Conferenties & Workshops

Conferentie 'Decolonizing societies', 2003

Decolonizing Societies; The Reorientation of Asian and African Livelihoods under Changing Regimes

International Conference

Netherlands Institute for War Documentation

December 11-13, 2003

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The decolonization process of the twentieth century, which culminated in the end of the colonial empires of the West and of Japan, also transformed the lives of millions of people in Asia and Africa. Not only did they cease – formally at least – to be colonial subjects and become the citizens of independent countries, but their ways of life and their understandings of the world changed dramatically.

Most histories of decolonization deal with the retreat from empire, the inception, flowering and eventual victory of nationalist movements, the diplomatic and military clashes, ending with the Last Post sounding for the colonial powers.

Far less attention has been paid to the fact that the change of regimes deeply affected the lives of the people in the (de)colonized territories. The other side of decolonization was a process of indigenization (of the economy, institutions, and culture), which created all kinds of tensions in the neophyte nations. The new political centres attempted to integrate local economies into a national system inevitably making drastic shifts in the structure and the orientation of these economies. The struggles for independence and the often rather awkward inclusion of peripheral and ethnic communities into the new national framework uprooted large numbers of people, who almost invariably ended up in the cities, adding to the numbers of the urban poor, and cogently to the incitable masses, and creating new problems of hygiene and safety. In many places, the transfer of power brought changes in the framework of authority and in the judicial structure, creating a generation of adventurers and opportunists, warlords and champions of ethnic and regional particularism.

The conference addresses crucial issues of social and economic change in Asia and Africa during the period extending from the late colonial era to the first decades of independence: the reorientation of local enterprises; public security; and mobilities and changes in the urban environment. By so doing, the conference will be able to look at the effects of the change of rulers on the daily realities of individuals and communities, their prospects and reactions and the disruptions and reorientations in the physical and social environment. It aims to address these issues in particular through the problems of access and participation. In the transformation of the people from colonial subjects to national citizens, the opportunities to gain access to wealth and power were distributed unevenly over different classes and ethnic groups, varying in different environments. The change of power created new chances, but also new inequalities – and retained many old ones.

These issues are still too often studied simply within national frameworks. Much can be learned from a more comparative approach that considers the decolonization process as it occurred almost simultaneously in many different societies. This is not to argue that all changes should be traced to colonialism and its demise. In some cases decolonization only strengthened trends that had been set earlier, such as urbanization, the international reorientation of the economy, or the rise of new types of power holders. Only by explicitly comparing the situation during late-colonial and early-independent times, can we assess the character and dynamics of the changes wrought by the power shifts, and how they relate to other developments.

The aim of the conference is to search for comparisons transcending the colonial and national borders, and to adopt a longer time frame, extending from the late colonial period to the early decades of independence in Africa and Asia (1930s-1970s). By preference individual contributions to the conference should be based upon empirical research in one specific case or locality, however with special reference to the general developments in the region during the decades of transfer and reorientation.

The conference broaches three clusters of themes:

1. The reorientation of business: capital and labour

In the late colonial period the local economies in the colonized territories of Asia and Africa rested to a large extent on foreign (largely metropolitan) capital and business, and migrant labour. The concomitant regime change(s), the shifts in international economic relations and markets, the withdrawal of colonial capital, and the issue of migrant labour, all put great pressure on the functioning of these local economies. A process of reorganization and reorientation took place. New sources of capital and labour had to be found, while technological expertise had to be developed from scratch. The former colonial enterprises retained their dominant position and were most reluctant to transfer their companies to the new regimes. The aim of this theme is to address the question of how local economies in Asia and Africa and the people involved coped with these processes of change during the long decolonization period.

2. Regimes of order: public security and crises in authority

The withdrawal of the colonial state was often accompanied by large outbreaks of violence. The (de)colonized territories were subjected to prolonged periods of turbulence and chaos, affecting the population in the most central part of their lives: it threatened the sense of personal security and the guarantee of house and home. Pre-existing institutions and mechanisms guaranteeing order, administering justice, or bolstering social cohesion weakened or even became obsolete, or were perhaps even discarded by the new regimes. Lifting the colonial lid, the ideological and cultural content, not to mention the power and riches of the new nation were heavily contested. Ideological and party strife, as well as a heightened ethnic and class competition formed serious threats to the basic (feelings of) security in many regions. This cluster focuses on the feelings and reactions of the local populations towards the crises in authority and the threat to their personal security.

3. Displacements: urbanization and the physical environment

Decolonization in Asia and Africa probably had a profound impact on life in the cities. As a consequence of the long-drawn and, often violent, conflicts between the retreating colonial empires and the rising new regimes large-scale migrations took place. Many people were uprooted through mobilization and deportation, and through flight to and from the cities in search of work, food, shelter, and security. The urban migration affected the physical environment of the cities enormously and put great pressure on urban infrastructural facilities. Access to or the deprivation of these facilities were decisive for the living conditions of millions of peoples in the cities and resulted in a ‘struggle for urban space’ during the decolonization period. The way this struggle developed and its effects on city life and city structures will be central to the third theme.

The art of (de)colonization

During the three-day conference several meetings will be organized during which artists will express their views on the decolonization processes in Asia and Africa. Novelists, poets, performing and visual artists will be invited to reflect on the way local art viewed the social and economic effects of regime changes and to what extent this view was represented in their works and ideas.

Conference Secretary:

Ms Els Bogaerts MA

Netherlands Institute for War Documentation

Herengracht 380

1016 CJ Amsterdam

The Netherlands

E-mail: indie-indonesie@niod.knaw.nl

Phone +31 20 5233800

Fax +31 20 5233888

The conference is organized under the aegis of the research programme ‘Indonesia across Orders: The Reorganization of Indonesian Society’, based at the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (Amsterdam), and executed in cooperation with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI, Jakarta), the International Institute of Asian Studies (Leiden), the Royal Institute for Linguistics and Anthropology (Leiden), Utrecht University, the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam), and the Australian National University (Canberra).

The research programme Indonesia across Orders: The reorganisation of Indonesian society has been developed at the request of the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. The programme focuses on the institutional and structural changes in Indonesian society as a result of the departure of the colonisers (reorganisation), and on the other hand the reactions, adjustment and prospects of individuals and groups (reorientation). The research strives to provide new insights into the consequences of war, revolution and decolonisation for the different population groups in the Indonesian archipelago from the 1930s to the 1960s.

For more details, see the Research and Background pages.

Abstracts

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