En Volkenkunde 159 (2003), No: 1, Leiden, 135-161

G. Oostindie Squaring the circle; Commemorating the VOC after 400 years

In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 159 (2003), no: 1, Leiden, 135-161

This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access GERT J. OOSTINDIE Squaring the circle Commemorating the VOC after 400 years

In 2002, the Netherlands 'celebrated' the establishment, exactly four centuries before, of the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, East Indies Company). By pure coincidence, that same year a national monument in commemoration of the Atlantic slave trade and Dutch Caribbean slavery - in which the Dutch West Indische Compagnie (WIC, West Indies Company) was a key player - was inaugurated in Amsterdam. In both the celebration of the Dutch East Indies Company and the act of repentance regarding its West Indies counterpart, Queen Beatrix and the then Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok were conspicuously present.1

1 The official dates were 20 March and 1 July, respectively. This article was first presented in November 2002 as a paper at the Erasmushuis in Jakarta and for the Lembaga Adat/ Kebudayaan Toar Lumimuut Masyarakat Minahasa in Tondano. I owe thanks to the audiences at these occasions for their reactions, to the anonymous readers for the Bijdragen and to several colleagues who commented on a draft of this article: Taufik Abdullah, Sander Adelaar, Michiel Baud, Vincent Houben, Adrian B. Lapian, Remco Raben, Merle Ricklefs, Leslie Witz and, at KITLV, David Henley, Gerrit Knaap, Harry Poeze, Henk Schulte Nordholt, and Roger Tol. Enriq Hessing and Laura van Deelen of the Stichting Viering 400 jaar VOC kindly shared their criticism on this paper with me; we agreed to disagree on interpretation. After completing and circulating my first draft, 1 was presented with two other Dutch pieces on the VOC celebrations reflecting more or less the same concerns and criticism: Raben (2002) and Van Stipriaan and Bal (2002). There is a remarkable consensus in these papers and mine, perhaps underlining that the points made here are all too obvious. A very nuanced analysis of Dutch and Indonesian interpretations is provided by Lapian (2002). Peter Rietbergen (2002) provides a different perspective. Weary of 'political correctness' and a presumed widespread Dutch feeling of guilt about the colonial past, he rightly defends

GERT J. OOSTINDIE is director of the KITLV in Leiden and Professor of Caribbean Studies at Utrecht University. His research interests are history (particularly slavery and decolonization), international relations, and ethnicity. He published some twenty books in the Caribbean and Latin American Studies. His most recent English-language books are (with Inge Klinkers), Decolonising the Caribbean; Dutch policies in a comparative perspective, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003, and the edited volume Facing up to the past; Perspectives on the commemoration of slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe, Kingston: Randle/The Hague: Prince Claus Fund, 2001.

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Looking back on the festivities relating to the VOC which spanned over half a year, one may conclude that in spite of politely voiced objections against the whole idea of a 'celebration', the festive mood aimed for was maintained up to the end, in the Netherlands that is. In contrast, official reactions in Indonesia, once the prime operating area of the VOC, were dismissive, as were those in South Africa. The response in other states once touched by the company ranged from indifferent or at best lukewarm (India, China, Sri Lanka) to moderately interested among the two nations which can usefully incorporate VOC history in their own narrative of the national past (Taiwan, Japan). The whole project of a commemoration, let alone celebration, clearly remained a unilateral Dutch pursuit. One wonders whether this could, and should, have been otherwise. This question will be at the heart of my exposition. Behind it looms the larger question of how nations commemorate their past, somewhere between the extremes of a self-congratulatory splendid isolation and meaningless political correctness.

Nation-building and the representation of the past

The interpretation of the national past is a crucial ingredient in nation-building, and so is the subsequent education of all citizens in the canonical version of this history. History, it has been said, is built upon achievement, and indeed much of the rhetoric of the national past centres on glorious achievements, ever so many reasons for chauvinistic pride and evocations to keep that particular flame alive. Of course, achievement is not all, and in fact just as in individual lives, so in the trajectory of most nations disillusionment, disintegration, as well as defeat and humiliation by other forces and nations may figure. Such experiences need not necessarily undermine the concept of the nation. Thus, the feeling of past victimization might well be used to strengthen the sense of community, to foment revanchism or, conversely, to bequeath the nation with a touch of purity, a vulnerable absence of malice. Finally, and not very common at least until recently, there is the option of addressing the nation's past lapses from virtue in moralistic terms allowing for a national mea culpa - which, incidentally, may rebound full circle to self-

the commemoration as such. Yet in my view, what is at stake is not as much the legitimacy of 'commemoration', but rather of 'celebration'. Rietbergen seems rather eager to implicitly downplay problematic aspects of VOC and Dutch colonialism by references to the many faults committed by others, including the Indonesian rulers of yesterday and today. Very much to the point is his discussion of the increasingly predominant weight of the leisure industry and the mass media in all renderings of the past, including this one.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access Squaring the circle 137 congratulatory conclusions on the laudable humbleness of this great nation. Quite obviously, all of this defining of the nation through the representation of its past becomes infinitely more complicated once there is a genuine striving to come to terms across national boundaries on such phenomena as colonialism or warfare. How does the Netherlands fit in this picture? As a preliminary note, it may be useful to remind you that decades of educational reform and weari- ness of state-sponsored nation-building have not been particularly helpful to public historical awareness in the first place. Hence what is known and particularly not known by the general public is not primarily an expression of political or scholarly decisions on content. Knowledge and awareness of the national past in Dutch society simply does not run deep. This applies to a phenomenon such as the VOC as well. With this caveat in mind, the following observations seem pertinent. Not surprisingly, the forging of a Dutch nation in a long-winding and at times bloody war of secession from Spain, and the subsequent 'Golden' seventeenth century in which the emerging Dutch Republic shortly was the world's first hegemonic power, has long been the favourite epoch in Dutch historiography. Here there is ample achievement to be celebrated indeed, ranging from economic prosperity and international political prowess to cultural bloom and religious tolerance, from remarkable experiments in elite democratization to the successful integration of large groups of immigrants. This 'Golden' epoch was to remain a touchstone in the national memory. While the Netherlands was increasingly brought down to earth as a mere middle and eventually minor European power, this glorious episode would provide stuff for pride and inspiration as well as nostalgia up to the present. The colonial ventures in Asia figured prominently in that reckoning. As Johan Fabricius (1997:7) had it in his Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe, a 1923-adventure story on the early Dutch pursuits in Indonesia and still - if perhaps in its dying days now - a classic boys' book today, the adventures of these 'first courageous "Masters next to God" who with their valiant crew installed our authority in the [East] Indies' was definitely an example to emulate. While this 'Golden Age' produced a colonial empire still extant centuries later, the Netherlands plunged back to the status of a modest middle power in Europe. The Republic collapsed in the late eighteenth century and was succeeded after a French interregnum by the present Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Kingdom managed to stay outside of all European wars until 1940. Then, the Second World War produced a dividing line in Dutch national and colonial history, and would at the same time give fresh impetus to Dutch thinking about the nation's past and present. The German occupation ended a long period of peace and destroyed the illusion that Dutch neu- trality would again be respected as it had been throughout the nineteenth

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century and in the First World War. Five years of Nazi rule resulted in the deportation and extermination of over one hundred thousand Dutch Jews and an equal number of casualties and executions among the rest of the population - roughly equal numbers, but only 35,000 Jews survived the war, as against the great majority of the total Dutch population of nine million. Material damage was enormous. The Dutch government-in-exile in London stood before the impossible task of not only monitoring the developments in the occupied Netherlands, but also directing overseas affairs. The Japanese occupation of Indonesia in 1942 was the second devastating blow, even if the Dutch at the time did not yet foresee that this would be followed by the unilateral and irreversible declaration of Indonesian independence on 17 August 1945. Only the West Indian colonies of Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles would formally remain under Dutch rule during the war and long after. Arguably, the Nazi occupation became the central trope in post-war Dutch thinking about the nation. In the initial rendering of the war, both victimhood and heroic resistance were singled out: after the non-aggressive, neutral Dutch had been ruthlessly violated by the Germans, courageous nationals had dared to go underground and fight Nazi oppression.2 Only as time passed was the holocaust of the Jewish population placed more in the centre of memory, and were more critical questions put forward. After all, the Nazis had not encountered much resistance against the deportation of the Jews and actually little tangible protest against their rule in general - the courage to resist had clearly not been widespread. Gradually, and to a degree triggered by foreign scholarship, a far less heroic interpretation of the war years came ahead, and has perhaps already attained canonical status at least among the educated elites. It has even been argued that much of Dutch hegemonic rhetoric for relatively lenient migration policies and against xen- ophobia from the 1970s through the 1990s was inspired not only by a sense of justice, but also and perhaps even more so by a longing to belatedly make up for the failure to save the Jews during the war. All this, of course, does not refrain the general public - particularly during soccer matches - from indulging in anti-German commonplaces as if 'good' equalled the Dutch and 'bad' the Germans. In more general terms, one still observes a tendency towards moralizing in Dutch thinking about its place in

2 This moralizing interpretation of Dutch history during the Nazi occupation was embodied in the work of the officially designated national historian of this period, Louis de Jong. Interestingly, the parts on Dutch rule in Indonesia in his 27-volume work were highly critical of Dutch colonialism, and encountered fierce criticism among repatriates. Parts of his work on Indonesia have recently been published in English, but only those dealing with the period of the Japanese occupation. L. de Jong, The collapse of a colonial society; The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War, Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access Squaring the circle 139 the world which some interpret as sheer hypocrisy. Indonesians may think here of former Dutch minister Jan Pronk's heavy criticism on the Indonesian government after the 1991 killings in East Timor, in the view of the Soeharto regime a preposterous gesture coming from the mouth of a former colonizer.3 More recent, and in my view more telling examples of ambiguous, perhaps hypocrite Dutch concerns with morality are the controversies over the cre- dentials of the father of Maxima Zorreguieta, the chosen bride of the future Dutch king, and over the failed Dutchbat mission in Srebrenica in former Yugoslavia. In the first case, there were doubts about Mr. Zorreguieta's participation in the military junta of Argentina in the late 1970s and early 1980s and hence his, and eventually his daughter's, acceptability to the royal family and Dutch democracy. Well-taken doubts indeed, yet at times such doubts were translated into a public discourse which all too easily glossed over the fact that during the regime, neither politics nor business nor the general public in the Netherlands had seriously objected to the junta at all.4 Likewise, the 1995 failure of the Dutch UN battalion to fulfil the pledge to protect Bosnian Muslim refugees in Srebrenica against Serb aggression resulting in the horrible slaughter of 7,500 men was publicly deeply regretted. Yet in the end, and in spite of strong domestic criticism, until the publication of a very critical report in 2002 and perhaps even then, the Dutch government continued to attribute responsibility primarily to the aggressive Serbs, rather than to the Dutch troops who refrained from military action to defend the Bosnians. The latter absence of heroism, incidentally, reminds one of the revised version of Dutch 'resistance' during the Nazi occupation.5

Colonialism in the narrative of the Dutch past

The whole idea of an innocent and freedom-loving Netherlands being violated by a foreign aggressor, ultimately regaining its foot and indeed its

3 Pronk's position reminds me of the comment of a British reader of a draft of this paper on Dutch attitudes at large: 'These include on the positive side a sense of responsibility, obligation, and guilt, and on the negative side a pride and condescension which is often so deeply anchored as to be wholly unconscious, and to which Indonesians are extremely sensitive'. 4 In his study commissioned by the Dutch government on the subject, Baud (2001:175-9) argues against a simple transfer of Dutch moral criteria to the Argentine context; yet such cautious words were quickly lost in the public debates in the Netherlands. 5 Srebrenica; Reconstruction, background, consequences and analyses of the fall of a 'safe' area. Web version Amsterdam: NIOD 2002. Available on the website www.oorlogsdoc.knaw.nl of the NIOD which investigated the events at the behest of, again, the Dutch government. The Kok cabinet did resign in reaction to the conclusions of the report and particularly the renewed public indignation. Yet this seemed related less to the failure in Srebrenica itself than to the way all of this was handled in The Hague since.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access 140 Gert J. Oostindie habitual pragmatism and equilibrium may well seem preposterous from other points of view, and particularly from an Indonesian or more generally postcolonial perspective. I will shortly get back to this. Yet first a couple of general observations on Dutch colonial history and its place in Dutch public awareness should be made. Any rendering of basic facts about Dutch colonialism should begin with the observation that the Netherlands' Asian exploits were infinitely more important to the metropolis than its endeavours in the so-called New World, where the Dutch ended up with nothing but two consolation prizes, Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles. To give an idea of the contrasts in sheer size, in 1940 Indonesia had some seventy million inhabitants, the Netherlands almost nine millions. The two Dutch Caribbean colonies taken together housed a quarter of a million only, virtually all descendants from former colonizers and particularly African slaves and Indian and Javanese indentured labourers, all brought there by the Dutch. Indonesia was said to be the cork that kept the Dutch economy floating, while by that time for the Caribbean colonies it was mostly the other way around. The prospect of parting with Indonesia was the more abhorrent to most Dutch politicians, as this would imply to the Netherlands a humiliating degradation to a minor European country, one 'with the rank of Denmark'. In contrast, the posses- sion of two tiny Caribbean territories hardly added to the geopolitical clout and international status of the metropolis. An analysis of the cultural dimension of this equation discloses remarkable paradoxes. While for the Dutch the superiority of their own culture may have been beyond dispute, there was some genuine appreciation of elements of Indonesian 'high' culture. Caribbean popular culture in contrast was dismissed as backwards, Caribbean elite culture as a distorted version of metropolitan culture at best. While Indonesia did leave many traces in metropolitan culture and imagination, this was not the case for Caribbean culture, at least not until the mass migration since the 1970s. In contrast, it was in the Caribbean rather than in Asia that the Dutch themselves left a last- ing cultural impact and succeeded in creating populations strongly oriented towards the metropolis. It may be argued that the colonial past as such has never figured very prominently in Dutch thinking about the nation. But to the extent it has, colonial history was long virtually equated with the exploits in Asia and particularly Indonesia both in Dutch historiography and in public awareness. Here a Eurocentric perspective reigned unchallenged. 'Daar werd wat groots verricht', roughly, 'Something monumental was achieved there' reigned supreme and was easily taken all the way to the present form from Jan Pieterszoon Coen's seventeenth-century claim that something magnificent was being achieved in the Indies under his reign. It remains fascinating how, even during the war

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access Squaring the circle 141 and indeed in the directly following years of warfare over Indonesian independence, leading Dutch politicians and civil servants continued to reassure each other that their mission in the colony was far from over, and that they indeed thought most reasonable Indonesians were ready to admit this.6 In retrospect, it is precisely the failure to draw some obvious parallels between the German occupation of the Netherlands and the Dutch colonization of Indonesia and particularly the refusal to concede independence which strikes one today - with the unfair benefit of hindsight. Certainly, there is a world of theoretical and historical difference between Dutch colonialism in Indonesia and Nazi rule in the Netherlands. Yet if the Dutch emphasized their own victimhood, what about the Indonesians under their rule, and particularly their post-1945 military actions? And how to interpret the then popular Dutch equation of Soekarno to the domestic Nazi collaborator Mussert?7 Apparently, not only a lack of realism and appreciation of the strength of a pan-Indonesian nationalism, but equally an unwillingness to stand one's loss blinded many Dutch. Though much of this has been changed over the past decades, one still senses a propensity to downplay the sharp sides of Dutch colonialism and retain as much as possible of the exoticism and romanticism attached to this long episode in national history. Outside the ivory tower of Dutch scholarship, the outright military campaigns of the post-war years are often still euphemistically designated as 'police actions', war crimes as 'excesses' as if real war crimes were not in the Dutch repertoire, and so on.

6 See for example, Van den Doel 2000. The book Daar werd wat groots verricht was published in 1941, shortly after the Netherlands had been occupied by the Nazis. It seems likely that the self-congratulatory tone was not only a rethorical reminder of Coen's earlier claim, but also served to compensate somewhat for the recent humiliations at home. 7 There is a historical precedent. When in 1913 the Indonesian elites were invited to join in the festivities over the centenary of the liberation from Napoleon's French rule and the inauguration of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Indonesian intellectual R.M. Soewardi Soerjaningrat (1913:16) reacted with a fiercely sarcastic pamphlet, in Indonesian and Dutch, under the telling title 'If I were a Dutchman,...'. The brunt of his argument was that an Indonesian patriot could understand Dutch patriotism and thus the urge to celebrate this centenary precisely because he himself too longed to break away from alien rule - Dutch colonialism, in this case. He closed as follows: 'No, indeed, if I were a Dutchman, I never would want to celebrate such a jubilee in a country we rule. First concede freedom to that subjugated people, only then commemorate our own freedom.' Not surprisingly, the colonial government did not take his sarcastic indignation lightly. While there was no serious debate over his position, Soewardi was arrested for some time. Such chauvinistic myopia remains with us today. In 1998, the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, still on a voluntary basis part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, were invited to join in the celebrations marking the 150th year of the Constitution with its emphasis on individual rights and liberties. Apparently nobody in The Hague remembered that in 1848,. slavery still ruled in the Dutch Caribbean colonies. (Of course, slavery at the time was still legal in the Dutch East Indies as well.)

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So the picture has become far subtler than during the forties and fifties, yet ambivalence, to say the least, still characterizes Dutch thinking about the parting with Indonesia. The most striking case in point was given during Queen Beatrix' visit to the former colony in 1995. All warm and amicable words, yet the very timing of arrival, days after 17 August rather than shortly before as Jakarta had suggested, implied no explicit acknowledgement of 1945 rather than 1949 as the starting point of the Indonesian Republic.8 Lately, in the Netherlands, the demise of colonialism in Indonesia has mainly been a subject of debate between the state and repatriates, whose history in the Netherlands has been extensively documented by now (Bossenbroek 2001; Willems 2001). With one significant exception, these debates have only indirectly to do with Indonesia itself. The weight of the argument now is about Dutch responsibility for the misfortunes of Dutch citizens in the colony under the Japanese occupation and immediately after. Thus, often angry debates on The Hague's supposedly sluggish stance vis-a-vis Tokyo when it comes to demanding apologies and reparations; on reparations for losses incurred during the Japanese occupation and the subsequent warfare; on the reputedly cold welcome in the metropolis after repatriation, etcetera. All important issues liable to provoke tense emotions, yet hardly issues of importance to Indonesians today. The only issue in current Dutch debates which directly links the course of the decolonization process half a century ago to the contemporary state of affairs in both Indonesia and the Netherlands concerns the Moluccas. It is actually on this issue that The Hague has frequently felt itself torn between the diplomatic principle of non-interference and the pressure from Moluccan Dutchmen at home worrying about violence in their ancestors' islands. One observes that, ever since the spectacular and violent actions by militant Moluccan youth in the 1970s, Dutch priorities here have been with the careful handling of a domestic minority problem, not with exerting political pressure on Jakarta. What about the awareness of Dutch colonialism in the West Indies? It seems a long history of glossing over these chapters has recently come to an end. Mirroring their minor significance to the metropolis, for centuries the Caribbean colonies were virtually non-existent in Dutch historiography and public awareness. This only started to change in the last couple of decades, the major reason of course being the mass migration from Suriname and next also the Antilles to the Netherlands.9 The exodus not only alerted the Dutch

8 The conflict over New Guinea, in retrospect rather absurd, only served to worsen the bilateral relations in 1949-1962 and beyond. Here the prevailing Dutch version still seems to be that the blame is mainly with Indonesia, which after all failed to heed United Nations arbitrage. On Queen Beatrix' visit, see Houben (1997, 2000). 9 On Dutch Caribbean decolonization, including the exodus to the Netherlands, see Oostindie and Klinkers 2003.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access Squaring the circle 143 public to the existence of these Dutch creations in the Caribbean, but gradually also produced an outspoken Caribbean interest group perfectly capable to bring its own versions of history to the spotlight. Hence within the last five years, the transatlantic slave trade and slavery - neglected in history text books, silenced in public awareness - were transformed from a Caribbean j'accuse to a Dutch mea culpa and became canonized as the single defining phenomenon in the contemporary interpretation of Dutch West Indian history. This rare mea culpa version of history was literally given shape with the inauguration on 1 July 2002 of a monument in commemoration of slavery - almost 140 years after the official abolition of slavery in the Dutch West Indies, 1 July 1863. A worthy symbolic gesture indeed. One only hopes it will not nourish Dutch feelings of being an exemplary and thus leading self-critical nation.

Celebrating the VOC

Thus, the history of the Dutch West Indies Company is now being canonized under the header 'something gruesome was achieved there'. This is an aston- ishing contrast to the traditional version of Dutch history in the territory of its counterpart the East Indies Company, where 'something monumental was achieved' through which indeed the Netherlands became far more important than its own sheer size would have led one to expect. Serious scholarship today tends to have a sound disliking of moralizing and certainly of uncritically glorifying national exploits. Indeed it is difficult to find modern Dutch scholarly work still uncritically singing the praise of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia and particularly of the VOC. There might be little inclination to produce a similar mea culpa interpretation of colonial rule as has overnight become the official norm for West Indian history, yet uncritical chauvinist analysis has definitely gone out of fashion during the last decades. In this context, as I will try to demonstrate, the whole concept of a 'celebration of 400 years VOC' seems a remarkable regression, yet a regression that may stimulate potentially refreshing debates on the margins of political correctness.10 First, some facts. Virtually all activities around the VOC during 2002 were directly organized, financially supported or coordinated by the foundation Celebration 400 years VOC. Not a government agency as such, the foundation's overall budget of some 4.5 million Euros was mainly provided by the Dutch government and to a lesser extent by major Dutch companies active in Asia. President of the board was a Member of Parliament for one of the then coalition parties; the committee of recommendation comprised the

10 For a criticism of moralizing in recent Dutch scholarship of colonialism and decolonization, see De Beus 2001 and Meijer 1995.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access 144 Gert}. Oostindie presidents of the two Chambers of Dutch parliament, the Dutch National Bank and the Dutch employers' organization. At the official opening of the celebrations, Queen Beatrix, Crown Prince Willem Alexander, Prime Minister Wim Kok and many of his cabinet only added to the feeling that 'tout le The Hague' was happily part of the celebratory scene. In the Preface to the brochure presenting the foundation's objectives and the program for the year, its president, parliamentarian Enriq Hessing starts of on a rather cautionary tone. 'On 20 March 1602 the Unified East Indies Company (VOC) was established. This marks the beginning of the worldwide orientation of the Netherlands and a period of great economic and cultural flourishing. In 2002, this is 400 years ago. There is much interest to celebrate this in a festive way. Many activities are being organized in diverse sectors of society, such as government, the business community, and the educational system, the arts and sciences. The resulting program mirrors the significance the VOC has had for the Netherlands. This comprises international cooperation, interest in other cultures, entrepreneurialism, craftsmanship and innovation. The significance of these characteristics lies not only in the past, but also in the present and future. The brochure presents an overview of the activities that will take place in the Netherlands in 2002. It has become a richly varied program with elements of looking back and forward, contemplation, inspiration and cooperation. The shadow sides of the VOC will also be dealt with.' (Viering 2002:5.) Under the title 'What will we be celebrating?' the following page provides further explanation. Emphasis will be on the early period, ranging from 1595, the year of the first Dutch expedition to Asia, to 1620. The achievements of this early past will be celebrated: the uniting of the various previously com- peting Dutch maritime companies, the accomplishments of maritime tech- nology, the impact of the opening up of new trade networks for Dutch society at large. Again, passing reference is made to the 'shadow sides' which will 'obviously not be celebrated' but will be dealt with in education, scholarly meetings, exhibitions, and so on. As a closing remark, the significance of the VOC is located not simply in the past, but equally in the present and future. 'Hence within the framework of the celebration we will expressly emphasize the importance of international co-operation, entrepreneurialism, craftsmanship and innovation for the future of the Netherlands' (Viering 2002:7). Quite clearly, not simply pride in a glorious past but equally the intention to seize this opportunity to further trade with Asia and hence in a sense emulate the early successes of the VOC was a leading motive behind the whole celebratory effort. In fact, from personal experience I may state that as late as early 2001, the whole concept of 'shadow sides' was apparently new or at least not particularly welcome to the organizing foundation. Its board did since react open-mindedly to the urge not to turn a blind eye to the less than

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access Squaring the circle 145 glorious pages of this history, but not for a moment considered re-baptizing its own efforts to a more neutral commemoration rather than celebration. Late in 2001, the foundation's president Hessing still thought the celebration would not be controversial, particularly as this was a Dutch festivity, which would certainly not be imposed on other countries. Moreover, misgivings regarding a 'fashionable pondering over national guilt' lingered within the foundation.11 And in fact, the official commemoration on 20 March 2002 in the Ridderzaal, the same location where the VOC had been established four centuries before, was at least in intention as much solemn as celebratory, and certainly not an exercise in national moral questioning. The same goes for the more scholarly commemoration of the VOC in a series of four lectures presented to and subsequently published by Dutch parliament in a beautifully produced book under the telling title Roemrucht verleden, (Illustrious past).12 Meanwhile, schools were being provided by educational materials fully in tune with the celebratory intention, even if some attention was paid to the links between the early VOC exploits, violence and colonialism. Major museums as well as tiny ones all over the country mounted a vast array of exhibitions on the VOC, its exploits and the implications of Dutch-Asian trade for the metropolis. Stacks of books were being reprinted and published emphasizing anew the glory of an epoch that forever changed the face not only of the Netherlands, but of all countries involved. Somewhat in the margins of these celebratory exercises, there were occasional academic conferences and public debates - in which participating

11 NRC Handelsblad, 21-12-2001. At the request of and financed by the Stichting 400 jaar VOC, the KITLV hosted an information centre and website on the VOC. In the preliminary discussions, the foundation's leadership seemed slightly taken aback by our suggestion to broaden the perspective beyond the celebratory aspect. This attitude changed in the sense that the foundation eventually even subsidized debates organized both by the KITLV and by a fiercely anti-celebration platform in the spring of 2002. By that time, the foundation's president Hessing had become well versed in acknowledging the 'shadow sides' as well. 12 De Bruijn et al. 2002. In the Preface to the book P.J. Biesheuvel, chair of the parliamentarian committee on the VOC, carefully writes of 'commemoration' rather than 'celebration'. The three scholars J.R. de Bruijn, H. den Heijer and F. Gaastra contributing to the book discuss VOC history in 'neutral' terms, that is without mentioning 'shadow sides' whether as core business of the company or as excess. The closing chapter by prominent Dutch banker (and former academic) Alexander H.G. Rinnooy Kan, 'De VOC, een multinational avant la lettre' (De Bruijn et al. 2002: 71-85) does address such questions. Alongside praise for the VOC for being a vanguard capitalist enterprise, a pioneering innovator, high tech multinational, etcetera, he also emphasizes the company's lack of responsible behaviour. He then mentions violence and the 'murderous actions of Jan Pietersz. Coen'. 'Respect or even consideration for the fate of the inhabitants or nature was often lacking. [...] These dark sides of the VOC obviously do cast a shadow over the celebration of 400 years of the VOC His conclusion is only conditionally positive: there is every reason for admiration for the VOC's accomplishments and the example set for the future, but one cannot escape the fact that its strategies 'do not dovetail in all respects with our contemporary, ethical criteria' (De Bruijn et al. 2002:82-3).

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access 146 Gert}. Oostindie historians and other intellectuals usually tended to criticize the concept of celebration - and some demonstrations, mainly organized and supported by Dutchmen of Moluccan backgrounds.13 The media lent a sympathetic ear to the objections, and in fact many a newspaper devoted articles to the protests and commented against the celebratory mood of the whole endeavour. Yet what in the end prevailed was not the bitter (mainly to others) but rather the sweet (mainly to the Dutch). And so in my files I have the most diverse tokens of celebration, ranging from a 'VOC-arrangement' of the leading department store the Bijenkorf, the arrival from Sydney and subsequent tour through the Netherlands of the Duyfken, a replica of one of the first Dutch ships ever to reach as far as Indonesia and the first to make it to Australia, concerts and theatre performances inspired by the VOC and its times, and so forth. Now should all of this bother us? Perhaps much depends on whom we consider to be.'us'. I will come back to this. But first let me turn to the question how the whole concept of the celebration was received outside of the Netherlands, and particularly in Indonesia.

An Indonesian perspective

Again a preliminary statement is useful. While the Dutch have dominated West Indian history, this is hardly true for the former East Indies. Perhaps therefore the WIC is a far more delicate subject in the former Caribbean colonies than the VOC will ever be in Indonesia. So there is room for a lighter touch here. In fact, the Jakarta radio station Delta commented sarcastically rather than angry that as the Dutch soccer team had failed to qualify for the 2002 World Championships in Seoul and Tokyo, the Dutch apparently needed something else to feel proud of - and had therefore opted for celebrating the VOC instead.14 Likewise, a bar and restaurant called the 'VOC/Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie' was established in Jakarta some years ago without any protest. Very few Indonesians would know what 'VOC' once meant in the first place. Yet the project to establish a restaurant called the 'WIC/West- Indische Compagnie' in the former Dutch colony of Curasao - still a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands today - was cancelled because of fierce local protest. The restaurant is there to be sure, but the name was changed in order not to give offence.15

13 Keppy 2001:8-9. Also www.blimbing.nl and www.dlm.org/voc. Newspapers covered the protests against the welcoming of the Duyfken, protests which however were hardly radical. 14 Personal communication Professor Taufik Abdullah, 14-10-2002. 15 This observation underlines the remarks made by Van Stipriaan and Bal (2002) who refer in this context to the WIC cafe only, without having had previous knowledge of its VOC counterpart.

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But obviously we need to dig deeper. In a recently published collection of essays, Indonesian historiography, the renowned Professor Sartono Kartodirdjo, a dean of his country's historians, emphasizes time and again the importance of the uncovering, re-interpretation and dissemination of national history for the process of nation building. 'National history', he writes, 'functioning as "the memory" of a nation is of primary importance to preserve its identity and personality' (Sartono Kartodirdjo 2001:63). Throughout the book, based on essays initially written in the 1990s, just prior to the breakdown of the Orde Baru, one also senses the importance he attributes to history as a narrative to counter centrifugal tendencies within the Indonesian state. Sartono emphatically underlines the need for a nationalist, Indonesia-centric historiography which should not fall into the trap of jingoism and chauvinism. For him, writing national history 'is in actual fact nothing but a form of legiti- mizing the present existence of the Indonesian people as a nation' (Sartono Kartodirdjo 2001:15). Throughout Indonesian historiography, we find harsh statements regarding the colonial period, during which 'the natives were deprived not only of their human dignity but also of their natural identity'. Thus, by 1945, '[h]aving lived under colonial rule for more than two centuries, the Indonesian peo- ples had been negated and denied a dignified existence on their native soil. Through being oppressed and underprivileged, they had lost their identity.'16 In the post-independence pursuit of identity and an appropriate national history, Sartono writes, 'the colonial historiography became quite obsolete'. He in fact approvingly quotes the Dutch economic historian Van Leur who since the 1930s and particularly in his pioneering Indonesian trade and society had criticized colonial historiography as 'observed from the deck of the ship, the ramparts of the fortress, the high galley of the trading house'. In his own words again, it would be 'senseless to start the modern period in Indonesian history with the arrival of the first Dutch ships at the harbour of Banten' (Sartono Kartodirdjo 2001:26, 31, 69; Van Leur 1955). Clearly the perspective from which history, and in this particular case the early history of the VOC in Indonesia, is recounted is a highly sensitive one. In a survey of 'writings dealing with various kinds of struggles against the colonial ruler', Sartono (2001:26) concludes that 'the abundance of this genre of history bears witness to the urgent need to restore the nation's dignity and personality, which was negated for so long during colonial domination'. Once we understand this perspective, it comes as no surprise that official

16 Sartono Kartodirdjo 2001:55, 67 respectively. The 'more than two centuries' refer to the post-VOC Tax Neerlandica period (1800-1942)' (Sartono Kartodirdjo 2001:81). Yet throughout the book Sartono emphasizes the continuities from the VOC period to the Pax Neerlandica period.

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Indonesian reactions to the whole concept of a celebration of the VOC ranged from suspicious to, eventually, utterly dismissive. No matter how often the Dutch organizing foundation emphasized that it was only celebrating the pioneering first decades, certainly not the later colonial state, Jakarta demonstrated little appreciation of such subtleties. As 20 March was nearing, the Indonesian ambassador to the Netherlands, Abdul Irsan, increasingly dis- approved in public of the whole celebratory concept, squarely denouncing the advent of the VOC as the start of colonialism in Indonesian. Of course, he said, Indonesia could not accept the invitation 'to celebrate its own colonisation'.17 His embassy actually published a Dutch-language booklet on the VOC that in no uncertain terms characterized the company as the beginnings of a colonization which had oppressed the Indonesians for centuries. Yet unfortunately, few of the contributions to this book demonstrates a willingness to venture beyond VOC bashing and an uneven criticism of Dutch colonialism.18 Incidentally, as early as 1930 Soekarno (1931:15) had denounced the VOC in similar terms.19 Meanwhile, in Indonesia there were attempts to mobilize for protests not only against the VOC celebrations, but also against subsequent phases of colonialism and particularly Dutch warfare in 1945-1949. The rather radical messages published on the Internet quoted among other sources various Dutch newspapers, thus suggesting interesting links within a transnational Indonesian community. Here we find fierce criticism not only of Dutch colonialism ('they stole our riches, enslaved the oppressed people and committed massive, cruel, inhuman slaughters'), but equally of Dutch hypocrisy: while the Dutch, so the message reads, are celebrating the VOC which wrought havoc on the Indonesian people, they still condemn the Germans for the Nazi occupation. Yet really, writes Batara Hutagalung, the Indonesian people should demand apologies from the Dutch for colonialism with all of its violations of human rights.20 Much to Dutch embarrassment, the Indonesian government in the end decided to boycott the official celebrations in the Netherlands, and instructed its embassies not to participate in any of the celebratory activities whatsoever. The diplomatic game was played with some inconsistency though. Declining

17 Andryanto and Maryasno (2001:117-9) and various interviews in the Dutch media. While praising the generally good relations between Indonesia and the Netherlands, Abdul Irsan actually spoke of a few remaining 'pebblestones or psychological obstacles resulting from the earlier history'. 18 De V.O.C. in de lndonesische archipel: handeldrijven en koloniseren. Gepubliceerd door de Ambassade van de Republiek Indonesia, Den Haag. Jakarta: Balai Pustaka (Persero), 2002. 19 'Greed for gain was the essence of the VOC in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, greed for gain [was] the cause of the race for colonial possessions in the nineteenth century, after modern capitalism was established in Europe and America.'. 20 'Arogansi bekas penjajah', [email protected], March 2002.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access Squaring the circle 149 the invitation accepted earlier at the last minute, the Indonesian ambassador to The Hague was conspicuously absent at the celebration in the Ridderzaal on 20 March. Yet one member of the Indonesian cabinet was present (though not in an official capacity), and by delivering a speech helped to soften the by then inescapable conclusion that this was a one-sided Dutch celebration with colonial overtones. In his speech Minister Kwik Kian Gie greeted the Queen, the Prime-Minister and the many other high-placed persons on behalf of his President Megawati Sukarnoputri, thus symbolically undermining the 'boycott'. At the same time he did not spare his audience his conclusion that while the VOC may have introduced important innovations to Asia and particularly Indonesia, it also presented the first phase of an oppressive colonial state which for centuries had refused Indonesians the right to shape their own destiny.21 The same week, the Indonesian Ministry of Culture and Tourism held a seminar during which renowned historians such as Anhar Gonggong and R.Z. Leirissa voiced similar opinions.22 By then South Africa too had decided not to participate in any of the VOC celebrations. Inevitably, the establishment of the VOC 400 years ago and the landing of Jan van Riebeeck at the Cape and its subsequent colonization 350 years ago are seen there as part and parcel of the creation of a colonial state which reached its nadir under the apartheid system - again, little room for a celebration and mainly disinterest: 'There has been a hush or even a silence'.23 In a sense, then, only those Asian countries which are in the less compromising position to regard the VOC as a mere passer-by in a distant past have demonstrated, even if no positive engagement, at least less qualms over this quintessentially Dutch effort at celebration.24

21 Speech Kwik Kian Gie, The Hague, Ridderzaal, 20-3-2002. See also virtually all Dutch newspapers of that week for coverage and criticism of the issues at stake. 22 NRC Handelsblad, 23-3-2002. 23 The Dutch Embassy in South Africa actually requested local historians to conduct a survey regarding prevailing opinions - if any - in the country regarding the VOC and Van Riebeeck. This survey eventually conducted in Cape Town among both specialists and a wider public confirmed the little interest in the VOC. Van Riebeeck commands slightly more attention but (much in contrast to the celebrations in 1952 under the apartheid system) little sympathy. See Leslie Witz with Mbulelo Mrubata, 'An opportunity or a problem? A survey of perceptions of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and Jan Van Riebeeck in contemporary South Africa' [unpublished paper commissioned by the Dutch Embassy to South Africa]. The paper opens with the line 'There has been a hush or even a silence'. Conversation with Witz, 10 September 2002. See also Worden 2001:48-54. E-mail communication by Worden to the author, 8-8-2002. NRC Handelsblad, 4-4-2002. 24 My conclusion, partly based on information provided by the relevant Dutch embassies. Reports from both India (in spite of the activities of a Dutch-sponsored foundation '1602-2002. 400 Years Indo-Dutch Partnership/Sharing the Future') and Japan testify to very little interest in the VOC jubilee. See also the series of impressions published in early 2002 regarding the legacies and commemoration of the VOC in NRC Handelsblad: India (27-1-2002), Jakarta (23-3- 2002), Malakka (29-3-2002), South Africa (4-4-2002), and China (12-4-2002).

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Naivete, arrogance and diplomacy

Looking back, one cannot escape the conclusion that the effort to celebrate the VOC as a precursor of innovative entrepreneurship was bound to clash, not only with critical groups in the Netherlands itself, but particularly with the Asian and African countries involved. These clashes were never violent, particularly because of the reticence among the contesters. Anyway, the apparent insufficient anticipation of the ill feelings encountered testifies to a mixture of naivete, perhaps fuelled by Eurocentric arrogance, and most certainly to a lack of diplomatic tact. This comes the more as a surprise bearing in mind that the concept of celebrating was partly inspired by the longing to engage in public relations in favour of the contemporary Dutch heirs to 'the world's first ever multinational company'. Irony has it that while the official emphasis was on early Dutch internationalism, the actual 'celebrations' reflected contemporary parochialism instead. As a Dutch diplomat confidentially remarked, 'The way the Netherlands has handled the whole VOC thing begs many questions about empathy'. Leading newspapers expressed such misgivings in their editorials as well.25 Interestingly, the Dutch government itself started to cautiously disengage itself from the concept of a celebration. During a visit to Indonesia in late 2001, Dutch State Secretary for Culture Rick van der Ploeg already alluded to the shadow sides of the VOC history, stating that 'many of the beautiful canal houses of Amsterdam were built from the wealth of this part of the world'.26 By early 2002, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs advised its embassies not to participate in 'celebrations' of the VOC. In fact, under the title 'Forum Dialog Indonesia Belanda', the Dutch Embassy in Jakarta co-organized joint Indonesian-Dutch seminars in which the VOC and subsequent colonial history was the subject of historical analysis as well as criticism, also by the Dutch participants. Thus in September 2002, a two-day seminar on the VOC was held in Jakarta by an interesting combination of parties: the National Committee for the Defense of the Dignity of the Indonesian People, an organization with an explicit and radical anti-colonial programme, the Indonesian Society of Historians, and the Dutch Embassy which also provided financial means.

25 Raben 2002. On the eve of the solemn commemoration in the Ridderzaal, the major leftist newspaper, de Volkskrant (19-3-2002), suggested that the Dutch had apparently said farewell to a period in which the colonial past could only be spoken of with shame. That the resulting tone of celebration had entailed the Indonesian refusal to participate was only logical, the newspaper commented, and a stain on the whole project. The liberal NRC Handelsblad (19-3-2002) likewise deplored the absence of Indonesia, the more so 'as the VOC has meant a lot to Indonesia as well'. Nevertheless it reminded its readership of the context of those early VOC endeavours, in which the trade in spices was linked to 'robbery, murder, repression, war, cruelty against native populations and indifference to its own personnel'. 26 Quoted in The Jakarta Post, 10-11-2001.

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The stated objective of the two-day seminar was a critical evaluation of the VOC, as its title suggests: 'The Two Faces of the World's First Multinational Company'. 'Celebration' clearly was not the flavour of the day.27 In a sense, then, one might be inclined to conclude that the whole project was simply not well thought-out at its origins in The Hague. Yet this is too easy. At the same time the VOC celebrations were being organized, the Dutch government was expressing its 'deep remorse' for the nation's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in its Caribbean colonies, and pre- paring for the inauguration of a monument to commemorate this disgraceful past.28 Apparently there was a strong Caribbean pressure for and no longer any pressing objections against a thorough revision of the place of the West Indies Company in Dutch history. Why this contrast to the VOC? First, I would suggest, because the political clout of the Caribbean community in the Netherlands has increased consider- ably in the past decades, and Dutch politics has learned to take this seriously. This includes the recognition that this colonialism was indeed part and parcel of the Dutch national history. In contrast to this rather strong Caribbean representation, the political voice of Dutch people of Indonesian descent is divided and moreover less concerned with the distant past. Two issues have drawn most public attention over the years. This refers first to the position of Moluccans in the Netherlands and their links to their relatives and islands of origin in Indonesia. The second issue has been more conspicuous and concerns the repercussions of the Japanese occupation and the 1945-1949 warfare for individuals and families who eventually decided to settle in the Netherlands, and for the military who fought in vain to break Indonesian nationalism. Heated debates on these issues spurred by militant Moluccans and Dutch veterans have been going on for decades and actually resulted in official Dutch regrets to those involved in the Netherlands, again monuments and commemorating institutions, and financial compensation. Ironically, in a sense much of the criticism the Dutch government encountered during these debates referred not so much to its colonialism, but rather to its perceived subsequent 'failure' to protect the interests of the parties involved vis-a-vis the Indonesian Republic. This context, in understatement, is not precisely conducive to a critical reappraisal of Dutch colonialism.

27 Written report on the seminar by the Dutch Embassy, as well as personal observations by one of the participants, Gerrit Knaap, communicated to the author on 14-10-2002. 28 Oostindie 2001. The formulation of 'deep remorse' was first expressed by Minister Van Boxtel at the UN-conference against racism in Durban, South Africa, in the summer of 2001. The same words were expressed again by him at the inauguration of the monument in Amsterdam, on 1 July 2002. In April 2002, Crown Prince Willem Alexander used very similar words on his official visit to Ghana, once a crucial Dutch colony in the system of the Atlantic slave trade.

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There is a second explanation, which brings us back to the earlier reminder that Dutch colonialism in Asia and its legacies were far more important to the metropolis than its exploits in the Americas. In a sense, there is not much to lose in acknowledging the inescapable fact that Dutch Atlantic history was dominated by crass exploitation through the slave trade, slavery and next Asian indentured labour. Few ever thought of the Caribbean as a veritable lieu de memoire for Dutch history; there was mainly silence in the historical representation. Now that the silence has been shattered, not that much is lost in speaking of 'deep remorse'. One feels no real objections to speak out against these long-past crimes against humanity committed by ancestors long since passed away and forgotten. A cynic might even conclude that pay- ing for a monument in commemoration of slavery even serves as a form of moral absolution for the Dutch and damage control towards angry descendants of African slaves. The contrast to the Dutch representation of its role in Asia, and particularly Indonesia, is striking. Evidently, the concept of 'Daar iverd wat groots verricht' has become both obsolete and politically incorrect, even if it seems to have been making something of a comeback.29 Yet there is the fact that the Netherlands, a rather small country with limited natural resources, did have an impact in Asia, did play a vanguard role with their multinational VOC in sense out of proportion with its own modest scale. This statement lends itself to scholarly corroboration detached of moral and political observations, and deep down the unrealistic longing to convince others of the desirability to separate the two is at the heart of the celebration project. Naive as the hopes may have been to convince Asians of this, much of the festivities may indeed have helped to convince Dutch audiences of the accomplishments of their VOC, which once aptly carried the epitaph 'the praiseworthy company'. Most effort has indeed been invested in that endeavour, and one senses that the urge to talk about the 'shadow sides' has been shallow as long as one thought of domestic consumption. Thus in the glossy magazine distributed in the public relations campaign, the organizing foundation's president Enriq Hessing's preface neatly skips over the passage on 'shadow sides' included in the official brochure. Likewise, in his Preface to - in itself reasonably balanced - educational materials on the VOC and its legacies, then Minister of Education Loek Hermans chooses to stress innovation and the exploring of new horizons, rather than engaging in debates on colonialism.30 While

29 Ruud Spruit, director of one of the participating museums, actually voiced his amazement over the apparent turn in the Dutch perspective. For years, he maintained, exhibitions on the VOC were seen with distrust and were reacted upon with shame and condemnations, as the company was seen as nothing but a ruthless instrument of exploitation. Now, suddenly, the VOC was en vogue again. NRC Handelsblad, 29-3-2002. 30 Weijers 2002:3; see also Greven and Verschuren 2001.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:06:06PM via free access Squaring the circle 153 all Dutch publications emphasize the opening up of new trade routes, there is far less if any attention to the disruption of extant intra-Asian ones through the imposition of monopolies. And while most of the scholars who published widely read general introductions to the VOC or organized the major exhibitions in leading museums have one time or another underlined the need for a balanced representation of this past, their own work presented during this jubilee mainly uses the celebratory registers as well. Is this an exaggeration? I do not think so, as a couple of examples may illustrate. What of the treatment of, for instance, slavery under the VOC? The slave trade from neighbouring regions, India and even as far as eastern Africa to Indonesia, to a large extent in the company's portfolio, may have been in the order of half a million people, incidentally about the same as the number of Africans bought and traded away to the Americas by the Dutch. In Indonesia, slavery was not a dominant mode of labour, except for major VOC cities such as Batavia and a plantation area such as Banda. In the late seventeenth century, slaves formed roughly half of the populations of Batavia, present-day Jakarta, and Banda. Yet the 'special jubilee edition' of Femme Gaastra's Geschiedenis van de VOC, no doubt the best and indeed leading introduction to the company, devotes no more than a passing paragraph and table to the subject. The subject is simply glossed over in De kleurrijke wereld van de VOC, the 'National Jubilee Book' accompanying the most prominent exhibition on the VOC - this time opened by the Crown Prince - co-hosted by the maritime museums of Amsterdam and Rotterdam.31 What, then, of the genocide or forced depopulation in 1621 of the Banda Islands under Jan Pieterszoon Coen, who wanted to guarantee a steady sup- ply of nutmeg? Gaastra devotes a passing paragraph to this episode, stating that the 'gruesome consequences of these action' are 'well-known', yet not elaborating this theme. De kleurrijke wereld is more outspoken, and qualifies the occurrences in Banda as the largest massacre in the history of the VOC, and indeed Coen himself as the 'butcher of Banda' and 'a symbol of every-

31 Gaastra 2002:94; Akveld and Jacobs 2002. For figures on slavery in Indonesia, see Knaap 1995:193-206. See also Boomgaard (forthcoming). A pioneering study on slavery in Southeast Asia is Reid 1983. There are obvious contrasts between slavery in the East and the West Indies, contrasts with just as evident implications for contemporary legacies and commemorations. Particularly relevant is the fact that slavery in the Americas was racially defined and polarized, while for Asia no such clear-cut distinctions can be made. See also Oostindie 2001. It is probably only logical that Van Stipriaan, like me a scholar with expertise in slavery in the Americas and particularly the Dutch Caribbean colonies and likewise engaged in the debate on a monument in commemoration of slavery in the Netherlands, would also be struck by these contrasts. Required to give his comments, with colleague Ellen Bal, on the VOC celebrations, their paper arrives at the same conclusions regarding the contemporary Dutch handling of slavery in 'East' and 'West', and even at the same rough estimate of half a million slaves in both parts of the empire (Van Stipriaan and Bal 2002).

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thing that was brutish, bad and wrong with the company'. Indeed, in press interviews Els Jacobs, one of the two editors of the book and curator of the exhibition, stresses the need to find a 'good mix' in the presentation of facts about the VOC. At the opening of the exhibition, Jacobs again mentioned occasional 'brute violence' exercised by the VOC, while the Amsterdam Maritime Museum's director Willem Bijleveld pleaded for an even-handed interpretation of the past, neither celebratory nor condemning. Yet the exhibition itself does not present anything but nice objects, and indeed a wonderful 'colourful world' of trade on an equal footing rather than one of exchanges at gunpoint.32 Finally, what about the slaughter of perhaps as many as 10,000 Chinese in and around Jakarta in 1740? Gaastra has only one passing reference to 'the notorious Chinese massacre', without providing any figures or explanation. De kleurrijke wereld does not mention this episode at all.33 One may also ask broader questions, such as whether the link between the VOC and subsequent colonialism is discussed in any depth or the question whether violence should be defined as excess or rather the quintessence of VOC rule. One seldom find such questions raised, let alone answered in these books aiming at a broader, not primarily scholarly Dutch audience.34 Much less would such questions surface at all during the many explicitly festive occasions organized for an again broader audience. In the Netherlands, it was only in one scholarly congress and two debates that such questions obtained centre stage.35 Small wonder, then, that in the Netherlands celebration has remained the flavour of the VOC year. This applies also to the last and one of the most spectacular exhibitions, 'De Nederlandse ontmoeting met Azie 1600-1950' (The Dutch Encounter with Asia 1600-1950) opened in October 2002 by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. On reading the beautiful catalogue to the exhibition, one senses that its editor and authors - all renowned specialists - have reflected on the criticism voiced regarding a celebration of the VOC. Thus the very Preface mentions violence and slavery and the continuity from

32 Gaastra 2002:45; Akveld and Jacobs 2002:113; de Volkskrant 20-3-2002. Speeches at the opening of the exhibition, Amsterdam Maritime Museum, 15-3-2002. 33 Gaastra 2002:62; Akveld and Jacobs 2002. See also Dros 2002:479-85. 34 With due hesitation I mention the VOC website hosted by my own institution, the KITLV. This website, sponsored but not controlled or censored in any way by the 'Stichting viering 400 jaar VOC does provide some more information on Jan Pieterszoon Coen, slavery etc. It does not discuss wider questions of colonialism and violence. See www. kitlv.nl and www.voc- kenniscentrum.nl. 35 On the basis of this congress, KITLV historian Gerrit Knaap did co-edit a collection of essays in which precisely the role of the VOC as a military and naval power is emphasized. The collection contains a balanced overview by Van Goor (2002:9-33) of Dutch historiography on the VOC which demonstrates that certainly not all modern Dutch scholarship has painted a rosy picture of the VOC.

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VOC to the subsequent colonial period. Indeed, this is the only exhibition that intentionally presents the entire period of the Dutch presence in Asia, and particularly in Indonesia, as a continuous story. At the same time, the heading 'encounter' suggests a basis of equal footing, which again begs the obvious questions (Zandvliet et al. 2002).

The present in the way of the past

It is all too evident that the choice for celebration was unfortunate and even inappropriate. Commemoration would have been a better even if rather oblique motto, and at least more of an open invitation for debate. Yet this is not simply about words. This is, or should be, about the question whether Dutch and Indonesians can see eye to eye in discussing the distant past. Most certainly the answer to that question is affirmative. Yet it seems a more recent past has stood in the way, the past, that is of decolonization. It is indeed striking that the Dutch government earlier in 2002 found no objections whatsoever in letting the Crown Prince express deep remorse in Ghana over the Dutch involvement in the Atlantic slave trade, even if the host government had not really expressed a desire to discuss this at all, while at the same time The Hague still seems unable to find the right words regarding the Indonesian independence, which most certainly would be appreciated in Jakarta and beyond. Will we need another two or three centuries again? This is all about priorities, wrongly set in this case. It seems that as long as there are all too understandable Indonesian misgivings about the way the Dutch handle not only '1602' but particularly '1945', the searching for common ground regarding the VOC will continue to suffer.36 The Indonesian perspective on the VOC most certainly departs from the conviction that the Dutch had no right to act as colonizers in the first place. The idea of a celebration points in another direction - of equal partnership, of an absence of violence, etcetera - and thus was bound to provoke irrita- tion. Ambassador Abdul Irsan reported that at Dutch schools he still found students thinking of the Dutch role in terms of a 'holy mission to civilise' while, in his words, colonization was precisely a repression of human rights. Yet there is room for open exchange once the effort is made. In fact, the ambassador qualified the new educational materials on the VOC recently published for use in Dutch schools 'a real progress' as now the dark sides of murders and slavery were also acknowledged. He simply concluded that

36 The leadership of the four major political parties in the Netherlands explicitly declined to support a public debate on Dutch decolonization in Indonesia and particularly the 1945-1949 period. See Houben 1997:51-2.

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of this shared past, 'the good has to be preserved, the bad acknowledged' (Andryanto and Maryasno 2001:117-9). That is all there is to it. Political correctness may have gone out of fashion again in the Netherlands, yet this is not about oblique self-criticism but rather about the willingness to discuss a shared past in such a way that no partner is excluded form the start. Once that common ground has been entered, debates about morality can give way to other, perhaps more pressing discussions as well. The most crucial of these may be the one of the origins and cohesion of the Indonesian state as we know it today - a creation not so much of the VOC which indeed never colonized more than some disparate parts of the archipelago, but certainly of its successor, the Dutch colonial state, long known to Indonesians simply as the kompeni, a telling continuity. In Professor Sartono's words, 'the existence of the nation-state has to be explained in terms of its colonial past and beyond', and '[t]he Dutch East Indies was inherited by the new Indonesian State'. Sartono stresses that this story should be told 'nation-centric', and even that '[b]y revealing its genesis, the very existence of the nation-state is justified or legitimized'.37 One need not subscribe to this latter view to acknowledge that these are the issues that should engage us, rather than sterile ones about self-congratulatory celebrations.

Squaring the circle

In short, while the 'celebration' of this particular history has a rather bizarre, chauvinist and divisive flavour to it, 'commemoration' is as oblique as one can get. The simple challenge is to engage in open debate. That is the way to square the circle. Remarkably, almost half a century after the independence of Indonesia, this truism has proved less evident than one would have expected. Not at the Dutch side which started this whole business in the first place, nor at the Indonesian side which reacted rather predictably.38

37 'The nation-state is in many respects a legacy of colonialism, e.g. its territorial unity, many of its institutions, etc' Sartono Kartodirdjo 2001:54, 63. 38 It seems, incidentally, that the reservations on the celebratory enterprise have not all been lost on the organizing committee, if not in practice, at least in rhetoric. As I am writing these lines, an invitation to join a meeting on 24 October 2002, again in the historical Ridderzaal, lands on my desk. The programme is meant to exchange information on all that has been accomplished in the VOC year and to thank the participating parties. The opening lines read as follows: 'Dear X, Celebration 400 Years VOC is running smoothly. Many national and local activities have been organized which have brought pleasure to many. The shadow sides too have been covered extensively.' In the Introduction to its final report, the committee once again makes a passing reference to the 'shadow sides', while at the same time concluding that there has been 'wide public support' for the celebration. Many contributed 'enthusiastically', many more participated 'with pleasure' (Viering 2002:3).

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One need, incidentally, not surmise that this was a peculiar Dutch error of judgement. It seems very hard for whatever nation to commemorate, let alone celebrate its own past without offending others. 'Celebrations', writes the Haitian-American scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1995:118), 'straddle the two sides of historicity. They impose a silence upon the events they ignore, and they fill that silence with narratives of power about the events they celebrate.' A statement hard to gloss over. Certainly, there is the commendable German Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, in sharp contrast to the Japanese refusal to engage in such openness. Certainly, there has recently been a rather sud- den commitment in many European countries as well as the United States to officially regret the transatlantic slave trade. Yet these all reflect episodes which could hardly elicit anything but shame and regret, once put in proper perspective. Turning to historically and morally more complex episodes, it apparently becomes far more difficult not to fall back in chauvinism. This is exactly what was at the heart of the heated debates regarding the celebrations of the 1492 descubrimiento (discovery) of the Americas. Though the events were eventually re-baptized into the more neutral and even cosy encuentro (meeting), and in fact one observer thought 'the most striking feature of the quincentennial was the loudness of dissenting voices world-wide', in Spain the celebratory overtones remained sound and clear (Trouillot 1995:138). Do nations learn from one another's mistakes? One often finds reasons to doubt. Thus, accord- ing to the Indian historian of the VOC Sanjay Subrahmanyam, the Portuguese practically 'ruined their relations' with the Asian countries involved by trying to impose a celebratory tone to their jubilee - five centuries after Vasco da Gama's indeed spectacular maritime exploits - of Portuguese-Asian relations.39 Former colonizers simply have a hard time keeping a sound distance. The Dutch have once again proven not to be an exception to this rule. Yet I would not want to rest my case here. I conclude by two observations on the role of professional historians in all this. It is appropriate to first remind of the accurate observation by Adrian Lapian (2002:1), that whereas there are opposing poles in the views and memories of the VOC and colonialism as such, the interpretations of the small circle of historians in Indonesia and the Netherlands tend to converge. As for my Dutch colleagues, I am inclined to think that none of those who are presently working on the VOC or Dutch colonialism at large would want to ignore the so-called 'shadow sides'. Quite a few are actually inclined to even think of these as the core business of the VOC and the ensuing colonial state. Yet it seems that at the same

39 Sanjay Subrahmanyam in a debate on the VOC at Amsterdam University, 24 June 2002. In the galley proof stage of the present article, I chanced upon a provocative article by Subrahmanyam (2002) which addresses the same issues as I do here. While I could not use it for my writing, it should be of interest to the reader.

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time many have not been able or interested to avoid that their work would be appropriated in the celebratory mood that prevailed in the Netherlands. The VOC has definitely been incorporated there in the contemporary Dutch cultural leisure industry with its limited space for critical appraisals.40 As one of my esteemed colleagues wrote me in a note accompanying a booklet with yet another of his solid contributions on the VOC: 'the title ['Illustrious Past'] is horrible'. Yet there it was, whether he liked it or not.41 So there is a shared past of colonialism with all of its implications of inequity in power and spoils, a colonial history which indeed starts with the VOC. This colonialism left many legacies, among which tangible benefits to the Netherlands and the creation - not sought by the Dutch - of an independ- ent Republic of Indonesia with the present national borders. The Dutch still have a hard time incorporating colonialism into their version of the nation and in a sense therefore, they still have not completed the decolonization process, as I hope the above observations regarding the 'celebration' of the VOC have illustrated. Have Indonesians, and particularly their historians, done much better so far? Has Indonesian historiography dared to go beyond national victimhood to explore the space between myth and the often sober- ing realities of history? Has it yet managed to move beyond anticolonialism to truly interrogate its own past? Some Indonesian historians stress the need to move in that direction, but can they count on wide support?42 This is dubious indeed, understandably perhaps in view of the present crisis of the Indonesian state. Yet to move beyond crude post hoc anticolonialism and to build an interpretive framework suitable to deal with the wide variations in colonial impact both in time and region seems to be the real challenge for Indonesian historiography - whether or not the Dutch are meanwhile trying to square their circle as well.43

40 A similar point about the influence of the leisure industry on the representation of the past was recently made by Rietbergen 2002. 41 Historians from, or educated at, Leiden University have been most prominent in the Dutch celebration, which may fuel the barren dispute of a 'colonialist' Leiden school versus a 'progressive' Amsterdam school (compare Meijer 1995). 42 For example Lapian 2002. Likewise, Professor R.Z. Leirissa emphasized during the September 2002 seminar in Jakarta the need to go beyond simply blaming the VOC, and to also analyse and explain how and why local elites worked with the Dutch. As his colleage dr Bambang Purwanto stated, in the end it is simply not very helpful to continue framing Indonesian history since 1602 as one of permanent victimhood. Yet the reactions from the predominantly Indonesian audience were at times fiercely hostile to such nuance. (My interpretation based on a personal communication, 14 October 2002, by one of the participants at the seminar, Gerrit Knaap.) 43 On the challenge of the decolonization of historiography in both countries, see Schulte Nordholt 2002:40-2,52-4. Compare co-organizer Leslie Witz's remarks on the so-called 'Exhibition Y35?', opened on 28 September 2002 in Cape Town: 'This exhibition raises important questions about the many South African monuments and memorials that endure as icons serving to glorify

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