Strangers in the House: Dutch Historiography and Anglophone Trespassers

Since George McTurin Kahin's landmark history of the Indonesian revolution, Australian-American Indonesian historiography has studiously avoided (with a very few notable exceptions) Dutch history writing on Indonesia. Until relatively recently it seems that a rather impervious linguistic and what might be loosely termed, postcolonialist, barrier has existed separating the two. The stand-off, if such it is, has been mutual with one venerable Dutch scholar suggesting laconically in a Dutch language publication little over a decade ago that: 'American and Australian historians sometimes demonstrate an insufficient recognition of the problematical aspects of the Indocentric perspective.' In examining post-war, Dutch language historiography of the colonialera, this paper aims to provide perspective on the historical gap separating 'postimperial' and postcolonial writing in these two traditions. It identifies key themes and figures and the role of institutional structures in the perpetuation of Dutch colonialist historiographical traditions that explain its reception of post-war theoretical and substantive Anglophone preoccupations in this field. The article concludes with a consideration of more recent trends in both 'camps' that provides evidence of a growing convergence between the two bodies of historiography and the factors contributing to this more recent mutual reassessment.