Dutch Elites and Decolonization

Abstract

Historians and contemporary witnesses of the decolonization of Indonesia alike draw similar conclusions about the end of the Dutch empire in Southeast Asia. The events of the time have been combined and characterized as a moment of singular importance. The transfer of power, past and present commentators agree, not only brought an end to 350 years of Dutch presence in the Indonesian archipelago but also brought out features of what the Dutch believed to be their “shared identity”: stubbornness and legalistic conceptions of property and sovereignty. Good intentions and interplay of adverse factors have been held accountable for the resistance with which the small European country responded to the demand of a majority of the Indonesian population for sovereignty, independence, and national freedom.