The Dutch government said it is returning 288 objects wrongfully taken during the colonial era to Indonesia, including weapons, coins, jewellery and textiles looted from Bali after a 1906 war.
The official handover takes place today in a ceremony attended by the Indonesian director-general for culture, Hilmar Farid, at the Wereldmuseum in Amsterdam, the Dutch government said in a press release.
“In the colonial period, cultural objects were often looted, or they changed hands involuntarily in some other way,” said Eppo Bruins, the Dutch minister for education, culture and science. “The return of these objects is important with regard to material redress.”
Gold leaf, Denpasar, Bali (around 1906)
The repatriations follow a similar return in July 2023, when almost 500 items were returned to Indonesia and Sri Lanka. All these restitutions have followed claims from the countries of origin and recommendations by the government-appointed independent Colonial Collections Committee led by Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You.
But a new government, led by Geert Wilders’ far-right PVV, took office in July. The PVV said before the elections that it opposed what it called the “sell-out” of colonial heritage from Dutch museums, says Jos van Beurden, an expert on looting. Bruins is a member of the New Social Contract (NSC) party, a more moderate coalition partner.
“It seems that NSC has also stipulated in the division of ministries that the restitution policy will continue,” says van Beurden, whose influential 2016 doctoral work is published in English as Treasures in Trusted Hands. “The PVV has probably put this position on hold in exchange for bigger priorities, such as asylum issues and climate policy.”
Kettle, Tabanan, Bali (around 1906)
The 282 objects looted from southern Bali, known as the Puputan Badung collection, were taken in the context of fierce attacks in 1906 by the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army against the kingdoms of Badung and Tabanan, according to the committee’s report, published in June.
The military operation in Den Pasar at the heart of the kingdom of Badung ended in the mass ritual suicide—or “Puputan”—of the king and several hundred courtiers. “Women carrying weapons, a lance or kriss, and children, bravely ran towards the troops and certain death,” according to the Dutch chief of staff’s journal. “The survivors were repeatedly ordered to lay down their weapons and surrender, to no avail.”
Around 1,000 Balinese were killed while the Dutch lost four men. A week later, in the kingdom of Tabanan, the Dutch army attacked the palace and arrested the king, who together with the crown prince, committed suicide that night.
The looted items from these military operations include “krisses,” or Indonesian daggers, which traditionally possess spiritual significance, gilded spearheads and lance points, coins and jewellery.
The committee said that the objects “were involuntarily lost in a country where the Netherlands exercised colonial rule for an extensive period of time” and should be restituted unconditionally “on the grounds of involuntary loss of possession.”
Four sculptures are also among the objects to be repatriated: a statue of Ganesha that was shipped to the Netherlands by a colonial administrator in 1843 and statues of Brahma, Bhairava and Nandi from Singasari, a Hindu-Buddhist temple complex in eastern Java.
