Dutch Nationality Research Articles

The Eurasians of Indonesia: A Problem and Challenge in Colonial History

Persons of mixed European and Asian parentage appeared in the Indonesian archipelago shortly after the arrival of the first “Westerners” in the sixteenth century. Although most of them were absorbed by the indigenous population, some were not and came to constitute a separate, identifiable group. The main reason, apart from paternal pride, seems to have been religious. Christianity, especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, encouraged a strong feeling of responsibility toward the biracial offspring of non-European women. A moral obligation was felt to baptize the child and give it the name of the father. Legal rules and regulations facilitated the process: the European father, for example, could “recognize” his natural child by a non-European woman, adopt it, or request a “Letter of legitimation”. Possession of “the status of European” in the nineteenth century permitted persons of mixed descent to benefit educationally from the rapid expansion of “European” (i.e. Dutch) schools. Finally, the Dutch nationality law of 1892 — based squarely on the jus sanguinis principle — contained the crucial provision that all those who were considered Europeans when the act came into force (July 1, 1893) — including those who were legally assimilated and socially a part of the European group — became Dutch citizens.

International Court of Justice

Case concerning the Guardianship of an Infant (Netherlands v. Sweden): An application instituting proceedings against Sweden was filed by the Netherlands on July 10, 1957, and alleged that Marie Elisabeth Boll, born in Sweden of a Dutch father and a mother of Swedish nationality before her marriage, possessed Dutch nationality. After the death of the mother Swedish authorities had taken and maintained measures providing for guardianship of the child, despite appeals from the Dutch guardians and from the Netherlands government, which considered that the Swedish authorities had violated the 1902 convention governing the guardianship of infants. In an order of August 19, 1957, the Court fixed November 30, 1957, as the time–limit for the memorial of the Netherlands and March 31, 1958, as the time–limit for the counter–memorial of Sweden.

The Eurasians of Indonesia: Castaways of Colonialism

THE PRESENT-DAY problem of the Eurasians of Indonesia became acute soon after the transfer of sovereignty from the Dutch colonial administration to the new State of Indonesia in Ig49. The problem had been smoldering, however, for a considerable period of time, having developed from the existence of a colonial society and of an official Dutch policy with regard to the offspring of Europeans and members of the indigenous population. The primary social division in Indonesia during the first centuries of Dutch rule was a religious onebetween and Non-Christians. The racial division was secondary.' A code for the registration of vital statistics was established in I828 for all Christians and Jews. It made the registration of births, marriages and deaths compulsory and Article 69 of the code stipulated that the registration of a child by an unmarried had to be accepted.2 This registration in the minds of many people became synonymous with belonging to the group. A significant fact was that not only were the legal children of fathers and Indonesian mothers included in the statistics, but also the children born out of concubinage, provided the father them as his children. Without this recognition by the father, the child was Indonesian; with it, the child had the legal of the father.3 Later, the law of i892 on Dutch Nationality stipulated that anyone who was the legal, legalized or paternally recognized child of a father who possessed Dutch citizenship at the time of the child's birth was a Dutch citizen by right of birth.4 Since concubinage was widespread among soldiers and other Europeans and many were not willing to recognize their offspring, the number of children who did not qualify for European status far

Quakerism in Danzig

THE BULLETIN OF Friends Historical Association Vol. 41Autumn Number, 1953No. 2 QUAKERISM IN DANZIG By William I. Hull* Edited by Henry J. Cadbury [The following pages have been copied with some abbreviation from the manuscript history of Quakerism in Holland prepared by the late William I. Hull. He subsequently revised his plan for this elaborate work so as to present part of it in ten monographs of which five were published between 1933 and 1941, the last of them, posthumously. But the manuscript included the story of Quakerism in nearly one hundred places, most of which were not systematically dealt with in the published volumes. Danzig was one of these, for the work aimed to include western Germany as well as Holland. This section seemed independent enough to publish now separately. The editor is grateful to Hannah C. Hull for permission to do so. The omissions are mainly of long quotations from sources available elsewhere in print. The additions in the present editing are indicated by square brackets as in this note. The last half is summarized here in a note. Attention may be called here to the brief chapter on the same subject in William Hubben's Die Quaker in der deutschen Vergangenheit, (Leipzig, 1929), pp. 97-101, and to the current research carried on by Marek Waysblum as noted in this Bulletin, 40 (1951), 39.] * William I. HuU (1868-1939), Howard M. Jenkins Research Professor of Quaker History at Swarthmore College, was the author of William Perni and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvania (1935) , Benjamin Furly and Quakerism in Rotterdam (1941), and other works. 81 82Bulletin of Friends Historical Association THIS city, far distant from the Netherlands, in the northeastern part of Prussia, by which it was annexed in 1793, became familiar with Quakerism at an early time in the history of the Friends. William Ames made his appearance in it in 1661, and wrote an epistle there in the same year addressed to "My worthy Brothers, Sisters and Friends, for whom by God's will I have labored so that the immortal seed might be awakened in you."1 This letterwas printed in the Dutch and affords evidence that the people of Danzig and of the parts of Germany among whom Ames labored were of Dutch nationality or descent. Danzig was then, and until 1793, a free city under the suzerainty of the King of Poland, and Ames made a missionary excursion from it into the Kingdom of Poland, among the Mennonites, whom he calls "Baptists," and then says of them that "they are a very wicked people, notwithstanding their profession"; of the Polish people he says that they "are much like unto the Ireish people." [At this point W. I. Hull inserts the text of two letters from Ames to Fox (A. R. Barclay MSS 8 and 7) which he subsequently published in The Rise of Quakerism in Amsterdam, 1655-1665, pp. 72-76.] The visit of William Ames to Danzig must have resulted in some of its inhabitants accepting Quakerism, for we find in a letter from Steven Crisp, probably written to Isaac Penington, and dated Amsterdam, the tenth of Second Month, 1663, the following postscript: "One thing I had forgot to acquaint thee with: two days ago arrived here, two or, three Friends, who say they were banished from Dantzick."2 It is stated also, in a letter from William Caton to Margaret Fell in 1664, that the city magistrates had resorted to imprisonment and banishment to exterminate the new heresy. Some idea of the beginnings of Quakerism in Danzig and of the way in which the magistrates entered upon its extermina1 W. I. Hull, The Rise of Quakerism in Amsterdam, 16551665 (Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 1938). p. 78 and note 145. 2 Letters of Isaac Penington, edited by John Kendall (London, 1796) , p. 102. Quakerism in Danzig83 tion is given by Benedict Figk,3 a minister of the Parish- Church of Danzig. In one of the appendices to his German version of Richard Blome's Fanatick History he gives an account of the "examination of some Quakers at Dantzig." [The first part of this was printed in The Rise of Quakerism in Amsterdam, pp...

Book Reviews

THIS book is a study of the important problem of the relation between the space-time theory of Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason “and the relativist theory of Einstein. The author, who is of Dutch nationality, has already written essays on the subject in his native language. The present extensive study in German is based on the works of the late Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, and more especially on the recent work of Prof. Ernst Cassirer, to whom the book is dedicated. Cassirer's “Substance and Function “was reviewed in NATURE of August 9, p. 187. The transcendental aesthetic theory of Kant was founded on the classical mechanics of Newton, and intended to give the philosophical basis of Newton's concepts of absolute space, time, and velocity. There is no more important problem in contemporary philosophy than to determine whether and how far Kant's doctrine can be adapted to the new physics.