De demografische geschiedenis van de Indische Nederlanders: NIDI rapport

Abstract

This report describes the demographic history of the Indo-Dutch population during the period 1930-2001. The guiding question here is, what can still today be noticed demographically of the Dutch colonial past in what since 1949 is the republic of Indonesia. The direct trigger for the current study was Het Gebaar (‘The Gesture’), a financial compensation from the Dutch government to the Indo-Dutch community. Within the first generation of the Indo-Dutch population, several groups can be distinguished: (a) persons who lived in the Dutch East Indies during or after World War II and who had the legal status of being ‘Dutch’; (b) persons who had lived in the Dutch East Indies before World War II and who had the legal status of being ‘Dutch’, but who had already left the Dutch East Indies before World War II, in virtually all cases to the Netherlands; (c) persons who lived in the Dutch East Indies during or after World War II, and who did not have the legal status of being ‘Dutch’, but obtained this status later by settling permanently in the Netherlands. A special sub-group within this category are: (d) Moluccans, persons from the Moluccan islands who were forced to choose between Indonesia and the Netherlands, came over to the Netherlands for that reason, but lived long under the assumption that their stay in the Netherlands would be temporary only. Numerically by far the most important group of Indo-Dutch persons is group (a): those who experienced as ‘Dutchmen’ the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies. Suitable statistical data on this population by age and sex are most recently available from the census of 1930. Therefore, the demographic reconstruction of the Indo-Dutch population starts in 1930. For all four categories the demographic development is decribed in detail, making use of simplifying assumptions wherever direct statistical data are lacking.