Dutch East Indies and Indonesia Brochure Collection

Indonesia

The collection consists of about 1100 different brochures published between 1837 and1966. They cover a wide range of themes concerning the Dutch East Indies as a colony and the eventually successful Indonesian struggle for independence and consecutively Indonesia as an independent nation. About half of the brochures are from the Netherlands, while the other half were published in what is now Indonesia. Only a few are from other countries. Two thirds are written in Dutch and only about a quarter is in Indonesian, others titles being in English, German or French. Prominent themes among many others are management of the colony, economic and social issues, politics, especially the relation between Dutch East Indies and the Netherlands, and the role of the Dutch East Indies in the Second World War. Dutch East Indies became the collective name for the colonial proporties of the Dutch East India Company after their nationalisation by the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1816. These colonized areas consisted of what after a long struggle for autonomy became contemporary indepent Indonesia.