Beyond the Pale: Dutch Extreme Violence in the Indonesian War of Independence, 1945-1949 by NIOD, KITLV and NIMH

The report Beyond the Pale is the outcome of the 5-year joint investigation of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), the Netherlands Institute for Military History (NIMH) and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies on violence perpetrated by the Dutch during the Indonesian war of independence. More than 25 scholars, mainly historians, from the previously mentioned institutes worked on different projects within the research group to examine in which ways the Dutch army used violence and to what extent responsibility was taken legally, politically and socially. The report concludes that the Dutch army systemically exerted extreme violence while waging war against the Republic of Indonesia and that this was condoned by the Dutch government and army leaders.

The existence and the outcome of this report emphasize the current societal and academic attention to Dutch perpetratorship in post-war Indonesia. This elaborate report highlights many different aspects of the perpetrated violence and examines it from many different angles, such as history, law, international relations, and memory studies. Thus, it explores various types of Dutch perpetratorship during the period. However, many archives and research facilities in Indonesia remained closed to the Dutch researchers due to distrust and a difference in research interest, as Indonesian researchers were generally more interested in the social impact of the war on Indonesians, rather than in Dutch violence. Consequently, questions on the Indonesian perspective remain unanswered in this report.

The report has online open access: https://doi.org/10.1515/9789048557172

Author of this entry: Dewi Kopp

Kon. Inst. v. Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV),, Nederlands Instituut voor Militaire Historie (NIMH), and NIOD Inst. v. Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies. Beyond the Pale: Dutch Extreme Violence in the Indonesian War of Independence, 1945-1949. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9789048557172