Quote:
I challenge you to find any other source than Van Leeuwen on the subject.
I'm the daughter of a Dutch 'pied-noir'. My mother (her family lived for generations in the Dutch- Indies) escaped Indonesia when it became independent after a bloody war in 1949. The story is incredibly similar: the 'cold welcome' after 'repatriation', discrimination, the diaspora, social inferiority, accusations of colonialism. The Dutch pieds-noirs are called Indos. Same place in colonial society as pieds-noir.
Except that the majority of the Dutch pieds-noir were/are of mixed-blood descent. That made them the more visible in Holland.
I am interested in comparative history because the huge and growing extremist anti-Muslem movement in Holland is led by an Indo. Some Indos feel that 'the Muslims' kicked them out of their country.
I wonder if there are indeed millions of us in Europe, postcolonial children
http://www.topix.com/forum/world/fra...BEA5B4B205A/p2
I am a Canadian Citizen, and I have held that honour since I was eight years old. As a soldier, I have raised arms to defend Canada, and suffered injury in her service. However, I am still required to provide a list of documents that prove my right to live here, just to get a drivers licence. In this land of ice and snow, I am not white enough to be considered white but still dark enough to be asked where I come from or what my back ground is. I have come to realize that I will never be completely in the “Canadian club”. The reason for that is that I just don’t fit. The only other INDO’s I know, are my two sisters.
I think that part of this INDO identity issue has its roots in learned behaviour. Over the last generation or two, starting with Dutch Colonial rule, Japanese Occupation, The Bersiap Period and assimilation into different cultures, has made the concept of “eyes open and mouth shut” the rules instead of the exception.
The time for silence is over.
http://dutcheastindies.web.id/my-heritage-is-my-right
Quote:
And this is not because we shove it all into a dark corner and try and forget about it. You only pulled that out of thin air because it's what's keeping your argument alive.
In a letter published in NRC Handelsblad last week, 22 prominent writers, historians and lawyers asked the Dutch government to finally recognise the proclamation in 1945 was a legitimate act. "The Indonesian people themselves decided on their independence," they wrote.
The Dutch foreign ministry, however, immediately responded by saying the independence only became official after sovereignty was handed over. "The actual transfer of sovereignty took place on December 27, 1949 (...). This is an established historical fact that can not be changed 60 years later," a statement issued by the ministry read.
Not only do the authors of the letter want the Dutch government to retroactively recognise Indonesia’s independence, they say it needs to render account of its armed and political actions between 1945 and 1949. "The lack of full political recognition by the Netherlands is a historic failure we consider unjust towards the people of Indonesia."
http://www.nrc.nl/international/arti...dependence_day
Between 1946 and 1949 two military campaigns, euphemistically called `police actions', resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 Indonesians and, according to one Financial Times Service report, 6,000 Dutch soldiers. However, the colonial power found itself politically isolated as well as economically near bankruptcy, and independence was reluctantly conceded in December 1949; a fact that even today causes controversy.
The period 1945-49 in Dutch colonial history, however, is still highly sensitive. Indeed, this chapter is conspicuous among colonial studies by its absence. Unlike Vietnam, which Hollywood has transformed into an icon of contemporary culture, post-Second World War Indonesia constitutes something of a collective blind-spot in the Dutch psyche. The case of one of the Netherlands' leading historians, the late Jan Romein, is enlightening. His wife, Annie Romein-Verschoor, had grown up in colonial Dutch East Indies. They were both self-confessed Communists. progressive idealists and committed to Indonesian independence. Yet when Jan Romein published his major study of decolonisation, De Eeuw van Azie (The Asian Century) in 1956, Indonesia earned only a superficial mention. Of the 300 pages, twenty-five were on Indonesia, while the bibliography of 267 titles contained only ten relating to it. In 1980 a leading Indonesian historian, Taufik Abdullah, referring to the loud Dutch silence, remarked that international historiography was the monopoly of the conquerors.
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar...cId=5000418748
Quote:
You ask me for sources?
:yes:
