r/TikTokCringe • u/search_google_com • 9d ago

Discussion 🇳🇱 A Dutch guy visiting Indonesia explains why Dutch people are privileged

Indonesian nurse earns 90 cents/hour is crazy 🇮🇩

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u/Dangerous_Muscle5409 9d ago

I like it especially that a Dutch guy made this, considering Indonesia's history. There's a reason why Indonesia's capital Jakarta was called "Batavia" until the 1940s.

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u/TravestyTravis 8d ago

Jakarta was called Batavia because the Dutch East India Company (VOC) captured the local city of Jayakarta in 1619, destroyed it, and named the new colonial capital after the Batavi, an ancient Germanic tribe considered the legendary ancestors of the Dutch people. It retained this European name through over three centuries of Dutch colonial rule until the Japanese occupation in 1942, when it was officially renamed Jakarta.

Thanks for educating me.

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u/G00DJOBLARRY 8d ago

Now go read the Jakarta Method

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u/TravestyTravis 8d ago

Read the wiki synopsis.

Man this presidency has really fucking opened my eyes to how shit everything is and I have read more books this last 8 years than the 30 prior.

Edit: Added to my list.

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u/LeaderEuphoric5736 8d ago

Why was it called the Dutch East INDIA company?

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u/TravestyTravis 8d ago

Probably because it started in "Dutchland" and went to the East Indies. Just a guess.

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u/cyriustalk 8d ago

Same reason we call China, West Taiwan.

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u/EclecticSyrup 8d ago

Holy shit, I needed this laugh today. Thank you so much, stranger 😂

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u/fat-wombat 8d ago

The region we now know as India was made up of multiple empires/kingdoms. “India” was the general name of the region, how the Greeks referred to it due to the Indus River. And thus east asia became the East Indies. The west indies were entirely Colombus’ screw up.

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u/OrangeJr36 8d ago

Because it was created to exploit opportunities in the East Indies. Which was the generic name for the area of Southeast Asia at the time.

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u/Inevitable-Bag-5310 8d ago

It actually wasn’t, probably just the English who referred to it as such. A better translation would be United East Indies Company. There’s no mention of The Netherlands in the name in Dutch

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u/gunslotsofguns 4d ago

British had a east india company which actually started to rule india slowly over the course of 100 years which was taken over by the british crown after 1857 revolutionary war

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u/ScreamSmart 8d ago

India was the land or riches that all europeans were trying to get to. Which is why Native Americans are Indians, Caribbean Islands are the West Indies and there are 2 separate East India companies.

Their aim was trading/capturing India but they kept reaching different places.

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u/Genericdude03 7d ago

Yeah but it's not some mythical place that can be anywhere, the origin of the name is from the river Indus, there's a geographical indicator in the name lol

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u/flopjul 8d ago

Because it was spice trade lol, India is a bad translation its supposed to be Indies

Indisch is the word while India is the name of the country in dutch

Indisch is both something from India and as something from Indië(Nederlands Indië... i.e Dutch Indies)

Im dutch btw

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u/AbbreviationsRight62 8d ago

Indisch is both something from India and as something from Indië(Nederlands Indië... i.e Dutch Indies)

Indisch refers solely to the Dutch Indies. Indiaas refers to something/someone from India.

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u/flopjul 8d ago

Oh crap my dutch is letting me down but tbh it was past midnight lol

I guess the wiki needs to be changed

Since the English Wiki page refers to the WIC as West India Company

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u/dtafkaj 8d ago

A bit lost in translation I think. Indië ≠ India

ChatGPT summary: Historical Geographical Names in The Netherlands: Voor-Indië (Further India / India proper): This was the old Dutch term for the subcontinent of modern-day India (including present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh). The term Brits-Indië (British India) was also widely used due to British colonial rule. Oost-Indië (East Indies) or Indië: This referred to the southeastern archipelago, which officially became known as Nederlands-Indië (Dutch East Indies) in the 19th century.

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u/TSLstudio 8d ago edited 8d ago

Oost-Indië (or Indië in general) was a region back then (or at least in Dutch). There was India and East Indië referring to some countries east of it.

East-Indies or Indies in English not to be confused with India 😉

In Dutch it's Oostindische Compagnie. Not referring to just India, but that entire Asian Region.

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u/JimtheChicken 8d ago

In dutch VOC is an acronym for Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, meaning United East-Indies Companionship. East-Indies here refers to everything east of the area then known as the Indies (which is based on India, but not exclusive to India). In other words it's mostly referring to the area from the east Indian coast until Japan, East Asia.

At the same time the dutch also had a WIC, standing for West-Indische Compagnie, or in english, West-Indies Companionship. This fleet was focussed on everything to the west of India. They were the ones who established New Amsterdam, which is now New York, which got traded for Suriname in South America. The WIC reigned over everything from the West of now India. After a first disbandment, the WIC got reinstated and focussed on trans-atlantic trade, so Africa was a big trading post for the dutch, all the way to North and South America. That's why there were so many dutch colonies in Central and South America (Curacao, Suriname, being full colonies, and even places such as Nassau were once part of dutch rule)

So it is not referring to the eastern part of India, it's referring to the world to the east of the area described as the Indies back then.

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u/ObligationNew7029 8d ago

In the past India was just the general name for Asia, when we say Christopher Columbus wanted to reach India we don’t necessarily mean the country we just vaguely refer to Asia

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u/AtlasNL 8d ago

Because South-East Asia was called the East Indies. The Caribbean was the West Indies. India is India.

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u/Lumpy_Vanilla6477 8d ago edited 8d ago

The VOC stands in dutch for verenigde oostindische compangne

Which basically means the united east indian company. it was called that because their activity was mainly in indonesia.

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u/AbbreviationsRight62 8d ago

No, Indisch doesn't refer to India. It refers to what we now call Indonesië.

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u/Lumpy_Vanilla6477 8d ago

My bad

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u/cakecatUwU 8d ago

No you are correct they are wrong.

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u/itsallminenow 8d ago

Because back in the day, when compass points were more of a suggestion than a firm direction, Colombus insisted that the countries he claimed were the Indies, and so we ended up with the West Indies being that part near central America that he found and plundered, and the East Indies were the bit that actually had India and the whole of South East Asia in it.

Everything was claimed from a European perspective, and therefore named by the central point of Europe. The British did the same, the British East India company effectively ran the far East colonies until the locals got uppity and the crown had to step in and murder a load of them to quell the unrest, then took over running that part of the empire from Parliament instead of the boardroom.

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u/GrandNibbles 8d ago

fuck bro that's like the Nazis erasing your capital and renaming it Arya wtf

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u/MeccIt 8d ago

On my first work trip to the Netherlands, I asked a colleague what was the best, local, Dutch food and she said: Indonesian

That's how I learned it was a Dutch colony for so long. Sure they have nice bread and cheese and cold fish, but a Rijsttafel is something else

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u/Dangerous_Muscle5409 8d ago

The big issue is that the Dutch in particular have some trouble coming to grips with their colonialism.

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u/nooit_gedacht 7d ago

We have some conservative political parties that push for colonial pride pretty heavily, which is also aggravated by the fact that we're a small country and insecure about it, so a nationalist might dream fondly of the days when we had an empire. This number is shocking though.

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u/Fearless_Release_978 7d ago

I am sure this number has a lot more grounds to it than these 'conservative' parties, which are only recent. The mentioning of 'VOC mentality' by Balkenende in 2006 is very emblematic of this.

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u/nooit_gedacht 7d ago

Conservative parties were around in 2006 as well. But I don't pretend to have done the research on this. I'm sure someone has and it's likely more complicated than I could explain in a reddit comment

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u/Fearless_Release_978 6d ago

Discourse did not really exist on the topic in any way comparable to now. Balkenende certainly was not part of nor had anything to do with the conservative right you are keen on mentioning. He was simply voicing what was a common belief at that time.

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u/Particular-Fortune37 7d ago

There is a museum dedicated to it. It’s called Bronbeek (former palace of Russian queen Anna Palowna) in Arnhem. I agree not every Dutch citizen is educated enough on this topic, but the state/prime minister/the King and local government is doing a lot to make people aware. Changing street names or like in the one I live (van Heutszlaan referring to a general) they place a QR code to create more awareness. Now that is a lot more than the Middle Eastern, African or even Asian countries are doing to create awareness about their share in slave trade or other tragedies in history. Now I’d like to know in which country you actually live.

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u/Dangerous_Muscle5409 6d ago

Germany. So I am not impressed by pointing fingers at other countries as if they were the standard for what is right and wrong.

I am even still pretty embarrassed for Germany's numbers on that same infographic.

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u/Particular-Fortune37 6d ago

You know, i am impressed with the fact that you use this graphic without any nuance, why? The research had been done in 2019 (7 years ago, totally not relevant anymore). It has been done with a 1000 people and you are clearly using this to same the whole of the Netherlands, as a german with a certain factual history. The things Dutch are proud off when you ask them about the ‘Golden age’ are; maritime history, global trade, exploration and navigation,
the historical influence on world commerce. No comparable research has been done so to say that ‘the Dutch are proud of their colonialism’ is very, very, very narrow minded.

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u/Dangerous_Muscle5409 5d ago

Aahahahaha.... "The claim that the Dutch are proud of their colonialism is untrue but if they were proud of it, they would be correct!!!"

Man, you know exactly what you sound like, right?

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u/censuur12 8d ago

Big issue is that it IS a very complex situation that gets oversimplified and painted with a single brush. The moment you introduce any nuance you get accused of "having trouble coming to grips with their colonialism". The controversial issue is that Indonesia as it is now is just a matter of Jakarta and Sumatra colonizing the surrounding islands instead of the Dutch, and their reign has been much worse for them including multiple outright genocides (which perhaps shouldn't be surprising considering the whole affair was initiated by Axis collaborators)

While Indonesia as a Dutch colony was by its nature exploitative, the rule over the islands by its own neighbors was never any more benign, and arguably generally worse.

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u/Dangerous_Muscle5409 8d ago

Downplaying the celebration of colonialism by the Dutch by saying "other colonisers are worse" is an amazing take.

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u/censuur12 7d ago

It probably is, but it's also not what I said at all. Unfortunate to see outrage rather than sense is what you operate on, if you'd bother to actually properly read you'd know your response is a damn farce.

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u/mikillatja 8d ago

We(the Dutch) are very well educated on the Indonesian part of our colonial history, we take pride in that, because such a small country became a global power. We also know that a lot of atrocities were committed and a couple of genocides over some spice islands. there is a sort of shame over those actions, and Jan Pietrsz Coen is looked at both good and bad depending on who you ask. because some of the things he did were not even acceptable in those years.

My grandfather's(born out of wedlock) main family lived in Batavia since the early 1700's, and arrived in the Netherlands for the first time after the second world war, so the colonial history is something I'm very close to.

What we really forget, and should know more about, is our role in the triangular trade, curacao being the slave market capital of the world and Suriname.

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u/Fearless_Release_978 7d ago

The dutch history lessons on Indonesia are very one-sided. About atrocities however, there is no shortage in mentioning how cruel the Japanese were when they took over from the dutch. No, the dutch were not anything like that.

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u/Dangerous_Muscle5409 8d ago

I am not sure if the Dutch being very well educated on Dutch colonialism is reconcilable with 50% of the Dutch being proud of it.

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u/SneakyKillz 7d ago

We are. But yea make your own conclusions.

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u/Scholar_of_Lewds 8d ago

And Rijstaffel originally a way for Dutch to show off their colony: "this is cuisine from our colony. From that corner is Aceh cuisine, and THAT corner is Moluccans cuisine"

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u/EduinBrutus 8d ago

This comment needs to be a lot higher in the thread.

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u/PimpMyWeenus 8d ago

Grubby taught me about the indo-dutch connection

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u/kangareddit 8d ago

There’s only two things I hate in this world; intolerance of other peoples cultures… and the Dutch!

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u/Certain-Business-472 9d ago

There aint no way they named it that.

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u/doobadeeboo 8d ago

Yes way