Media History, 2014

Vol. 20, No. 3, 239–253, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2014.920204

PROPAGANDA THAT DARE NOT SPEAK

ITS NAME
International information services about the
Dutch East Indies, 1919–1934

Vincent Kuitenbrouwer

During the first half of the twentieth century, colonial rule in the Indonesian archipelago was an
important marker of international prestige for the Netherlands, which was merely a small power
on the European continent, carefully guarding its neutral status against the Great Powers. After
World War I, there was growing concern amongst several groups in Dutch society about criticism
of the colonial regime in the foreign press. This article considers three organizations that aimed to
set up an international information service about the Dutch East Indies in the 1920s. Although
private individuals ran these organizations, they had close links with the authorities in The Hague
and Batavia, indicating the emergence of a controlled media environment. Moreover, despite the
fact that people involved preferred to use neutral terms to describe their activities, they aimed to
provide the international public with propaganda supporting the Dutch colonial regime.

KEYWORDS Colonial propaganda; Dutch East Indies; Dutch media history;

Indonesian nationalism; telegraph lines; transnational networks

Introduction
The international status of the Netherlands during the nineteenth and first half of
the twentieth century was complex. In Europe, it was a small power with a marginal role in
the balance of power on the continent. In Asia, however, it possessed the third largest
overseas empire in the world: the Dutch East Indies. This difficult situation dominated
Dutch foreign policy throughout the period. From the official secession of Belgium onward
(1839), the Dutch Government adhered to a policy of neutrality and remained outside
conflicts between the Great Powers, up until the Nazi invasion of May 1940. There is
academic debate about the nature of Dutch neutrality. Some authors see it as the
outcome of an intellectual tradition of international law that dates back to the seventeenth
century.1 Others write that there were more pragmatic motives behind the policy of
neutrality in the modern age. They argue that the main goal of Dutch officials was to
preserve the geopolitical status quo, guarding both the territorial integrity of the
metropolis and the colonies.2
This article raises the question to what extent the policy of neutrality affected the
international information service about the Dutch East Indies. Neutrality was an idée fixe in
the Dutch press too and in this atmosphere, open manipulation of information by the
authorities was a taboo.3 The government in The Hague was relatively late in establishing
an official information service: the Rijkspersdienst (Government Press Service) was founded
in 1934, decades later than similar institutions in other countries.4 However, before that

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

240 VINCENT KUITENBROUWER

moment a number of Dutch individuals, inside and outside government circles, already
thought it important to provide a counterweight to negative comments in the media
about the Netherlands and its dependencies. During the interwar years, several Dutch
private organizations, supported by officials, started to experiment with providing
information about colonial affairs to the international press. In the following I discuss
three of these organizations that were active in the 1920s: a press agency, a
documentation service, and a publishing house. Besides secondary literature, I make use
of correspondence between the leaders of these organizations and Dutch officials. These
sources reveal the intentions of the people involved and their ideas about how they could
enlarge Dutch colonial prestige abroad.
One relevant issue is whether these organizations made a form of ‘propaganda.’
That term became morally charged after World War I as the warring nations had produced
persuasive information on a scale unprecedented in world history. From the primary
sources, it appears that the word ‘propaganda’ certainly was a taboo for Dutch
contemporaries. The primary sources show that they used different, more neutral, words
to indicate their intensions. Such semantics, however, cannot be taken at face value. As
has been pointed out by Frank Van Vree, many Dutch opinion-makers in the interwar years
considered the press as a ‘leading’ social institution that exercised moral influence on the
domestic public. He argues that in the Netherlands journalists cared less about commerce
than in other countries.5 I will show that similar considerations shaped the international
information service, which means that the Dutch organizations discussed below were
proactive in their efforts to manipulate audiences abroad.
A second focus-point of this article is the colonial context. This is not to say that
overseas issues were the only topics of Dutch international information service in the
1920s. The lingering diplomatic dispute with Belgium over the exact borders around the
River Scheldt received priority, as it was a hot topic in the domestic and international
press. Still, the colony in the East Indies was important for the country’s reputation abroad.
People connected to the information service wanted to show that the Dutch Empire was
beneficial for its non-Western subjects. In addition, a proactive information service was
increasingly urgent considering colonial rule itself. The anticolonial movement in the
Indies grew rapidly during and after World War I, and the colonial government tried to
retain its legitimacy by suppressing dissident views. Several studies have shown that press
censorship in the Indies increased during the interwar years, mainly affecting Malay and
Chinese periodicals.6 I argue that there was a parallel development in Europe where Dutch
organizations attempted to systematically filter out or correct views in the media that they
considered to be harmful for the colonial regime.
The following analysis is a relevant addition to international scholarship on colonial
press history. At first sight, there is a great disparity between the Netherlands, as a small
power, and the Great Powers of the early twentieth century. Compared to the British
Empire, the Dutch lines of communication with the colony in the East were little
developed. In the British sphere of influence, an intricate web of transcontinental
telegraph cables existed, which was dominated by powerful organizations that were
founded in the late nineteenth century. Simon Potter speaks of a ‘press system,’ in which
the ‘patterns of interconnections’ were ‘formal, entrenched and limited.’ In contrast, the
Dutch communication lines were informal, lacking imperial hardware, and a strong
 PROPAGANDA THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME 241

organization at least up until after World War I. This was a ‘network,’ to stick to Potter’s
terms.7 Still, I argue that the Dutch colonial lines of communication were a controlled
media environment in which several groups with close ties to the authorities manipulated
information. Despite the fact that the people involved in these activities expressed
themselves in neutral terms and avoided the word ‘propaganda,’ this was a form of
persuasive information.

The Growing Need for a Dutch Information Service

Worries about foreign media’s coverage of issues that affected the overseas interests
of the Netherlands started around 1900. The South African War (1899–1902) was an
important event in this respect. Inspired by feelings of kinship with the Boers, Dutch
organizations waged a war of words against the British. This substantial propaganda
campaign did not lead to lasting institutions, although several pro-Boers remained
involved in later initiatives to influence world opinion on other matters.8 During World War
I, plans for a more systematic information service emerged. Although the Netherlands
officially remained neutral and escaped the great devastation of the Western front, the
Dutch media was an important battleground of propagandists from warring nations.9
These activities endangered neutrality and officials started to monitor Dutch media in
order to prevent conflicts with foreign powers. For instance, municipal committees
supervised local cinemas. The rules were unclear and differed from town to town, but in
general, the committees tried to ensure a balanced program in which none of the
belligerent powers received more attention than the others.10 The government also
interfered in the written press to prevent hostile comments on one of the warring nations.
In 1915 the editor-in-chief of the populist daily De Telegraaf was even arrested for
criticizing Germany in his articles.11 This was, however, an exception to the rule. In general,
the relations between the government and the press were good. In fact, there was no
need for a national censorship body as officials conferred on a regular basis with editors
about what information to publish, or not to publish. The president of the journalists’
union, L. J. Plemp van Duiveland, was at the pinnacle of this informal network, mediating
between the government and the largest newspapers.12
In addition to the balancing act in the domestic media, World War I brought to light
other problems. In the late nineteenth century three large press agencies—Reuters
(British), Havas (French), and Wolff (German)—had divided the world into spheres of
influence in which they each possessed a monopoly on intercontinental telegraph lines.13
In the early twentieth century, Dutch entrepreneurs set up several press agencies, but did
not possess independent telegraph lines and thus depended on news provided by the
monopolists. Many Dutch contemporaries were unhappy with the situation, particularly
considering the colonies. The foreign press agencies, which had close ties with the
governments of their countries, could easily censor telegraph messages from overseas
dependencies to the Netherlands. During the South African War, the British, who
controlled the lines in Southeast Asia, already interfered with messages coming from
the Dutch Indies to prevent secret information from the Boers reaching Europe.14 During
World War I the British installed a naval blockade of the Dutch Indies and the submarine
telegraph lines were severely restricted too, which effectively cut off the Netherlands from
242 VINCENT KUITENBROUWER

its prized colony. During this period of isolation, the anticolonial movement in the Indies
grew significantly and Governor General J.P. van Limburg Stirum tried to appease public
discontent by installing a representative body, the Volksraad, in 1918. Although the
influence of this proto-Parliament—in which Indonesians were represented—was limited,
many Dutch commentators considered it to be an outrageous genuflection to anticolonial
activists.15
In addition to the growing internal tensions of Dutch rule in the archipelago, the
international environment also became more hostile during the 1920s. The Soviet Union
started to actively propagate Lenin’s rhetoric abroad. The Comintern, founded in 1919,
coordinated the international information service of the Soviets and provided a platform
for anticolonial intellectuals. In 1927, the League against Imperialism was inaugurated in
Brussels, with several Indonesian nationalists present. They used this organization and its
periodicals to distribute their writings, in which they openly criticized the Dutch colonial
authorities.16
Obviously, Communist and anticolonial nationalist agitation was a direct threat to
Dutch colonial prestige and received top priority by Dutch officials. But there was also
growing worry about the newly founded League of Nations. The main imperial powers
exerted much influence on the League and as a result no fundamental criticism on
colonial rule was formulated.17 However, several committees were platforms for human-
itarian activists who dismissed aspects of the colonial regime in the Indies. The committee
on labor, for example, repeatedly discussed the situation in Java, where peasants were
forced to pay taxes in the form of manual labor. A number of committee members
considered this to be a form of slavery. The Dutch Government decided to counter such
views by providing the delegates at the League of Nations with information about the
background of the system, explaining that it was based on local customs. In 1929,
E. Moresco, the former secretary general of the Department of Colonies, was appointed as
permanent liaison to fulfill this task.18
The appointment of Moresco is one of the signs that Dutch officials felt increasingly
uneasy about the international criticism of colonial rule in the Indies during the 1920s.
They lamented that there was little known about the Indies—and the Netherlands, in
general—in the international media, which enabled people to proclaim ‘nonsense’ about
Dutch colonial rule unchallenged. An increasing number of individuals felt that a proactive
information service could change the situation, but it proved difficult to achieve this.
International media’s limited interest in a small country like the Netherlands meant that
people needed to invest a lot of time and energy to get the attention of influential
authors.19 In addition, Dutch was not a world language, which made it difficult to distribute
information from publications in the Netherlands abroad. Such material had to be
translated and edited before it could be sent off.
In addition, officials had other reasons to be reluctant to actively distribute informa-
tion about Dutch colonial rule. In part, their reserve toward systematic propaganda can be
explained by the status of the Netherlands as a small country and the policy of neutrality.
The primary sources, however, also yield other arguments that were forwarded by
contemporaries. Minister of Foreign Affairs Frans Beelaerts van Blokland argued that one
had to be careful with manipulating the international public opinion too openly.
According to him propaganda was considered a sign of weakness in the international
 PROPAGANDA THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME 243

arena, deployed only by ‘second rank powers.’20 Moreover, Dutch officials were generally
of the opinion that information service to foreign media would only be effective if the
people involved did not reveal their connection to the government.21
These considerations affected the ideas of people involved in the colonial
information service. After a journey to the Indies in 1928, the prominent politician H. Colijn
commented on the ‘propaganda’ from Indonesian nationalist activists, which he thought
to be detrimental for an indigenous society as it caused social disorder. He argued that the
colonial authorities could stabilize the situation by providing the locals with ‘a perfectly
objective depiction’ of colonial affairs, showing that on the whole, Dutch rule was
beneficial for the peoples of the archipelago.22 Although Colijn wrote about information
service in the colony itself, similar views existed on the international situation. In several
sources, the Dutch word ‘zakelijk’ is used, which can not only be translated as ‘objective’
but also as ‘businesslike’ and ‘down to earth.’23 These semantics reveal that Dutch officials
thought that the most effective way to dispel the criticism on the colonial state in the
Indies was to temper the tone of their persuasive information. Moreover, it should not be
too obvious that it was published to defend national interests. This restraint must not
be mistaken for a passive form of neutrality: indeed, it was a direct attempt to manipulate
the international media. In the aftermath of World War I, several private organizations, in
close cooperation with the Dutch Government, sought to develop a media strategy along
these lines.

‘Finger Exercises’ in Dutch Information Service, Early 1920s

By the end of World War I, many Dutch officials had become convinced that they
needed an organization to coordinate information management to prevent the problems
that they had faced during the conflict. In 1920, Plemp van Duiveland was appointed by
the Department of Foreign Affairs as ‘senior press official’ and in time became head of the
newly founded ‘press bureau’ of the diplomatic service. His main task was informing
international media about the Netherlands. In principle, this was an important step as it
was the first time that the Dutch Government appointed a spokesman. At first sight,
however, the results seem to have been rather meager. Assessing the public relations of
the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1930, Th.F.M. Schaepman complained in Parliament
that Plemp van Duiveland had failed to set up a professional and systematic information
service to inform foreign correspondents in the Netherlands. The MP pointed out that
other countries did have such organizations and that the Dutch Government was lagging
behind in this respect.24
Although Plemp van Duiveland failed to found an official organization to provide
information to international media, he did develop other channels. As was the case during
World War I, these networks were informal and did not have a clear institutional
framework. There were other continuities, as several individuals who had been involved in
the campaign for the Boers during the South African War remained involved in the
information service during the interwar years.25 Furthermore, three new organizations
were founded that, although they were formally independent, were in close contact with
the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Colonies. In this sense the 1920s was a period of
continual experiment with information service. The press historian Joan Hemels speaks of
244 VINCENT KUITENBROUWER

‘finger exercises’ (‘vingeroefeningen’) for an official institution.26 These initiatives affected

both how information was transferred from the different parts of the Dutch Empire, and
how this information was distributed to foreign media.
The first organization that sought to reshape the lines of communication between
the Indies and the Netherlands was a press agency that was founded in Java in 1917: the
Algemeen Nieuws-en Telegraaf-Agentschap (Aneta). Its founder, the energetic Eurasian
journalist D. W. Berretty, became frustrated with the information blackout in the
archipelago during World War I and sought to change the situation. He turned out to
be a shrewd businessman. In 1919 he struck a deal with Reuters, buying its office in
Batavia, which provided him with the monopoly to distribute foreign news within the
Indonesian archipelago. In 1920, Aneta started to provide Dutch newspapers with news
about the Indies, using the cables of Reuters. In 1924, the Indies press agency opened an
office in The Hague to coordinate its European operations, which from 1927 was run by
Herman Salomonson, a journalist who had worked in the Indies.27 The commercial success
of Aneta was eternalized in the office building of the agency in Batavia, a flashy art-deco
structure with Berretty’s motto engraved in it: ‘Activité, Activité, Vitesse!’28
In addition to his apparent commercial interests, Berretty seems to have had
political motivations too, and he ardently supported the colonial regime. From the start of
his business, he kept in close contact with government officials in Batavia and willingly
censored the telegraph messages he distributed in the archipelago to block information
that could cause social unrest. In exchange the authorities provided Berretty with support,
including financially. The close ties between Aneta and the colonial regime caused
controversy in the Indies, and several newspaper editors attacked Berretty. The hot-
tempered media magnate struck back, and on several occasions, boycotted critical
newspapers, forcing them to back down. Also the Volksraad and the Parliament in The
Hague scrutinized Berretty’s ties with the authorities, which eventually forced the director
of Aneta to step down in 1931.29 Despite these controversies, government officials in
Batavia and The Hague continued to cooperate with Aneta. Throughout the interwar years,
the press agency was a major player in the telegraph network of the Indies and a loyal
supporter of the colonial regime.
In the direct aftermath of World War I, several organizations in Europe offered their
services to the government too. In January 1919, F. J. W. Drion founded the Nationaal
Bureau voor Documentatie Nederland (NBDN) in The Hague. The goal of the NBDN was to
inform international media about the Netherlands and its colonies with the main purpose
of correcting news that in the eyes of Drion and his helpers could harm Dutch prestige
and interests. Drion employed a number of so-called silent press attachés, correspondents
who monitored the press in different countries and reported about the coverage of Dutch
affairs. Occasionally, they wrote letters to newspapers to protest against certain views.
With the information he received, Drion compiled two publications. First, a series of press
cuttings about the Netherlands from international media, accompanied by confidential
excerpts from letters from the press attachés that was circulated amongst officials in The
Hague. Second, Drion edited a periodical called La Gazette de Hollande that contained
French and English articles about the Netherlands and its colonies written by selected
Dutch authors. It was sent to foreign newspaper editors and Dutch diplomatic envoys who
were asked to distribute it further. The idea behind this publication was that foreign
 PROPAGANDA THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME 245

authors could access information from the Netherlands that was originally written in a
language that they could not read.
Many groups in Dutch society applauded the attempts of Drion to provide the
international media with ‘correct’ information. Initially, he received substantial financial
support from the business community, amounting to fl. 100,000 in 1921.30 In the late
1920s, the flow of money from these sources diminished. Despite the increasing strain on
government budgets, the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Colonies stepped in and
provided secret funds that were enough to keep the NBDN going up until 1934—when
the funds were allocated to the Regeeringspersdienst, which meant the end of the NBDN.31
Up until that decision, the relation between Drion and the government was good. Officials
generally expressed their satisfaction with the work of the NBDN and its employees.32
Drion also cultivated close ties with Aneta, and he received material from the colonies
firsthand and free of charge.33
In 1919, another Dutchman started an organization to influence the international
press. E. van der Vlugt founded a publishing house in Paris, called Le Monde Nouveau. Its
main publication was a review with the same name, but in the course of the 1920s, Van
der Vlugt broadened its activities and started to publish books, set up a travel agency, and
founded a colonial information service, Centre d’Etudes et d’Information Coloniales. As he
explained in a folder from 1928, all publications of Le Monde Nouveau were in French, a
‘universal language’, which made it accessible to journalists from many countries.
Moreover, Van der Vlugt boasted that in Paris, he could easily tap into the ‘cardiac artery’
of ‘journalistic world-currents.’ Apparently, his extensive network counted hundreds of
influential publicists. Van der Vlugt claimed he could shape world opinion on the Neth-
erlands to serve national interests: a form of ‘journalistic resistance.’ One of his priorities
was to publish positive accounts of Dutch colonial rule in the Indies, both in his review and
in his books. Although he admitted that he also published on other topics (including other
colonial empires), Van der Vlugt argued that his form of persuasive information was the
most effective—if the Dutch perspective was made too explicit in his work, it would be
rejected as propaganda. Instead, he aimed at ‘unconscious influence, that works in slowly
on the consciousness of the public.’34
Van der Vlugt had influential supporters in the Netherlands, amongst whom were
Colijn and the president of the Dutch National Bank, Gerard Vissering.35 On several
occasions in the 1920s and 1930s, the Dutch Government allocated thousands of guilders
to Le Monde Nouveau. The cooperation between Van der Vlugt and other organizations
was more problematic. To an extent, his bureau overlapped with the NDBN, which
employed a press attaché in Paris. As a result, there was a fair share of rivalry between the
two organizations, and the Parisian NDBN representative aired his discontent about Le
Monde Nouveau to Drion.36 These tensions, however, did not prevent regular reprinting of
articles from La Gazette de Hollande in Le Monde Nouveau, and vice versa. Moreover,
several authors provided material to both Drion and Van der Vlugt. This indicates that the
NBDN and Le Monde Nouveau were perceived as similar by contemporaries.
In the 1920s, the contours of a Dutch international information service emerged.
Initially, the organizations were able to generate enough funds to work independently, but
eventually the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Colonies stepped in to provide funds.
Plemp van Duiveland oversaw the bureaus but did not implement a strict regime to
246 VINCENT KUITENBROUWER

coordinate the efforts. Undoubtedly, the Dutch policy of neutrality imposed a certain
restraint toward an all-out official propaganda campaign, but the sources also show other
considerations. Dutch agents trying to influence world opinion preferred to present their
publications as unbiased and to cultivate relations with influential opinion-makers. This,
however, must not obscure their true goal, which was to enhance national prestige
abroad. In this respect, the early Dutch information service was not as passive as it may
seem at first sight. The subtle style of Dutch persuasive information turned its main
weakness (its limited scope) into a strength as it silently spread via foreign communication
channels. Colonial information networks could be manipulated effectively in this way, as
was shown during the late 1920s.

Coverage of the Communist Uprisings of 1926–1927

The continuing rise of the anticolonial movement in the Indies after World War I
greatly worried Dutch authorities. Among officials of the Department of Colonies, there
was increasing determination to silence the call for merdeka (the Malay word for
independence). The indigenous peoples of the archipelago, it was argued, could not do
without colonial tutelage in the foreseeable future. Moreover, Dutch colonialists argued
that the economy of the Indies was in the capable hands of Dutch companies, who
generated much wealth that also reached the general population. The more tensions rose
in the Indies, the more colonial officials used such arguments to bolster their authority.
This was also the case in November 1926 and January 1927 when groups of Indonesian
Communists ran amok in towns across Java and Sumatra. Although the unrest was quickly
repressed, these events stirred up fear of revolution and strengthened the resolve to
continue the colonial regime.
In the wake of the Communist unrest, Dutch awareness of international opinion
about colonial affairs was also raised. The 1926–1927 uprisings attracted attention in the
world press in ways that shocked Dutch opinion-makers. Several foreign commentators
wrote that the situation in Java had not changed since the days of the cultivation system,
which forced peasants to grow certain crops and which mainly benefited local elites and
European planters. Although this system had been officially abolished at the end of the
nineteenth century, critical authors condemned Dutch rule in the archipelago as oppress-
ive and exploitative. Many publicists in the Netherlands opposed this view, arguing that it
was based on incorrect information and ignored the great investments of the colonial
authorities to develop the population. One of the greatest irritations was that foreign
critics repeatedly referred to the famous Dutch novel Max Havelaar by Multatuli (1860), to
denounce the cultivation system.37 In the years after the Communist risings, Drion ordered
his press attachés to prevent the novel from being translated and republished. In March
1927, he considered the book unsuitable ‘for foreign countries, at this moment. Much
nonsense has been uttered about the Indies already and it would only give the impression
that it still looks the same in the Indies as Multatuli describes it.’38
In 1926 and 1927, the NBDN refuted critical articles about the Indies on several
occasions. In November 1926, the British newspaper the Manchester Guardian published
an article that argued that the unrest was a reaction against the exploitative colonial
regime in the archipelago.39 The silent attaché of the NBDN in London arranged for a
 PROPAGANDA THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME 247

riposte.40 The journalist Jan Brants, correspondent in England for the Dutch daily Algemeen
Handelsblad, wrote a letter in which he argued that Dutch colonial rule had changed
fundamentally since 1900. The Dutch fulfilled a ‘debt of honor’ against the indigenous
population, which meant that all revenues were invested in the development of the
colony.41 In other countries, particularly in Germany, authors also argued that the uprisings
were caused by local dissatisfaction about the Dutch colonial system. The German
geologist Emil Carthaus, who had published on the Indies in the 1890s, wrote several
articles in Berlin dailies in which he denounced the corrupt nexus between the Javanese
nobility and colonial businessmen at the expense of the masses.42 Drion asked S. Cohen, a
retired colonial administrator, to refute these allegations. With a touch of irony Cohen
pointed out that the German ‘specialist’ on Java made many factual errors concerning the
economic system of the Indies.43
The efforts of the NBDN to correct the ‘mistakes’ in the coverage of the Communist
unrest of 1926–1927 reflected wider worries that foreigners had a faulty image of Dutch
colonial rule that was based on outmoded views. In May 1927, Drion and Salomonson
wrote articles in the prestigious periodical Haagsch Maandblad to argue for proactive
methods to inform international media about the modern colonial state.44 Several
influential newspapers ran editorials applauding these articles, and the editors wrote
that the public and political support for such initiatives increased.45 There was also
growing willingness in government circles to extent the information service to the
international press. Plemp van Duiveland wrote a memorandum in which he argued for an
official organization to coordinate the public relations of all sections of government. The
cabinet rejected this farreaching plan but did approve a second memorandum that
proposed to extend the existing channels of communication of the departments of
Foreign Affairs and Colonies.46 As a result, the Dutch authorities tightened their ties with
Aneta, the NBDN, and Le Monde Nouveau, and for the time being, these organizations
received more funds. A three-pronged colonial media strategy emerged that aimed to
control the telegraph lines from the Indies, increase the flow of official publications and
extend the distribution range by offering these publications directly to journalists via the
information bureaus and embassies.
Aneta focused on the telegraph lines. In the spring of 1927, the directors offered
their services to the authorities in Batavia and The Hague. They reported that they had
successfully run a test to distribute messages via the Reuters network, which extended the
reach of Aneta, making it the most important supplier of news from the Indonesian
archipelago to international media. Beretty indicated that he was prepared only to wire
news that was approved by the authorities. The government representative at the
Volksraad, H. J. Kiewiet de Jonge, was appointed to censor reports on his own accord. The
messages were distributed under the name of Reuters so that foreign journalists would
not be aware that Dutch officials had tampered with the texts. ‘Reutaneta’, as the project
became known to those involved, was born. The Departments of Foreign Affairs and
Colonies, using secret funds, paid Aneta fl. 15,000 per annum for its services, which was
supplemented with a sum of fl. 20,000 by a colonial entrepreneur. In addition, the press
agency received reductions of taxes on their messages.47
In addition to the Reutaneta project, another initiative was taken to increase the
flow of pro-colonial information from the Indies to international audiences. Again, this was
248 VINCENT KUITENBROUWER

a private effort, although the people involved had close ties with the Indies Government.
In July 1928, F. M. Baron van Asbeck, a senior member of the Governor General’s
staff, formed a committee with like-minded spirits, including Kiewiet de Jonge, that
wrote a report to advise the authorities in Batavia and The Hague on colonial media
strategy. The main recommendation was to translate excerpts from official reports to the
Volksraad into French and English, turn them into pamphlets, and distribute them
internationally via the NBDN, Le Monde Nouveau, and embassies. The report included a list
of suitable topics, mainly concerning economic development and governance.48 The
Indies Government in Batavia and the Department of Colonies in The Hague supported
this plan. However, the suggestion to appoint a special administrator to coordinate the
publication of official data was rejected. The Van Asbeck Committee, therefore, took up
the task itself and received an official title: ‘committee for government publications’
(Commissie voor Regeeringspublicaties).
In the wake of the Communist uprisings, organizations working in Europe also
increased their efforts to distribute the views of Dutch colonial elites in various media. The
most successful initiative of the NBDN was a series of articles in the British periodical
Asiatic Review that appeared between 1927 and 1934. Drion arranged a committee
consisting of leading figures from the Department of Colonies and the Colonial Institute in
Amsterdam that invited authors to write on various aspects of the Dutch colonial system.49
In the summer of 1927, the prominent journalist A. J. Lievegoed, who had extensively
worked in the Indies, published an article about the Communist uprisings in the Asiatic
Review. He explained that in the twentieth century the Dutch regime was working hard to
modernize the Indies, but that the local population, displaying the ‘impetuosity of youth,’
was, not ready for this transformation. The rioting was no ‘spontaneous rising of an
oppressed people,’ but a way to air the frustrations.50 The article, originally written in
English, also reached the public in France when Van der Vlugt published a translated
version in Le Monde Nouveau.51
Lievegoed’s paternalistic analysis of the disturbances echoed official publications on
this issue. In the course of 1927, the government in Batavia published several reports in
which the causes of the risings were analyzed. These publications spoke of an ingenious
network of Communists, sponsored by the Soviet Union, who conspired against the Dutch
authorities in the archipelago. Revolutionary agitators were able to mobilize a number of
people by stirring up discontent about social grievances, but the ideological message of
Communism did not reach the masses, officials reported. Several administrators at the
Department of Colonies thought that these views were relevant for a wider European
audience and sought ways to distribute them. One of these officials was Petrus
Blumberger, who started writing on the Communist movement in the Indies in 1927. La
Gazette de Hollande published a series of his articles in December of that year.52 Van der
Vlugt contracted Blumberger for a book about Communism in the Indonesian archipelago.
The civil servant first wrote a Dutch version (published with the help of an anti-Communist
organization), which was translated into French in order to reach the international
public.53
In a prospectus of Blumberger’s book, Van der Vlugt promoted the publication as
‘objectively written […] a coherent and well-reasoned complete account of the emergence
and development of a destructive movement in a colonial society.’ He argued that it was
 PROPAGANDA THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME 249

no propaganda and that the ‘down-to-earth’ (‘zakelijke’) style of Blumberger ‘elucidated’

the Dutch colonial policy rather than ‘defending’ it.54 These words echoed previous views
on the information service and must not be taken at face value. Indeed, Blumberger
himself made it quite clear that his main goal was to make Dutch official reports accessible
to the European public. In the foreword of the Dutch version, he explained that the plan
for a French publication ‘for the benefit foreign circles’ prompted him to ‘reproduce
several Government Publications […] in total or in part, and also to quote extensively from
French literature.’ In addition Blumberger indicated that he did not refer to Communist
literature.55 To put it in other words, its ‘down-to-earth’ style did not mean that the book
was neutral. On the contrary, this was a specimen of persuasive information that gave a
selective account of the Communist uprisings in Java and Sumatra, from the perspective of
the colonial regime.

Conclusion: Propaganda That Dare Not Speak Its Name

In the interwar years, internal and external pressures on the colonial state in the
Indonesian archipelago prompted a proactive stance toward international public opinion
of several groups in Dutch society. Critical accounts by foreign authors caused alarm as
they could harm national prestige. Although such worries already existed at the end of the
nineteenth century, they became urgent during World War I when the Dutch commun-
ication lines appeared to be vulnerable to interference from the great powers. The
isolation of the Indies was a particularly traumatic experience. In addition, the rise of the
anticolonial movement caused alarm. In this context, several organizations were founded
to coordinate the information service to the international media. In the 1920s, a strategy
emerged that was aimed at controlling the telegraph lines from the Indies and distributing
views that supported the colonial regime in the archipelago. The Communist uprisings of
1926–1927 served as a catalyst because they showed the vulnerability of the Dutch
colonial reputation. Although private individuals ran the organizations, they operated in
close contact with government officials, who supported these activities and increasingly
provided funds to sustain them. This was a systematic attempt to manipulate international
public opinion.
Dutch contemporaries were less than frank about this campaign. The word
‘propaganda’ was taboo amongst those involved in it. At first sight, this restraint can be
explained by the neutral status of the Netherlands, which prevented outspoken
manipulations. From the primary sources, however, other considerations emerge as well.
People involved in the information service thought that their activities would be most
effective if they did not explicitly mention their true intentions. They developed a style in
their publications to cover up their manipulations. The press agency Aneta used the brand
name Reuters to conceal the fact that a censor had checked the messages that it sent out.
Also the NBDN and Le Monde Nouveau operated confidentially in order to spread their
views without raising suspicion. In particular, Van der Vlugt used adjectives such as
‘objective’ and ‘down-to-earth’ in order to convince international audiences.
Such euphemisms must not obscure the fact that Aneta, NBDN, and Le Monde
Nouveau did produce persuasive information about the Indies, selecting views and
opinions that supported the colonial regime. The language of neutrality, therefore, can be
250 VINCENT KUITENBROUWER

seen as a thin layer of varnish covering a controlled media environment. The information
service on the Dutch East Indies is comparable to that of other colonial powers, despite
the apparent differences. Whereas the British possessed an extensive and regulated
information system, the Dutch did not. Also the fact that Dutch was no world language
made large-scale propaganda difficult for organizations in the Netherlands. Still, Dutch
transnational communication lines were affected by colonial power hierarchies as the
authorities worked together with private institutions to manipulate flows of information.
Despite its subtleties, the Dutch colonial information service was a form of propaganda:
a propaganda that dare not speak its name.

Notes
1. See Boogman, ‘Achtergronden’; Voorhoeve, Peace.
2. M. Kuitenbrouwer, Nederland, 120–1 and 206–7; Van Dijk, The Netherlands Indies, 1–18;
Moeyes, ‘Neutral.’
3. Hemels, Een journalistiek, 23.
4. Hemels, Van perschef; De Graaff, Kalm, 287–8.
5. Van Vree, De Nederlandse, 42.
6. Maters, Van zachte; Termorshuizen, Realisten.
7. Potter, ‘Webs,’ 622.
8. J. J. V. Kuitenbrouwer, War.
9. Tames, Oorlog; Hemels, Een journalistiek; cf. Wijfjes, Journalistiek, 130–1.
10. De Groot and Dibbets, ‘Welke Slag,’ 510–2.
11. Wijfjes, Journalistiek, 133–7; Tames, Oorlog, 83–4.
12. Hemels, Van perschef, 10–1; Wijfjes, Journalistiek, 125–6.
13. Hemels, Een journalistiek, 39–40.
14. Bossenbroek, Holland, 201; Van Dijk, The Netherlands Indies, 13–4.
15. Termorshuizen, Realisten, 175–7; Van den Doel, Zo ver de wereld, 280–1.
16. Stutje, ‘Indonesian.’
17. Mazower, Governing, 166.
18. The papers concerning this appointment can be found in the Dutch National Archives
(NL-HaNA), Koloniën/Dossierarchief, 2.10.54, inv.nr. 725.
19. Drion, ‘Nederland,’ 256.
20. NL-HaNA, Koloniën/Geheim archief, 2.10.36.51, inv.nr. 322. V. 02-01-1929 B m.r. 2426/28.
Letter F. Beelaerts van Blokland to minister of Colonies, 5 November 1928. All quotes from
Dutch primary sources in this article were translated by Vincent Kuitenbrouwer.
21. Plemp van Duiveland, Journalistiek, 125; De Graaff, Kalm, 577.
22. Colijn, Koloniale vraagstukken, 38.
23. NL-HaNA, Koloniën/Geheim archief, 2.10.36.51, inv.nr. 322. V. 02-01-1929 B m.r. 2426/28.
Memo department of Colonies, not dated [Summer 1928]; Letter E. van der Vlugt to
Minister of Colonies, 1 October 1928.
24. Hemels, Van perschef, 14–5.
25. De Graaff, Kalm, 584–5.
26. Hemels, Van perschef, 10.
27. Termorshuizen, Realisten, 747–8.
 PROPAGANDA THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME 251

28. Termorshuizen, ‘Berrety.’

29. Termorshuizen, Realisten, 100–2.
30. De Graaff, Kalm, 577.
31. Hemels, Van perschef, 32; De Graaff, Kalm, 588.
32. De Graaff, Kalm, 578.
33. NL-HaNA, Koloniën/Geheim archief, 2.10.36.51, inv.nr.365. V 02-10-1931-V17. H. Salomon-
son to P. Blumberger, 29 September 1931. The director of the Dutch bureau of Aneta,
Salomonson, had worked for the NBDN in the early 1920s.
34. NL-HaNA, Koloniën/Geheim archief, 2.10.36.51, inv.nr. 322. V. 02-01-1929 B m.r. 2426/28.
Folder of Le Nouveau Monde.
35. De Graaff, Kalm, 586.
36. NL-HaNA, Nationaal Bureau Documentatie, 2.19.026, inv.nr. 31. W.F.A. Roëll to F.J.W. Drion,
28 March 1931.
37. See for example: NL-HaNA, Nationaal Bureau Documentatie, 2.19.026, inv.nr. 47. Press
report 280 (1926) p.1. Multatuli was the pen-name of Eduard Douwes Dekker.
38. NL-HaNA, Nationaal Bureau Documentatie, 2.19.026, inv.nr. 30. F.J.W. Drion to W.F.A. Roëll,
27 March 1927.
39. NL-HaNA, Nationaal Bureau Documentatie, 2.19.026, inv.nr. 47. Press report 277 (1926) p. 5.
40. NL-HaNA, Nationaal Bureau Documentatie, 2.19.026, inv.nr. 22. P. Geyl to F. J. W. Drion, 16
and 24 November 1926.
41. NL-HaNA, Nationaal Bureau Documentatie, 2.19.026, inv.nr. 47. Press report 277 (1926) p. 5.
42. NL-HaNA, Nationaal Bureau Documentatie, 2.19.026, inv.nr. 49. Press report 14 (1927)
pp. 5–6.
43. NL-HaNA, Nationaal Bureau Documentatie, 2.19.026, inv.nr. 49. Press report [unread-
able] (1927).
44. Drion, ‘Nederland’; Salomonson, ‘Nederland.’
45. Het Algemeen Handelsblad, 7 May 1927; Het Vaderland, 10 May 1927; De Nieuwe
Rotterdamsche Courant, 11 May 1927.
46. Hemels, Van perschef, 20.
47. De Graaff, Kalm, 584.
48. NL-HaNA, Koloniën/Geheim archief, 2.10.36.51, inv.nr. 322. V. 02–01-1929 B m.r. 2426/28.
Van Asbeck-report, 28 July 1928.
49. NL-HaNA, Nationaal Bureau Documentatie, 2.19.026, inv.nr. 22. P. Geyl to F. J. W. Drion,
9 November 1926.
50. Lievegoed, ‘The Recent.’
51. NL-HaNA, Nationaal Bureau Documentatie, 2.19.026, inv.nr. 49. Press report 264 (1927).
52. NL-HaNA, Nationaal Bureau Documentatie, 2.19.026, inv.nr. 49. Press report 270 (1927).
53. Blumberger, De communistische; Blumberger, Le communisme.
54. NL-HaNA, Koloniën/Geheim archief, 2.10.36.51, inv.nr. 322. V. 02-01-1929 B m.r. 2426/28.
Folder of Le Nouveau Monde.
55. Blumberger, De communistische beweging, foreword.

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