The Dutch-Indonesian conflict 1945-49 – attention for the other side

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Arie Brand
police-action

Reopening inquiries into what actually happened during the Police Actions of 1945-49. Continue reading →

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The Retreat IV: Conclusion

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Arie Brand
jawa

‘The Retreat’ by J. Eijkelboom, Part IV, the Conclusion, continued from Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. A few days later I went to pick up my monthly wages at the battalion’s administration just before noon. I met a … Continue reading →

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The Retreat III

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Arie Brand
jawa

‘The Retreat’ by J. Eijkelboom, Part III. Continued from parts 1 and 2. I was just intending to order a second portion pisang goreng when an out of breath indigenous soldier came storming into the warong. Sersan, your wife is … Continue reading →

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The Retreat II

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Arie Brand
independence

‘The Retreat’ by J. Eijkelboom, Part II, continued from Part 1. My transfer to Intelligence brought another sort of life with it. In the desa where I moved in with a detachment of ten indigenous soldiers, I could start living … Continue reading →

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The Retreat by J. Eijkelboom

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Arie Brand
jawa

Jan Eijkelboom was trained in England to ‘fight against the Japs’ but, as it happened, he was drafted to fight in the Indies when the Japanese had long gone. He arrived in Java in the middle of 1947 and served … Continue reading →

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Triumph of History

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Arie Brand
Bunker_en_Sukarno

On the date of today, in 1962, then President Sukarno gave his yearly Independence Day speech of which the English version received that year the title ‘A Year of Triumph’. The then very recent New York or Bunker Agreement between … Continue reading →

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Gusti Dertik in Bali

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Arie Brand
bali-villagers

“One of the rajas of Badung who once discussed Van der Tuuk with me said very peculiarly of him; “There is in the whole of Bali only one man who knows and understands Balinese and that man is Gusti Dertik” … Continue reading →

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Gusti Dertik in the Lampong Districts

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Arie Brand
lampung

Van der Tuuk used the time in Holland (1857-1868) to work on the rich material he had brought from the Batak lands. But he had a combatative disposition and got involved in a lot of polemics. His main target was … Continue reading →

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Gusti Dertik in Batakland

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Arie Brand
tuuk-2

Gusti Dertik (Dr.Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk) was, so we are told, the greatest nineteenth century Western student of Indonesian languages, possibly rivaled only by Brandes, a quite different type of scholar (and different type of human being). He laid … Continue reading →

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‘The Clan’, by Willem Walraven, Part II

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Arie Brand
walraven

The second part of a translation of a story entitled “The Clan” in which pre-war Dutch journalist Willem Walraven tells about his Sundanese wife Itih, and her family. Read the first part – A Pre-War “Mixed” Marriage. She the ever … Continue reading →

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