Social Imaginary of a Homeland: citizenship, representation, and integration of Moluccans in the Netherlands

Introduction

The year 2021 marked seventy years since the first Moluccan soldiers and their families arrived in the Netherlands. While the small state is often seen as a beacon of progressiveness and tolerance in western Europe, a history of untruths, tragedy, violence, and later a degree of reconciliation, have marked these seventy years. From what started as a temporary solution to accommodate 12,500 Moluccan soldiers and their families, the now over 71 thousand citizens of Moluccan descent are an important piece in the social fabric of the contemporary Netherlands.[1] Their history in the country they were brought to has not been simple: from physical and social isolation to terrorist acts in the broader community, the journey has rife with tensions and complexities. Recently, several special publications and visual media were released in special commemoration of the 70^th year, but in 2017, more provocative elements of the Dutch-Moluccan history were found on the front pages again. A lawsuit was brought against the Dutch state by the families of the young Moluccan perpetrators killed in the 1977 train hijacking[2] and unanswered questions surrounding their deaths at the hands of Dutch marines brought the case to public attention and created controversy once again about the context of Moluccans in the Netherlands. This controversy invigorated the conversation around the role of the movement for an independent Moluccan state (RMS). This pertains to the Moluccas, a province of islands under Indonesian control since their independence in 1949, to where the repatriated Moluccans were initially intended to return. A return to this homeland was the basis for the RMS movement in the first decades after the Moluccans arrived, however, today, this is no longer the case to the same extent. Whereas now Moluccans have made the Netherlands home and integration levels are high, the dream – or, social imaginary – of a homeland has played a significant role in the process of Dutch-Moluccan integration.

The aim of this research is to investigate how the social imaginary of a homeland materialised in Moluccan communities and impacted their integration processes in the Netherlands between 1950 and 1990. The first part of this work establishes the theoretical framework on which the analysis of this research is based. Through the analytical lens of social imaginaries and based on the concept of imagined (national) communities, the evolution of the way in which Moluccans imagined themselves (in relation to each other and in relation to the external Dutch society) is examined at three moments of contention. In the first analysis section, I address the 1950s and the creation of the BPRSM[3] in the Netherlands in 1952 as an expression of the RMS movement, discuss the first generation of Moluccan migrants, and examine the implications of a ‘temporary resident’ mindset during the first years of the diaspora. Section two covers the time around 1975: the first train hijacking and other tensions arose in the adolescence and young adulthood of the second generation of Moluccans, as for better or worse they were becoming ‘permanent residents.’ Finally, section three is an exploration of the controversies and contentions that surrounded the signing of the General Mutual Declaration in 1986, as third-generation Moluccans entered the picture and ‘permanent residents’ became citizens in the Netherlands.

Theoretical Framework

The social imaginary is a powerful thing. It can build and break nations, hold communities together or drive them apart, stoke the hopes and dreams of people or crush them. Especially in combination with nationalism, the social imaginary of a (national) community is the foundation of values and common understandings that upholds group cohesion, promoting common goals and a shared future. While not new in the realm of cultural studies, studying and defining social imaginaries remains somewhat complex. An important point made by Vandevoort et al. is that globalisation and the accompanying migration trend has played a large role in shedding light on the intricacies of identity and culture, its constructions, and the study thereof; traditional conceptions of culture as a somewhat uniform collection of ideas and beliefs that informs a collective identity no longer hold up to a world in which borders (both physical and metaphysical) are vague and porous.[4]

For this research, two main scholars are engaged with to delineate the meaning of social imaginaries, the purpose of studying them, and the use of (social) imaginaries as an analytical lens for understanding cultural historical phenomena. Charles Taylor, a key scholar in the field of cultural studies, defines social imaginaries as “the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations which are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images which underlie these expectations.”[5] Taylor’s conceptualisation is abstract and flexible, meaning it allows for the consideration of many elements, but is particularly useful for its final line: it explicitly addresses and allows for the inclusion of broader context and deeper investigation of the foundations of any given imaginary. As opposed to examining social phenomena on a surface or more individual level, looking into these occurrences in the broader context of their social imaginaries – in the way that occurrences shape the social imaginary, and how social imaginaries shape (the interpretation and reaction to) occurrences – offers a constructive and constructivist way to go about the study and understanding of (cultural) history.

This definition by Taylor builds upon and fits together well with Benedict Anderson’s definition of nations as imagined communities, which brings the element of nationhood and nationalism to the social imaginary: “[a nation is] an imagined political community… It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”[6] Just as culture and identity can no longer be studied as static, the ideas surrounding nations and their origins are also changing to reflect contemporary perspectives. Anderson explains that in history, the concept of a nation has seemed ‘traditional’ and authentic through its strong emotional legitimacy, forged through developments in commerce, technology and especially print capitalism – suddenly, it was possible for “rapidly growing numbers of people to think about themselves, and to relate themselves to others, in profoundly new ways.”[7] In the study of nations and nationalism, the focus transferred from ‘primal urges’ – looking at nations as a given, a tradition – to the sociological setting, in which subjective national identifications and imagined communities had become politically visible since the 1800s.[8] Glenda Sluga explains that the combination of print culture and newly literate masses catalysed a sense of ‘simultaneity’: the notion that ‘everyone’ would be experiencing the same content at the same time, spending their free time consuming the same novels or newspapers, for example,[9] or seeing the same posters and written campaigns. Language also played a key role in tapping into emotions, fostering feelings of connection and solidarity with ‘fellow nationals,’ especially using mother tongues and more widely spoken languages made the content even more accessible. This also links to the idea of national patriotism – or, allegiance to the social imaginary and imagined (national) community – as a learned form of emotional subjectivity passed on through family.[10]

Employing social imaginaries as an analytical tool thus combats the drawbacks of a static approach to culture and identity, in that it focuses not on ‘true’ or physical aspects, but rather on the perceived and enacted aspects of culture that informs a(n imagined) community and the related collective identities. In cultural analysis of modern history, with its globalised complexities, the flexibility to consider elements spanning multiple and various contexts (over time, geographies, and societies, for example)[11] is what using social imaginaries as an analytical lens offers. Especially in the case of this research, flexibility is vital: the multiplicity of political, societal, and cultural dynamics involved in the case of Moluccans in the Netherlands requires an accommodating approach to see, along the writings of Charles Taylor, the ways in which Moluccans imagined their social existence, how the individuals fit together and behaved within their imagined community and why, as well as delve deeper into the imaginations, preconditions, and contexts that underlay the (social) expectations within the community.

As briefly introduced above, the RMS movement was a crucial element in the lives of many Moluccans after their arrival in the Netherlands in the early 1950s. Indeed, the RMS movement, in combination with the social and political conditions of the later 20^th century, informed the social imaginary of the Moluccan diaspora – namely, how they imagined their social existence and interacted with one another and those outside of the group. To operationalise this study, the analytical lens of social imaginaries is applied to Moluccans in the Netherlands at three moments of contention, over three generations, covering three distinct positionalities: the 1950s, 1970s, and finally 1980s.

Each of these moments in time hold captivating images of the implications of social and political citizenship, representation, and integration of Moluccans in the Netherlands. By engaging with the works and definitions of Taylor and of Anderson, the extent to which the social imaginary of an RMS (Republik Maluku Selatan) homeland materialised in Moluccan communities and impacted their integration processes in the Netherlands between 1950 and 1990 becomes clearer.

Analysis

This research analyses the Moluccan diaspora in the Netherlands from the 1950s to the 1990s, the role of the social imaginary of a Republic of South Maluku (RMS) homeland, and the impacts thereof on both the social and political aspects of citizenship, representation and integration of the Moluccan communities that found themselves in the Netherlands post-WWII. Before going deeper into the three moments of contention at the heart of the study, it is important to understand the context and series of events that prompted the Dutch government to bring the Moluccans to the Netherlands, and what brought the Moluccans to accept that offer.

In the 17^th century, the Netherlands took control of islands in Southeast Asia – until 1949 known as the Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia – as part of the spice trade, with special attention to the Moluccas, a group of islands knows as the ‘spice islands.’[12] The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was dissolved in the 1800s and the Dutch East Indies were taken under colonial control and remained so until after the Second World War. Post-WWII saw the Indonesian struggle for independence come to a slow fruition, as round-table talks on the decolonisation of the country were ‘completed’ in 1945, but the Dutch continued to hold onto Indonesia before finally letting go in 1949. The violent altercations that took place in the lead-up to Dutch departure are what separated the Moluccans from the Indonesians and prompted the diaspora that would follow. Despite the Moluccas being part of the Indonesian archipelago, differences in language, religion, and particularly allegiance, meant that many Moluccans refused to take on Indonesian citizenship or accept state control, instead entreating the declaration of an independent Republik Maluku Selatan or South Moluccan Republic (RMS).[13] In the process of decolonisation, once the fighting was resolved, over 3,500 Moluccan soldiers that had fought in the Royal Dutch East Indian Army (KNIL) on behalf of the Dutch state requested to be demobilised in an independent RMS state, so as to live peacefully and not under the governance of those they had fought against. Because this was not possible, and because the soldiers were officially still in the employment of the KNIL and the Dutch state was responsible for their demobilisation, the state was left only with the option to ‘repatriate’ the Moluccan soldiers and their families to the Netherlands – and, in 1951, around 12,500 Moluccan men, women and children were brought to the Netherlands by boat.[14] The families and soldiers arrived and were immediately dismissed from the army, meaning that they were in a juridically complex position: officially, according the decolonisation agreements made between the Netherlands and newly independent Indonesia, the Moluccans were Indonesian citizens.[15] However, they saw themselves as citizens of the RMS, which technically did not exist, and all three parties certainly didn’t view the Moluccans as Dutch citizens.[16] This liminality – a “threshold, a somewhat disruptive and disorienting state that marks a boundary” traditionally between two phases of a ritual,[17] but in this case between two places, identities, societies – would set the tone of the Dutch-Moluccan relationship for the next years.

The 1950s: early years

Social imaginaries and imagined national communities can be particularly strong when a group of people faces the same traumatic experience and upheaval of life or life-expectations. The focus of Chapter 1 lies in the 1950s, after the Moluccans had arrived in the Netherlands by necessity due to tensions and difficulties in compromising between the KNIL military, the Dutch government, and the newly independent Indonesian state. In summary, the demand for an independent South Maluku republic (RMS) had not been granted by Indonesia state, and the remaining KNIL soldiers plus families, totalling around 12,500 Moluccans, were demobilized in the Netherlands on the condition and assumption of repatriation as soon as an independent RMS homeland was secured. During this era, when considering the strength of the social imaginary of a RMS homeland, notions of social and political citizenship, representation and integration have a different form than they will in the years to come; namely, these notions are not in relation to the Dutch state or Dutch society – there was little to no interaction with the general population of the Netherlands – but in relation to others within the Moluccan community.

A specific moment of contention at the focus of this section is 1952 and the creation of the BPRMS organisation in the Netherlands.[18] In the original Malay, BRPRM stands for Badan Perwakilan Rajat Maluku Selatan; in Dutch the vertegenwoordigend lichaam van het Zuid-Molukse volk,[19] and in English: the Representative Body of the South Moluccan People.[20] The Dutch word ‘volk’ can be translated as ‘nation’ as well as ‘people,’ and this in itself is a complex discussion. Kwame Anthony Appiah uses the term ‘peoples’ or ‘a people’ to describe some groups because it doesn’t necessitate or imply that they already share a (political) citizenship; a people thus being a group of humans “united by a shared ancestry, real or imagined, whether or not they share a state.”[21] However, Kwame’s discussion on what it means to be a ‘nation’ is also relevant: a nation is a people who imagine themselves as having a shared ancestry and, importantly, also care about the fact that they have this alleged ancestry in common.[22] A key difference, then, is that a nation could care enough about its togetherness to want to rule itself and establish a state. But, Kwame argues, to build a state around a nation needs more than just ‘a people’ and a will; the nation must be made from the ‘people’ by instilling the shared sentiments that will make it possible for them to live together.[23] In other words, the social imaginary must be constructed, and the imagined community fostered.

The BPRMS was established a little over a year after the Moluccan volk[24] arrived in Europe, but was not the first organisation of its kind. In 1952, it was the product of conflict resolution between the KRM and CRAMS, two of the other political entities fighting for the rights of the Moluccans.[25] The two groups were both in the business of getting the Moluccan volk back to their own RMS, but represented different sections of the group. CRAMS[26] claimed itself to be the highest representative of the volk but specifically of the ex-KNIL soldiers, while KRM[27] established itself as a less authoritarian or dominating representative of the more general Moluccan volk.[28] This split also created a divide between the Moluccans themselves based on where they came from: the common term for Moluccans in the 50s and 60s was ‘Ambonese’ (the ‘A’ in CRAMS) after the capital city in the Maluku province, and conflicts arose out of the notion that while all Ambonese are Moluccan, not all Moluccans are Ambonese.[29] Not all Moluccans were tied as closely to the military side of the situation, but the soldiers and sailors also felt the need for effective representation. From this and other inclusivity and representation tensions, the BPRMS was born as a union between these groups that was accepted as a representative voice by the Dutch government and the RMS organisations in the South Pacific. The establishment of the BPRMS in February of 1952 was an anchor, then, of the social imaginary of the Moluccan volk: this institution was demonstrated as being of the people, by the people, and for the people, and as such worked to build up a political imaginary, a nation around which a state could be formed.[30] As much as a key representative body worked to fill out and form the social imaginary of a homeland, as well as connect the growing number of Moluccans in the Netherlands as an imagined (national) community, this imaginary was fragile and would be subject to adjustment in the future of the RMS movement.

This era of first-generation immigrants, a mostly homogenous and community-oriented group, is marked by a notion of temporariness – an imminent return to the socially imagined independent homeland meant that both the Moluccan community and the Dutch (government and society) considered the newcomers as simply temporary residents. Moluccans were broadly considered to be a ‘special minority’ in the Netherlands, and to have a ‘special relationship’ with the country.[31] Unlike many other categories of post-colonial migrants to the Netherlands, such as the Surinamese or Indo-Europeans, the Moluccans did not have a ‘natural right’ to Dutch citizenship since they were considered as ‘natives’ to their land and not in any way European subjects of the crown.[32] And, as briefly noted above, they did not have any other valid citizenship either: while the decolonisation agreements assigned Moluccans the Indonesian citizenship, the Moluccans refused to accept it for their hopes of (soon) obtaining RMS status. Besides this, the Indonesian government was hesitant to offer citizenship to the Moluccans in any case if they were actively supportive of the RMS movement taking place on the Moluccas islands. Thus, the group of 12,500 that had been involuntarily brough to the Netherlands were formally stateless. The notion of citizenship, in a political sense, is connected to the idea of representation. Gert Oostindie draws a useful analogy of the importance, or at least usefulness, of citizenship as he explains that it has a “hard edge” that involves practicing the rights of citizenship (such as travelling to and settling in the Netherlands), but also the social sense of citizenship: a soft inside that is “articulated in terms of the possibility of such intangible notions as identity and the space granted to all citizens, regardless of their differences, to join together in the national community, to belong.”[33]

Excluded from the Dutch citizenship and not belonging in that national community nor being represented in it, and (self-)excluded from the Indonesian citizenship and community, the Moluccans had to rely on their social imaginary of a RMS homeland. The imagining and enacting of their (informal, but hopeful) citizenship was a guiding principle of how the individual social existence was imagined, how the individuals related as a group, and how expectations were managed among them. Being separated by oceans and continents from other who would identify as RMS citizens, but remaining tied to the cause – holding in mind the image of their community – by refusing Indonesian citizenship, can here be seen as a signal of the strength of this imagined (national) community. This once again ties back to Appiah’s discussion on ‘nations:’ the post-imperial and postcolonial age, in as much as it can be ‘post,’ was propelled by the rise in popularity of national sovereignty and notion that that not much else is more important than this national sovereignty.[34] While Indonesia’s struggle for independence and assertion of national sovereignty consisted of the expulsion of the foreign authority (the Dutch), the Moluccan struggle was to have Indonesia release their (newly acquired) control over the Spice Islands so that they too could assert their sovereignty, and ultimately, statehood. This was the goal of the BPRMS and its supporters, and this goal informed the social imaginary of the Moluccans in the Netherlands, not only in how they viewed themselves and their neighbours, but also how they imagined their community locally and overseas.

A final element of the 1950s that served to concretise the social imaginary of a homeland was the temporariness of accommodation in the early years of the Moluccan diaspora in the Netherlands. When the volk arrived, they were split and sent to various locations around the country, including former concentration camps, labour camps, and military barracks.[35] Given that the intention of the Dutch government was to have them leaving again within a few months and the Moluccan expectation was the same, integration with Dutch society was not a priority nor a goal. Indeed, the isolation of the Moluccan volk was both geographical and social. Additional to the sense of situational temporariness, the Netherlands was suffering from a housing shortage after WWII, and placing the Moluccans in temporary style accommodation seemed then to be a solid short-term solution until a more definitive solution could be found.[36] The camps were generally liveable but were not of a high standard – generally a kitchen block would be shared in the neighbourhood while the sleeping arrangements consisted of bunkbeds. In what was considered a ‘policy of full maintenance,’ the Dutch government organised the provision of essentials in the Moluccan communities, which counted in part to the Dutch feeling of responsibility towards the involuntarily repatriated group.[37] The result of this living situation was conflict, on the one hand, as seen by necessity of a joined representative body that the BPRMS became, but also of intense cooperation and togetherness. While there was very little contact with the outside world, organisations sprang up within the camps that facilitated the building of the community – or, in other words, the social imaginary of the Moluccan volk that worked to inform their social existence, shape their perceptions of fitting in and together, and dictate the expectations of their broader (imagined) community. One such example is the camp councils that existed per location in the role of being liaison between the Dutch authorities and the general first-generation volk.[38] Their existence removed the need for further communication or integration,[39] as well as operating as political expressions and local representative bodies for the people in the camps. Often this political expression was in support of the goals of the RMS, maintaining the narrative of impermanence of Moluccan presence in the Netherlands, and worked as a unifying agent in combination with the BPRMS. At this time, the liminality of the Moluccan community as not Dutch, but also not Indonesian, was yet to become serious while the social imaginary of the homeland – and thus the presumed impermanence of their presence in the Netherlands – held the Moluccan community together but isolated.

The 1970s: homeland calling

Building on the themes of the first chapter, the focus of Chapter shifts 2 to the mid-70s as tensions rise in the Netherlands between the Moluccan youth primarily, and the Dutch government. Since the late 1960s there had been several violent events, including the burning of the Indonesian Embassy, the occupation of government buildings, and most significantly, hostage-taking situations along with train-hijackings in the 1970s. After having lived in temporary-style camps in the first years of their stay, it was also during this time that Moluccan communities were subject to evacuation, or eviction, to specially selected or built neighbourhoods around the Netherlands: a move to decidedly more permanent form of housing that hinted at what the Dutch government had already known and accepted but not yet formally communicated. The anticipated return to a homeland of their own was not in the Moluccan volk’s foreseeable future. The era of the second-generation Moluccans in the Netherlands was marked by the radicalisation of young people that had experienced the grief of their parents as the dream of a return to the Maluku Islands as an independent state diminished, many of them also having grown up and experienced life in the temporary camps. Thus, in this understated and somewhat non-consensual transition of the Moluccans in the Netherlands from temporary to permanent residents, the notions of social and political citizenship, representation and integration take on a drastically different form than the preceding decades. This research analyses these changes and the degrees to which each notion interacts with the other, as the liminality of the Moluccan social and political identity reached a critical point. The specific moment of contention at the centre of this chapter is the train-hijacking of 1975 as the culmination of the tensions at that time, exemplary of Moluccan frustrations, and demonstrative of Dutch attitudes towards and handling of the situations involving Moluccan communities. The context of other violent events before and after this attack creates a clearer image of this specific moment of contention. Through the lens of social imaginaries, I investigate here the role of the social imaginary of an independent RMS homeland in driving action from within the Moluccan community, as well as exploring specifically the moments of stronger imagination and moments of desperation to keep the RMS-cause, and its social imaginary, alive.

The repatriated Moluccans maintained contact with the rest of their (imagined) community still in the South Pacific and on the frontline of the struggles between Indonesia and the RMS movement to claim an independent state. This was predominantly through organisations such as the BPRMS, which worked to foster the social imaginary of a homeland in the Netherlands in the form of meetings, rallies, commemorative moments and the like. In line with Benedict Anderson’s operationalisation of print media as a base on which nationalism and imagined communities are built, printed media – such as local Moluccan newspapers, magazines, public posters and pamphlets – was a growing and influential force in Moluccan communities.[40] Since its beginnings in 1952, the BPRMS had experienced some adjustments: the ‘Perwakilan’ (representative) element became ‘Persekutuan’ (federation or united) in 1963, before BPRMS was shorted and sharpened in 1966 to BP[41]– Badan Persatuan,[42] a united party. The focus of this party created divisions in their internal workings and the previously integrated CRAMS faction (among others) withdrew as representatives from the new BP. In working together more closely with the Dutch government and the Indonesian embassy, the BP was seen as traitorous by some other factions and their supporters, especially given that one of their goals was to better the treatment and status of Moluccans in the Netherlands rather than fighting purely to have the RMS recognised so the volk could return.[43] The second-generation Moluccans were more in favour of these policies, in particular because it put the Netherlands back on the forefront to solve the ‘problem’ of their colonial past and the ‘temporary solutions’ that had at that point become permanent fixtures in the lives of the repatriates and their children. In this way, the social imaginary of the RMS homeland shifted ever so slightly away from the South Pacific, but became an expression of making room for the Moluccan nation in the Netherlands with the rights, duties and respect that entailed. The social imaginary, and the community in which it informed expectation and behaviours, expanded the way in which the social existence was imagined and began to include, in contrast to in the 1950s, relationships and expectations of the Dutch government and society.

The change in attitude and expansion of the social imaginary was propelled by the changes in the living situation of the Moluccan volk in the Netherlands. Until the late 50s, temporary style accommodation in the former concentration camps was the norm and the full maintenance policy was in effect, but a policy of ‘self-support’ came into effect that requires the Moluccans to pay their own expenses and necessities.[44] For this, they had to find work or apply for social benefits, which went against the idea that the Dutch were responsible for the ‘special minority’ they had not yet been able to return and led to wide discontent. Considering the social and geographical isolation of the camps, new attention was given to providing accommodation of a closer, more permanent type. Neighbourhoods were built for the Moluccan communities nearer to existing towns with the idea of being in proximity to employment, although some city officials resisted and a number of these neighbourhoods, called wijken, ended up on the outskirts of the regions in which they were meant to be.[45] The Moluccan camps were thus evacuated, and those who refused to leave were indeed evicted, and the shift from temporary to permanent residency began. Indeed, this resulted in a more open community that had more contact with the rest of the Dutch society, but the new kind of isolation meant that the camp-mentality (along with the camp councils) transformed into wijk-mentality with wijk councils setting the tone for the evolving Moluccan imaginary and imagined community. Steijlen explains that the institutions and culture that grew out the neighbourhoods created further cohesiveness in that it fostered a sense of semi-permanent ‘Moluccan territory’[46] and a strong bond between the youth especially – having grown up in a culture that did not fit the country they were in, but had its place, as they had their place, in the imagined community of each and every wijk.

The acts of violence that took place in the 70s were a culmination of tensions and contestations that had marked the Moluccan journey in the two decades since their arrival. The delayed and superficial integration of the Moluccan volk into Dutch society (and vice versa) “fostered a politicised and oppositional identity,”[47] and resulted in radicalisation and radical actions. At the centre of this chapter is the first of two train-hijackings, which took place in in 1975. The BP’s youth organisation Pemuda Masjarakat[48] (PM) had similar goals to its parent organisation in wanting to hold the Netherlands accountable for its role in the Moluccan situation and to bring international recognition to the RMS movement.[49] The anger and frustration of many youths at seeing unfulfilled promises take the hope away from their parents, as well as being increasingly subjected to harsher social and financial conditions, led to violent action. The train hijacking at Wijster did not achieve its goal: the ultimatums given by the perpetrators were not fulfilled, innocent hostages were killed, and the leader of the RMS government-in-exile denounced their actions. Instead of bringing the RMS cause to the global stage, the ’Moluccan problem’ was brought to the front pages of Dutch society.[50] One outcome of violence and terrorist acts was that through the challenge posed the Dutch government, it finally came to official conclusion that there was no credible way to realise the RMS as they had intended decades ago, and only now made this deliberately clear to the volk and to Dutch society.[51] The Dutch attitude switched from the Moluccans being an external, foreign or temporary issue, to their (permanent) presence being a domestic concern.[52] Another outcome, more relevant to this research, was that this threat on the community impacted not only the outside world, but also on the less radical Moluccan volk and those who opposed the violence. After the violence of the mid-70s, when the Dutch attitude changed, so did that of much of the volk: no longer were the imaging themselves to be (temporarily) in exile, or a special minority, but rather as immigrants in their new home.[53] At the same time, questions of citizenship were re-addressed, as up until this point the volk remained stateless: the renewed domestic concern meant that in 1976 the Moluccans would be treated legally as Dutch citizens, and this would eventually become true under the third-generation-rule which stipulated that the children of children of non-Dutch nationals born in the Netherlands would be official Dutch citizens.[54]

A final element of the 1970s that served to concretise the social imaginary of a (local) homeland was the reality of the rest of the Moluccan volk that didn’t adhere to the radicalised nationalism of the BP and PM. While the wijk-mentality grew the social cohesion in the 60s and 70s, the finite nature of physical neighbourhoods meant that as the Moluccan population grew, it also extended into the cities and metropoles of the Netherlands. Other parts of the Moluccan second generation and youth left the wijken for study or more work opportunities,[55] created familial connections outside of the Moluccan territory,[56] and their integration into a more diverse kind of Dutch society – one in which they could be and were more active – became a reality. The social imaginary that had been dominant, that of an RMS homeland abroad, shifted more strongly to that of a homeland in the Netherlands. The imagined community of the Moluccans in the South Pacific waned, as the way in which the volk imagined their own social existence came closer to their locality.

The 1980s: continental compromise

The third and final short chapter of this research turns its focus to the mid-80s leading into the 1990s as tensions decreased between Moluccan communities and the Dutch government and society. The Moluccan neighbourhoods remained strong centres of culture and community, where many of the moved-out Moluccans could return for national celebrations and traditional affairs, as well as retaining its status as unofficially official Moluccan territory and ‘home’ where first- and older second-generation Moluccans still lived.[57] As integration increased and the youngest of the Moluccan volk no longer knew the history of their parents and grandparents except through stories, the strength of the social imaginary of returning to a homeland diminished. The temporariness that had marked the preceding decades was given up, to a degree, by large parts of the Moluccan community as efforts for integration were undertaken and many reconciled the idea of the permanence of their presence in the Netherlands. The Dutch government, too, officially shifted its narrative of the Moluccans as a temporary ‘special minority’ to one of creating intentional and active policy for the integration and future success of the Moluccans in their respective communities and in the state at large.

The critical moment of this shift on the General Mutual Declaration of 1986, when leaders in the Moluccan community, including those involved with the BP(RMS), and the Dutch government leaders came together to create terms of agreement for the future of the Moluccans in the Netherlands. This was essentially to increase integration, solidify the Moluccan place in in the Netherlands, and to begin to solve the issues of unemployment and inadequate housing that plagued the community.[58] Funding was provided for the KNIL first-generation veterans as a first step of reparations,[59] for cultural institutions and hubs, and a scheme was produced for better education and employment opportunities for youth in particular.[60] Significantly, and somewhat controversially among those still strongly for the RMS-cause, the declaration acted as mutual recognition of the permanence of the Moluccans in the Netherlands. In this era of third-generation Moluccans, the community had come from temporary residents at first to permanent residents later, to becoming citizens of the Netherlands. 1986 was also the first year in which the Dutch parliament had a member of Moluccan descent[61] setting the precedent of Dutch political representation for the volk.

One of the most outstanding outcomes of the 1986 declaration’s focus on both maintaining and growing cultural institutions and hubs was the establishment of the Museum Maluku in Utrecht. While the original discussions involved setting up a form of park monument, the museum was chosen as a project for its function as a fluid, living monument to this history and future of Dutch-Moluccans.[62] Originally opened in 1990 as the Moluccan Historical Museum, the institution was government-funded to provide a physical location for the histories and stories of the volk. After becoming a private foundation in 1996 and changing its name to Museum Maluku in 2008,[63] the mission of the museum was and is to represent the ongoing and current events as well as the history of the Moluccans in the Netherlands to a diverse audience. Institutions such as this mark a clear shift in what the Moluccan social imaginary consisted (and consists) of; it demonstrates how this imaginary has evolved since their arrival. The museum is also a marker of changes in the Dutch political and social attitude towards the Moluccan presence in the Netherlands: at first being funded by the government and now as a trust being run on donations, it is – just as the Moluccans themselves – a permanent fixture of integration in the Dutch social, political and cultural landscape.

Conclusion

Social imaginaries are powerful things: it can be what holds a community together, splits a nation apart, and bring a people (or multiple peoples) together again. However, they are also fluid, flexible, and ever evolving. The case of the Moluccans in the Netherlands is unique, and showcases the ways in which social imaginaries impact the imagined communities – nations, or in the case of this research, volk – in which they operate. The 1950s saw the Moluccan volk adhere strongly to the social imaginary of returning to an RMS homeland in the South Pacific. It informed the way the first generation imagined their own social existence as exiles in a foreign land, temporary residents living in camps under the care of a paternalistic state. It impacted the way they fit together: a mostly homogenous group living cohesively while working together with camp councils and representatives. Importantly, this social imaginary built on temporariness inhibited and nullified any sort of integration into or actual communication with the Dutch society from which they were both physically and socially isolated. Two decades later, the evolving nature of the social imaginary became clear as the move from camps to wijken began to solidify the place of the Moluccan volk as permanent, rather than temporary residents in Europe. Frustrations culminated in violence and divisions within the community on both social and political levels; in a slight shift of the social imaginary, the second generation of Moluccan volk began to accept that their stay in the Netherlands required more from the Dutch government in the way of setting them up for a successful future. Moving into the wijken created a sense of Moluccan territory and cultural home-grounds, and their (national, imagined) community became one of fighting for reparations and clearer status. As the population grew and extended into the cities of the Netherlands, levels of integration rose and the social imaginary moved away from returning to the South Pacific, but rather enacting a homeland more locally. The 1980s and 90s saw a greater two-way shift in the direction of political and social citizenship through representation of Moluccan interests and higher integration efforts – efforts from the Dutch side, too, through the establishment of agreements on reparations, education, employment, and sites of cultural heritage. The social imaginary of a homeland evolved to one of second- and third-generation Dutch-Moluccan volk living in the Netherlands with strong cultural ties to the others in their community and to their history. The camps remain part of this history, as the wijken remain a hub for tradition and national identity.

It is by no measure a clean or concluded history as tensions remain, and, for some, the dream of an independent RMS in the South Pacific. There is much research to be done on the impacts of this journey on current descendants of the KNIL soldiers who landed in the Netherlands, as well as the ongoing contentions in Indonesia regarding the Moluccas, the still-active RMS struggle there and how Dutch-Moluccans interact with these kinds of transnational ties. The lens of social imaginaries is important, however, to recognize contexts and outcomes of history, and works to bring understanding and appreciation for the struggles and complexities of history; to bring out new and significant elements of the past to inform the present and the future of complex modern communities.

Official feedback: Your paper is a wonderful analysis of how, through the lens of the social imaginary, one can make sense of the development and representation of Moluccan identity in The Netherlands. The way you have operationalized and theorized SI as a yielding tool of interpretation is very convincing and I also appreciate the incorporation of Appiah’s perspective in your analysis. Your use of sources is impressive and adds to the in-depth nature of your treatment of the topic. The formal aspect of your paper are also great (e.g. structure, annotation, readability).

This was a really nice paper to write - the topic was intriguing, historical but still relevant, and I was excited to research and write about the history of the country I live in now. The Cultural History course involved a lot of paper planning and this was really beneficial for me to have a more or less worked out idea long before the deadline. I received a lot of feedback and tips along the way, which meant I was somewhat busy with the paper for quite a few weeks in total. However, early 2022 was tough in terms of lockdowns, the Christmas break in general, and getting sick. In the lead up to the original deadline I realised there was no way I would finish it on time, so I received two extensions to get the work done. I work very efficiently with deadline pressure but even then often overestimate how much work I can get done last minute - this paper writing process really demonstrated to me that I shouldn't just go into work with the 'she'll be right' attitude and hope for the best, but that the work takes time. That's especially true if it's a case like this one where I actually care about the topic and am genuinely interested in the work I'm doing. In the case of this paper, we had to use Chicago full note referencing (which I hadn't ever used before) so that was also a bit of a steep learning curve - especially in combination with learning Zotero at the same time. However, despite taking forever to get the hang of, I got the hang of Chicago and it was great practice for the IP paper.

Thinking back, researching and writing this paper probably took me four or five full days when crunch time really came. This is more than usual I'd say, but honestly closer to what's expected for works of this scope. I learnt a lot from the process about improvisation and adjusting, as well as being honest in the paper about its strengths and limitations. I'm really happy about the way it turned out in the end, with the feedback I received and my final grade too, but on second read-through in posting it here I also see so much room for improvement. The things I would change are for sure things I would've noticed if it wasn't left for the last minute, and I could read it through as a whole at least one more time before submitting. For example, the flow is off in some parts - so the style that I pride myself on is just lacking here and there. I use the same pointer words, or just use filler words in general, and there were some mistakes here and there. I had catchy chapter titles already written and forgot about them, but would've seen them if I'd given myself the time to go back through my preparation (class)work. In the version I submitted, it was written 'chapter 1/2/3' but here I've updated them to what I had planned already. Besides this, the final chapter is a fair bit shorter than the others and I would've liked to keep it a bit more uniform. Indeed, I exceeded the word limit anyway, which means I actually needed to shorten the other sections more so I could devote more words and research time to the final part. With more time and less stress this would've been more than possible.

So, for the future, I want to make sure I give myself enough time to do the amount and quality of work that I actually want to. I don't want to underestimate the workload or overestimate myself - it only leads to frustration and stress, and even though it worked out grades-wise, I want to do better and more 'normaal' for myself.

Onwards and upwards! Right?