War booty

The Rijksmuseum collection holds objects that were seized by the Dutch colonial army and navy in territories that had been colonised by the Netherlands. They include flags, weapons and other objects that, prior to being captured, belonged to rulers and warriors in Asia who resisted Dutch power. Once this colonial war booty was in the Netherlands, the Dutch government distributed it among museums around the country – including the Rijksmuseum. The Rijksmuseum presented these captured objects to tell a proud, nationalistic story about Dutch colonialism. These items of war booty are still part of the Rijksmuseum collection. What meaning do these objects convey today, in a museum that now offers a critical examination of colonialism and pays more attention to the stories of the people from whom these objects were taken?

Trophies

Beyond being a military act, the acquisition of spoils of war was a colonial and political act. In Dutch hands, booty became a war trophy – a symbol of conquest and subjugation. Before being seized, these objects were important items belonging to local rulers and communities that served as symbols of political power and, in some cases, anti-colonial resistance. Once housed in the Rijksmuseum, however, the objects were stripped of that original meaning and transformed into symbols of colonial domination.

From around 1900, the Rijksmuseum presented looted items to the Dutch visiting public as a form of colonial propaganda or as ‘treasures from the colony’. Following the Second World War (1939–1945) and subsequent decolonisation in Asia, these were removed from display and transferred to the Rijksmuseum’s storage depot, where the objects remained for many years.

About restitution

The global debate around the presence of colonial plunder in Western museum collections has refocused attention on this part of the Rijksmuseum collection. This critical discussion raises the question of whether objects taken in colonial wars should be returned to their original owners in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and other former Dutch territories. In 2022, the Dutch State adopted a policy which makes restitution possible in cases of involuntary loss of possession.

The Rijksmuseum sees it as important to provide a clear, accurate and transparent account of how objects from the colonies entered its collection. We trace which individuals and institutions were involved in this process, and address the significance these objects held for their original owners. In the following we provide a brief overview of objects in the Rijksmuseum collection that were seized in Dutch colonial wars in Indonesia.

Flags and cannons

The Rijksmuseum holds 15 flags and 20 cannons that were captured in the 19th century by the Dutch navy, in battles against Indonesian forces at sea or on rivers. In military tradition, a captured flag or cannon symbolises conquest, and colonial forces ‘remitted’ these trophies to the Netherlands as proof of their triumphs. From 1883 onwards, it was the Ministry of the Navy (Ministerie van Marine) that transferred the objects to the Rijksmuseum. Some of the flags were displayed as war trophies until around 1930, as part of the Rijksmuseum’s exhibition on Dutch history. Over the decades, discoloration and material degradation greatly altered the appearance of the flags.

Loot from Bone, South Sulawesi

Silver teapots, sugar bowls, a coffee pot and four trays: although the colonial history of these household items may not be immediately obvious, they are, in fact, closely connected to the 1905 colonial war waged by the Netherlands against Raja Lapawawoi and Bone, a principality on the Indonesian island of South Sulawesi. On the day of the Dutch attack on the coastal town of Watampone, 1,000 people on the Bone side were either killed or wounded. In the months that followed, the colonial army waged a sustained campaign of violence to occupy the territory and capture its ruler, Raja Lapawawoi.

It was in this war zone that the Dutch army seized several silver objects that the colonial administration had previously, in 1894, presented to Raja Lapawawoi to mark the Islamic fasting month. Ownership of the silverware was prestigious for the raja because it bore political significance for both him and the Dutch colonial administration.

In September 1906, a special crate from the Ministry of Colonies (Ministerie van Koloniën) arrived at the Rijksmuseum. The crate contained, among other things, parts of a silver tea set seized during Dutch military operations in Bone and surrounding areas. And so it was that, 14 months after the outbreak of the war, the Rijksmuseum collection officially incorporated these objects into its collection. To our knowledge, they have never left the storage depot or been displayed to the public.

Loot from Gowa, South Sulawesi

During the war against Bone, the colonial army also attacked the Raja of Gowa and his territory. Here too, the Dutch forces seized objects belonging to the raja, including a decorated sabre, a medal and a commemorative coin that the colonial government had gifted to the raja in recognition of his loyalty. These items of ‘jewellery’ were considered to be regalia: objects symbolising the political power of the ruler. The sabre, medal and coin arrived at the Rijksmuseum in the same crate as the silver objects from Bone, which have a similarly complex history, having shifted in status over time from gift to regalia, to war booty, and finally to museum collection.

The ultimate fate of the Gowa objects was different, however. In 1929, the Minister of Colonies asked the Rijksmuseum to ‘give’ the jewels back. The request had come from the eldest son of the ruler who had fallen in battle in 1906. ‘From the perspective of good governance toward the now extremely loyal Gowa family,’ the minister wrote to the director of the Rijksmuseum, ‘the Government of the Indies considers it highly desirable that this request be honoured.’ In 1930, the sabre, medal and coin, along with several tableware items, were indeed ’made available’ by the Rijksmuseum to the Dutch East Indies government, which handed them over to the ruling family in Gowa – without these objects, the ruler would have had no political power.

Loot from Lombok

In August 1894, Dutch colonial forces suffered a major defeat on the island of Lombok. Immediate retaliation followed: over the next three months, the army shelled villages with cannon, burned them down, and plundered and destroyed the palaces and court complexes of the Balinese rulers. Many local people were killed.

Military physician J.W. Portengen participated in the attacks on Mataram and Cakranegara, two neighbouring complexes of temples and royal residences. A few months after the devastating attack on Lombok, Portengen returned to the Netherlands. His luggage must have contained personal war booty, which he perhaps regarded as battlefield souvenirs – including two firearms, several lances, five kris daggers, a small cannon, a ceramic gargoyle and a wooden statue. In August 1896, Portengen donated these objects to the Rijksmuseum.

The Rijksmuseum transferred the wooden statue to the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden (now Wereldmuseum) in 1952, as a long-term loan. In 2023, the Dutch government restituted it to Indonesia, along with dozens of other objects in the Wereldmuseum collection that were seized on Lombok in 1894.

Photo credits

• Photo J.W. Portengen: RKD, Iconographic Bureau Collection, IB 4000227
• Letter J.W. Portengen: North Holland Archives, Archive 476 Rijksmuseum and its predecessors, inventory number 980, scan 673
• North Holland Archives, Archive 476 Rijksmuseum and its predecessors, inventory number 980, scan 674