Dutch East Indies

In presenting to the reader the first edition of Isles of the East, it is hoped that its pages may prove of interest to those, who seek information regarding Java and the Dutch Indies generally, as a pleasure resort on the one hand, and as a country offering exceptional commercial opportunities, on the other.

Between 1945 and 1949, Indonesia defended its recently declared independence, and the Netherlands waged its last major colonial war. Much is now
known about this war, but a great deal has also remained unclear or contested. At the end of 2016, the second Rutte cabinet decided to finance a broad-based study on the Dutch military conduct during this conflict. This book presents the conclusions of that study.

Oil fields can easily turn into battlefields. This happened more than once in the former colony of the Dutch East Indies (Nederlands-Indië, now Indonesia) in the turmoil of the 1940s, when Japanese, Dutch, Allied, and Indonesian forces fought fierce battles over the control of
local oil facilities—with good reason, because in the 1940s the Dutch East Indies was one of the world’s biggest oil exporters. Centered on the oil industry city of Plajoe, this portion of the global petroleumscape, a multilayered network of spaces made possible by petroleum
and facilitating its flow, was designed to support a country on the other side of the world.
It was then reshaped by war and revolution, in the context of changing global actors. This chapter tells a largely unknown story about the construction, destruction, and reconstruction of the petroleumscape in what is now the province of South Sumatra in Indonesia. It is
a story of how oil fields can become battlefields and of how even in peacetime a petroleumscape is shaped by attempts to protect and defend sources of wealth and power.

Through the eyes of young Major Jacobs, a full view emerges of the "boiling cauldron" that was Sumatra in 1945. In spite of the official Allied victory, Jacobs had to attempt to rule Sumatra using the existing Japanese military structure until British relief arrived.

Diary February 13, 1942 - January 8, 1945 of Mr. EB van Dam (March 15, 1899 - October 7, 1970)
 

The BPM employee in Pladjoe, Emanuel Benjamin van Dam (Groningen, 1899), was interned in the Mulo school in Palembang in April 1942, in the Prison in Palembang from April 15, 1942, and in January 1943 in Poentjak Sekoening in Palembang. From September 1943 in the Prison in Muntok and from March 1945 in Belalau. In September 1945, he was transferred to hospitals in Johor Baru and Singapore.

David Van Reybrouck’s *Revolusi* traces Indonesia’s struggle for independence from Dutch colonial rule, the Japanese occupation and the revolution of 1945–49. Drawing on extensive research and eyewitness testimony, it places the conflict within the wider history of colonialism, nationalism and global decolonisation.

Between 1966 and 1980, the War History Office of the National Defense College of Japan published the 102-volume Senshi Sōsho (War History Series). These volumes give a detailed account of the operations of the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Second World War. This book, vol. 3 of the series, describes in depth the campaign to gain control over the Indonesian archipelago. (copyright: the Corts Foundation)

Football in the Dutch Indies was still just taking baby steps in the early 1930s. The nation totalled approx. 4.000 members, spread over about 400 clubs. No league had been set up, as the archipelago was simply too expansive. The islands of Java and Sumatra did feature inner-city leagues, however. The winners of these leagues would contest for the title of champions of the Dutch Indies.

This feature is going to deal with a wonderful passenger liner that has proved to be a much-loved ship, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Personally, I remember the day so well, when I boarded her for the first time, and then sadly I watched my beloved JVO leave our shores for the very last time as she departed Wellington New Zealand on January 30, 1963, and I would never see her ever again, except in the News papers with shocking news later in that same year! She departed Sydney Australia on February 3 for her final voyage, which was unofficially to an undisclosed destination, but it turned out to be Naples.

As we will discover in this work this gracious Dutch liner enjoyed six distinctive lives and several transformations during her long and distinguished career. To this day, she is remembered for her rather long and very difficult name, a name that most people had great difficulty in pronouncing. Of course, I have not as yet officially given her full name as yet, only those three capital letters. JVO

A timeline of mens' and womens' internees camps in South Sumatra