ABSTRACT
During the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-1949) Dutch national media collaborated with the authorities in providing a sanitized representation of the conflict. The public was complicit in this early unremembering. Some left-wing media carried reports of Dutch atrocities. Joris Ivens’ documentary Indonesia Calling (1946) represented the conflict as one of international liberation which contested colonialism, but was viewed by few members of the Dutch public. Hella Haasse's novel Oeroeg (1948) came to be widely read as a representation of the irreconcilability of East and West. In early historiography, Van Mook offered the enlightened colonial view that the Dutch mission had been sabotaged by outsiders. De Kadt's thesis was that Dutch smugness had brought about the violent conflict.
