Many colonial countries have brought a lot of death and destruction to their colonies. The Netherlands is no different, and as a Dutch citizen I am still very ashamed of this. An example is the wiping out of Balinese kings in 1906 in Bandung, a terrible event that still for me is the true image of Dutch colonialism; a complete misunderstanding of the importance of culture leading to terrible events. However, the Dutch have also had a positive influence on Indonesia during their time there, and one of these were noted by me during my recent trip to Bali.
Indonesian language; Bahasa Indonesia, has been influenced quite a lot by the Dutch. While driving past a local car rental place, I noticed a sign saying ‘knalpot’. Knalpot is the old Dutch word meaning ‘exhaust’. The introduction of this word in the Indonesian dictionary indicates that the Netherlands did bring some advancements to Indonesia, such as the motorbike (although when seeing the terrible traffic in Kuta, Bali, one would almost wish they never did so).
Other Dutch words that are used in modern day Bahasa include ‘kantor’ (from the Dutch word ‘kantoor’, meaning ‘office’), kabel (cable) and bioskop (cinema). All these words are words that would represent a modern Western society, and thus it would seem as if the Dutch did indeed try to modernize Indonesia (even if it was just for themselves).
Not all changes in language were positive. The Dutch brought the words ‘oom’ en ‘tante’ to Indonesia, which mean ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’. I found this out when a friend from school who is from Indonesia approached me when I used the word ‘tante’ on the phone with my mom. In Indonesia they are used to address someone older than you, usually as a sign of respect. The fact that they would use a Dutch word to show respect to someone would indicate that the Dutch were seen as a ‘higher’ people, a community that needed respect from the Indonesians. Now this may seem obvious considering that the Dutch were the colonists, but being able to draw this conclusion from just the use of certain words is quite unusual.
It is interesting to note that so many conclusions about a country’s colonial history can be drawn just from the language that they use. I have done no further research on the topic yet, so in my next blog post I will try and see if I can find any evidence of the claims that I made in this post.
Sebastiaan Jansen's History blog 