ABSTRACT
In mid-November 1945, airmail was restored between Indonesia and the Netherlands. As a result, more and more families in the Netherlands received letters from their relatives about the precarious situation in Indonesia. Those with loved ones in Indonesia were deeply concerned, and asked Prime Minister Schermerhorn’s cabinet to use military means to end the violence as soon as possible. However, the Minister of Overseas Territories, Logemann, opposed the use of force and prioritized negotiations with Indonesia. 1 Against this background of clashing political and personal interests, this chapter addresses the question of how the earliest acts of violence were perceived in the Dutch public domain in the years 1945–1949. This can be divided into two sub-questions. First, how was the violence discussed, regardless of whether ‘bersiap’ or other terms were used? Second, to what extent did reports of the violence play a role in public opinion, in political and military decision-making and in other areas, as a motive for retaliation or as a spur for intervention? To answer these questions, we address different domains: military information, information provided by the Dutch government, military magazines, journalistic reporting, film productions and, finally, Indies, Dutch and Indonesian newspapers.
