This publication emerges from a process of co-creation in which
historian Maartje Janse and research journalist Anne-Lot Hoek challenge the
dominant national narrative about the colonial experience in the Dutch East
Indies (present-day Indonesia). In combining journalistic and academic writing
with musical performance by musician Ernst Jansz they amplify the critical
voices that have spoken out against colonial injustice and that have long been
ignored in public and academic debate. Even though it is often suggested that
the mindset of people in the past prevented them from seeing what was wrong with
things we now find highly problematic, they argue that there was indeed a
tradition of colonial criticism in the Netherlands, one that included the voices
of many ‘forgotten critics’ whose lives and criticism are the subject of this
publication. The voices however were for a long time overlooked by Dutch
historians. The publication is organized around the biographies of several
critics (whose lives Janse and Hoek have published on before), the historical
debate afterwards and includes reflective videos and texts on the process of
co-creation.Maartje Janse started the process by tracing the life history of an outspoken
nineteenth-century critic of the colonial system in the Dutch East Indies,
Willem Bosch. The authors argue that it was not self-evident how criticism of
colonial injustices should be voiced and that Bosch experimented with different
methods, including organizing one of the first Dutch pressure groups.The story of Willem Bosch inspired Ernst Jansz, a Dutch musician with Indo roots,
to compose a song (‘De ballade van Sarina en Kromo’). It is an interpretation of
an old Malaysian ‘krontjong’ song, that Jansz transformed into a protest song
that reminds its listeners of protest songs of the 1960s and 1970s. Jansz, in
his lyrics, adds an indigenous perspective to this project. He performed the
song during the Voice4Thought festival in 2016, a gathering that aimed to
reflect upon migration and mobility in current times. Filmmaker Sjoerd Sijsma
made a video ‘pamplet’ in which the performance of Ernst Jansz, an interview
with Maartje Janse, and historical images from the colonial period have been
combined.Anne-Lot Hoek connected Willem Bosch to a series of twentieth-century
anti-colonial critics such as Dutch Indies civil servant Siebe Lijftogt,
Indonesian nationalists Sutan Sjahrir, Rachmad Koesoemobroto, Dutch writer Rudy
Kousbroek and Indonesian activist Jeffry Pondaag. She argues that dissenting
voices have been underrepresented in the post-war debates on colonialism and its
legacy for decades, and that one of the main reasons is that the notion of the
objective historian was not effectively problematized for a long time.http://dissentingvoices.bridginghumanities.com/
Dissenting Voices: Challenging the Colonial System