“The Straight Dope” being a board on which topic-wise anything-and-everything – however outlandish – seems welcome: herewith, something which rather puzzles and disturbs me. Would be glad to hear folks’ thoughts – particularly, from people from the country concerned.
I’m British – as with various other countries in Europe and elsewhere, in the nineteenth and earlier part of the twentieth century, we established colonies in what is now called the Third World. I have the picture that none of the colonial powers’ records were particularly stellar, as regards treatment of the colonised populations – would like to think (perhaps deludedly) that on that scene, we Brits were more benign and humane than some. I have heard from various sources, that the Dutch, administering their overseas empire – mostly consisting of the islands of the East Indies, now Indonesia – were in this, on the whole harsh and cruel colonial masters, inflicting great oppression on the population there whom they ruled.
I was initially amazed to hear this – the Dutch being generally pictured as very sensible, kindly, liberally-inclined folk – I’ve visited Holland a few times, and in the main, found the people delightful. The attributed nastiness re the colonial empire, seems so out of character. Wondering prompted, as to whether the Dutch used to send their psychos and misfits off to run the colonies, whilst the nice majority of people, stayed at home? Or – is the thing a libel, or at any rate highly exaggerated? I’d much like to find that things were in fact not so – at all events, would particularly be interested in input from Dutch folk.
During the trip which was the source for “Westward Ha!” S. J. Perelman visited what is now Indonesia, and met with some Dutch colonists. He was not impressed. I’ll have to review it, but I believe in his collected letters he hated them even more than what came out in the book - and that was quite a bit.
That’s an impression, not a fact.
I’m Canadian, and I thought it was common knowledge that both the Dutch and the Belgians were particularly brutal colonial powers. And this is totally IMO, but I always blamed the Afrikaaners for the cruelty during and after South African apartheid.
Going way back, the Batavia Massacre is an old if faded stain on their reputation. The Intervention in Bali was typical colonialist overkill, made weird by the natives’ resort to mass ceremonial suicide. Probably the most inexcusable episode was the Rawagede massacre. Right after the Dutch were liberated from the Nazis, they acted like einsatzgruppen themselves.
Speaking of Great Britain’s credibility, there was this painting of poor old Bramins being blown to shreds. Painted by the Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin as counter-propaganda when GB and Russia were contesting Central Asia, the British calling the Czar a despotic autocrat; unlike their own benevolent rule.
Interesting question (BTW, “third world” is considered an insulting term - “developing countries” is more respectful). It was a college history course on colonialism, which included an examination of the Dutch presence in the East Indies, that first piqued my interest in Indonesia - a love affair that is lasting a lifetime. (I’m writing from Jakarta, where I have lived 13 of the last 20 years).
I wish I had time to address your question fully, but I don’t, so I’ll just make a few offhand statements and suggest some good books:
First, don’t ever assume ANY colonial power can be fully let off the hook for brutality. You’d like to think the British were superior, and perhaps they weren’t among the worst, but India would certainly yield some examples of shocking behavior.
As long as we are comparing, though: historically, the Portuguese have been just about the worst colonialists. Look at Angola, Mozambique, East Timor… And the Portuguese have some relatively recent discredit to their name. When they left Mozambique, they deliberately destroyed the infrastructure they had built. Their attitude was, “If we can’t benefit from it, nobody can.” When I lived in Maputo, out my office window I could see a towering, empty, crumbling building. It had been planned as a hotel. When the Portuguese left, they poured cement down the elevator shaft to render the building unusable. A monument to their contempt for the people they colonized.
But the Japanese were just about the worst. When the Dutch got pushed out, Indonesians were so happy because the Japanese were taking over. They thought that their Asian “brothers” would be kinder to them. Hell no. I still hear stories (not so much from the original sufferers, but from their grandkis) of how horribly the Japanese treated Indonesians in WW2.
The Dutch were indeed nasty a lot of the time (Slithy Tove’s cite of the intervention in Bali is a particularly notable example, IMHO) but their occupation of the East Indies coincided with the development of the “Ethical Policy” as well as a strong feminist movement in Holland. These trends did lead, at least, to some intellectual agonizing over their colonialist behavior. It may not be much, but it’s something.
The Indonesian people themselves are awesome, in my view, in how well they have integrated Dutch colonialism into their sense of self and their history. In Jakarta, you can visit historical relics of the Dutch colonialist past (the old governor’s mansion, for example) and great care has been taken to restore and preserve the past, without any sense of resentment or a need to shrilly note how evil the colonialists were (something I’d hardly blame them for).
Finally, if you are truly interested in the subject, here are a few recommended books:
Letters of a Javanese Princess. Several versions are out there; I think the one with the forward by Eleanor Roosevelt is the most popular/easily available in English. Be aware that, as is often the case in such situations, some questions have been raised over the plausibility of all the content. Kartini was real, absolutely (Indonesia celebrates a day in her honor). But her letters may have had a little “help” from some of the translators, if you know what I mean.
Max Havelaar, by Multituli. This is a book I put off reading for a long time because I thought it was of historical interest, but probably not actually a very good novel, since it isn’t terribly well known on its literary merits and its reputation rests largely on its contribution to illuminating the historical period. Boy was I wrong! It’s a fantastic novel. I’ve only recently started reading it, so I can’t say if it maintains it’s quality throughout, but at least at the beginning it is witty and engaging.
The Buru Quartet, by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, or at least the first book, This Earth of Mankind. The book dissolves into polemics by the end, but it starts out strong and has some really moving sections.
I think it would be very, very unusual for people who were minding their own business to suddenly drop everything and start working as laborers in mines or fields for a bunch of strangers who just showed up, unless there was a very credible threat of brutality. Anywhere, anytime.
The British tended to send its people to live in its colonies, whereas other european countries used colonies as places to get raw materials. Some of this is because malaria made it impossible to have large populations in tropical places and the british colonized some temperate places as well as tropical places.
From my readings it seems the order from best to worst for european colonizers was Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and Belgium.
For starters, the Belgian treatment of Congo was fairly typical until King Leopold (i870-1900) started exploiting it for his personal gain. That lead to a deeply dark era.
As for our Dutch selves, we were major players in the slave trade. We all know the horror stories. I always wondered how it would be economical to treat slaves so bad that so many of them would die in transit. Recent historic research has led to a more nuanced view. As for the slavery itself on the Surinam plantages, I recently saw a documentary about it.(I was interested becuse I recently traced my Dutch/Surinam Family tree, and I discovered in the 1862 decree that freed all slaves, that my ancestors at the time held shares in a plantation, listed as "three male field negroes, one female field negro, one male house negro). Their new names were given. :: shame:: Maybe I should look up their descendants and tell them I’m sorry.
. Still, punishments for disobedience and running away were brutal, but there was little excess brutality. Bad for business, I suppose.
As for Indonesia, don’t confuse our behavior during colonial times with the war we waged after Indonesia had declared its independence. That war (we weaselly called it “polical action”) is so recent that my 80-year old dad feared he would be drafted to go there. That war is shameful but mercifully it was short. The Japanese occupation during World War Two was, as remarked by CairoCarol, much more brutal.
As for the Dutch colonial occupation itself, well…The Dutch tended, even then, not to be brutal when there was no profit in it. They also tended to belittel the natives and to rather install Dutch fortune seekers in position of power, no matter their level of incompetence, rather then competent Indonesians. My own grandfather, born 1894, travelled to Indonesia when he was twenty years old and immediately got assigned supervision of a bridge building project inland, even though he had no relevant experience whatsoever and had studied law. :rolleyes:
Dutch also tended to intermarry with the natives and, well, do the "inter"without the marry.
The only credible Rule for the entirety of history is that Everybody Was A Bastard. Was, Is and Shall Be.
I certainly don’t think the British were nicer, but it depended on the era and place. The Tasmanians were the unluckiest.
[ However this was a whiggish period when the convict ships going south were as horrible and death-dealing as the slave ships they replaced: if the parliament of GB treated it’s own people that way… ]
The British get nasty when they get hysterical — which happens easily — but in this case I wouldn’t call them poor old bramins, nor feel anything particular about it. We committed many atrocities during the Mutiny, and I feel the different Indian states had every right to rebel and revert to the idyllic life prior to the British if they could get away with it; but they committed atrocities too, and this was one of their own punishments: had the British copied other Indian customs, they could have had elephants stomp on them.
Plus it’s kinda quick. The point was to make them despair of entering heaven according to whatever demented superstition they adhered to.
It’s important to distinguish between possessions and colonies: the first have a civilised population who may or may not acquiesce, but certainly won’t want settlers; the second include vast, mainly empty places with few and easily crushed indigenes, where your surplus people can go, such as Australasia, the Americas, South Africa etc., the British specialised in the latter. Much less resistance.
Anyway, at a certain stage in development every country tries to expand, and have an empire if they can, even a baby empire.
To check out real brutality, there are a few references on the Web from a Hindu perspective mentioning the Muslim Invasions; by no means unresentful.
As bad as they were, the Indonesians don’t really hate the Dutch. The Melakans in Malaysia are ambivalent to their rule as well.
IMHO, the French were the worst colonists. I was recently in Vietnams and the Viets hated the French with a passion.
You can google on this but the Viets think the French has done NOTHING to improve the social situation of the people their entire rule. They exploited the local population entirely. And when they pulled out, they took everything with them. They said they would take the buildings with them if they could as well…
French were the worst colonists - I’ve never heard natives criticize their colonial masters as bad as the Vietnamese people criticize the French.
Thanks everyone, for responses. I feel a bit relieved to find from what I read here, that on the whole the Dutch seem to have been less vile as colonial masters, than I had been given to understand from things I’d had told to me. For sure, none of us Europeans were saints in our administering of our empires overseas.
With my great liking for the Dutch people (plus prejudice in favour of my own nation), I’d kind-of imagined that the order of ranking for “good colonists” in puddleglum’s post, would have been Britain / Holland / France / Spain / Portugal / Belgium; whereas instead Holland comes there, in second-to-last place. I’d generally got the – maybe wrong – impression that even poor old Belgium (once Leopold had been kicked into touch) was more clueless than nasty, in its running of its African territories – i.e. nothing done to prepare them for independence. On visits to Belgium, I’ve observed evidence for a certain amount of mutual affection, and links, between Belgium and the Congo (or whatever the latter nation happens to be calling itself this week). I like to think that there’s an upside to almost every downside – perhaps I’m just an incurable wet sentimentalist.
“Third World” is more obsolete than insulting. It’s a relic of the Cold War. The First World was “the Free World”–the US & our non-Commie allies, plus a few neutral, prosperous democracies. The Second World was the USSR & countries behind the Iron Curtain, “Red” China & Cuba; they were not as well off as “we” were but the “subject states” did get rubles to help things along. The Third World was everybody else; generally poor & up for grabs. Remember the Domino Effect?
“Developing” is both more respectful & more logical.
This is just my persnickity comment on vocabulary. The rest of your message was quite illuminating & well written…
I don’t want to hijack the thread too much, but says who? “Third world” is falling out of favor because it’s a Cold War era term that’s no longer all that relevant, not because it’s insulting. If anything “developing country” is more offensive, since while it may be true in an economic sense, it implies that the country hasn’t fully developed into a “real” country.
Sorry – I’m no cutting-edge world-politics-maven – would plead “ignorance, not contempt”.
I’ve always been interested in Portuguese Africa, and sorry about how things went there. Naive wishes about, “why can’t we all just get along together?”… Have heard that at the end of empire in Mozambique (1975, if I remember rightly) – the Portuguese colonists had to leave the country, at short notice.
In some African countries, Europeans who wished to stay on, were allowed to – even, I gather, in Algeria in the early 1960s, notwithstanding all the nastiness attending on the last years of French rule; if you were French, but chose for whatever reason to stay there, you could get Algerian citizenship, and stay – and some did so. In Mozambique – if you were a very unusual Portuguese colonist, sympathising with the locals and wanting to stay on, on equal terms with them, and to do what you could to help build up the country; could you take out Mozambican citizenship and stay, waving goodbye to your peers as they trashed the place as far as they could, and left? Or would that not have been possible?
(Anyone who did that, might have had cause to regret their decision in view of how the next couple of decades played out in Mozambique; but people don’t have the gift of prophecy, and / or sometimes think, “for better or for worse --sod it.”)
The old thing; King Log and King Stork. As above – “hindsight is 20/20”.
I do get the picture that, most of the time, the Indonesians are one of the world’s nicer and more benign peoples. Given the chance, I’d love to visit the country.
Many thanks – getting into these books, certainly to be thought of.
This is as good a place as any to link to this awesome Ted-talk on the current situation, and recent developement of “developing nations”. Take the 20 minutes to watch it: it really changed my view from “Rich us, poor them” to “Hey, some of those guys go FAST and it overall isn’t nearly as bleak as I thought”.
And the funny thing is, the Portuguese themselves were convinced they were the best. They wrote all the time about how the British and the French were horrible racists, but they, the Portuguese, were good much nicer “masters”. Thing is, their idea of not being racist was giving their poor farmers tax incentives to marry (or even “marry” ahem) the local population to “breed out the black”. They would literally muse about how in a few generations, their colonies wouldn’t even have any more of those nasty black people cluttering up the place! And then, of course, there was the disaster when they left…
Yeah, great book! In the Netherlands it’s actually known for it’s literary merits as well…
To be honest, I’d let go of the idea of ranking them in terms of how horrible they were. They were all horrible in very different ways. They treated each colony in a different way, as well. They each had theories about why they did what they did, and those theories changed over time, differed per person and led to different outcomes, but all the outcomes were terrible for the colonies and the people there. Fundamentally, each country had an elaborate explanation for why they were the benevolent ones, when all of them were vile.
But yes, the Dutch did terrible things in the colonies. During the Indonesian War of Independence they committed terrible war crimes. Even worse is that the Dutch government is still resisting taking full responsibility whenever it can get away with it. If you are going to be surprised about the behaviour of those nice Dutch people, be surprised about that. (It’s a complex issues, of course, and if you are going to offer restitution for crimes of long ago, where will it end? But it’s certainly upsetting to see these attempts at evasion of responsibility, when you know what happened.)
Maastricht – was trying to do a reply to this post of yours, but somehow it all went down the tubes. Will try to reconstruct, but likely that will be tomorrow, not today.
It refers to the economy, not to the politics. And while the original meaning of “third world” has fallen into disuse, its equivalency to “poor country” has produced the term “fourth world”: the poor people who live in rich countries.
Same with Spain, I was watching a Spanish( from Spain) program( telenovela) and the woman was talking about how the Spanish weren’t racists since they breed with the Native people.
In the former colonies of Spain, the Spanish colonies are still a touchy subject since people are very upset on how on how Spain destroy destruction of indigenous languages, eradication of native tribes and war.
