosuwiryo, Darul Islam in West Java) and the Communist uprising in Madiun, 1948 comes out of nothing (and leads to nothing!).

Australia is in 1945 the strongest supporter for Indonesian Independence. The British were also willing to recognise Soekarno, until General Mallaby was  shot in Surabaya by pemuda (p. 564), followed by the killing of British pilots and Gurkan/Indian army in Bekasi.

Quite much attention is here given to Nasution: from his education (at a KNIL military academy under Dutch supervision) to the strongest military man under Sudirman, leading the Siliwangi division. At many places in this book we see developments that could have directed towards different developments in the future, but the study of history cannot do much with suggestions like 'what if..',  Bossenbroek manages to keep his book clear  and leading towards understanding how the fight and war between the Dutch and the Indonesians was determined by the strong will for independence on the Indonesian side and the strong support finally from the UN and the USA.

The 2d 'police action' or overall attack on the Republic in Java of 19 December 1948 is mentioned on p. 646-653, It mentions that Soekarno and Hatta had promised to flee from the capital of Yogyakarta to the mountains and join the guerilla fight against the Dutch. Soekarno and Hatta did not run away, but in fact were taken prisnoer to the island ofBangka. They are followed here in some detail, but it is not mentioned, that some six ministers fled to the mountains and lived for six months the life of guerilla warriors. Because of my own interest I only mention here the Catholic Minister Kasimo (Catholics in Independent Indonesia, p. 160). In this way no history is complete and all have their preference, in the case of Bossenbroek very much information is about the negotiations between the Dutch and the Americans.

A personalized and more dramatic history of Indonesia: Martin Bossenbroek

Besides the two books mentioned in December, a third book has appeared: De Wraak van Dipenogeoro (=The Revenge of Diponegoro), by Martin Bossenbroek (Amsterdam: Atheneum, 2020, 798 pp.) On the cover of the book it is written that Bossenbroek 'has brought the writing of history on a higher level with his book on the Boer war in South Africa (about 1900-1902), which sold 80,000 copies in the Netherlands and was translated into English and Afrikaans. What is a 'higher level'?  Only in higher number of people buying this book? In this new book Bossenbroek has on pages 19-20 an analysis of Dutch historiography especially at Leiden University (with the most eminent example  in Cees Fasseur) of a neutral, nearly indifferent style of writing history. They did not take position in the debate about the meaning of its course, did not write about the ethics and traditions of the period. Different from Multatuli and Alfred Birney (De tolk van Java) this Leiden tradition declared cruelty as an exception, something that 'also' happened in history. 

Bossenbroek wrote a 'short history' of Indonesia in two acts: first Diponegoro and General Hendrik Merkus de Kock as the two most important figures of the Java War (1820-1825) and then he switches to the struggle for an independent Indonesia with Huib van Mook and Soekarno as the two leading figures for the period 1925-1950. For him this is the beginning and the end of the Dutch East Indies.

The tiger of the picture on the cover is the Dutch side, the buffaloe is Indonesia, on a hugh painting by Raden Saleh (12 m2!). With Diponegoro fighting against the Dutch true colonialism has started (therefore we should not talk about the Java War, but the Diponegoro War). The photograph is from a painting by Raden Saleh only discovered in 2007 in a Dutch royal palace, sold in 2013 by the younger generation of the Oranje Royal family to the national gallery of Singapore.

Bossenbroek does not give us the full story of the struggle of Dipenegoro and Soekarno. In the first 325 pages much space is given to De  Kock and his family, friends: much about Raffles, Dutch politics. Much space is given to the colonial policy of King William I (1813-1840) who did not want to spend money to the colonies, but instead they should give money in return, they were to be seen as an investment. Only through the Cultuurstelsel, the forced production of agricultural products like sugar, coffee, indigo, for the international market this plan worked. Diponegoro did not like to live in the palace, the kraton, but ina more religious context. Therefore his ultimate ideal was an Islamic society under his leadership. During the war he called himself Sultan Abdulhamid. The ideal of De Kock has not become clear: just a reliable military leader?

Bossenbroek makes easy reading, but his emphasis on personal anecdotes, does not give us enough information to come close to the psychology of the major persons. As to the first part I found S. van Praag (Onrust op Java) much more relevant for the personal history of Diponegoro (and of course the writings of Merle Ricklefs and the 900 pages book by Peter Carey). The various Dutch people are pictured with sharp contrast: Resident Smissaert only as lazy, not really interested in his job; Huib Nahuys as a smart man, full of energy, mostly for his own profit. De Kock as a man with much discipline, patient, not really sentimental about the many deaths he caused through his actions, also not really a believer in the new order he had to create in Central Java. Finally: this is more interesting reading, but I am not sure about the higher level of historiography claimed here.

Amsterdam and Slavery: also in Asia

During the last months at least three important books have appeared on the history of Indonesia. I will later write some words on the comprehensive and rather literary works of Van Reybrouck and Bossenbroek. All three books under discussion start with (quite negative) judgments about the past. Of course, there is an opinion that academic study of history should explain how a development grew, how it must be explained against the background of its own time, not as seen by modern, critical observers some centuries later. That is value-free writing of history. It seems that there is a tendency, where ethical values of the 21 century may play a role as well. This is definitely true for this book on Slavery in East and West: the Amsterdam Research, published by Pepijn Bradon, Guno Jones, Nancy Jouwe and Matthias van Rossum in Amsterdam, Spectrum, 2020, 448pp. The book was ordered by the city council of Amsterdam, in preparation for  public apology to be expressed in 2021 for the active role people and institutions in Amsterdam had in support of the absolutely despicable institution and practice of slave-making, slave-trade and related matters. In 38 chapters here, besides introduction and conclusion, more than 40 authors write some kind of indictment of past aspects of Amsterdam history.

The book is part of the long process of growing consciousness about the global practice of slave-making and Dutch participation in it. Most studies in this field are related to the Dutch part of the trade in slaves in the Atlantic area: African people, taken slave by raids and wars in West Africa who were brought to the Caribbean and areas of North and South America, where the Dutch town on the island of Curacao and its colony of Surinam played their roles, where plantations after the 1670s until the early 1860s worked with slaves.

People are seldom absolutely free: they work for other people in order to receive salaries, they worked because they were in debt, but the most drastic loss of self-control and freedom is seen where not only labour can be asked and ordered, but where human bodies and persons are sold as if they are things: that is the ethical and philosophical anger behind this book. Pages 24-25 give all kind of definitions of slavery.

In the town of Amsterdam few real slaves were found, but institutions like the United East India Company (VOC) and the West India Company (WIC) were responsible for the practice of slavery. Matthias van Rossum (chapter 1: on the VOC) has a short review of the easy adaptation of the Dutch VOC traders in societies of Asia, where slaves were part of transport and trade. As early as 1603 Cornelis de Houtman published a Malay-Dutch dictionary with words like slave (hamba) and 'to catch people' (tawan orang), while the word mardeka was used for free persons, who were not slaves. The nutmeg culture on the Banda Islands was served by slaves, after Jan Pieterszoon Coen had killed nearly the full original population in a holocaust of 1621 (p. 58). Wim Manuhutu wrote about Amsterdam (called here Mokum) and the Moluccas, where the VOC defended a monopoly on the production and trade of cloves. In the 19th century in Java the cultuurstelsel was common, a system of obligation for villages to produce specific products (sugar, indigo,tea, coffee) for the world market and where some kind of slavery became part of the system (forced labour up to 200 days per year). There was for many time also a debate about freedom of human beings and the necessity to abolish slavery. Nowadays there is a plea for a society of memory, resulting in monuments, books like this, moral and even financial recompensation.

Multatuli as a Catholic (for some days? months?)

 Eduard Douwes Dekker, better known as Multatuli (1820-1887) is best for his novel Max Havelaar (1860) about a colonial official in the period 1840-1855 who was not corrupt, who defended the rights of poor people against the Dutch colonial system, but also against the native Javanese feudal rulers. He is generally considered as the most prominent Dutch author, at least for the 19th century. Besides the great novel about the basic evil of the colonial system, he wrote theatre plays, essays on many subjects (Ideas) and even more letters. The Complete Works/Volledige Werken count 25 volumes, each of some 800 pages! After being against colonialism, he also was the first famous, self-confident and aggressive atheist of the Netherlands, fighting religion in many of his pages. However, there was a development in this personality and even a short 'Roman Catholic period'. 

He was born in a Mennonite (anabaptist) family, where baptism of children was not the practice.To become member of the religious community was a personal choice. It was quite common to be baptised at the age of 18 or even later. Although Multatuli was educated in a pious Mennonite family, he never was baptised in this church. His father was a captain on a boat sailing to Indonesia and at the age of 18 he arrived in Batavia where he became a minor official at the finance ministry of the colony. The young man here fell in love with a Catholic girl, Caroline Versteegh, who probably was in a boarding school in the colonial capital. Her father worked in a plantation, 30 km south of Semarang. It would be impossible at that time to marry the Catholic girl, without converting to Catholicism and so we may understand that Eduard Douwes Dekker (later better known as Multatuli) was baptised on Saturday 28 August 1841 in the chapel of the government hospital of Batavia (by lack of a proper church or even Cathedral). The father of Caroline, however, did not take this conversion serious: Multatuli was fond of fighting and gambling, had serious financial debts and showed lack of discipline in some of his duties. The marriage never was effectuated.

There is an interesting article on the contacts of Multatuli with Prefect Apostolic Joannes Scholten (1797-1865). In mid-1841 Multatuli showed much sympathy for this 'gentle and nice person' who was already in bad health. During the time Scholten suffered of typhus, the young official Douwes Dekker took care for him, watched him at his bed. Also several letters of the correspondance between the two have been saved. As late as the early 1870s, thirty years after their meetings in Batavia, Multatuli wrote four nice and emotional pages in his Ideas (Volledige Werken VI:243-246), in which he praised Scholten as the brave and helping army chapain during the Java War. - There is a special journal Over Multatuli, where Wilfried Dierick wrote an interesting article 'Een 'roomsch' intermezzo' (vol 17:1986, 28-41). While reading this (also through the  summary in the biography of 2002 by Dick van der Meulen), I saw again that my three volumes on Catholics in Indonesia, 1808-2010 have very little information about the European and Eurasian Catholics in the colony. I concentrated on the start of the great Indonesian group of Catholics, although they were until 1920 still a minority! So,  this may be seen as a small correction to my earlier research on Catholics in Indonesia.

Indonesia: colonialism and decolonisation according to David Van Reybrouck

The Belgian historian, general journalist, and literator, David Van Reybrouck, is best known through his great book on Congo (2010). It was partly written on documentation, but for more than 50% based on interviews with living people: oral history, anecdotes and small personal stories picture the colonial history of the country which began in the 1880s. Van Reybrouck also was the co-author of the two books by Morocco-Belgian Mohamed El Bachiri, whose wife was killed by an attack by Muslim terrorists in Brussels on 22 March 2016 (A Jihad of Love; The Odyssee of Mohamed).
After five years of research he now has published a book of 600 pages which concentrates on the rise and development of the colonialism in Indonesia from 1600-1942 and the difficult process of the revolutionary war between 1945-1949 after which the Netherlands finally gave up its colonial rule. The period 1945-1949 fills about half the book. Reybrouck is quite rude about the Dutch personnel during the VOC period, during the colonial state, and also about the present opinions of Dutch people. Only six percent of the population now is negative about the colonial past and 26% would prefer to 'own' overseas parts in the country. This is much higher than found among citizens of France or the UK, the two largest former colonial states. The Dutch were crude, severe, had a wrong understanding of the Indonesians, especially their wish to follow the national aspirations of Sukarno and his movement since the 1920s. After the Japanese rule there were ample occasions for a smooth transition of power and end a war that cost about 200.000 lives on the side of the Indonesians, but the Dutch were obstinate and only American interventions and threat to stop economic cooperation made an end to their efforts in 1949.

Although the title of the book only refers to the period 1945-1949, it has a much broader picture of Indonesian history. About the subject of revolution, Van Reybrouck stresses that the global role of Indonesia was important, even leading. It was the first Asian country to claim and reach independence, even before India and Pakistan. In 1955 it became the leader (at the Bandung Conference) of the Third World Movement. As to the earlier history it is clear that the Dutch presence in the VOC never was a peaceful trading company: it brought an army with it, and used it. Through the genocide of the population of the Banda Islands and the implementation of the monopoly on spices in the hongi inspections, where all clove trees outside the island of Ambon were cut. After 1700 the cooking in France and many European countries changed: from pepper and other eastern spices to European ones and so the export of food changed to coffee, tea, cacao, sugar, while indigo became important for the colour of clothes. In this way economy and colonial policy changed too. I am still in the first chapters of the book, but this new presentation of colonialism and its end, extremely well written in a lively style, will be important for the general attitude towards Indonesian and Dutch colonial history.

The dubious abuse of blasphemy

On 16 October this year, a French teacher in a secondary school in Paris was killed by a young man of Chech offspring. The main reason was that he had showed a cartoon of an Arab man with a turban, with a bomb. Apparently it was thought that this was not just the image of an extremist, but of the Prophet Muhammad. There were many reactions in Europe, also in the Netherlands. Clearly, the victim of the killing was a defender of free speech. But among Dutch Muslims a protest started on the internet with a list asking that in the Netherlands a law should defend the Muslim prophet against blasphemy. More than 150.000 people signed this proposal and a debate in the media and also in the parliament was held pro and contra this movement. Who was the victim? The Prophet Muhammad for the showing of an angry and violent Arab man?  Or rather the teacher Pathy in France and victims of the man who killed some people in Austria, close to a Jewish Synagoge?

From the examples of Pakistan we know that aggressive defence of the honour of the Pophet and against any expression that can be labelled blasphemy may cause tension and also violence between religious communities. After the return of HRS, Habib Rizieq Shihab in Jakarta after 3,5 years of exile in Mecca, this issue has now began in Indonesia too.

After the return of Rizieq in Jakarta on 10 November, people apparently had problems to deal with the agenda of this 'firebrand' as he is labelled by some. The chiefs of police of Central and West Jakarta have been replaced because  HRS did not obey the rules for social distance due in the time of the corona epidemic. But Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan paid a courtesy rule to this unruly citizen (because he needs his support in order to become president at the next elections of 2023?) Baswedan and the host were wearing the required masks here. During this courtesy call the rules were followed! HRS also went with a large following to the Puncak area on 12 November to open a new pesantren of his 'movement'. 14-15 November HRS celebrated maulid and the marriage of a son in Petamburan. For this marriage the mayorof Central Jakarta helped with some facilities and was thereupon dismissed from his function by governor Anies Baswedan.What else will follow? During this trip to Puncak there was a lady who expressed her negative opinion about Rizieq ans she was calleda 'whore'by the Imam besar of Jakarta and said: "If the police fail to process (the blasphemy against him), then don't blame the Muslims when a head is found in the streets..." (source: Jakarta Post, 26 November 2020). Apparently, accusation of blasphemy can create all kind of self-appointed victims and will never work as a healing or peace-creating factor.

A new Introduction to the Qur'an from Edinburgh

In the 1970s and 1980s there were two  basic books on the Qur'an in European academic studies: the reprint of the book by Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorans and the English (published by Edinburg University Press) by William Montgomery Watt, Bell's Introduction to the Qur'an. The latter book has a strange title, because only a small part is the original work by Richard Bell, and most of it by his student, Montgomery Watt. The basic idea of Watt was about the changing society in Mecca: from a closed group, around powerful tribal leaders, to an open trading society of individuals. This new society was in need of new ethics: no longer the pride of people about their tribe, but the individual persons earning money, who should learn how to be benevolent towards the poor in a society, where no longer the tribal chief took responsibility for the poor and weak. The ethical renewal of Muhammad had to do with the call to the rich who should care for the poor.

Then we had the book by Patricia Crone on the Meccan trade as small and not important on the global scale. And the whole idea of the changing society in need of new ethics disappeared. This great vision of Watt even is no longer mentioned in this book. I also missed the Abraham-theory of Snouck Hurgonje: that only in the later Meccan (perhaps) and in de early Medina period Abraham was identified with Arab culture. although sura 2 receives ample discussion (97-104) and the new vision on Abraham is rightly seen as 'a climactic conclusion to the preceding polemic against Jews and Christians' (103)

Edinburg University Press has now published a new book on the Qur'an: the book by Bell and Watt is only mentioned once in a negative way. On p. 87 the two authors are quoted as champions for a fragmented Qur'an with many short passages and virtually never a whole sura as a literary unit. Sinai, educated in the literary tradition of Angelika Neuwirth, is a firm defender of the sura as a literary unit.  In the summary of the doctrine the new perspective of Meccan society as individual traders is also not mentioned. Now the eschatological symbols are related to the sermons of Ephrem and Jacob of Serugh: "Syriac homilies are redolent of the Qur'an in a considerable number of respects: they criticise man's excessive 'love' of material possessions, his miserliness, and his insatiable desire 'to have more'; they draw on themes of social criticism enshrined in the Hebrew Bible, such as the demand to protect orphans and the poor or the condemnation of false measures (Q 83:1-3); they follow Matthew 6:5-6 in censuring ostentious praying (Q 107:6); and they ascribe a special salvific significance to almsgiving. Furthermore, the early Qur'anic endorsement of vigils is highly reminiscent of the prayer regimen of Christan monks.' (166-7). Remains the question: is it necessary to write about similar, quite obvious ideas between the Christian Bible and the Qur'an in relation to preachers living 100 or even 300 years before Muhammad at a distance of some 2000 kilometer?

The revolutionary ideas of John Wansbrough in the 1970s are firmly rejected: the Qur'an was finished at least between 630-650, with the many manuscripts from San'a.  There is a Meccan period (even clearly discernable in three period, identical to Nöldeke's) and a Medina period, with many ritual and social rules, militancy, but no clear periods or temporal divisions. Problematic in Qur'an interpretation is the lack of local and personal data: as if it is all sermons, a literary style where also the informative parts are lacking, because the believers are considered as knowledgeable. Sinai does not talk about literary beauty of the text, after all it is an academic book. Definitely very readible and covering anything we would like to have it now.

I am now thinking about rewriting the small book from 2002: De Korte Hoofdstukken van de Koran, in fact a commentary on sura 78-114 of the Qur'an, known as Juz 'm Amma. It is interesting to read the new commentaries. Sinai is a fascinating and honest author, who can raise and feed respect for the Qur'an.