The Dutch Royal Institute for Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV) in Leiden has proposed a new inquiry into what actually happened in the conflict between the Netherlands and the Republic in the years 1945-1949. But it will differ from earlier inquiries, that focused on Dutch excesses, in that this time around there will also be attention for the actions of the TNI and the para military groups.

‘The Retreat’ by J. Eijkelboom, Part III. Continued from parts 1 and 2.

‘The Retreat’ by J. Eijkelboom, Part II, continued from Part 1.

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 there as a sergeant for 2 1/2 years. In later life he functioned, inter alia, as editor of the renowned/notorious Amsterdam student paper “Propria Cures” and the leftist weekly “Vrij Nederland”. Apart from his journalistic activities he has published about half a dozen bundles of poetry. I have translated here his ‘short’ story “The Retreat” (“De Terugtocht”) that was first published in 1953 in the literary magazine “Libertinage”. It is rather a long “short story” and this is only the first part. Two or three more are to follow.

“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”

from Dr. Julius Jacobs , “Eenigen tijd onder de Baliers”, 1883

Tourists polled, their favourite hotels, restaurants, malls, and holiday destinations in Indonesia.

The tangled logic of the state of Indonesia’s assertion of sovereignity over western Papua.

Census figures unreliable, are Jakarta and Java are much less populated than is thought?

Captain Westerling, hero against Javanese imperialism or villain of its Dutch counterpart.

Mystics and Islamists battle it out in a Javanese village, Andrew Beatty’s “A Shadow Falls”.