Exhibition aims to establish common ground amid fractious debate over violence in post-independence Indonesia
A little bit of a crappy story. Lets compare the Dutch of today to the rest of Europe today. I’m from the UK with freinds and family in the Netherlands. If it wasn’t for elderly parents, I’d have moved there too.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
That we shouldn’t try and confront our colonial past because other countries did more colonialism? That’s seems like a very odd take.
Not that. Most of the Western world has a shocking history that must be used to remind us of what we can be capable of. Some nations however are at different places. The UK is particularly challenging (on average) compared to other places.
How does the UK factor into this story and how is it relevant?
Not the person you’re replying to, but I’ve lived in both the Netherlands and the UK.
My experience is that the UK is far more in denial about the crimes of empire than the Netherlands.
Most European countries have a shameful colonial history. Many haven’t fully come to terms with it.
Many haven’t fully come to terms with it.
No… they haven’t. Colonialism is not the past… it’s the present. And the Netherlands still benefit from it to this very day.
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I’ve been thinking about this, and I think one of the factors is inter-generational wealth transfer.
If you look, here in the Netherlands, many of the families that made out like bandits in the slave trade and colonial exploitation are still very wealthy and influential. That results in an incentive, baked into the economic tissue of the country, to continue to ignore these topics.
I could be wrong, but my impression is that this is also true for England, but to a (much) higher degree than over here.
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The Netherlands and Britain share a colonial history. In fact they became adversaries in a corporate sense, fighting over the spoils in many wars and areas, e.g. Boer war. It’s a commonly held view that Britain has one of the worst colonial records for widespread cruelty to indigenous people but no European power comes out looking great. Both countries seem unable to properly move on from that era. The institutions of oppression remain in place like vestigial organs e.g. royal families alive and well. The British just built a new aircraft carrier. You don’t need one of these to defend an island, it’s an offensive weapon and another vestige of the colonial mindset that lives like a disease in the hearts of the British.
I know all that.
But what about this makes it a “crappy story”, besides the fact that it’s not about Britain?
Perhaps they were making the point that it’s not informative to talk about colonial history from an isolated standpoint or apply contemporary ethics to historical events. The Netherlands history is the UK context and vice versa.
What about confronting it’s colonial present? Last time I checked, the colonialist world order that underpins the wealth of the Global North hasn’t ended.
I think it means losing those colonies
Last time I checked, big foreign corporations are still looting and pillaging all over Africa as if independence never happened… I wonder why?
edit: This includes Shell, a Dutch corporation, btw.
I’m guessing relative weakness of the governments and rampant corruption.
Yeah… tons of bribe money will do that to the governments of weak nations - it’s almost like Cuba had the correct idea.
Cuba should start bribing those governments to stick it to the West
Thanks for letting me know the evils of colonialism, English website.
I’m not generally one to defend a MSM outlet, and I have many issues specifically with the Guardian, but in this case they have been publishing a lot about “how slavery changed the Guardian, Britain and the world”
i mean, that’s the audience that needs to hear this message the most…
Yeah but stroopwafel though
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But in few European countries is the process of confronting the colonial period proving as fractious and divisive as in the Netherlands, where opposing sides have in recent years struggled to agree on who was victim and who was perpetrator.
This month, an exhibition at Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk gallery space and two new books in a major historical series try to establish common ground over the violence that ensued after Indonesia declared independence from Dutch colonial rule in 1945.
“Every day, we have seen how much of our past related with this former colony is still raw and unworked, denied, fought against or praised, when many others think differently about it,” said Annabelle Birnie, the director of the Nieuwe Kerk, which launches the Big Indonesia show on Saturday.
The current debate in the Netherlands centres on what happened next: after Indonesia’s future president Sukarno declared independence on 17 August 1945, the Dutch fought to prolong colonial rule, often through barbaric means, before ceding on 27 December 1949.
In August, Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, withdrew from a commemorative ceremony because of a speech by the apologist daughter of Raymond Westerling, an army officer who led revenge attacks on local people during the war.
Campaigners for the recognition of Indonesians’ losses, such as Jeffry Pondaag, chair of the Dutch Honorary Debts Committee Foundation, advocate compensation for all damage and gains from colonial activity.
The original article contains 1,295 words, the summary contains 231 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
