Silences and Memories of the Indonesian Revolution and Dutch Colonialism

Katharine McGregor

doi:10.51769/bmgn-lchr.19569

Silences and Memories of the Indonesian Revolution and Dutch Colonialism

Author(s)

Katharine McGregor University of Melbourne https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6955-128X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51769/bmgn-lchr.19569

Abstract

This essay considers silences as well as memories of the Indonesian Revolution and Dutch colonialism more broadly. It takes as a starting point a Dutch-Indonesian volume based on an oral history approach produced as part of the large research project ‘Independence, Decolonization, Violence and War in Indonesia, 1945-1950.’ This work is discussed alongside broader issues of remembrance and forgetting in relation to the Revolution and colonialism in both countries and the politics of memory. The author also introduces her own work in relation to memories of colonialism and a decolonial approach to memory work.

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Author Biography

Katharine McGregor, University of Melbourne

Katharine McGregor is Professor in Southeast Asian History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and an expert on memory, violence and Indonesian history. She is the author of Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence (2023) which won the 2024 NSW Premier’s History Prize and co-editor of Rethinking Histories of Indonesia: Experiencing, Resisting and Renegotiating Coloniality to be published by ANU Press in 2025. She is currently working on an arc funded research project called ‘Submerged Histories: Memory Activism in Indonesia and the Netherlands’. E-mail: k.mcgregor@unimelb.edu.au.

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Published

2025-06-30

Issue

Vol. 140 No. 2 (2025)

Section

Forum

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How to Cite

McGregor, K. (2025). Silences and Memories of the Indonesian Revolution and Dutch Colonialism. BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review, 140(2), 80-88. https://doi.org/10.51769/bmgn-lchr.19569