Arson in the Archipelago
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Arson in the Archipelago Burning and destruction by Dutch armed forces during the Dutch-Indonesian war 1945-1949 MA Thesis Colonial and Global History, Leiden University Mischa Frenks Oude Vest 55a 2312 XS Leiden Tel: 0623341137 Email: [email protected] Student nr.: 0447455 Supervisor: Dr. T.W. Brocades Zaalberg Second reader: Prof. dr. B. Schoenmaker 20 ECTS 06-12-2019 Contents1 Contents ...................................................................................................................... 1 Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 4 Historiography ......................................................................................................... 7 Concepts and terminology...................................................................................... 13 Methodology .......................................................................................................... 16 Layout of the chapters ............................................................................................ 18 Chapter 1 A genealogy of arson and its restraints (1815-1949) ........................... 20 The ‘pacification’ of the Dutch East Indies ........................................................... 21 The laws of war and the VPTL .............................................................................. 26 The Dutch-Indonesian war 1945-1949................................................................... 29 Restraints on arson during the Dutch-Indonesian war 1945-1949 ......................... 33 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 37 Chapter 2 Arson during the ‘Zuid-Celebes affair’ (1946-1947) .......................... 38 Zuid-Celebes .......................................................................................................... 41 Arson during the ‘Zuid-Celebes affair’ .................................................................. 43 Photos from the Kavelaars Collection.................................................................... 50 ‘Massacre in Macasser’ .......................................................................................... 52 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 57 Chapter 3 Arson in the diaries of the 1st Division ‘7 December’ in West-Java (1947-1949) .............................................................................................................................. 58 Diaries .................................................................................................................... 59 West-Java ............................................................................................................... 61 Archives and diaries compared .............................................................................. 65 1 Photo Titelpage Armed Marines run through a burning kampong in Soerabaja, Java. Who set the houses on fire is unclear. 1946-06-22, photo by H.A. Wilmar, Mariniersbrigade. Via: NIMH Beeldbank, objectnummer 2174-0259 <https://nimh-beeldbank.defensie.nl> visited on 28-09-2019. 1 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 77 Chapter 4 Arson in the Riouw Residency (1949) .................................................. 78 Military necessity ................................................................................................... 80 Riouw Residency ................................................................................................... 81 The Soengei Loear case ......................................................................................... 83 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 91 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 92 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 97 Archival sources ..................................................................................................... 97 Printed primary sources........................................................................................ 101 Literature .............................................................................................................. 102 Glossary: Abbreviations and foreign terms ......................................................... 106 2 Acknowledgments From the tactics of the VOC in the seventeenth century to those of the Dutch colonial armed forces in the twentieth century has been quite a step. The war of decolonization is such a complicated conflict that it has indeed been beneficial to participate in the course research seminar ‘The decolonization war in Indonesia, 1945-1950’ last semester. My internship at the project ‘Comparing the wars of decolonization’ part of the larger research program ‘Independence, decolonization, violence and war in Indonesia, 1945-1950’ has made my Master studies far more exciting and fun than only participating at university could have ever been. This experience provided me with a better insight in colonialism and colonial wars through some very dedicated, interesting and knowledgeable people. Therefore I want to thank everyone involved in the project, which number too many people to name individually here. The internship and seminar were valuable but also made for a very busy semester, thus when the summer started there was still a significant amount of work that had to be done for this thesis. Five months of uninterrupted work has now finally completed it. My gratitude goes out to Thijs Brocades Zaalberg, who was both my internship supervisor and my thesis supervisor and provided me with the idea for this thesis and guided me along the way. He also arranged the access to the Nederlands Instituut voor Militaire Historie (NIMH) ‘diary database’, for which I thank Rémy Limpach and Tico Onderwater and everyone else at the NIMH who worked on the database. I would also like to thank Kees van Dooren for his valuable comments on my English. Especially, I want to thank my family and friends for their support and for providing the necessary distraction, while being understanding when my focus had to be on my thesis. This thesis is dedicated to my parents, without their patience and support this would have never been possible. I want to thank my mother for having the trust in me to bring it to an end, and my father for all his advice and help throughout my studies. Mischa Frenks Leiden, October 2019 3 Introduction During the Dutch-Indonesian war (1945-1949) arson and destruction can be seen as a permanent part of the Dutch colonial politics of violence aimed at deterrence and collective punishment.2 Thus concludes Dutch/Swiss historian Rémy Limpach in his book The burning kampongs of General Spoor on ‘extreme violence’ during this war. Despite the title, ‘extreme violence’ in general, rather than the use of fire in particular, is the main theme of the book. Only a small part of the book is explicitly dedicated to arson by the Dutch. 3 Nonetheless throughout this book, and in significant other publications on this war, arson is a recurring theme. Before returning to the rest of the historiography and the main research question there will be a brief introduction to the Dutch-Indonesian war, of which there will be a more detailed account in the first chapter. After the Japanese capitulation on the 15th of August 1945 Indonesian nationalist leaders Soekarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed the Republic of Indonesia on August 17th. At this point the Dutch had no military presence in their former colony, as most Europeans had been confined to camps by the Japanese during World War 2. British troops of the Allied South East Asia Command (SEAC) under Lord Louis Mountbatten were made responsible for the temporary governance after Japanese capitulation. However, their presence was far too small for the changed situation, and the violence of the bersiap period soon began. The violence was directed at all ethnic groups associated with Dutch colonial rule, while Indonesian groups also fought amongst themselves. The English left in the second half of 1946 and by then the Dutch government had rebuilt part of their former colonial forces, the Koninklijk Nederlands-Indisch Leger (Royal Netherlands Indies Army) (KNIL), and were expanding their troops with men from the Netherlands.4 Four years of war followed during which the Dutch tried to reclaim their former colony, largely because of their interest in the economic benefits and the international stature that had come with it. It was the largest military operation ever undertaken by The Netherlands at a point in time when the country was only just freed from German occupation itself.5 In total the Dutch mobilised over 200.000 men and the war turned into a grim counter- 2 R. Limpach, De brandende kampongs van Generaal Spoor (Amsterdam 2016) 439. 3 Ibidem, 433-439. 4 G. Oostindie, I. Hoogenboom and J. Verwey, ‘The decolonization war in Indonesia, 1945-1949: War crimes in Dutch veterans’ egodocuments’, War in History 25:2 (2018) 254-276 there 256.