The Mixed Company: Fighting Power and Ethnic Relations in the Dutch Colonial Army,1890–1920

From the outset the armed forces used by the Dutch in South East Asia, although always rather small, were never made up exclusively of Dutchmen. The United East-India Company soon found it convenient for both military and financial reasons to strengthen its power with locally recruited soldiers and sailors.¹ Its European forces, moreover, counted a considerable number of foreigners among their members – mostly Germans, coming to the Netherlands from impoverished areas of the Empire. After the fall of the United East-India Company, its successor (first the Dutch Republic, later on the Kingdom of the Netherlands) continued these arrangements. The Dutch Colonial Army became, as to its European part, a veritable foreign legion, while a majority of its soldiers was recruited from among the Javanese and Amboynese.