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When, in 2005, I received the exciting news about my
transfer from Berlin as Dutch ambassador to Jakarta, the first thing I did
was to go to the well-known Berlin bookshop of Dussmann in the Friedrichstrasse
to look for travel guides about Indonesia.
Contrary to
what I had expected, I could not find any book on Indonesia in the section
dealing with Asia and Southeast Asia. I kept searching and to my surprise
finally found what I had been looking for in the section on Oceania and the
Pacific.
Only then did I
fully realize that Indonesia actually covers two continents, of which the
borderline runs through the deep waterway between Bali and Lombok, where
the so-called “Wallace Line” is located. To the east of this line we can
find kangaroos and other marsupials, just like in Australia, but not to the
western side of it.
The reason is
clear: When sea levels were much lower in the past, these very special
animals could not cross the sea because it remained too deep for them. As a
result, quite divergent developments took place on both sides, also in the
field of flora. These deep straits did not, however, prevent human beings
and their cultures from migrating all over the area that is today called the
Indonesian Archipelago.
Generally it
can be said that the geographic boundaries of Indonesia with its huge
territory and extraordinarily rich diversity, have not been determined by
ethnicity, culture, religion, language, nor its belonging to one or more
continents, but rather by its Dutch colonial history. The Dutch colonial
boundaries in the end became the political boundaries of the Republic of
Indonesia.
Not one inch
more and not one inch less. I do not want to say that there is any merit in
the Dutch contribution to the unity of Indonesia. It is just a result of
colonial history, which did not follow any logical ethnic or other
boundaries. The Dutch just tried to get control of a large area to serve
their own interests, both strategic and economic.
Many people
argue that present day Indonesia experienced 350 years of Dutch
colonialism. This is true, although it is not valid for the whole territory
of Indonesia. Some areas had only been fully colonized since the early 20th
century, which in some cases means that full colonial occupation lasted
some 35 instead of 350 years.
In the early
17th century the Dutch occupied small parts of what today is Indonesia,
with the main purpose of lucrative trade in, for instance, spices like
nutmeg, which were found in the remote Banda Islands. This spice trade,
conducted by the United East Indies Company (Vereenigde Oostindische
Compagnie — VOC), was the beginning of a development that finally led to
that huge colonial empire, called the Dutch East Indies or Nederlands
Indië, which stretched over an area of over 5,300 kilometers (which is
similar to the distance from Bremen, in Germany, to the western borders of
China).
The northern
region of Aceh was one of the areas occupied by the Dutch in the beginning
of the 20th century, after a bloody war of some 30 years. Had Aceh not been
occupied and incorporated into the Dutch East Indies, it might now have
been a separate Sultanate, like for instance Brunei, not part of the
Republic of Indonesia. The same applies to the Batak region in Northern
Sumatra, as well as to Bali, which were equally only incorporated in the
early 20th century.
In the absence
of Dutch domination in Northern Sumatra in the late 19th century, the
German Lutheran Church had the chance to convert many Batak people there
and to establish the Batak Christian Protestant Church.
Similarly,
German protestant missionaries introduced Christianity to Papua in 1855.
Later on, with the expansion of Dutch colonialism in Papua, it was agreed
between Christian missionaries that Papua was to be divided into a Catholic
and Protestant zone of influence.
Just imagine
how pragmatic the missionaries were at the time, by deciding that the
northern part of West Papua was to be Protestant and the southern part
Catholic! I am sure that in Europe such things did not go that smoothly.
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