Portal:Indonesia/ST List/SA Dutch East Indies

The Dutch East Indies, or Netherlands East Indies, (Dutch: Nederlands-Indië; Indonesian: Hindia-Belanda) was the name of the colonies set up by the Dutch East India Company, which came under administration of the Netherlands during the nineteenth century.

In the Indies, the foundation of Batavia on the north-west coast of Java in 1619 formed the permanent center of Dutch trade in Asia. It was significant to Indonesia's history that as an unplanned colony it was founded on mercantile interests rather than Dutch national expansion. By 1700, a colonial pattern was well established; the VOC had grown to become a state-within-a-state and the dominant power in the archipelago. After the bankrupt company was liquidated on 1 January 1800 (decades before the British HEIC was taken over in the form of crown colonies), and after a British interregnum — strategic custody — during the Napoleonic Wars, the Dutch government effectively took over the administration.

Following the capitulation of Japan at the end of the second World War, a group of nationalists, among others Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, declared the independence of Indonesia, sparking armed conflict when the Dutch attempted to regain control of the region. However, pressure from Australia and newly independent India forced a negotiation brokered by the United States of America resulting in the Round Table Conference of 1949 in which the Dutch acknowledged the sovereignty of Indonesia excepting the region of western New Guinea. (Read More...)