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Who colonized Indonesia?

Southeast Asia — the powers that ruled Indonesia, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Indonesia?

The Netherlands. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) took control of the spice islands from 1602, the Dutch state governed the Netherlands East Indies from 1800, and Indonesia won recognised independence in December 1949 after a four-year war.

Indonesia was colonised by a corporation before it was colonised by a country. The VOC held sovereign powers — to wage war, mint coin and sign treaties — and used them at Banda in 1621 to exterminate a population for control of nutmeg.

Reference

Who ruled Indonesia, and when

before 1602
Majapahit, Mataram, Aceh and other polities
1602–1799
Dutch East India Company (VOC)
1800–1942
Netherlands East Indies
1942–1945
Japanese occupation
since 1945
Republic of Indonesia

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Netherlands, Japan (1942–45 occupation)
Independence
Declared 17 August 1945; recognised 27 December 1949
Longest single ruler
The VOC — a company — for nearly two centuries
Banda, 1621
A population of roughly 15,000 reduced to about 1,000
Dutch acknowledgement
The Netherlands accepted 1945 as the independence date only in 2005

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1621

    Banda massacre: the VOC destroys the population of the nutmeg islands.

  2. 1830

    Cultivation System forces peasants to grow export crops for the state.

  3. 1873–1904

    Aceh War, one of the longest colonial wars of the century.

  4. 1945

    Sukarno and Hatta declare independence.

  5. 1945–49

    Dutch 'police actions'; Rawagede and other massacres.

  6. 1949

    The Netherlands transfers sovereignty.

Context

What the record shows

State rule brought the Cultivation System, which required peasants to devote a fifth of their land to export crops, and ended with a war the Dutch called a police action and fought with executions and village burnings.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Indonesia?
The Netherlands — first through the Dutch East India Company from 1602, then as the Netherlands East Indies from 1800 until 1942.
How long were the Dutch in Indonesia?
About 350 years counting from the VOC's arrival, though direct territorial control over the whole archipelago was only completed in the early twentieth century.
When did Indonesia become independent?
Independence was declared on 17 August 1945 and recognised by the Netherlands on 27 December 1949.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Indonesia

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.