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This volume’s title, Monarchies and Decolonisation in Asia , appears to suggest a linear progression in the histories of colonies. Yet monarchies existed in Asia prior to colonial rule, and in many places they continued to exist under colonialism. Decolonisation in Indonesia, for instance, has proved to be a rejection of both indigenous and colonial forms of rule. The colony known as the Netherlands East Indies ended up as the Republic of Indonesia in 1945, 1 and yet it is worth noting that the larger, colonial-era political organisations of the 1930s
Special Region amid the general disestablishment of sultans and rajas in Indonesian local politics during the 1950s. The Japanese occupation, 1942–45 Japanese forces occupied the Netherlands East Indies, displacing the Dutch, from 1942 to 1945. The Sultan of Yogyakarta and the ruler of Pakualaman used the Japanese occupation of Indonesia to strengthen their legitimacy by implementing reforms that would prove useful during the formation of the Yogyakarta Special Region. First, Sultan Hamengku Buwono IX of Yogyakarta and Pakualam VIII sacrificed their traditional
. Indonesia’s 17,000 islands, 300-plus ethnic groups, sultanates and statelets merged piecemeal into a single political entity through actions of the Dutch over three centuries. Today’s Republic of Indonesia is the successor state to the colony known as the Netherlands East Indies and has the same boundaries. Older history books narrated Indonesian history as a series of broken sequences. Opening chapters began
armed services, or military commanders in bitter dispute with civil administrators. In the Netherlands East Indies by the 1920s, tension between the army and navy was such that the former was in constant fear that it might be reduced to a mere gendarmerie. The RAF, desperate to maintain its autonomy, frequently fell foul of the military in the 1920s as it argued its case for a role in the Middle East and
the baser human passions, and was thus a favoured entertainment for Javanese royalty. 2 At celebrations for the Dutch monarchy in the Netherlands East Indies (colonial Indonesia), such courtly dances were frequent at the gala performances sponsored by Dutch officials and Javanese aristocrats during the festivities they were obliged to host. 3 However, the December 1936 performance was the first of its kind at a Dutch court
Indonesian archipelago. It was incorporated into the Netherlands East Indies in 1903 and has been a province of Indonesia since its declaration of independence from the Netherlands in 1945. 2 The prestigious title Sayyid al-Mukammal states the sultan’s claim to being of the same tribe as Muhammad
men missing in other areas in the Far East the position had been reviewed in the light of all available information. Most of those reported as missing in the fighting in Malaya, in the Netherlands East Indies and in Burma before November 1942 had now been reported as prisoners of war either by official notification or through communications received from the men themselves. Because of this level of notification the government was forced to accept that a ‘considerable number’ of those still missing following these campaigns would not still be c03.indd 101 7
was too insignificant a country and could not provide the president of 140 The Tokyo trial of Japanese leaders, 1946–48 the Tribunal, when the question arose of replacing Webb during the latter’s absence in Australia.24 The French judge, Henri Bernard, did not contribute particularly but did dissent in part at the end of the trial. The Dutch judge, Röling, was the youngest and probably the ablest of the judges. He was 39 years of age when appointed and had specialised in the laws of the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia). Röling was strongly committed to the trial
. Lange (eds), Sensible Sammlungen: Aus dem anthropologischen Depot (Hamburg: Philo Fine Arts, 2011), pp. 15–40; for another approach: S. Legène and J. van Dijk (eds), The Netherlands East Indies at the Tropenmuseum. A Colonial History (Amsterdam: KIT, 2011 ), pp. 6
no farther than in North East Asia, this stands in clear contrast with the Japanese element in Karafuto (97·5) per cent). And if we look at Western empires in South East Asia, the 3 per cent colonists-to-colonised ratio in Korea still compares favourably with the low ones to be found in French Indochina (0·2) per cent), British Malaya (0·7) per cent) or the Netherlands East Indies (0·4) per cent). 10 In short, the Japanese community of Korea happened to be a rather large community, quite uncommon in other colonial empires, but not so