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The impact of American diplomatic pressure on the Indonesian struggle for independence after world war II was controversial. Some Dutch government officials, civil servants, or ordinary residents of the former Dutch East Indies have deplored the American record of ignorance about the particularity of Dutch colonial society in Southeast Asia, and many amongst them have faulted Americans for advocating a capricious and simplistic anti-colonialism that wreaked havoc in post-war Indonesia and elsewhere. A few, in fact, have complained bitterly about the political constraints imposed upon the Dutch nation by the outside world, especially by the US foreign policy establishment and the United Nations, which neither 'trusted nor understood us and forced us to take a course of action which was not of our own choosing'. However, American policies towards the decolonization of Indonesia during the years following the second world war did not emerge in a vacuum. Accordingly, in this essay I wish to explore the evolution of American diplomats' views regarding Dutch colonial rule in Southeast Asia between the early 1920s and 1942, the year the Japanese invaded the Dutch East Indies. Through an examination of the steady stream of reports which US diplomats in Batavia, Medan, and Soerabaya transmitted to the Department of State in Washington DC, one can gain insights into the official perceptions and popular stereotypes that shaped Americans' understanding of Dutch colonial rule. After all, the formulation of US foreign policy — as was true for die diplomatic relations of many other democratic nations — relied not only on 'perceptions of the official mind' but also heeded an array of more nebulous public opinions. Even though the US consuls' dispatches about the social and political situation of the Dutch East Indies had only minimal impact on the actual implementation of US foreign policy in me Pacific, which was crafted primarily in the corridors of power in the White House and the State Department in Washington DC, their reports mirrored fluctuations in both official and popular attitudes. In general, diplomats in the field tried to respond to the issues that most preoccupied their superiors, while their correspondence also echoed changes in public sentiments regarding either Dutch colonialism or European imperialism in general.

Visions of empire. Changing American perspectives on Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia between 1920 and 1942