DECOLONIZATION: DUTCH TERRITORIES

Abstract

This chapter discusses the decolonization of Dutch territories. When Japan occupied the Netherlands East Indies in March 1942, the territory had been a Dutch colony for more than three centuries. 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 in July 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. The chapter highlights that unlike the cases of Indonesia and Western New Guinea, the process of decolonization of Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles developed primarily through constitutional law. After having reached an agreement with representatives of the two colonies, giving them an autonomous status within the kingdom, the Dutch Government ceased to report to the United Nations under Art. 73(e) of the UN Charter after 1950. It consolidated the status of the territories in the 1954 Charter of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, based on equal partnership and autonomy.