Dutch buy ex-Australian vehicles

[Hanno Spoelstra]

David,

I think in general the average Dutch citizen living in the Netherlands could not care less. After the war, everybody wanted to get back to normal life. People coming back from German and Japanese concentration camps were told not to feel sorry for themselves, as "everyone had had to live through the war" (...).

For citizens which had lived part or all of their lives in the Netherlands East Indies, many of whom had fought to defend it, their world had fallen apart. If they had lived through it, they moved to the Netherlands with no possessions other than the meagre clothes on their backs. My late father's family was among them.

For the Dutch government and businesses trying to prevent the loss of the colony was worth fighting a four year-long bloody war, as a lot of money was made and power gained over the course of 350 years of colonialism. The Dutch knew no better than that the NEI were a part of the Kingdom...

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

Out of curiosity, what sort of sense do you have of the general feeling of the average Dutch citizen after the war, with regards to Indonesia? Would they have been quite happen with an independent Indonesia?

It seems so odd that Britain, France and Holland, from a political perspective after the war, were all so hell bent on reestablishing their concept of colonialism in Southeast Asia. It was such a costly mistake for all of them.