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Overview

This research paper discusses the development of the Dutch colonial police forces in the late nineteenth and twentieth century in the context of colonial state formation. The differences in the organization of the police forces and the practice of policing in the Dutch colonies (the Dutch East Indies, Suriname, and the Dutch Antilles/Dutch Caribbean) were significant, but political policing and a difficult relationship between police and community were overall the result of a weak and inefficient colonial state. Decolonization did not imply a breach of Dutch involvement with the police in the (former) Dutch West Indies. In Indonesia, the independent republic that replaced the Dutch East Indies after a period of war, Japanese Occupation, military actions, and diplomacy (1942–1950), the breach was more definite. However, the history of the decolonization of the Indonesian police still needs to be investigated in order to understand the continuities and discontinuities in policing and police methods in colonial and postcolonial Indonesia.

International Perspectives And Key Issues

The end of the twentieth century marked a turning point in the research on colonial police and state formation. Failing humanitarian interventions and unsuccessful international peace missions in those years may have provoked this change. The image of a repressive police, effectively maintaining colonial power, dominated academic historical writings until well into the 1980s (Anderson and Killingray, 1991, 1992; Arnold, 1986), but since the late 1990s and early 2000s, historians are inclined to emphasize the fundamental weakness of the colonial state and thus the ineffectiveness of the police (Bickers 2004; Campion 2002; Chandavarkar 1998; Sinclair 2006). The research on Dutch colonial policing on which this present entry is mainly built (Bloembergen 2009, 2011a, 2012; Broek 2011; Klinkers 2011) links up with this approach and is in particular inspired by the insights of Rajnarayan Chandavarkar (1998) and David Campion (2002) that police violence was the result of a weak and inefficient state rather than a strong, decisive state. The failure of the colonial police was caused, as they argue, not only by inadequate management but also by a difficult relationship between police and the community.

The tensions within the twofold task of the police – to maintain order and to provide in the social need of security – were more manifest in colonial societies with their racial biased organization structures and fragmented power relations than elsewhere: the cooperation of the local population was required for providing safety and protection, but at the same time, the police had to maintain order on behalf of a foreign regime which could provoke hostility and popular opposition. The police was therefore faced with unsolvable dilemmas that incited repression, in such a way that the challenge became not how the colonial state maintained control through the police, but how they could achieve this in spite of the police.

It is a question whether the histories of the modern colonial police forces in the Dutch East Indies in Asia and the Dutch West Indies – consisting of Suriname and the Antilles (in the Caribbean world) – can be analyzed and understood within one integrated Dutch police system. On the one hand, the three organizations of police forces (for the Dutch East Indies, Suriname, and the Antilles) all emerged at the end of the nineteenth century in the context of modern colonial states-in-development; they shared as their main objectives the prevention and detection of crime, surveillance, and the maintenance of colonial power, while, in the context of a modern colonial state-in-development, colonial authorities and entrepreneurs waged similar debates about security and the organization and mission of the colonial police. The fear of a loss of control over the indigenous or colonized people in a changing colonial world and the colonial state’s responsibility for the safety and protection of the inhabitants were key reasons for maintaining the colonial police. The state’s concern for security legitimized colonial power, while security also seemed indispensable for economic development (Bloembergen 2009, pp. 71–106; 109–136).

On the other hand, however, the organization of the police forces in each of the Dutch colonies and their practice of policing differed importantly. Obviously, there were differences in scale and population. The colonial regime of the Dutch East Indies, after a period of military expansion until 1910, had to oversee a million population in an immense archipelago consisting of thousands of islands, stretching from the west of Sumatra to the east of New Guinea. However, the Dutch East Indies’ modern colonial police forces, at the peak of their development in the early 1930s, consisted of only 54,000 men, at a population of 60 million souls (including less than 200,000 Europeans). Police control in the Dutch East Indies was therefore fragmented by definition and dependent on the effectiveness of local administration and security control. Meaningful, the semi-traditional village police – a service provided by male inhabitants of the villages – formalized by the colonial administration, was maintained throughout the colonial period.

Suriname is about 12 times smaller than the Dutch East Indies, and is about four times the size of the Netherlands, and thinly populated. The majority of the people live in the capital of Paramaribo and along the northern coast. Over three-fourths of Suriname is covered by tropical rainforest. The islands of the Antilles (Aruba, Curacao, St. Maarten, Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba) are small, scattered widely over the Caribbean Sea, and densely populated. Until the 1950s, the colonial police in Suriname and the Antilles did not exceed a few hundred men each, with minimal specialization. These West Indian colonies were populated by Europeans and the descendents of African slaves. In addition, Asian contract laborers and their descendents lived also in Suriname, while the interior was inhabited with small groups of Amerindians and Maroons. Thus, there were no indigenous systems of authority and control in Suriname and the Antilles.

The police in the Dutch East Indies was the largest and most professionalized of the three colonial police organizations. Nevertheless, the police in the Dutch East Indies was fragmented and revealed the weaknesses of the colonial state. Political consciousness and tensions in the colonies in the 1930s placed ideals of professionalization and modernization under pressure. Political policing became more prominent. The anxiety of the colonial state in the Dutch East Indies resulted in violent police actions, not diminishing but overshadowing policing out of care and protection. Policing in Suriname became in those years also subject to repression and gathering intelligence. In this period, the colonies shared politics of policing. Nevertheless, the outcome was different. While, after a violent decolonization war between 1945 and 1949, the independence of Indonesia was recognized by the Netherlands in 1949, a process of gradual decolonization of the Dutch West Indies was started.

As, in the end, the police forces in the Dutch East Indies and West Indies developed in distinct and mostly separate contexts, their histories will be dealt with in the following in more detail, separately.

Policing The Dutch East Indies

The lack of security was not an uncommon phenomenon in nineteenth century colonial Java. And policing had always been a tragic business. That is at least the idea that rises from colonialists’ complaints about the dreadful performance of the Javanese politieoppasser (literal meaning: police caretaker) or the formidable sleep of the indigenous village wards – the two main tools of civil colonial policing during the nineteenth century. But with the army and a diverse flock of armed security guards and auxiliary forces at hand, the unsafe circumstances, especially in rural Java, never seemed a problem to the colonial authorities – at least until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Only then, in the context of a “liberal” colonial state-in-progress and in the context of military, administrative, and economic expansion, worries were explicitly addressed – in public and governmental discussions – about rampant lack of security in Java. At the same time, a new ideal seems to emerge, the ideal of effective and good policing. The wracked result of this all was the police reform of 1897, the first of a series of three large police reforms – in 1897, in 1911–1914, and in 1918–1920 – by which the Dutch colonial state endeavored to get more control over the organization of security surveillance.

Fundamentals

The modern police of the Dutch East Indies, thus developed in the heyday of the “ethical policy” that held sway between 1900 and 1920, was the answer to a typical colonial problem: the struggle of a colonial state that wanted to be civilized but witnessed its legitimacy crumbling. Compelled to use force to enforce its authority, it nonetheless also sought to govern by consent. The modern police embodied these two contrary forces of the ethical policy, or the Dutch version of the mission civilicatrice, namely, simultaneous efforts to achieve development and control (Locher Scholten 1981). Since the colonial police was the instrument used to pursue these diverse goals, it became a two-headed beast: in trying to safeguard the state’s authority, it provoked resistance, while, in reaching out to fulfil society’s need for security, it needed the cooperation of the local population (Campion 2002, pp. 1–2).

Three meaningful police reforms between 1897 and 1920 contributed to the installation of a would be modern police force, or the general police, that operated in the 1920s and 1930s. These reforms were all important steps in the colonial state’s effort to gain control over security surveillance. After the reform of 1918–1920, the Netherlands Indies officially (although not effectively) had a centralized and uniform modern police force. It was in itself pluralistic: it consisted of (a) the gewapende politie (an armed militarized police force, in hands of European administration) and (b) the general police, with its many divisions – the administrative police (dating from the nineteenth century), a modern city police (created in 1912–1914, large towns), the field police (veldpolitie; created in 1918–1920 for the security surveillance of the rural areas), and, mainly meant for political control, the gewestelijke recherche (the regional investigation departments). The Attorney General was in charge of central control, the director of Interior Administration of the management of the police.

The modern Dutch East Indies’ police force never had, nor could it have, a monopoly of security surveillance. Therefore, the colonial budget was too small, and the territory and the population number too large. Manned for more than 96 % by Indonesians and directed by a small minority of European staff, the size of the force peaked in the 1930s at 54,000, and this on a population of almost 60 million souls, which counted less than 200,000 Europeans. Only a very small minority of Indonesian policemen could reach the higher ranks of the police force. Through its organization and hierarchy, the police force therefore reflected an essential characteristic of the colonial state: namely, how this state worked both on principles of cooperation and inclusion, and on difference and exclusion (compare Cooper 2005). Due to the dualistic principle of colonial administration in the Dutch East Indies, the system of policing and surveillance remained moreover very much fragmented. The effectiveness of policing and surveillance depended to a large extent on the functioning of the local administration – a European administrative hierarchy or the Binnenlands Bestuur (Interior Administration), paralleled by an indigenous administrative hierarchy, or the pangreh praja, which was responsible for administrative police and village police. This village police, partly a colonial construction as well, was a forced service of guarding and patrolling, which male adult inhabitants of a village or of indigenous quarters (kampong) in the towns provided in turn. While ideally the modern colonial police tools were to encapsulate these local semi-traditional tools, the village police, whether effectively functioning or not, remained for economic reasons the core of colonial security surveillance at the very local level (Bloembergen 2012). Next to that, the modern colonial police force also depended on other local or private forms of security surveillance and on how the modern police tools interacted with these.

Trustworthy to her civilizing mission, the Indies’ government, however, kept up the ideal of the police as a good police force, that is, “a force of men with high mental attitudes towards life, a good morale and a strong character” – this according to an official governmental enunciation in the Volksraad in 1931. The Police School in Soekaboemi, set up in 1914 (10 years before a comparable school existed in the Netherlands), was the symbol and promoter of this ideal. The curriculum of the police academy reflected the same ambivalent notion of fear and concern that shaped the modern colonial police, and thus the aims to empower and gain loyalty, and to civilize. Thus, police recruits, from the lowest to the highest rank, were trained to perform as a tool for (political) control and as a civil security tool – at least as a more civilized tool than the army. On the one hand, they were trained in semi-military discipline, the use of arms and physical exercises, and, after communists revolts erupted in West Java and on the west coast of Sumatra at the end of 1926 and early 1927, also on how to recognize a “communist conspiracy” – all reflecting the police needs of a police state; on the other hand, they were educated on the principles of a constitutional state, criminal law and justice, methods and rules of civilized modern policing, and the idea that postponement of violence should be a leitmotif (Bloembergen 2009:203–247; 299–332; Bloembergen 2011a, b). Also, they were meant to perform as a tool of “civilization”: to bring order, safety, neatness, cleanliness – in short “light” in colonial society. This idea became part of the self-image of the policemen who were trained at the police academy.

The image of good, civilized police and the idea of civilization and neatness through policing seemed to have become more important even in the 1930s. With further development of Indonesian nationalism and fiercer political policing, it became harder for the colonial authorities to ignore opposition against colonial rule. After the violent repression of communist revolts in 1926–1927, mass arrests, and the internment of around 1,300 presumed communists without trial, the colonial government subsequently refined and extended the organization of political policing and enlarged the police force in general. The international economic crisis, which forced the government to cut down policing expenses, did not hamper the artificial image of rust en orde (law and order) or zaman normal (times of normalcy) by which the 1930s have been characterized. Meanwhile, the police, more visible because of the extension of political policing and being watched while watching, had become the standard for the quality of colonial government. For those groups who felt oppressed by the police, the police embodied “the dirty work of empire” (Orwell 2001 [1936]).

Consequences: Political Policing

Colonial anxiety was the main condition under which a centralized Dutch East Indies Intelligence Service was set up in 1916. In the context of modernizing colonial society, this anxiety was fed, in short, by peaks of panic about religious revolts and rural unrest in the countryside, a growing awareness of an indigenous movement towards association and progress (the pergerakan), the visible Japanese drive for expansion in Asia, and, therefore, double awareness of the insecure position of the Netherlands in Asia – a position which leaned on Dutch neutrality in international relations. After the installation of a Central Intelligence Service, set up during the Great War, and slightly reformed in 1919, the colonial government had – on paper – strong means to assess and control indigenous political activities: (1) a Central Intelligence Service (Politieke Inlichtingendienst, PID), in 1916, renamed Algemeene Recherche Dienst (General Intelligence Service, ARD), in the hands of the Attorney General; (2) a weekly survey of Javanese, Malay, and Malay Chinese newspapers (Overzicht van de Inlandsche en Maleische Pers, IPO); (3) the new Regulation for association and gathering, or article 8a, a tool in the hands of the police to act (¼to attend/watch meetings and, officially when directed to do so, to intervene whenever “disturbances were expected”) (Sunario 1926, p. 19); and (4) steady background intelligence, provided by the advisor for Native Affairs (Laffan 2002).

From ARD to the local administrators, from the modern police in all its diverse units to local spies, and back to the center, the will “to know” and means to arrive at knowledge were there. But did this result in perspicacity? Practice was rough.

In the night of 12 November 1926, the colonial police and administrators on Java were completely surprised by communist revolts that took place at several locations at the same time – in the main capital Batavia, in Bandung, and, most thoroughly, in Banten (West Java). Completely surprised they were again in January 1927, when another communist uprising occurred in the west coast of Sumatra. These uprisings, both organized by the Partai Kommunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party, PKI), could occur despite the existence of a Central Intelligence Service, despite intense police surveillance, despite repression of strikes in the first half of the 1920s (organized by the Union of Tram and Railway workers), and despite forced exile of most of these organizations leaders. The latter measures could be implemented on the base of the so-called exorbitant rights of the governorgeneral, a regulation dating from 1854 which gave the governor-general the right to expel persons living in the Dutch East Indies when it was in the interest of colonial law and order. These violent interventions and repressive measures did have the effect that the preparations of the intended revolt were obstructed by loss of strong leadership, internal conflict, and miscommunications within the PKI divisions. Moreover, since the end of 1924, the colonial authorities notably feared organized unrest. Therefore, this was a double failure of the political police and the ARD: they were surprised by badly organized uprisings, which they had foreseen (Bloembergen 2009:247–259).

This clear failure of Governor-General Johan Paul van Limburg Stirum’s expressed wish, in 1916, to be “informed [.. .] on what’s going on in the Native’s mind,” was above all a failure of central control of the political police. The main reasons are as follows: due to the fragmentation of colonial authority, political policing remained to a large extent a local business. Miscommunication, due to language problems, unbridgeable distances, misunderstandings, and conflicting interests of police, administrators, and local spies did the rest. And this miscommunication was enhanced by the mechanisms of secrecy and misleading that accompanied spying and the PKI’s preparations of a revolt. As one police expert would point out later on, despite ARD, central police control, and regional intelligence forces, there was no effective interlocal (nor supra-local) collaboration between police forces and administrations.

The way the colonial state subsequently repressed the communist uprisings was a typical solution of a colonial state that went on the defensive: what followed was mass repression, mass custodies, and mass internments to a special camp in Boven-Digoel (in short “Digoel”) in New Guinea – and this without any form of trial. The PKI was no longer tolerated.

The communist revolts moreover stimulated a general enlargement of the police force: the set up of a refined system of intelligence gathering and reporting (the Politiek-Politioneele Verslagen) and the set up of stronger guidelines for recognizing “radicalism” and keeping firm while watching. The memory of the fierce repression of the communist uprisings and the spectre of “Digoel” moreover made clear to nationalist/anti-colonial opposition, where the government drew the line. In that sense, 1927 was a turning point: a more pronounced policy of political policing made political police and the police state-in-development more effective – or so it seemed (Bloembergen 2009, pp. 247–298, 2011a).

The system of political policing still fell prey to bureaucratic retarding and the inability to process more information, to miscommunication, and to misunderstandings as well. Moreover, because the political police were, in their task of political control, guided by the search for signs of communism, they further blinded the state. The system of political surveillance therefore stimulated the inability and disinclination of the majority of the colonial government to try to understand the aims, aspirations, reach and depth of the national movement, and other drives for progress among the indigenous population. The system was also the product of this inability and disinclination.

Moreover, precisely because of the scale, violence, and visibility of their repressive actions, the police also showed the fragile position and hampering legitimacy of the colonial state. While the police looked out, the public watched, criticized, and ridiculed the police. In the end, the colonial police therefore was not so much a vehicle for discipline, but a vehicle for the loss of prestige and corrosion of colonial authority. This is what made colonial policing a dirty task, and in the end, a tragedy.

Future Directions: Decolonization

This research paper does not cover the history of the police during the Pacific War and the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies (1942–1945) nor the issue of policing and decolonization in the Dutch East Indies/the Indonesian Republic, during the Indonesian revolution and Dutch military aggressions in the period 1945–1949. These histories still need to be investigated, although Ambar Wulan (2009) made a beginning with her study on the Indonesian Republican police and intelligence gathering during the Indonesian Revolution, 1945–1949. To be short, for these periods there are, to a certain extent, continuities with prewar colonial policing: the problem of the legitimacy of the colonial state, and thus of the police, only had become more acute. The practice of policing and the nature of the security problems, however, also changed, becoming even more complicated and more pluriform. The Dutch colonial police, for several reasons, could no longer play the role it had played before the Pacific War. They resumed their tasks in a society transformed and also unsettled by the Japanese occupation and war economy, a society involved in a decolonization war, and a society in a permanent state of civil wars. Moreover, the colonial police had to concur with the new police force, developed by the Indonesian Republic in the same period. These circumstances complicated the tasks of policing and the issue of police loyalties. A study of the colonial police in this period would have to address the relationships and interactions between this force and the colonial army and Dutch troops during the two military aggressions in 1947 and in 1948–1949 (notably referred to at the time as police actions) and those between this force, the Republican police force, and the various Dutch and Indonesian security forces developed in this period. The question concerning the functioning of the colonial police during this period is, therefore, not easy to answer and deserves new research.

Policing The Dutch West Indies: Suriname And The Netherlands Antilles/ Dutch Caribbean

The marechaussee in Suriname became operative on the first of July 1863, the same day that 33,000 slaves became free citizens in Suriname. This newly established police force symbolized the historical transformation of colonial society. The developments in the police force of Suriname in the late nineteenth century were closely intertwined with the changes in a society adapting to the abolition of slavery. Society was on the move. Social boundaries were no longer determined by slavery and freedom. Disciplining and law enforcement, until then largely based on military and plantation discipline, had to be reshaped. In addition, society became more complex because of the arrival of indentured laborers from Asia and the West Indies. Chinese, more than 34,000 British Indian laborers, and almost 33,000 Javanese immigrants from the Dutch East Indies moved to Suriname to work the plantations, while increasingly ex-slaves found a living outside the plantation economy. The unfolding developments of the Surinamese police force show the struggle of the colonial authorities to accept, mold, and structure the socioeconomic changes in colonial society in the aftermath of slavery. The search for a suitable colonial police force resulted in a series of reorganizations which came to a conclusion with the founding of the korps gewapende politie (armed police force) in 1895.

Maintaining colonial power was a major concern for the planters and local authorities. The police had to be efficient, leaning towards military discipline, but also decent and generous towards the people to legitimate state control and to realize its civilization mission. That is, to create a society, conform western European culture with people willing to work for the benefits of colonial prosperity (Klinkers 2011).

Fundamentals

In November 1862, more than 6 months before the abolition of slavery, the minister of Colonial Affairs gave permission to the governor of Suriname to introduce a new colonial police force, het korps marechaussee (marechaussee). On the Dutch island of Curac¸ao, a brigade of marechaussee had been operating since 1838. This brigade was not an institutional part of the ministry of war like the Royal Marechaussee in the Netherlands but stood under the command of the Attorney General. As a result, the colonial authorities in Suriname chose unanimously for the installation of a civilian police force with a strong military character. Military of European descent and encamped in Suriname were recruited to join the marechaussee. The policemen were supposed to live in barracks to keep a safe distance from the local community.

The Attorney General had a difficult time to maintain the marechaussee up strength. The solution for this shortage of personnel was sought in the foundation in 1868 of a second police force, the korps inlandse politie (inland police force). The inland police force would be manned with creoles, that is to say, descendents of former slaves in Suriname. The entrance of Creoles into the police force seemed inevitable, but their incorporation into the marechaussee was considered problematic. Racial prejudices certainly abounded. The obsession with the separation of local and European policemen in different police forces was remarkable, since Suriname had a long history of cooperation between black and white men in maintaining law and order. Black overseers were considered as mediators between slaves and whites at the plantations. Besides, patrols of black (both enslaved and free) and white men pursued runaway slaves in the interior of Suriname in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The racial separation in the postabolition police force can be understood as a redefinition of social boundaries in the aftermath of slavery (Compare Cooper and Stoler 1997, p. 7). The marechaussee was supposed to represent the colonial state and symbolized the unbroken supremacy of the white colonial population after emancipation.

However, there was no fundamental difference in the police practices of both forces. The removal of the institutional distinction between inland police and marechaussee took decades with endless discussions. Eventually Governor T.A.J. van Asch van Wijck decided to turn daily practice into policy and merged the two systems into one armed police force. The institutional changes did not fundamentally change the system. What remained was one police force with a military character, with a growing shift from European to local personnel through time. The colonial authorities failed to establish a strong police force during the twentieth century, because of the lack of financial means. Besides, the authorities seem to distrust the local policemen and clang to the army as a loyal ally of colonial power. In addition, the rise of (semiprivate) policemen fractured the system of law enforcement even more.

The initial idea to organize the police systems in the colonies of the Dutch West Indies in the same way faded to the background. The Antillean police force passed through several stages during colonial times, beginning with the brigade koloniale marechaussee (colonial marechaussee) (1839–1918), followed by korps veldwacht (rural police) (1873–1918, 1932–1949), detachement marechaussee (marechaussee) (1911–1918), korps burgerpolitie (civilian police) (1918–1949), and korps militaire politietroepen (military police troops) (1928–1949). The police was highly militarized and had, in contrast to the Surinamese police, a large influx of Dutch military and civil policemen throughout all its stages, except for the rural policemen. Personnel was distributed over six islands, but the majority was located on Curac¸ao. The expansion of the oil industry in the 1920s, requiring security and causing a large recruitment of people on the island, had been a reason for reorganization, expansion, and further militarization of the police system with the formation of a korps militaire politietroepen besides the already existing korps burgerpolitie. The bifurcated police system did not live up to the expectations of a strong and efficient police force. The weakness of the system of maintenance order became apparent when a small group of Venezuelans overpowered the police station in a fortress on Curac¸ao in 1929 (Broek 2011). The Venezuelans under command of R.S. Urbina not only succeeded in overpowering the fortress but also captured Governor L.A. Fruytier for almost 1 day. The incident was considered as an embarrassment for colonial power.

Consequences: Political Policing

Ideals of an effective and a respectable police force, of civilizing society and its people, were frequently at odds with maintaining colonial power and control. This happened in uncertain times, as in the years following the abolition of slavery, but became most apparent in the 1930s. The global economic crisis not only caused poverty and unemployment in Suriname and Curac¸ao but raised also political consciousness and opposition against the colonial administration. Surinamese laborers who had been employed in the oil industry on Curac¸ao in the 1920s lost their jobs and returned to their home country, disillusioned but inspired by the island’s labor unions and left-wing press (Ramsoedh 1990, p. 33). The Surinamese colonial authorities feared that communism and nationalism would conquer influence, a fear that was stimulated by the communist revolts on Java and Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies in 1926 and 1927 (see above).

In Suriname, repression and political policing became more manifest than ever before. The press, labor unions, and other signs of political consciousness were not tolerated and repressed. An anti-revolution law was announced in 1933 to defy the feared threat of communism and to maintain colonial order. Most illustrious was the arrest of the Surinamese writer Anton de Kom who had been involved with communist and nationalist groups during his sojourn in the Netherlands. His decision to travel to Suriname to talk about the history of slavery caught the attention of the Dutch intelligence service that was surveying de Kom for some time already. They warned Governor A.A.L. Rutgers that he was suspected to poison the Surinamese people with anti-colonial thoughts. As a result, de Kom stood under police surveillance continuously, was forbidden to speak in public, and detained several times. A group of people gathered awaiting his release after he had been arrested again. The police ended this protest with force; 22 people were wounded and two were killed (Woortman and Boots 2009, pp. 63–135).

In this period of anxiety, the colonies shared politics of policing. The authorities in Suriname and the Antilles informed each other about possible security threats and measures. After the appointment of J.C. Kielstra as a governor of Suriname in 1933, the events in the Dutch East Indies gained importance. Kielstra had been a colonial administrator in the Dutch East Indies. Kielstra increased the repressive regime further, even though there were no indications that communism and nationalism would manifest themselves in Suriname as strongly as in the Dutch East Indies (Klinkers 2011, pp. 105–156).

Future Directions: Decolonization

Suriname and the Dutch Antilles became autonomous parts of the Dutch Kingdom in 1954 as stipulated in the ‘Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands.’ The Netherlands remained responsible for foreign affairs, defense, and good governance (Oostindie and Klinkers 2012, pp. 21–27). The police were internal Surinamese and Antillean affairs from then on. The Dutch gave up leading positions in the police organization in Suriname, which was already mainly staffed by local men reflecting the multicultural society. The Dutch input in the Antillean police forces was and would maintain relatively strong.

However, self-rule did not imply a breach of Dutch involvement in Surinamese police organization. Schooling and training, technical assistance, and cooperation between Dutch police and those in the West Indies intensified, while joint international crime investigation became more important. The organizations in Suriname and the Antilles started to expand and professionalize from the 1950s onwards. In Suriname, special branches, such as an intelligence service, children’s police, and traffic police were founded. The armed police force changed its name into korps politie Suriname (Suriname police force) in 1973, emphasizing the civilian mission of the police, even though military aspects in its presentation and protocol would be uphold. The ineffectiveness of the fragmented Antillean police system had been acknowledged before. The three forces (civilian police, military police troops, and the village police) were transformed into the korps politie Nederlandse Antillen (Dutch Antilles police force) in 1949 (Broek 2011, pp. 147–149).

The fear that the independence of Indonesia would become a source of inspiration for the people in Suriname was a reason for gathering intelligence in the 1950s. But more than the struggle for independence, the Dutch government – encouraged by the United States feared that communism would spread as an ink spot in the Caribbean area after the Cuban revolution of 1959. The Dutch government’s secret intelligence service, binnenlandse veiligheidsdienst (BVD), assisted in the founding and professionalization of the Antillean police forces and Surinamese intelligence services (veiligheidsdienst Nederlandse Antillen, centrale inlichtingendienst Suriname), both subdivisions of the local police organizations. The cooperation was not entirely successful because of mutual distrust, reason for the Dutch BVD to work together with the marines on the Antilles and the Dutch troops in Suriname.

The Dutch government had to bring foreign policy into practice in a changing colonial reality. The work of army and police, intertwined during colonial times as both had been occupied with the internal security, had to be unraveled. The army or marines were still allowed to assist the police in times of crisis, but when and how this was supposed to happen was hard to determine. A conflict between Suriname and Guyana police force about territorial claims in the southwestern border area in 1968–1969 and a revolt on Curac¸ao in 1969 demonstrate how difficult it was to act in a mutually acceptable way and according to 1954 Charter.

The border dispute between Suriname and (British) Guyana harks back to the nineteenth century but came to a crisis after Guyana became independent in 1966. After the Guyana police force dispatched Surinamese workers out of the area, the Surinamese government demanded a military response to the Guyanese action. The Dutch government sympathized with the Surinamese territorial claims but refused military assistance which would intensify the conflict. The Surinamese government founded in response a special police unit, the defensie politie (defense police), to guard and protect the territory. Eventually, the conflict would never come to an armed clash, but simply lost its urgency. Without coming to a conclusion the territorial claims still lingers on (Klinkers 2011, pp. 157–244).

The labor conflict in Curac¸ao which ended in a revolt on May 30, 1969, challenged the Charter even more. Thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets of Willemstad, looting and burning. The police killed two people. Eventually, the local authorities called the Dutch Marines for assistance to end the uproar. This military action was successful in restoring order but was criticized at home and abroad for this neocolonial act (Broek 2011, pp.153–190; Oostindie 1999). The revolt changed the attitude towards the Charter. It made the Dutch government realize that their possibilities for intervention to guarantee good governance overseas were limited. Besides, the continuing dependency of Dutch financial aid and the unlimited stream of migrants were other consequences of the Charter. The government in The Hague headed for independence of the West Indies, which was accepted in Suriname in 1975. The Antilles, on the other hand, refused sovereignty and are connected with the Netherlands until today, even though the ties loosened and the islands are no longer united in one country since October 2010 (Oostindie 2011). Aruba took the lead and received a separate status in 1983 already; the korps politie Aruba was founded in 1985 as a result of new responsibilities and legal arrangements. As international crime, like drugs and human trafficking, increased, the cooperation with and investments in the (former) Dutch Caribbean police systems remained of major importance for both areas.

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