Indië [Dutch East Indies] to the new Kingdom of the Netherlands, following
the Convention of London that was signed in 1814.34 The influence of Dutch
authority on the local societies in the archipelago showed a strong increase after
1816 when compared to the period of the VOC administration. The motives in
the VOC period were of a purely commercial nature. The leaders of the VOC were
not out to obtain territorial control, unless it would contribute to the profitability
of the trading activities. Although the trading emporium covered parts of the
Middle East, South, Southeast and East Asia, the VOC had only exercised direct
control in a small number of areas.35 This was also the most important reason
why the VOC had never made much effort to train administrative officials for
the East. After all, trade was the main objective, not administration.36 However,
with the dissolution of the VOC, the debts and possessions of this trading giant
were transferred to the Dutch state, and the overseas possessions therefore
became colonies in the sense that the mother country became responsible for
their administration.37 Herman Willem Daendels (1762-1818), who was sent
to the East by the King of Holland Louis Napoleon to defend Java against the
increasing British threat, understood that the responsibilities associated with
managing a colony were different from the ones of managing a trading company.
He started to centralise the administrative system on Java, fully in line with the
developments in the Netherlands based on the French administrative system.38
One of the many initiatives he took during his short reign (he arrived in Java
in January 1808 and in May 1811 he had to transfer his power to the newly
appointed and recently arrived governor-general Janssens) was the inception of
the Algemene Secretarie (General Secretariat) as the administrative centre for
the colonial government in the East Indies. Since then, communication between
the governor-general and regional residents (Daendels named them landdrosten,
later prefects and they were named residents since Raffles) only went via the
General Secretariat. Under the British administration of the Indies (1811-1816),
Lieutenant-General Raffles continued the reorganisation of the government
based on the principles introduced by Daendels.
When the territories in the East were returned into Dutch hands in 1816, it
was clear that the Dutch administration no longer could, nor wanted to, serve
the interests of trade only; it also wanted to serve the welfare of the mother
country and the colony. According to Van Welderen Rengers, the most important
assignment for the Dutch Commissioners General, who in 1816 assumed power
from the British, was 'to establish a system of colonial policy which would
provide profits for the mother country. [TJhere was also prevalent the
opinion that it would be impossible to obtain such results without taking into
consideration the individual rights of the native population'.39 In fact, 19 August
1816 saw the birth of the relationship between the State of the Netherlands and
COLONIAL LEGACY IN SOUTH EAST ASIA -
THE DUTCH ARCHIVES
34 Efthymiou, De organisatie van regelgeving, 120-122.
35 Hui Kian Kwee, The political economy, 218.
36 Fasseur, De Indologen, 23.
37 Fraassen en Klapwijk, Herinneringen, 297. Interesting in this respect are the discussions in the Nationale
Vergadering on the question of what colonies were. See the committee for the Titul over de Colonien',
established on February 3, 1797.
38 Ball, Indonesian Legal History, 88.
39 Welderen Rengers, The Failure, 54.
40 Welderen Rengers, The Failure, 52.
52
