The Djogdja Documenten: The Dutch-Indonesian Relationship Following Independence through an Archival Lens

Abstract

Abstract This article is an overview of a story highlighting a collection of displaced archives caused by the decolonization process. In the midst of Indonesian revolution against Dutch colonial rule, the intelligence agency of the Dutch army seized official documents from Indonesian government offices that would become known as the Djogdja Documenten. Despite coming from various sources originally, these documents were transformed into a single collection through the act of Dutch seizure. By reviewing the documents in question, searching for references to them in literature, and doing research in the archive of the National Archives of the Netherlands, I follow the postindependence relationship between the two countries starting just after the transfer of sovereignty, through President Sukarno’s anticolonial “Guided Democracy” period, and ending with President Suharto’s New Order and the increase in diplomacy between the two countries.