About the author
Gert Oostindie is director of KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV-KNAW), and Professor of Colonial and Postcolonial History at Leiden University. He is presently (co-)directing the government-funded research program on ‘Independence, Decolonization, Violence and War in Indonesia, 1945-1950’, and two NWO-funded programs, ‘Confronting Caribbean Challenges’ and ‘Traveling Caribbean Heritage’, and ‘The Colonial and Slavery Past of Rotterdam’ commissioned by the Rotterdam city council. He is a frequent contributor to the media on his areas of expertise.
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About the book
The Netherlands is home to one million citizens with roots in the former colonies – Indonesia, Suriname and the Antilles. Entitlement to Dutch citizenship, pre-migration acculturation in the Dutch language and culture as well as a strong rhetorical argument (“We are here because you were there!”) were important assets of the first generation, facilitating its integration into the Dutch society. The current Dutch population counts two million non-Western migrants, and the past decade witnessed heated debates about multiculturalism, the most important ones centered on acknowledgement and inclusion of colonialism and its legacies in the national memorial culture. Postcolonial Netherlands, which elicited much praise but also controversy following the publication of its Dutch edition, is the first scholarly monograph to address these themes in an internationally comparative framework.
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