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Behind the Banner of Unity: Nationalism and anticolonialism among Indonesian students inEurope, 1917-1931

Stutje, K.

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Citation for published version (APA):Stutje, K. (2016). Behind the Banner of Unity: Nationalism and anticolonialism among Indonesian students inEurope, 1917-1931.

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Download date: 11 Feb 2021

Behind the Banner of UnityNationalism and Anticolonialism among

Indonesian Students in Europe, 1917-1931

Klaas Stutje

Behind the Banner of Unity

Nationalism

and Anticolonialism am

ongIndonesian Students in Europe, 1917-1931

Klaas Stutje

Behind the Banner of Unity

Uitnodiging voor de verdediging van het proefschrift van

Klaas Stutje

Op woensdag 15 juni om 13:00

Aula der Universiteit van Amsterdam

Oude Lutherse KerkSingel 411

1012 WN Amsterdam

Receptie aansluitend

Paranymfen

René Boer

Wessel de Boer

promotieklaas@gmail.com

13796_Stutje_Omslag.indd 1 03-05-16 14:02

Cover image: Mohammad Hatta chairing a session at the Kongress gegen Imperialismus, Brussels 1927.

Source: Gibarti, Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont, after 140.

13796_Stutje_Omslag.indd 2 03-05-16 14:02

Behind the Banner of Unity

Nationalism and Anticolonialism among Indonesian Students in Europe, 1917-1931

ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT

ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor

aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam

op gezag van de Rector Magnificus

Prof. Dr. D.C. van den Boom

ten overstaan van een door het College voor Promoties ingestelde

commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Aula der Universiteit

op woensdag 15 juni 2016, te 13.00 uur

door Klaas Stutje

geboren te Amsterdam

Promotiecommissie

Promotor: Prof. Dr. J.T. Leerssen, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Copromotor: Dr. H.A. Poeze, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en

Volkenkunde

Overige leden: Prof. Dr. E.A. Buettner, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Prof. Dr. H. Fischer-Tiné, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Prof. Dr. S. Legêne, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Prof. Dr. M.M. van der Linden, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Prof. Dr. R. Raben, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Dr. E. van Ree, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Faculteit: Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Note on Spelling

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Ch. 1 From ‘Indische Vereeniging’ to ‘Perhimpoenan Indonesia’: Sociability and

mobilisation

Ch. 2 Regionalism, nationalism, internationalism: Ratu Langie in Zürich

Ch. 3 Ambassador without a country: Mononutu in Paris

Ch. 4 Nationalising a revolt, globalising a struggle: Hatta and Semaoen in Brussels

Ch. 5 Repression and refuge: Soebardjo in Berlin

Ch. 6 From national revolutionaries to national reformists: Indonesians in Europe

Epilogue

Conclusion

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

Summary English

Summary Dutch

Summary Indonesian

p. v

p. vii

p. ix

p. 1

p. 27-

27XX

p. 53

p. 79

p. 115

p. 159

p. 195

p. 223

p. 233

p. 245

p. 255

p. 277

p. 282

p. 287

p. 291

v

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors, Joep

Leerssen and Harry Poeze, for their relentless support and indispensable comments and

critiques. I greatly appreciated their confidence and encouragements, and their academic

work offered guidance at various points in time.

At the risk of forgetting people, I wish to thank the following for their comments,

ideas and assistance: Zely Ariane, Aafke Beukema, Marieke Bloembergen, Amieke Bouma,

Kim Christiaens, Tatjana Das, Maaike Derksen, Martijn Eickhoff, Farabi Fakih, Hanna

Jansen, Ammeke Kateman, Josip Kesic, Timo Klaassen, Paul Koopman, Kasper van Kooten,

Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, Susan Legêne, Michele Louro, Bart Luttikhuis, Enno Maessen,

Hugh McDonnell, Karlijn Olijslager, Mirko van Pampus, Jeffrey Petersen, Tymen Peverelli,

Bambang Purwanto, Remco Raben, Sanne Ravensbergen, Erik van Ree, Nienke Rentenaar,

Umar Ryad, Seng Guo Quan, Taomo Zhou, Ruri Widaningsih, Winnie de Wit, Manon

Wormsbecher, and Susanto Zuhdi.

Mr. Faiman, Mrs. Hatta, Mr. Somadikarta and Mr. Subardjo deserve special mention

for their hospitality in Indonesia and in the Netherlands, and for their willingness to share

their personal memories and family histories with me. Thanks as well to the members of the

Collective Identities and Radical History reading groups for providing my chapters and

papers with invaluable and encouraging feedback. My research trip to Indonesia was an

unforgettable experience thanks to the good care and generosity of the teaching staff of Alam

Bahasa, and the Heru family, and the great companionship of Carli Cooper and Inez

Maessen. Finally, I want to thank my colleagues and fellow-PhDs in the trenches of the P.C.

Hoofthuis, room 6.50 in particular. Stay strong and keep writing, the end is in sight!

Financially and institutionally, this thesis was made possible by the department of

European Studies, the Huizinga Institute, the Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational

and European Studies (ARTES), and its predecessor, the Institute for Culture and History

(ICG) at the University of Amsterdam. These institutes also facilitated research trips to Paris,

Berlin, London, the United States and Indonesia. Colleagues within these departments are too

numerous to mention, but are equally acknowledged here. Apart from these permanent

affiliations, my dissertation also benefitted from my participation in the SEAP conference at

Cornell University, the SAGSC conference at Chicago University and the Internationale Willi

Münzenberg Kongress in Berlin. These institutions covered part of my expenses and

provided a welcoming and stimulating scholarly environment. I would like to thank staff at

vi

various libraries and archives, including the University of Amsterdam, the former Royal

Tropical Institute (KIT) in Amsterdam, the International Institute for Social History in

Amsterdam, the Dutch National Archives in The Hague, Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia

in Jakarta, the Archive de la Préfecture de Police in Paris, the Centre d’Accueil et de

Recherche des Archives Nationales in Paris, British Library Archives in London, and the

Cornell University Library in Ithaca.

On a more personal note, I thank my many friends for their support and (feigned)

interest, but above all for reminding me that there is more to life than work. Finally, I owe an

immeasurable gratitude to the love and support of my sister, Anna; my parents, Mies and Jan

Willem; and my love, Jacqueline.

vii

Note on spelling

One of the disadvantages of transnational history writing is that the sources, and more

importantly the names in the sources, are written and transliterated in various traditions of

spelling and transliteration. Often, name variants are easy to reduce to more common

versions, but in more obscure sources it can be difficult to transliterate names to accepted

name systems. Throughout the dissertation, I have used modern, romanised transliteration

systems for non-Indonesian names whenever I could relate them to existing scholarship (for

example, Liao Huanxing instead of Liau Hansin, and Topchubachev instead of Toptchibachi).

However, when such scholarship was unavailable, or when a person is best known under his

or her historic name (Chiang Kai-shek instead of Jiang Zhongzheng), I left the spelling intact

to avoid confusion and to make it possible to retrace and check the sources.

Especially with regard to Chinese names, this accounts for a regrettable inconsistency.

For well-known personal names I adhere to the old-fashioned Wade-Giles system (for

example with Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen), while in other cases as well as in

geographical names I use the more accepted Pinyin system (such as Beijing, Guomindang

and Liao Huanxing). In the case of Chinese Indonesian names or lesser known individuals, I

took the names as they appeared in the sources, resulting in the Dutch romanised Hokkien

system for Chinese Indonesian names (Chung Hwa Hui, Han Tiauw Kie), and other – often

unorthodox – systems for Chinese persons in France, Belgium and Germany. A consistent

transliteration to the Pinyin system would not only bring the risk of hypercorrection, but

would also make further archival research impossible.

For the same reasons, I decided to use the self-applied contemporary spelling of

Indonesian names and organisations in the 1920s. Homogenising or ‘modernising’ historic

Indonesian names is not only undesirable, but also virtually impossible. Over the previous

decades, the Indonesian language has gone through several different spelling systems,

replacing, for instance, ‘oe’ with ‘u’, and ‘dj’ with ‘j’. Moreover, Indonesians often changed

their names in the course of their lives (for example, Suwardi Suryaningrat became Ki Hadjar

Dewantara in 1922). Finally, there is great regional variety of names and naming customs,

reflecting the multicultural nature of Indonesia. Until recently, most Javanese had only one

name (Soekarno, Semaoen) often carrying the name of their father in addition (Tjipto (son of)

Mangoenkoesoemo). Bataks, for instance, often used clan names, while Balinese gave names

according to birth order and caste. On top of that, nobility titles and honorifics were very

common. Consequently, a second name does not always indicate a family name as

viii

understood in a European context. Abdulmadjid Djojoadhiningrat, for example, cannot

simply be abbreviated to Mr. Djojoadhiningrat. To avoid all complexities, I decided to adopt

the spelling and use of names applied by the Indonesians themselves, and add extra

references in the index.

Regarding the name of the area we now know as Indonesia, scholarly literature has

not reached consensus on the most preferred variant. Some scholars use ‘Indonesia’, also for

the colonial period, while others use ‘the Indies’, ‘the East Indies’, ‘the Dutch Indies’, ‘the

Dutch East Indies’, ‘the Netherlands Indies’, and ‘the Netherlands East Indies’. Each term has

its merits and demerits. Throughout the work I will use ‘Dutch Indies’ as a compromise

between clarity, readability, and historical accuracy, but ‘Indonesian’ as a substitute for

‘inlander’ (Native), ‘Indisch’, or cultural identifications in the Archipelago.

ix

List of Abbreviations

AECO - Association pour l’Étude des Civilisations

Orientales

ANC - African National Congress

AMS - Algemeene Middelbare School, ‘General

High Schools

ARD - Indies ‘Algemeene Recherche Dienst’

CCP - Communist Party of China

CHH - Chung Hwa Hui

CID - Dutch ‘Centrale Inlichtingen Dienst’

CGTU - Confédération Générale du Travail

Unitaire

Comintern - Communist International

CPH - Communistische Partij Holland

CPH-CC - Communistische Partij Holland-

Centraal Comité

CPSU - Communist Party of the Soviet Union

CSI - Centraal Sarekat Islam

GMD - Guomindang

HBS - Hoogere Burger School, ‘Higher

Commoner’s School’

HP - Hindia Poetra

IAH - Internationale Arbeiterhilfe

IAMV - Internationaal Anti-Militairistische

Vereeniging

ILP - Independent Labour Party

IM - Indonesia Merdeka

INC - Indian National Congress

ISDV - Indische Sociaal-Democratische

Vereeniging

IV - Indische Vereeniging

KPD - Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands,

Communist Party of Germany

LACO - League against Colonial Oppression

LAI - League against Imperialism

LAI-NL - League against Imperialism-Nederland

LSI - Labour and Socialist International

PCF - Parti Communiste Française, Communist

Party of France

PI - Perhimpoenan Indonesia

PKI - Partai Komunist Indonesia

PNI - Partai Nasional Indonesia

PNI Baru - Pendidikan Nasional Indonesia Baru

PPPKI - Permoefakatan Perhimpoenan-

Perhimpoenan Politiek Kebangsaän Indonesia

RME - Rassemblement Mondial des Étudiants pour

la Paix, la Liberté et la Culture

ROEPI - Roekoen Peladjar Indonesia

SDAP - Sociaal Democratische Arbeiders Partij

SDEA - Société des Étudiants Asiatiques

SFIO - Section Française de l'Internationale

Ouvrière

SI - Sarekat Islam

SKBI - Sarekat Kaoem Boeroeh Indonesia

SPLI - Sarekat Pegawai Laoet Indonesia

SR - Sarekat Rakjat

SVIK - Studentenvereeniging ter Bevordering der

Indonesische Kunst

VSTP - Vereeniging van Spoor- en

Tramwegpersoneel