Decolonization: Dutch Territories

Abstract

Abstract When Japan occupied the Netherlands East Indies in March 1942, the territory had been a Dutch colony for more than three centuries (→ Colonialism). In the spirit of the → Atlantic Charter (1941), Queen Wilhelmina, then in exile in London, launched a plan for a post-war commonwealth of the Netherlands, Indonesia, Suriname, and the Netherlands Antilles. At the → Potsdam Conference (1945) the Anglo-American chiefs of staff agreed to transfer jurisdiction over the Netherlands East Indies to the South-East Asia Command under Lord Mountbatten. On August 1945 he became responsible for the fate of 128 million people living in territories devastated by war and with collapsed civil administrations. The task of the Command was, inter alia, to organize the → repatriation of enemy forces after the Japanese → surrender, to liberate Allied → prisoners of war, and to maintain order until the territories had been returned to the respective authorities.