The Djogdja Documenten Revisited: Repatriation, Silence, and the Seized Archives of the Decolonization War

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The Djogdja Documenten Revisited:

Repatriation, Silence, and the Seized

Archives of the Decolonization War

Rika Theo (12870528)

Rika.theo@gmail.com

Master Thesis Archival and Information Studies

Supervisor: dr. Michael Joseph Karabinos

Second reader: prof. dr. Charles Jeurgens

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Figure 1: The secret archives of the Netherlands-Indie were opened in 1990, with pictures of ARA’s two archivists from the Tweede Afdeling who worked on the inventory process: M.G.H.A. De Graaff and A.M. Tempelaars. Reprinted from Haagsche Courant, July 26, 1990. ... 46 Figure 2: Screenshot of the description of Djogdja Documenten. Reprinted from NL-HaNA, NEFIS en CMI, 2.10.62

https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/archief/2.10.62/invnr/%40II.~1.~1.1~499?query=nefis%2 0cmi&search-type=inventory ... 61

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I. Introduction

1. Background

When I first encountered the archive of the Netherlands Forces Intelligence

Service (NEFIS) en Centrale Militaire Inlichtingendienst (CMI)1_{in the National Archives}

of the Netherlands (NAN), I was deeply astonished. It contains a myriad of records displaced from Indonesia during the 1945-1949 decolonization war against the Netherlands2_{. Their existence was unknown to me and, I suppose, to many Indonesian}

people -perhaps except the archivists and historians. As an Indonesian, I witnessed a sliver of the country’s histories in these records, even though they were arranged and described in NEFIS’s perspective. I saw records that evidenced not only the early Indonesian Republican government, but also various socio-political organizations with their diversity of views and stances on independence struggles. I read letters from informants to the Dutch intelligence, conflicts, and divisions among the people that were not much told in the Indonesian official history book. Other records contained very personal documents - diaries, photos, private letters, and personal belongings. I found bloodstains on one of the documents, a reminder of the violence and horrifying antagonism of the decolonization war.

Among this wealth of seized archives, only a selection namely the Djogdja Documenten that has been sent back to Indonesia. Many other seized archives of the decolonization war were left out in the Netherlands. Only Indonesians privileged enough to come there will be able to see them. The knowledge of Dutch is required because, despite the main

1_{The seized archives or “Buitgemaakte en Gevonden Documenten” consists of 4000 inventory numbers of records}

that were confiscated, obtained, and looted in the Dutch East Indies. It is part of the inventory of Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Netherland Forces Intelligence Service [NEFIS] en Centrale Militaire Inlichtingendienst [CMI] in Nederlands-Indië, nummer toegang 2.10.62, inventorinummer: 3013-7112.

2_{This period was known in Indonesia as the independence struggle era when the Dutch military returned to}

Indonesia after Japan surrendered at the end of the World War II. In contrast, the Netherlands has long called this period in a euphemistic term ‘politionele acties’.

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language used in the documents are Indonesian, the inventory was described in the Dutch language. This encounter did inspire the pursuit of this research.

The academic research about the Djogdja Documenten and the NEFIS seized archives has not yet much continued since the last extensive research done by Michael Karabinos (2015) on the former and Okeu Yulianasari (2012) on the latter. Few new research continued their works. Nurjaman (2020) discussed briefly the Djodgja Documenten repatriation in his research on decolonizing the archives in the return of the Dutch East Indies static archives. Another mention is in Jos van Beurden’s (2017) dissertation that analyzed the return of colonial cultural objects. Meanwhile, the description of the NEFIS/CMI seized archives at the NAN has been improved by Leiden University’s historian Harry Poeze in 2016. Now we can see details of events and names found in each document and a glimpse of the records’ provenance. Nevertheless, the room to improve it to be more inclusive is still open.

The Djogdja Documenten that were returned to Indonesia in 1975-1976, comprises 396 inventory numbers. They were documents inscribed by the state institutions and the leaders of the Republics of Indonesia, seized in December 1948, when the Netherlands’ troops attacked the Republican's capital Yogyakarta and detained the government leaders. Their seizure and removal from Yogyakarta linked together all the records and recreated them as an entity: a single collection compiled together by NEFIS. Their purpose was changed into one intended by NEFIS, and thus, became—as a unit—a Dutch creation (Karabinos, 2015; p.374). They are the example of what Jeurgens and Karabinos (2020) refer to as colonized records: “the records which were originally created, owned and used by local institutions and people but were collected, looted, bought or copied and shipped to Europe” (p.207).

The repatriation of the Djogdja Documenten originated from an unprecedented request from Indonesia, made rather informally during the early years of the microfilm exchange project between the two national archives. After series of formal and informal negotiations, the records were transferred in their original form from The Hague to Jakarta in two batches, and then one more time in 1987. However, Indonesian archivists still believed that more archives can be considered as Djogdja Documenten and existed in

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the archives of the Algemene Secretarie (General Secretary) and the Procureur General (Attorney General) of Batavia at the NAN (Karabinos, 2013, p.385).

In the Netherlands’ legal view, the archives can be returned if they are created by the other sovereign state or government administrations. However, many Indonesian Republican archives captured in other areas outside Yogyakarta are seen in the NEFIS/CMI archives and elsewhere in the National Archives. Yet, there has been no official initiative or even discussion on the return or any further actions for these seized archives. Despite the finding aid is now more accessible after Poeze’s work, we still have not heard any archival research conducted to examine the rest of the seized archives.

The Djogdja Documenten repatriation is considered one of a few success stories of archival claims in the world. Yet, it still leaves many unanswered questions. For example, little was known about the selection process of the seized archives to become the Djogdja Documenten. Why were other Indonesian government archives from the 1945-1949 period left aside? Who decided which archives to be returned and under what criteria were the selection? We could not find the answers to these questions in the descriptions of the archives at the NAN and ANRI.

The return of the colonized archives has been positively seen as a step of decolonizing the archives, or even as literally decolonizing the archives (Lowry, 2017). Is it the case for the Djogdja Documenten return? This is a pivotal question today, whose answer may serve as one of the imperatives to take further actions for the 1945-1949 seized archives. Before answering that question, I would argue to do one important step: to locate the silences. This research borrows Michel-Rolph Trouillot (2004)’s framework of silence in historical production. Any single event enters history with some of its parts left out, resulting in the absence of certain things and peoples in history. This silence reflects unequal control of the means of historical production, which enters all four instances of history-making: fact creation (the making of sources), fact assembly (the making of archives), fact retrieval (the making of narratives), and the retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance) (p.195). This limits our ability to access the past or even leaves us with the challenge of “unthinkable histories” (Trouillot, 2004).

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In the history of the 1945-1949 decolonization war period, the inherent silence that this research particularly highlights is the second instance, when facts are assembled in the archives. Silence happens not only when archives are destroyed, displaced, classified, or neglected. The fact assemblers control and condition the facts in the process of selecting, arranging, and describing the narrative. In the long decades of debates and contestation of this period, archives are arguably complicit as the silent collaborator of silences in knowledge and history-making of this period. What we witness here is what Trouillot called ‘archival power at its strongest, the power to define what is and what is not a serious object of research and, therefore, of mention’ (p. 99).

The Djogdja Documenten is an archival collection that was molded not only by the inscribers (the Indonesian Republican leaders), the collecting agency (the NEFIS/CMI), but also by the Dutch and Indonesian government, and especially by the national archives, ANRI and NAN, at the time of repatriation and afterward. Silence in the fact assembly of the Djogdja Documenten is located in all parts of its various creations. Given this research’s purpose to analyze repatriation as part of decolonizing the archives, the repatriation part of the Djogdja Documenten is the research focus. In short, this research investigates the silences and gaps around the repatriation of the Djogdja Documenten in the context and process of the repatriation, and stemming from that, the archival silence of the Djogdja Documenten in both national archives.

2. The aim, scope, and research question

This research aims to locate the silences emanating from state-based archival repatriation, the role of archival institutions in the making and revealing of these silences through repatriation, and in their archival practices that shape the Djogdja Documenten. It adopts the framework of silence to analyze what has been missed, excluded, obscured and sidelined in the archival repatriation of the Djogdja Documenten.

The silences that happened prior to repatriation, in the process of repatriation and silences after the repatriation were investigated in relation to the making and representing of the archives, or what Trouillot refers to as fact assembly. In locating the silence, the power of archival institutions, whether in creating, facilitating, and enforcing

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silence or in filling and exposing the silence, during the events and process of repatriation was particularly examined. Subsequently, the research analyzes the archival silences of the Djogdja Documenten in the national archives of the Netherlands and Indonesia in the post-repatriation.

The silence of archival repatriation is not merely a question of the limits of archival repatriation; inasmuch as recognizing the silences in repatriation is part of the debates of decolonizing archives. Locating the silences around the repatriation of the Djogdja Documenten means unveiling the gaps, absences, exclusion, even collective omission in the political process of the repatriation, but also in the archives through the selection, description, ordering, and fragmentation. The analyses of silences in this fact assembly should bring into view what has been left out or obscured amidst their significance to the narratives making in both countries. In connecting archival repatriation, silences, and decolonization contexts, this research took a more epistemological perspective and moved beyond the main theme of sovereign ownership in archival repatriation.

It should be said that there is nothing complete about this research. The legal issues of repatriation were briefly explored, even though this remains the main challenge of archival repatriation. Neither does this research explore the broader and current development of repatriation, especially one more apparent in the heritage sector. The relatively less interest, debate, and media attention of archival repatriation compared to the artifact repatriation (Banton, 2018) is admittedly an instance of silence that deserves separate research.

Research question:

Analyzing the repatriation of the Djogdja Documenten from the Netherlands to Indonesia, what are the silences emanating from this state-based repatriation in the instance of fact assembly?

a. What are the silences or gaps in the context and events that shaped the repatriation of the Djogdja Documenten?

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b. What are the silences during the repatriation process? What are the roles of the national archives of both countries in relation to the silences happened in the repatriation process?

c. What are the archival silences in the post-repatriation of the Djogdja Documenten in both national archives?

3. Methods

Archival repatriation is a phenomenon that requires the examination and understanding of context concerning the distinct circumstances of each repatriation case. Given this situation, this research was designed as a case study research to investigate the repatriation of colonized archives in the context of the growing decolonization debate. A case study was selected because this research approach conducts an “empirical inquiry to investigate a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident (Yin 1994, p. 13 as quoted in Williamson, 2002). Besides, a case study provides evidence for hypothesis generation and for exploration of areas where existing knowledge is limited (Williamson, 2002, p.111) as in the case of the Djogdja Documenten repatriation.

The research began by conducting a thorough literature review for the main concepts namely (archival) silence and state-based archival repatriation. Both concepts were synthesized to be the analytical tool in investigating the research question and its sub-questions.

The analyses were done in three phases that investigate each research sub-question.

First, the silences or gaps in the context and events that shaped the repatriation of the Djogdja Documenten were analyzed. A literature review was conducted on the context that shaped the repatriation between Indonesia and the Netherlands. Primary source (archives) and secondary reading materials such as academic journal articles, opinion articles, and news related to the issue were consulted.

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The analyses focused on the evolving post-colonial narratives in both countries and the gaps within them. The research asked what the main narratives in both countries were, what have they omitted or sidelined, and how these narratives shaped the decisions of state-based repatriation. As context changes across time, the research continued to examine how the narratives have evolved, what are the remaining silences, and how they can shape the current imperative of archival repatriation.

Secondly, the process of the Djogdja Documenten repatriation was revisited by examining the records of the repatriation process and policy that were kept in the National Archives of the Netherlands. The following questions were asked:

• In this state-based repatriation, what are the political compromises and how did they create silence?

• How was the Djogdja Documenten selected to be returned and what were the silences in this selection?

• Did the protracted negotiations contain silences?

• Were there conditions of political secrecy of the seized archives that hinder the repatriation process?

• What was expressed as the basis of the repatriation for both countries and what has been left out as a result of this?

• How did the two archival institutions deal with silences in this repatriation process?

To answer this question, the research consulted records of the Tweede Afdeling and

Nederlandse Ambassade in Indonesië at the NAN. Due to the temporary closure of NAN

in several periods of the Covid-19 pandemic, not all the records related to the Djogdja Documenten could be consulted. The records of the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1975-1984 are among other important records that in the end could not be consulted.

Subsequently, interviews with relevant persons in this matter were conducted. As it was not possible to visit ANRI in Jakarta due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the interview was an alternative way to gain information and perspective of the Indonesian side.

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Unfortunately, not so many people related to the issue were still available or willing to be interviewed online. Two Indonesian key persons were interviewed, one was Djoko Utomo, the former director of ANRI and the other was Intan Lidwina Wibisono, an archivist at ANRI with knowledge of the inventory of the Djogdja Documenten.

Finally, the archival silence of the Djogdja Documenten was examined. The research asked questions such as: What was included and excluded through archival practices (e.g. description and arrangement)? Were there records destroyed, made obscured, sidelined, or classified for certain reasons? What are the barriers of access that possibly silence the archives?

The provenance of the Djogdja Documenten was analyzed to locate the silences from how the archives were formed and how the provenance was described at the NAN. From there, it continued to trace out the remaining seized archives that were left out at the NAN. The analyses went further to observe the silences in the archival description at the NAN, in particular the online catalog of the NEFIS/CMI archives. Finally, the post-repatriation process at ANRI was examined by analyzing the interviews, ANRI’s archival guidelines, and other secondary data such as news articles, academic articles, and books.

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II. Conceptual Framework

In this section, the framework of silence (including archival silence) is first explained, followed by the silence emanating from archival repatriation of the colonized archives. Both are then analyzed and connected to the concept of decolonizing the archives.

1. The framework of silence

Silence, generally speaking, represents absences, lapses, blank voids of something that remains untold or is not happening. It can be the absence of sound, speech, text, or other signs (Carter, 2006). Trouillot (2004) takes a further understanding of silence as an active and transitive process in which “one ‘silences’ a fact or individual as a silencer silences a gun” (p. 48). Carter (2006) calls this unnatural silence, characterized by the use of power, both overt and covert, in the silencing (p.228).

The concept of silence has been worked and developed in a great diversity of meaning and use. Aidan Russel (2019) makes an overview of different uses of silence in multiple disciplines. For example, trauma theory explores the connection between silence and violence. The studies of totalitarianism and state terror point out silence and its secrets as a technique to acquire, reproduce, and define power, while subaltern perspectives view silence as a strategic response to domination (Russel, 2019, p. 6). In memory studies, silence is often referred to as forgetting, denial, yet sometimes shown as a necessary suspension of speech on the processes of remembrance, mourning, and living together again (Russell, 2019, p. 4).

In history, silence underscores the constructed nature of our knowledge about the past. In his seminal works on this issue, Trouillot (2004) explains that silence enters history-making at four critical points: the history-making of sources, archives, narratives, and the history-making of history in the final instance. All four processes are the result of human processes, which are neither neutral nor natural. This makes any historical narrative is “a particular bundle

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of silence, the result of a unique process, and the operation required to deconstruct these silences will vary accordingly” (Trouillot, 2004, p. 26).

As “spaces and technologies of access to the past” (Lustig, 2020, p.68), archives inevitably embody the silences analyzed in both memory studies and history. Silence in the archives lives through the absence-presence of texts as archival institutions constantly have to decide what to include and exclude (Carter, 2006). The creation of silences, to put it simply, lies in the words not written, records not kept, stories that never end up, hidden, or made obscured on the official authorized papers or records (Trouillot, 2004). In practice, “silences can enter the archives when records are destroyed, never created, kept secret, forged, appraised or de-accessioned out of a collection” (Eadon, 2019, p. 12). Silences can manifest in the description when narratives and voices of certain groups in the records are left out and marginalized (Duff and Harris, 2002), or simply in the unprocessed collection backlogs which risks the records to be lost to oblivion.

The archival silence can be explained by recognizing archival practices as human processes imbued with power. As Verne Harris (2002) put it, archives are "expression and instrument of power’ which represent only a ‘sliver of social memory’ (Harris, 2002). Archival appraisal and description, for instance, do not merely appraise and describe existing documents but are creative processes to represent records (Yeo, 2010; Yakel, 2003). In deciding what to represent, what to include and exclude, power is exercised. It mostly operates subconsciously, given that the decision is always influenced by the archivist’s world view, identities, and experiences; and it may operate overtly when the archivist and archival institution has an obvious political agenda (Casswell, 2016).

Far from being neutral, archivists and archival institutions are likely complicit in fostering the silence. They can, intentionally or unintentionally, reproduce the existing oppressive power structures through archival practices. Robinson-Swett (2018) argues more strongly that archivists are often the power brokers for archival silences, whose hands are tied in many cases of silence. An apparent example of this is the case of colonial records researched by Ann Laura Stoler (2010). She reveals how the colonial records are products of colonial state machines and technologies that bolstered the production of the colonial power.

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This research particularly concerns the silence in the moment of fact assembly, the silences in the archives that make up the silence in the historical narratives. Excavating or at least locating this silence is important for an archive “is not a place where we recycle history’s waste. It is first and foremost an epistemic space” (Mbembe, 2015). Archives can define the stories that ‘matter’. It can forbid describing what happened from the point of view of some of the people who saw it happen or to whom it happened, hence with the exercise of that power, it can sanitize “facts”, and worse, resulting in societal memory being compromised (Trouillot, 2004, p. 162).

The impact goes even further. In the words of Anne Gilliland, “the absence of records from public view, the absence of certain details in records that are available, or the absence of records altogether, are what drive not only frustrations and disappointments with the archive but also archival fantasies” (Gilliland, 2017, p. XV). If it comes to the extreme, “silences can be the hotbed of imaginings, part-truths, and the so-called alternative facts, which in turn can thwart certainty and knowledge-based action” (Ibid., XVI).

The risk is there, but so is the opportunity because silence does not equate to muteness (Carter, 2006). An apparently silent archive can give new facts or tell new stories over time (Gilliland, 207, p. XVI). In the epistemic shift from one that views archives as neutral sites to one today with a growing call to adopt social justice, it is time to uncover and highlight what has been left out in the archives (Lustig, 2020). The awareness of the silences in the archives is the starting point to find the gaps and remedy them.

2. State-based archival repatriation and its silences

Throughout the history of the repatriation of displaced3_{archives, it has been and}

continued to be the problem of the states, resolved between states, using states' perspective and measures. The resolution of archival disputes centers on the legal and

3_{The records that have been removed from the context of their creation and where the ownership is disputed"}

(Lowry, 2019, p. 350). There are many other reasons behind their 'mobility', with each case bears its own complexity. The complexity resulted in various terms used to describe it, such as "migrated archives", “disputed archival claims”, “expatriate archives” and “shared/joint archival heritage” (Ibid).

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political nature of the displaced archives (Auer, 2017; Kecskeméti, 2017; Lowry, 2017), but has many gaps which will be explained in this section.

First, archival claims have been treated as legal issues, but legal approaches often failed or proved too problematic in resolving the dispute. Determining the lawfulness of the displaced archives is complicated, subject to varying interpretations, and requires fact-intensive history, which frequently caused the status of displaced archives lost in 'legal limbo' (Cox, 2017, pp.200-202).

Legal complexities are particularly apparent for archives displaced during war and occupation, as identified by Cox (2017) and Auer (2017). Applying international conventions is difficult since this kind of archives can be defined as both cultural property and sources of intelligence or enemy property. The latter was allowed for capture according to the law of armed conflict, while the former receives more robust legal protections yet still subject to exceptions for military needs. Moreover, the succession of power between states implicates the separate legal regime, which makes it more complex in determining the properties belong to predecessor and successor states (Cox, 2017). At the international front, United Nations, UNESCO, and ICA have made multiple resolutions and recommendations, yet “the issue of displaced archives has not been brought under normative acts in international law” (Auer, 2017, p. 123). The most notable failure of the multilateral effort to fill the legal gap is perhaps the 1983 Vienna Convention. The Vienna Convention was passed by the UN, but it could not be implemented since too few countries ratified it, especially not the states holding the displaced archives. In Kecskeméti’s words, “the Vienna conference becomes a political platform that produced a political statement rather than a workable convention” (2017, p.16). Thirty years after Vienna, there has been no serious multilateral action for the displaced archives (Lowry, 2017), although some valuable terms were produced and discussed in the international meeting on archives4_.

4_{For instance, the XXXth International Conference of the Round Table on Archives in Thessaloniki, 1994. One of}

the resolutions was to reaffirm the mission of archives in guaranteeing every nation's right to historical continuity, recalls the accepted archival principles that archives are inalienable and imprescriptible, and should not be regarded as "trophies" or as objects of exchange (Bastien, 1995).

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Besides convention and laws, states’ political will and logistical considerations define the fate of the displaced archives (Lowry, 2020, p.6). But this is again a complicated process emanating silences. Repatriation of displaced archives, especially ones seized by the military operation, has an inevitably political nature, given that the archives resulted from armed conflict and occupation, colonization, and decolonization (Cox, 2017, p.196). By many, such as states with a shared colonial past, archives are considered national patrimony, while their removal not only implicate issues of sovereignty, self-determination, and national pride, but also reveal traces of injustice, violence, and trauma. The protracted negotiation, the delay, neglect, and inertia in the state-led repatriation embodies the political push and pull between states, and inside each state (Cox, 2017).

But even before the repatriation, the political dimension of displaced archives results in their very secrecy and silences. As explained by Auer (2017), “Very often displaced archives are kept hidden, only known to a restricted number of persons. To keep the secret, free access and use have to be denied, which makes them, in the literal sense of the word, useless material for anybody other than their holders, and even they must avoid referencing the material” (p.123). This political secrecy and classification may contribute to the reluctance in returning the displaced archives.

Repatriation of archives that mainly happens through states’ negotiation at times results in a compromised and practical agreement. In so doing, repatriation serves more as gestures of friendship and goodwill, rather than the object of negotiations aimed at righting past wrongs and injustices or correcting illegalities (van Beurden 2017, Lowry 2019). As it has mostly done in states partnership scheme, internal and external factors of each state shape the decisions, such as in selecting the archives to be returned. In a form of mutual partnership, the repatriation project becomes a site of negotiation, in which dissonances are minimized (Scott, 2014). Here, the gaps of what could have been done but not done are often left without mentioned, overshadowed by the achievement of joint cooperation. Furthermore, the unequal power between parties may affect the resolution, leading to unequal or even neo-colonial terms.

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A compromised approach such as 'joint heritage' has been the solution for some countries, including Indonesia and the Netherlands. This approach, endorsed by the International Council of Archives (ICA) and United Nations of Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), applies to the archives where succession is shared between states and cannot be broken up (Cox, 2017). The archival holdings are entirely preserved in one of the states, but the other states have equal access and moral property rights (Kecskeméti, 2017). This approach has drawn a growing interest as shown in the ICA’s latest 2018/2019 international survey of Disputed Archival Claims. The majority of respondents in the survey (21 respondents) are willing to consider joint heritage to resolve their archival dispute, while only four respondents believed that joint heritage could not resolve their claims (Lowry, 2020).

Even though this concept seems to be a win-win solution for both states by bypassing the stalemate and finally forefronting greater 'access' of the displaced archives, silence may still appear. Cynthia Scott, who examined the shared cultural heritage project between Indonesia and the Netherlands, points out that dissonances existed but they were lessened by treading carefully the contestation of the colonial past and defining the past as different from the present. She underlines that distancing the past from the present is done at the expense of not addressing the underlying ethical dilemmas' (Scott, 2014, p.189).

Taking a critical stance on the state-based approach, Anne Gilliland (2017) argues that “associated arguments about displaced archives inalienable relationship to sovereign states are overly predicated upon outmoded physical- and nation states-based thinking” (p.180). Using a post-nationalist perspective, she suggests the archival field to “acknowledge, respect, advocate for and act upon the realities of always-in-motion diasporas of records in which multiple parties have rights, interests and diverging points of view than to try to negotiate ownership, protection and physical relocation of records across complex and contested histories and boundaries, power imbalances and stewardship capabilities (p.180).

This approach offers a fresh perspective and encourages us to look at return more broadly than the state-based ownership lens. However, this may seem to not really address the

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ethical problem of colonized and colonial archives, where archives were deeply entangled with trauma, injustice, and violence. To that end, Van Beurden (2017) suggests human rights and justice as alternative approaches for return. In the justice approach, he relates the ' capabilities' issue often raised in repatriation to the 'justice and capabilities' concept by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. This concept suggests shifting the focus to the redressable injustice, such as the unequal capabilities between parties. Capabilities are about what a person wants to do, what he or she can do, and what he or she is enabled to do; to realize justice requires an enabling environment (Sen 2010: 235; Nussbaum 2011: 20 as quoted in van Beurden, 2017, p.95). He argues that, in dealing with colonial objects, "The party that claims an object is easily considered the weaker one that does not have certain capabilities, but the possessing party cannot often open up for injustice committed in the past and for dialogue and mediation (van Beurden, 2017, p.95).

Another approach is from the critical displaced archives theory which 'looks beyond legal structure to consider relations of care' (Lowry, 2019, p.199). In practice, Lowry explains that repatriation requires equitable conversation, not confined to nation-states, but invites many voices to speak through and around the records, such as subjects, users, archivists, and others. It requires acknowledgment of the power asymmetries, that the political power required for repatriation and digitization initiatives derives from possession and possession reinforces power. Hence, multiple participants should be involved in dialogues about custody, access, and uses of records.

These approaches serve as alternatives to think and understand the repatriation in the post-colonial relationship, especially amidst the problematic gaps of the legal and state-based political approach. However, for archival institutions and archivists, the effort may begin with recognizing the silences and their role in those silences, before taking actions so that “the archival heritage created by oppressors and oppressed alike, within the country or in exile, is not kept hidden away, locked up, unintelligible, unsearchable and unusable” (Ketelaar, 2017, p.x).

For the colonized archives in the pursuit of decolonization, it goes even further than the matter of access. The homecoming of colonized archives should not only mean to expose, redress, and reconcile the past’ violence of colonialism, but also to contest and dismantle

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the colonial logic that remains in the archival practices and infrastructure to the present (Jeurgens and Karabinos, 2020; Karabinos, 2016; Stoler, 2010). This is a process that has not yet happened for the Djogdja Documenten, as noted by Nurjaman (2020), “The decolonization that was done is only to restore the physical form of the archive, without changing the system and archive structure” (p.83).

Jeurgens and Karabinos (2020) suggest that “archival institutions that have colonial and colonized records in custody cannot be held responsible for the processes in which these records were created, but they are responsible for the interfaces, the archival infrastructures, the representational systems they create to define, manage, categorize and give access to these records” (p.217). That, for the repatriated archives, obviously means examining the archival practices and infrastructure in the national archives of both countries. This research starts by examining the silences as the first step towards that attempt.

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III. Archival Repatriation in Two Contexts

This chapter explains the evolving context from past to present related to the repatriation of 1945-1949 seized archives. The two different contexts of Indonesia and the Netherlands are here juxtaposed to show the different gaps and narratives in the former colony and colonizer.

1. Indonesia: The making and re-making of national history

Since the early talk of gaining access to the Indonesian 1945-1949 records in the Netherlands, Indonesian officials and historians have often pointed out the importance of these documents to fill the gap of Indonesian records over this period. In the congress of the International Association of Historians on Asia, which took place in August 1974, Yogyakarta, the delegation of Indonesia, and the Netherlands discussed the cooperation in the field of history between the two countries5_.

An Indonesian historian Sartono Kartodirdjo suggested sending Indonesian historians to inventory 1945-1950 archives in the Netherlands. This inventory of archives was suggested to be microfilmed and sent back to Indonesia for the basic source of Indonesian history in the Revolution period. A report of this discussion, written by JJP de Jong, said this effort was expected to fill the poignant vacuum that exists in Indonesia concerning knowledge of its independence struggle during this period6_{. this Indonesian counterpart}

of Van der Wal's source publication on Dutch India relations 1945-1950

The gap was mentioned several times in the discussion about the return of the Djogdja Documenten. In the 1974 Dutch document titled 'Kwestie teruggave culturele en

historische voorwerpen en archieven aan Indonesie', the Netherlands mentioned about

the gaps, saying:

5_{Nationaal Archief, Den Haag (NL-HaNA), Nederlandse Ambassade in Indonesië 1962-1974, nummer toegang}

2.05.188, inventarisnummer 590.

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Gaps in the Indonesian museum and archive holdings will usually not be able to be filled. There are, however, a number of important exceptions7_.

The exception mentioned here comprises several archives and historical artworks located in various Dutch institutions, which being possessed without adhering to private law acquisition (in Dutch: privaatrechtelijke eigendomstitel). For this kind of archives located in ARA (Algemeen Rijksarchief), the document listed the buitgemaakte

archivalia 1945-1949, including the Djogdja Documenten, and the Nieuw-Guinea archief. It also noted that archives of Algemene Secretarie and the Procureur Generaal

have some original buitgemaakte documenten. In other words, these were among the archives that in theory could be officially returned, to the former colony.

However, to understand the gap, we need to examine what constitutes the gap for Indonesia on the other side. The 1945-1949 decolonization war has resulted not only destruction of lives and places, but also in archives. They have been either disposed of, burned, or if they could be saved, they remain scattered in various individual holdings. Archives in this period are rare but valuable because they recorded as much colonial violence as the independent struggle that made a new nation-state. For Indonesia, the archives witnessed a defining decolonization period, the very process of liberation that shapes the new nation-building. They are not only filled with a series of diplomatic negotiations with the Netherlands but also a violent confrontation with the colonist and internal upheaval among parties and socio-political groups. The records of this period are as well valuable government records as they could contain information about the early years of how the new governance Republic of Indonesia was conducted and its transformation (Hapsari and Ridayanti, 2019).

The introduction document of ANRI's service to static archive in 1945-1950 period said that information about various events that happened in the early years of the Indonesian government is very incomplete. For instance, it happens in the archive of the Indonesian

7_{Nationaal Archief, Den Haag (NL-HaNA), Algemeen Rijksarchief (ARA), Tweede Afdeling, nummer toegang}

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Ministry of Internal Affairs. ANRI only has three boxes of records of the ministry for the whole 1945-1949 period (Hapsari and Ridayanti, 2019, p.iv).

The reason for this dated back to the decolonization war. At the beginning of the Republic, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was located in Jakarta as the first capital. It was moved to Purwokerto, Central Java, after the Nederlandsch-Indische Civiele Administratie (NICA)8_{troops attacked the Ministry on December 29, 1945 (Abdulgani, 1965, p.162).}

Some of its archives could be saved from the attack. However, at the second attack on Yogyakarta in 1949, almost all archives of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs had to be burned (Abdulgani, 1965, p.210).

The former director of ANRI Djoko Utomo said that the records in the period of 1945-1949 do not even need to be appraised because they are very scarce while being an important source of a historical period (personal interview, December 9, 2020). This shows the imperative to fill in the gap of records in this period. The microfilm exchange with the Netherlands and the return of the Djogdja Documenten were its initial key efforts to remedy the very incomplete records. Besides, ANRI took several actions internally, such as conducting an oral history project of various Republican figures to tell their stories on this period and reaching out to individuals who still keep records of this period. There was also a recent effort by an ANRI archivist to locate and re-inventory the returned archives.

Nevertheless, it is important to underline that ANRI’s imperatives and efforts to fill the gaps of 1945-1940 records always entangle in the changing Indonesian socio-political context. The Djogdja Documenten return took place during the first two decades of Soeharto’s New Order government. Under this authoritarian regime, history writing and education were strictly directed by the state, with national unity as its unidimensional main tenet. This was not a new approach, but a continuation from the state-centered historiography9_{installed by the previous regime that stressed and sanctified the}

anti-8_{The Netherlands Indies Civil Administration was a semi-military organisation, tasked with the restoration of civil}

administration and law of Dutch colonial rule after the capitulation of Japan in Indonesia.

9_{Known as Indonesiasentris (Indonesia-centric) nationalist historiography, it refers to “the whole exercise of}

history writing whose primary aim and/or ultimate result, whether intended or not, is recognition and justification of the legitimate existence of Indonesia as a nation-state” (Curaming, 2003). It was originally developed as a direct

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colonial revolutionary struggles. However, Soeharto’s regime took it further by infusing the meta-narrative of an integral state with the army as its backbone (Reid, 2005, p.74). Other narratives that were seen unfit to the state version were suppressed, as national harmony and unity were enforced at the expense of freedom of speech in the country.

Being a state institution, the national archive most likely follows the policy of the central government, and in this way is complicit in the making of the state-centered history writing. Whether it is conscious or unconscious, archivalization is shaped by the state, especially in the case of an authoritarian state. For ANRI, it explains the times when the gaps and the silence in the archives were left on purpose. The authoritarian regime politics contributed to ANRI’s closure on a selected archive of this period to the public (see chapter Iv.4). Read another way, it should be acknowledged that ANRI was also complicit in sustaining the silence in the state-centered narrative.

Arguing the current imperative of archival return for Indonesia, therefore, should be departed from the context of current socio-political changes in the country. More than two decades of the post-authoritarian regime, the ongoing nation-building project has now become more nuanced with (at least gradually) open space of contestation against the state’s meta-narrative. The spirit of rewriting and re-imagining Indonesian history has been there since the fall of Soeharto. Formal historians have discussed it in various national seminars, official history books have been re-updated, critical takes of the past state-centered historiography were more and more conveyed in the academic journals (for instance, works of Asvi Warman Adam who focuses on the ‘bending’ of 1965 history, and works of Bambang Purwanto on deconstructing the Indonesian-centric historiography and addressing its methodological issues). At the more grassroots level, ‘informal’ historians, independent archives, and even mainstream media in Indonesia started to provide various versions of what has been silenced in the past.

counter to the Dutch colonial historiography (Neerlando-centric historiography) that used the perspective of the white powerful Dutch men and neglected the role of indigenous commoners (Suwignyo, 2014). It is an irony that the same colonial approach was reproduced in Indonesiasentris historiography, which is very much ultranationalist and counting heavily on rhetoric (Purwanto, 2001).

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Regardless of this spirit and steps toward the plurality of narratives, the main grand narrative of the past still traps the country (Aspinall, 2015; Suwingnyo, 2014). The country has not moved beyond Indonesia-centrism. Analyzing the renewed Indonesian history books, Suwignyo argues that the path of colonial historiography is intact, “in the sense that history is still made as a tool for biased policy, emphasizing the central role of a particular group of people, instead of constructing the past critically” (2014, p.130). The most obvious example can also be seen in realpolitik, where outdated nationalism is recycled by politicians to gain popular support based on emotional appeals, such as in the discourse of foreign threats and national dignity (Aspinall, 2015, p. 78).

In this incremental progress of re-making and re-imagining Indonesian history amidst the lingering of state-centered paradigm lies exactly the imperative. It is high time for continuous efforts to stimulate a more pluralized, localized, bottom-up, and critical view of history. They can reinvigorate nationalism, not in an outdated state-project, but meant as nation-building being a common project based on the sharing of common destiny and common future (Anderson, 1999). As Anthony Reid (2005) pointed out, “Indonesia’s histories will be plural as its people are plural. A new generation will learn to cope with difference and conflict in the past as in the present”. In this imperative towards the pluriversity of knowledge, archival institutions have epistemic possibility and responsibility to make the long-silenced-colonized archives accessible.

2. The Netherlands: Confronting colonial past

Coming to terms with the colonial past, including how much the colonial violence is acknowledged, included, and addressed officially and publicly, is a difficult issue in the Netherlands, yet we notice that the narrative has been gradually shifting. For a long period, the colonial past particularly its violence has been seen as "single black pages in an otherwise white book” (Bijl 2012, p.452). It was silenced "in the colonial facade of glory, peace, and development, enormously influencing the way colonial violence has been legitimated, interpreted and obscured" (Raben, 2012, p.496). Colonial history has not entered the main narrative of the nation as an integral epoch or watershed, but rather

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as something put in bracket (Goss, 2000, p.34). This context was indeed at play in the repatriation of the Djogdja Documenten.

To the Dutch government at large, the Djogdja Documenten repatriation was more based on legal, diplomatic, and scientific interest (See Chapter III section 4 on the basis of return). Van Beurden (2017) noted that there was “little archival evidence of awareness on the Dutch government side of the forced inequality and colonial injustices and the need to redress it” (p.136). Euphemisms were also used to hide the colonial past. This for instance appears in the term used for the repatriation at that time. While Indonesia initially used the term ‘restitution’ which then shifted to a more neutral term ‘return’ in 1975, the Dutch government preferred a broad term ‘transfer’ (overdracht). As stated in the Dutch note on art treasures and archives of Indonesian origin10_{, “It also seems}

advisable to avoid the term "return" (teruggave) as much as possible in the terminology and to use the term "transfer" (overdracht).”

However, as the context evolves, how the Netherlands confronts the colonial past is shifting. In recent years, Dutch academics increasingly addressed and brought to the front the question of why decolonization war is forgotten or marginalized (see for instance Bijl, 2012; Oostindie, Hoogenboom, and Verwey, 2016; Luttikhaus and Harinck, 2017; Scagliola, 2007; Raben, 2012). The violence of the decolonization war increasingly entered not only academic debate but also public and government debates. There was a possibility of the Dutch being “on the wrong side of history,” said the former Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Ben Bot (2005). Critical articles and books discussing the event have been published and received public attention (Knoester, 2018).

Several events have taken the debate to a new height. It was largely evoked in 2008, when nine widows of the victims in the 1947 massacre in Rawagede, Indonesia, won the legal action against the Dutch state in a civil court. In 2011, the court rejected the state’s invocation and ordered the Netherlands to pay the reparation and officially apologize. In 2016, the Dutch government granted 4.1 million euros for a four-year research project called the 'Independence, Decolonisation, Violence, and War in Indonesia 1945-1950. It

10_{Nota inzake de zich in Nederland rijksinstellingen bevindende kunstschatten en archiefonderdelen van}

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is the first large-scale state-backed scientific investigation in the Netherlands on this issue that has drawn contrasting public opinions (Walsum, 2019). The approval of the funding was triggered by historical research11 that found structural and systematic violence has been done by the Netherlands’ military in this period. Those unexpected events have widely opened the public debate on colonial mass violence. It disturbed the national master narrative in the Netherlands that normalized the mass violence by calling it excesses of the police action to restore order in a Dutch area12_{(Luttikhuis and Moses,}

2012).

The debate continued when King Willem Alexander of the Netherlands made an apology for “excessive violence on the part of the Dutch in 1945-1949”, in his official visit to Indonesia (Gorbiano, 2 September 2020). At the same visit, an Indonesian cultural heritage object from the colonial era, the dagger (keris) of the Prince Diponegoro, was returned after it had long been missing in a Dutch museum. The return of the dagger gained a warm welcome that lightly evoked the awareness of many colonial objects stored in the Netherlands. However, there was no mention at all of Indonesia’s colonial and colonized archives in the Netherlands, neither in the King’s speech nor in the official statement about the return of the dagger.

The archival return was neither specifically mentioned in the recommendations on the handling of colonial cultural objects, made by the Advisory Committee on National Policy Framework for Colonial Collections’ to the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science on 7 October 2020. The Committee recommended the Dutch government unconditionally return cultural goods looted in former Dutch colonies if the country of origin requests it. It advocates lenient handling of requests for restitution, with a starting point that what has been stolen should in principle be returned (Raad van Cultuur, October 7, 2020). The advice has created a heated polemic in the Dutch media up to date and reinstated the discussion about seized colonial objects and colonial violence.

11_{De brandende kampongs van Generaal Spoor (The burning villages of General Spoor), a doctoral thesis by a}

SwissDutch historian Remy Limpach on Dutch mass violence during the Indonesian War of Independence 1945 -1949. The thesis was commercially published in the Netherlands in September 2016.

12_{The Netherlands did not acknowledge Indonesia’s independence in 1945, but in 1949, the date of the}

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Up to the writing of this research, the issue of the Indonesian seized archives has still been largely missing in the Dutch decolonization debate, especially in the official and public debate. Nevertheless, silence is not equal to muteness. It implies voices (Carter, 2012) that wait to be located and unveiled. At this time, at least, it has evoked, one more time, an awkward conversation of the return of colonial objects between the former colony and colonizer. It should also be noted that decolonizing the archives has started, although slowly, to present in the Dutch academic discussion. For instance, the roundtable discussion on decolonizing archives in the Netherlands was held in the ‘Rethinking the VOC? Old genres, new trends in research and analysis’ symposium at the NAN in 2017. Several academic works have also explored this topic (such as Karabinos, 2019; also Jeurgens and Karabinos, 2020).

The explained contexts both in Indonesia and the Netherlands seem to be separate issues, but in fact, they are inextricably linked. Both can be seen as the epistemic gaps that need to be filled and even more, become an imperative of ‘opening’ the silence of the seized archives. The development of narratives may or should differ in the former colony and colonizer, but both have the same needs to improve the knowledge and narratives related to their colonial frontier.

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IV. Silences in the Repatriation Process of

the Djogdja Documenten

This part takes a closer look inside the lengthy repatriation process between the Netherlands and Indonesia to examine whether it contains, creates, perpetuates, or enforces silence. It specifically traces out how the process arrived at the conclusion and definition of the Djogdja Documenten as the chosen seized archives to be returned. The macro-analyses on the political context of return have been explained in detail by Karabinos (2013; 2015), Scott (2016), and van Beurden (2017). They mapped out how the repatriation process is shaped by the transformation of post-colonial relations between former colonizers and newly independent states, entangled in the changes of national politics and the broader international politics.

This analysis continues their research by taking a different turn by examining the process of repatriation that formed the Djogdja Documenten. Conducted under a bilateral framework with its legal and political complexity, the repatriation was another process that re-created the Djogdja Documenten, as it decided how and which among the 1945-1949 archives to be returned. Special focus is given to the role of both archives and the making of their choices in perpetuating or fixing archival silence during this process.

1. The initial cooperation

After the 1949 sovereignty transfer agreement, several archival cooperation between Indonesia and the Netherlands existed, despite being very limited and sporadic due to disruptive political relations. In the 1950s, for instance, there were cultural works of a Dutch government-financed organization Stichting voor Culturele Samenwerking (STICUSA or Foundation for Cultural Cooperation) and a Dutch-initiated microfilm project on the Dagregister of Batavia Castle which was left unfinished (Karabinos, 2015). The talk of the return of the seized Indonesian archives and historical objects, similarly, was re-instated at times but came out without any result (Scott, 2016; Van Beurden, 2017). A stronger stance of Soekarno’s anti-imperial nationalism policy furthered by the

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dispute of West New Guinea (now West Papua) worsened the relations and diminished the talk of return and archival cooperation.

Diplomatic relations were restored after the regime change in Indonesia brought Soeharto into power, de facto in 1966. The anti-communist regime provided a friendly diplomatic climate with Western countries while opening Indonesia to their aid, trade, and investment. The restored relations with the Netherlands, including the plan of Dutch developmental aid to Indonesia, paved a way to improve cooperation in the cultural sector (Scott, 2016). The contact between the two archives resumed. The early cooperation manifested in the invitation of two Indonesian students to study in the Netherlands’ archival school, namely Machfud Mangkudilaga in 1966, and Soemartini in 196713_{. Both}

became two central figures and ARA’s points of connection in ANRI later on.

The signing of the Cultural Agreement on sciences, culture, and arts on July 7, 1968, stipulated an intensified archival cooperation and the setting up of a Dutch cultural center, Erasmus House, in Jakarta (van Beurden, 2017). However, it did not include an agreement to return cultural property (Scott, 2016).

Neither did the cultural agreement automatically activate the archival cooperation, even though it laid out the foundation. The state archivists of both countries played a very important role in the shifting archival cooperation between the colonizer and ex-colony. ANRI’s director Raden Adjeng Soemartini (1970 to 1990) made many attempts beginning in 1970. Soemartini kickstarted and sustained the former colonizer-colonized’ archival cooperation by, in the words of Karabinos (2013), accepting the colonial nature of archives and working with the former colonial power. How she stressed the cooperation as ‘mutual interests’ and offered numerous Dutch colonial documents in Jakarta in exchange to be microfilmed implies her reaching out using a framework of archives as a shared colonial heritage.

The microfilm exchange project was the focal starting point of the initial archival cooperation along with the sending of ANRI’s archivists to have archival training in the Netherlands. It was recorded that in June 1970, President Soeharto asked the visiting

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Dutch Minister of Culture, Recreation and Social Welfare, Marga Klompée, for several historical manuscripts and included the option of sending microfilms instead of original copies (Van Beurden, 2017). According to Soemartini, the visit is the impetus for this renewed archival cooperation. In her interview with Kompas newspaper (26 January 1992), Soemartini recalled that during the visit, she tried to make Klompe visit ANRI. With the help of Harsja Bachtiar14_{, she proposed the memorandum containing the need}

to establish archival cooperation between ANRI and ARA. “From the beginning, I have emphasized cooperation with an equal position. So, we didn't beg but complement each other. We have something here, if you need it, I will give it, and vice versa. Apart from that, in the memorandum, I also suggested the need for Dutch assistance to accept our people sent there to study archives,” said Soemartini explaining her standpoint (Kompas, 26 January 1992).

In a memorandum dated June 25th,_{1970, Soemartini opened the proposal by mentioning}

the mutual interest in the microfilm exchange, “such that the Netherlands would acquire all microfilms of documents containing information of interest to the Netherlands from Indonesia, and vice versa”15_{. ANRI offered several archives to be microfilmed for the}

Netherlands, such as the ‘Burgerlijke Stand documents, Doop en begraaf rolls, genealogical and biographical cards collection, death wills and notary acts, church archives, and other Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) material, such as

Dagregisters, Resolutions, etc. Only after that did she convey Indonesia's interest in a

number of archives:

• Public documents and other materials from the period 1945-1950;

• Political reports, especially concerning activities of the Indonesian nationalist movements since the beginning of the twentieth century;

• Memories van Overgave of the various government administrators; • Parliamentary records pertaining to Indonesia

14_{A historian and at that that time the dean of the Faculty of Letters, University of Indonesia.}

15_{ANRI’s memorandum sent by Soemartini to M.Klompe, in NL-HaNA, Nederlandse Ambassade in Indonesië}

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The list shows which archives are of importance to Indonesia at that time. Even more, it reveals Indonesia’s definition and expectation on archives it wished to have. After two years of negotiation in the period which also witnessed Soeharto’s official visit to the Netherlands, the agreement between the two states was signed on September 1, 1972, in The Hague. Both agreed to have an exchange of microfilms to facilitate research. The reciprocal supply of microfilms will be for the records thought to be of importance for the history of the countries concerned. This agreement, however, did not mention the records from 1945 to 1950, nor the Djogdja Documenten.

The initial plan that started with the microfilm project without yet touching the subject of Indonesia's 1945-1950 seized archives reflects how both sides played modestly and took cautious stances. For ANRI, the choice was probably related to its modest situation, its weak archival infrastructure, and its focus on building up the archival system in the country. That the Netherlands gave a cautious but welcoming reaction is also understandable since it was still at the starting point in cultivating the previously fragile relationship with Indonesia.

Thus, the aim to exchange archives that ‘are not the exclusive property of one of the parties but represent a mutual interest’16_{is emphasized and implemented here. It can be}

seen that the ambiguous definition of ‘mutual interest’ between colonizer and ex-colonized was still hidden in this initial stage. The different takes on it will be shown in the later stage, starting when Indonesia insisted more strongly on the return of 1945-1949 archives.

2. The trigger and confusion of the Djogdja Documenten return

The talk about the return of 1945-1950 archives unfolded the following year. It has rarely been mentioned the role of Hatta in suggesting the return of archives on Indonesia’s independence struggle from the Netherlands to Indonesia. As quoted by Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad (19 April 1973), Hatta said that Indonesia would ask the Netherlands for copies of all documents about the Indonesian struggle for

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independence, arguing that the Netherlands was the only country that had full documentation of the independence struggle. Hatta had brought the idea to Indonesia Vice President Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX, who approved the plan to request copies from the Netherlands (NRC Handelsblad, 19 April 1973).

A 1974 opinion article in Indonesia Raya newspaper written by the pers attache of the Indonesian Embassy in Den Haag, H.J. Siri speculated that the idea probably came to Hatta when he visited libraries, archives, and secondhand bookshops during his 1971 visit to the Netherlands. It seems that the idea had been circulated in Indonesia because in 1973, the Dutch Ambassador Hugo Scheltema, as quoted in Antara news agency, said that Hatta’s proposal is being implemented17_.

In the same year, ANRI sent Soeri Soeroto, dean of Faculty of Letters, UGM, to study and make an inventory of the archives based on the framework of microfilm exchange. Soeroto’s work was not for the 1945-1949 archives, but he focused on the colonial archives of the 19th century and 20th century (1895-1942) period18_{. This explained that at that}

moment, the 1945-1950 archives have not yet been included in the implementation of microfilm exchange. Instead, the microfilm project began with the colonial archives.

The summary of Indonesia-Netherlands archival cooperation stated that “implementation was requested in 1974 about Indonesian desires for the restitution of archives captured by Dutch troops in the period 1945-1949”19_{. Yet, there were confusion}

and unpreparedness inside ARA and the related ministries in dealing with the unexpected request. On May 28, 1974, Ribberink sent a letter to the Director-General of Cultural Affairs, conveying the concern of his staff archivists that the records can impact the living Indonesian officials. For that reason, he stressed a preference to return the archive in microfilm. “By allowing the filming to be guided by our staff, Indonesia, where little

17_{NL-HaNA, Nederlandse Ambassade in Indonesië 1962-1974, nummer toegang 2.05.188, inventarisnummer 590.} 18_Ibid.

19_{Archief Samenwerking Nederland Indonesie, in NL-HaNA, ARA, Tweede Afdeling, nummer toegang 2.14.04,}

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material from the years 1945-50 remains, can be served, while privacy is safeguarded by ourselves”20_.

Three months later, he informed the Embassy Council for Press and Cultural Affairs A.L. Schneiders that the microfilming of the archives in the period of 1943-1950 will be made shortly, after the consultation with the Ministry of Internal Affairs is completed. But the microfilming of archives selected by Soeroto can be started. It was because Ribberink still needed to convince the Minister of Internal Affairs of the importance of microfilming the Djogdja Documenten, followed by his request to transfer the archive from the ministry to ARA. While this request was agreed upon, the Ministry required Ribberink to ask for the Ministry’s consent before the microfilm can be transferred21_{. This signifies the sensitivity}

of the seized archives of 1945-1949 for the Dutch government, and can also be shown from the secrecy of these archives as they were closed for a long time under national security reasons in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, the Djogdja Documenten issue was also raised in the International Association of Historians of Asia (IAHA) Congress, which took place in Yogyakarta, August 1974. An Indonesian historian, Sartono Kartodirdjo, suggested sending a historian to inventory the 1945-1950 archives in the Netherlands. Furthermore, a report written by an attending Dutch historian on that meeting revealed the confusion of the archive’s exact location, when it said they were in the archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs rather than Foreign Affairs (Karabinos, 2015).

The confusion grew further, this time on the form of the return—would it be microfilm or physical documents? On September 3, 1974, the Dutch Ambassador for Indonesia P.W. Jalink asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs whether microfilming of the Djogdja Documenten takes place for the Netherlands to have their copies after the physical return to Indonesia, or that it was thought of sending only the copied material to Indonesia. He said:

20_{NL-HaNA, ARA, Tweede Afdeling, nummer toegang 2.14.04, inventarisnummer 190, X1.6 Dossier overdracht}

Yokya-documenten.