NICOLAAS VAN DER WAAY
A painting on a Dutch royal family carriage. It shows people from the Dutch colonies, including Javanese people from the East Indies, paying tribute to Queen Wilhelmina on her 1898 coronation.
Maria Hertogh was born in Indonesia and grew up in Malaya. She was a child of the last days of European colonialism in Southeast Asia as well as of the new world of independent young nations. Read on to find out more about how geography and history affected her life and times.
When Maria was a young child, a large part of Indonesia was a Netherlands colony. In fact, that explains why the Hertoghs — a Dutch family — were living in Indonesia. Her father, Sergeant Adrianus Hertogh, had been posted there by the army of the Netherlands, the European kingdom where Dutch people come from.
While the Dutch ruled what they called the Dutch East Indies in Indonesia, a large part of the rest of Southeast Asia — including Malaya and Singapore — was part of the British empire. This backdrop of power in the hands of Dutch and British colonisers, as well as the Japanese Occupation during World War II, affected Maria’s childhood at many points.
Separated by war
Maria’s early years were hugely affected by World War II. Her father was captured by the Japanese and was a prisoner until the end of the war. The wartime hardships made it so difficult for her mother, Adeline Hertogh, to cope that she asked her friend, Aminah Mohamed, to help by looking after Maria.
Then, the story took an even more tragic turn when Mrs Hertogh was put in an internment camp by the Japanese. Until the war ended, Mrs Hertogh and Maria’s siblings were stuck in the camp while Mr Hertogh remained a prisoner of war in another camp.
Thankfully, Maria was safe with Cik Aminah’s family who loved and cared for her. But, wartime risks did not spare her family either. It became too dangerous for Cik Aminah to stay on in Indonesia. That was why she took her family back to her hometown in Terengganu, Malaya. The Hertoghs had no idea that their daughter was not in Indonesia anymore. This made it nearly impossible for them to find Maria.
In 1945, the Japanese were defeated, and the world war ended. Along with thousands of other prisoners, the Hertoghs were freed. They searched for Maria in Indonesia even though they had to return to their homeland, the Netherlands. There, they were separated from their daughter by thousands of miles.
To complicate matters, after the Japanese Occupation, there was a different kind of unrest in Southeast Asia. Dutch and British colonies each wanted their freedom.
The Dutch resisted leaving
When Japan was defeated, the Dutch expected they would be in charge of the East Indies again. They had ruled Indonesia for almost 350 years, since the first ships of the Dutch East India Company landed in the early 1600s.
But, just like the people of India, Malaya, Indochina (today’s Vietnam), and other nations, Indonesians wanted to control their own destiny. Their leaders declared independence in August 1945. The Netherlands refused to accept this. For four years, the Indonesians had to fight for their freedom. More than 300,000 Indonesians and 6,000 Dutch soldiers were killed in the civil war.
In 1949, the Dutch government finally agreed to recognise the new Indonesian republic. But, Dutch people’s colonial attitudes took longer to change. Many people back in the Netherlands looked down on Indonesians as an inferior society. Just because Maria grew up in Indonesia and Malaya, the Dutch newspapers even called her “jungle girl”. They had no idea that Maria’s life with Cik Aminah was so luxurious that she even had her own servants.
This old map of the Dutch East Indies show how the Dutch perceived their colonies. The pictures on the map highlight resources valued by the coloniser, like oil and coffee. The local people were depicted as being primitive.
An old Dutch stamp from the 1940s. The text reads, “The Netherlands is helping Dutch East Indies, national fundraising.”
At the same time, Maria’s case seemed to have become a matter of national pride in the Netherlands. Maria was a Dutch descendant, after all. The Hertoghs’ efforts to get Maria back were financially and politically supported by the Dutch government. The Dutch Queen personally asked the British government to help the Hertoghs.
British withdrawal
After World War II, most of the British colonies also wanted freedom. In Singapore and Malaya, confidence in colonial rule almost completely evaporated after the British were defeated by the Japanese.
Unlike the situation in Indonesia, the British government acknowledged Singapore and Malaya’s right to self-governance. In a speech in 1948, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee detailed his government’s plan to prepare Singapore and Malaya to become independent nations.
But, just like in the Netherlands, attitudes did not change overnight. Some aspects of the Maria Hertogh riots showed that the British colonial authorities did not understand the people they were ruling. For instance, they should have realised that sending Maria to stay in a Catholic convent would upset Muslims as she was a Muslim at that time.
In the aftermath of the riots, the British government set up the Singapore Riots Inquiry Commission to investigate the cause of the riots. The report appears to place a large portion of blame on the anger of the Malay-Muslim communities in Singapore. It failed to mention that a large number of Malays and other locals in Singapore had sheltered Europeans and Eurasians from harm during the 1950 riots. Such stories would only emerge many years after the riots.
Local resentment
When Maria’s two families were quarrelling, the people of Indonesia and Malaya were caught up in that much bigger struggle against colonialism. Although Indonesia had already achieved independence, its citizens were still upset at how difficult the Dutch had made the process.
The Indonesian War of Independence ended in 1949 with a treaty that required Indonesia to make annual payments to the Dutch government. Many Indonesians felt this was unfair. They questioned why their country had to make payments to a former coloniser that had exploited their land and people for over three centuries.
Malaya and Singapore were still colonies in 1950. In the early 1950s, various groups in Singapore were pushing fiercely for independence. Anti-colonialist groups saw Maria’s tragic tale as a good opportunity for them. The Hertoghs happened to be Dutch and the courts were still British. This was a chance for them to use the story to criticise these colonisers.
At the heart of the protests were Muslim activists in Singapore who formed the Nadra Action Committee. (Nadra was the name Cik Aminah gave Maria.) Muslim activists in several other societies, such as Malaya and Pakistan, also spoke up. Communists in Singapore, too, knew that the Maria Hertogh story was a good way to show that the colonial systems were unfair and that the European officers were racist against ethnic and religious minorities here. The communists appealed to all races to show their unhappiness with colonial rule.
Young Indonesians training to fight the Dutch in 1949.
The way some activists used race and religion to whip up people’s emotions was dangerous. But, the colonial authorities did not handle race and religion well either. Colonialism promoted the racist idea that Europeans were superior to Asians and other races, in order to make it seem natural that Europeans should rule over Asian peoples and enjoy more privileges.
At the time, the British claimed that their colonial laws and courts were rational and trustworthy, but historians now say that they were unfair, often punishing locals more severely than whites. Members of the Nadra Action Committee were arrested after the riots and sentenced to death.
On the other hand, H L Velgewas not charged with any crime after firing his gun into the crowd and wounding two Malays. Perhaps this was because he was trying to defend himself. However, some felt the authorities let him go because he was a Eurasian.
The action taken against the Nadra Action Committee looked so unfair that Tunku Abdul Rahman, who would later become the first Prime Minister of Malaysia, led a successful appeal to save the men from the death penalty.
Historians and even the British media at the time criticised the British government’s review of the riots. Although the report highlighted failures of the police in handling the riot, it was not interested in going deeper. Even before the Maria Hertogh case, the Muslim community — like other locals in Singapore —was already fed up with the way the colonial government was running the city. But, the government did not want to admit that there were these deeper reasons for the riot.
The world has changed
Given this backdrop of wartime and independence struggles in this region, we can see why one quarrel between two families over a child spun out of control. Much has changed since then.
Today, it is not acceptable to view one race as superior to another. There is even an important United Nations agreement that sets strict rules against racism. It is called the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Countries today are also obliged to respect the independence of other countries. Attempts to seize other countries as colonies would be met with strong disapproval from the global community.
The United Nations (UN) works with governments around the world to ensure that people everywhere have basic human rights. Furthermore, the UN encourages countries to allow citizens to choose their own governments.
Both Britain and the Netherlands of today bear little resemblance to their former colonial selves. The social inequities present in Maria’s time are no longer accepted. Their capital cities, London and Amsterdam, are amongst the most cosmopolitan in the world.
On a more personal level, when you and I read about Maria Hertogh, we too can see what went wrong and think about how to prevent it from happening to children like Maria in our world today.
— By ZACHARY JOHN
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VOCAB BUILDER
backdrop (say “bak-drop”; noun) = thesetting in which particular events took place.
rational (say “ra-she-nel”; adjective) = basedon reason.
cosmopolitan (say “kos-mo-po-lit’n”;adjective) = with a great diversity of peoples.
It is now over 70 years since the Maria Hertogh riots took place. Yet, the stories in this series offer fresh lessons that we can apply to our lives today. For the full series, visit our website, www.more.whatsup.sg.
14 FEB 2023
This series is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth.