How Tourism and Colonialism Were Connected in Indonesia

Social Sciences7 MIN READ

Associate Professor Arnout van der Meer takes a closer look at the legacy of tourism in colonial Indonesia

Arnout van der Meer, an associate professor of history, shares a laugh with students as they look at historical documents in Miller Library.
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By Abigail Curtis Photography by Gabe Souza
October 10, 2024

Traveling to faraway, exotic lands sounds appealing and aspirational. Who wouldn’t welcome the opportunity to go to beautiful places, see the sights, and return home replete with photos and memories of adventures?  

But the full picture can be more complicated.

That’s what Associate Professor of History Arnout van der Meer discovered while doing research for his recent book about everyday resistance in colonial Indonesia. He learned that the history of tourism there touches on issues that continue to resonate today, including power dynamics, colonialism, and racism.

Van de Meer was startled to discover that some of the 1920s-era literature advertising Java to tourists looked very similar to tourist guidebooks of today, and it even featured the same itineraries, language, and types of images.

In search of answers to why that is so, he went down a research rabbit hole, and what he found became the basis of an article, “‘Come to Java:’ Colonial Tourism and the Fragile Illusion of an ‘Island Paradise.’” It will be published this fall in the academic journal Itinerario

“What I try to do in the article is to very playfully take readers by the hand as I trace the history of tourism in Indonesia, and learn about where it comes from. Not just the ideas, but also the infrastructure,” van der Meer said. “And then the question that I pose at the end of the article is, what does this mean? What does it mean that the itinerary that in 1920 was meant to uphold colonial hierarchies of race, class, and gender, really meant to give Europeans a sense of superiority over the colonial other—what if those same itineraries and narratives are still found today?” 

The origin of empire

Van der Meer, who is from the Netherlands, has long been fascinated by Dutch colonial history in Indonesia, something that began with the all-important spice trade. The Indonesian archipelago, located between the Indian and Pacific oceans, has for millennia played a major role in the global trade of nutmeg, clove, mace, and pepper. 

Examining primary source documents, or original materials that provide a firsthand account of an event or time period, is a way to take a fresh look at the past.

In the late 16th century, Dutch access to spices was disrupted because of a new alliance between Portugal, which had taken control of the spice trade, and Spain, which was at war with the Netherlands. To solve the problem, a Dutch expedition set sail to the East Indies, and it didn’t take long before the Dutch East India Company was formed and began to expand and consolidate power in the archipelago. 

The Dutch conquered and made Jakarta the “linchpin of the empire,” van der Meer said. As time went on, the focus of the empire shifted from spices to large-scale cash commodities like coffee, sugar, and tea, but no matter the crop, the colonial “empire” remained very important to the Netherlands. By the end of the Dutch colonial period in 1920, almost 250,000 people of European descent lived in the major urban centers of Indonesia. 

“This created a massive European society,” van der Meer said. 

Start of modern tourism

Tourism helped Dutch colonizers create and affirm hierarchies among the people who lived in the archipelago, which in turn helped them to uphold the imperial project, the professor said. 

Eventually, the Dutch realized they could make money off tourism—and promote their style of imperialism—by inviting foreigners to come to colonial Indonesia. They did so with the help of an extensive promotion campaign consisting of guidebooks, pamphlets, and posters, with art depicting native Indonesians wearing traditional garb and showcasing the country’s picturesque volcanos, hot springs, crater lakes, seashore, and scenery. 

The books also reassured wealthy foreign visitors that they could still enjoy modern comforts and conveniences like railroads, hot running water, and electricity while visiting the new hotels that were springing up in the hills and mountains, close to natural and cultural wonders and staffed by happy, helpful locals. 

Students look through historic documents under the guidance of Associate Professor of History Arnout van der Meer.

“The goal is to really say, ‘Here, you can come and see this pristine paradise that we have safely opened up for your use,’” van der Meer said. “You’re going to be safe while traveling through this tropical, dangerous, unfamiliar, mysterious place.” 

However, the burgeoning tourist industry had real-life implications for native Indonesians. In van der Meer’s 2021 book, Performing Power: Cultural Hegemony, Identity, and Resistance in Colonial Indonesia, he examines how “colonial power” is displayed and contested in everyday encounters through language, clothes, gestures, and more. “All of those serve to create hierarchy,” he said. 

While written history often focuses on rebellions, battles, and other forms of conflict rather than everyday encounters between colonizers and the colonized, incidents that happened in the tourist hill towns showed that not all was as perfect as the guidebooks promised. 

In Itinerario, he writes about what happened in 1919 when Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto, the leader of an early Indonesian political movement, fell ill and went to the mountains to recuperate. The incursion by a native Indonesian of a space that was considered reserved for white Europeans surprised, even outraged, the Dutch colonial press. But, as Tjokroaminoto recovered, he encouraged local servants to form a local branch of his political party. 

“They are allegedly these noble savages, meaning that they’re apolitical,” van der Meer said. “It’s this powerful moment [for the Dutch colonizers]. … And we can see that these spaces are not as idyllic or pristine or European as they appear. In fact, these were spaces where colonial hierarchies were actively contested.” 

Help from the Haynesville Project

Through the Haynesville Project, which provides newly tenured faculty with financial support for creative, high-impact research, van der Meer was able to purchase some examples of vintage tourist literature to use in the classroom and for research. 

Arnout van der Meer, associate professor of history, has always been fascinated with colonial Indonesia. His current research looks at how tourism was connected to colonialism there.

He would like to keep following the historical threads to see where they lead—and to discover more of his own family history in the process. A lot of van der Meer’s fascination with colonial Indonesia stems from the fact that his great-grandmother was born in Indonesia. 

“It loomed large in the family stories, and my mother passed that kind of intrigue onto me,” he said. “I know that somehow it impacted my life, sometimes directly, and sometimes less directly. An interesting part, of course, is that even family memories can be romanticized because they are all disconnected from the cruelty of empire.” 

That can make it challenging to dig deeper and find out more, but it’s important to try to do so. 

“Yes, they are my ancestors, and they lived in this space. At the same time they were part of a system that was very brutal, exploitative, and discriminatory, and, you know, just murderous,” van der Meer said. “But I would like to explore that. I am a history professor who studies the history of Indonesia. It seems only proper that I delve in a little bit more and see what their life was like.” 

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