During the 16th century, the Moluccas, also known as the Spice Islands, were fought over for control by British, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch traders, who were keen to control the worldwide monopoly on Clove, Mace and Nutmeg production.
Eventually the Dutch VOC (East India Company) emerged as the most powerful merchants in the region. To maintain dominance over competing autonomous traders and British forces, the Dutch allied with 'warrior bands' from certain South Moluccan Islands including Ambon.
Following the collapse of the VOC and the transfer of its territories to the Dutch Government, the Royal Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) continued to recruit soldiers from the South Moluccas and Ambon. The latter were used to the colonial structure, and loyal to the Dutch Crown. Moreover, they were fierce and reliable warriors. They were even nicknamed Belanda Hitam (Black Dutch) by other Indonesians.
During the WWII Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, the Moluccans became among the most active in the resistance movement, creating underground resistance cells to aid the Allied forces. In addition to gathering intelligence, some sleeper cells hid weapons in strategic locations waiting to take up arms when the Allies arrived. Even torture and beheading by the Japanese secret Kempeitai police did not deter them.
"At that time the Moluccan special troops only found their contemporaries in the Gurkha units of the British Indian Army."
At the end of WWII, the Indonesian National Revolution, in which the Indonesians won de-colonising independence from the Dutch, caused the KNIL to be disbanded and native soldiers were either to be demobilised or to join the army of the independent Republic of Indonesia. Although the peace treaty provided for a federation of Indonesia states, the Indonesian government turned it into a unitary state. The majority of the mostly-Protestant Moluccans did not want to serve this Javanese Muslim leadership. Instead, these Moluccan nationalists declared the independent state of Republik Maluku Selatan (RMS). (Interestingly, this year will mark the 60th year anniversary of this declaration of independence on 25 April 1950).
Now, in addition to being called 'Black Dutch', the Moluccans were also derided as 'bloodhounds of the white' and 'traitors' by some Indonesians for cooperating with the Dutch. Moluccan independence would not last long as a bloody guerrilla civil war ensued between the RMS and the Republic of Indonesia. As a result, 12500 former-KNIL Moluccan soldiers and their families were evacuated to the Netherlands on a temporary basis, and ironically sheltered in former Nazi concentration camps such as Vught.
A former refugee recounts:
"When we arrived", she tells me, "we didn't know what Vught was. Or where they had put us. One day at dusk I looked outside and saw a strange woman I had never seen hanging out her washing. We all saw her but did not know who she was. When we asked the Dutch authorities they told us 'the people who lived here before were Jews. After they stayed here they were sent away and killed. These are their ghosts.' That was when we learnt about the war and what the Germans had done."
The Dutch Government undertook to negotiate with Indonesia an independent Molucca to which the exiles could return in the future. In the meantime, the CAZ agency was set up to manage temporary residents, who were stateless, discouraged from seeking work and received little support.
"Forced to idleness, isolated in their camps, robbed from their military status, confronted with another climate and struggling with their language problems there was nothing left for them then but to drift on their hope, their memories and their myths. One of these myths was the RMS, the independent Moluccan state. They started to derive their identity on the RMS-ideal."
In 1963, the Indonesian army succeeded in breaking Moluccan resistance on the island of Ceram.
In 1966, the first Moluccan President was executed by the Indonesians and a Dutch-based politician became a President in exile.
By 1970, the Dutch Government finally admitted that the Moluccans' future lay in the Netherlands and the CAZ was dissolved.
In 1970 and 1975, there were a series of radicalised extremist Moluccan terrorist acts in the Dutch homeland.
Since then the Government has implemented social programs in the form of new housing, better education and job opportunities for Dutch minorities. For some, the Moluccan RMS dream is still alive to this day. Some, including third generation Moluccan youth, still feel an emotional connection to the RMS. For others, any hope of repatriation is extinguished. Others yet feel betrayed by the Dutch for the broken promise of an independent South Moloccus. Like many immigrant groups worldwide, they must "[balance] the rich cultural heritage and history of their forefathers with the demands of life in the complex, multi-ethnic, westernized world that is the Netherlands today, a task faced by the younger generation of all of Holland's many immigrant groups."
A famous Dutch of Moluccan descent is Oranje World Cup squad member Giovanni van Bronckhorst, who would lead the 2010 team to the Cup finals in South Africa and subsequently be elected into the Order of Orange-Nassau.
References
Ben Allen & Aart Loubert "History and Identity: Moluccans in the Netherlands" http://www.safecom.org.au/dutch-moluccans.htm
Marina Brouwer (26 April 2010) "The Moluccan dream - still alive at 60"
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/moluccan-dream-%E2%80%93-still-alive-60
Minority Rights Group International, World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Netherlands : Moluccans, 2008, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/49749cd9c.html [accessed 20 December 2010]
Olena Frenkiel (8 March 2001) "Dutch Moluccans appeal for solidarity" BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/europe/1207403.stm
Wikipedia "South Moluccas"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Moluccas
[modified 15 December 2010]
To keep the dream alive:
The Foundation for Keeping Moluccan Civil and Political Rights
http://www.pak-amf.org/
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