Exposing the Colonial Exhibition: Dutch Anti-Colonial Activism in a Transnational Context

In 1932 anti-colonial activists from Surinam, Indonesia and the Netherlands formed a committee to oppose the Indonesian Exhibition staged in The Hague, the Netherlands. They called themselves the Anti-Koloniale Tentoonstellingsaktie (AKTA) (Anti-Colonial Exhibition Action). The Dutch government used the exhibition to spread a pro-colonial message. The committee confronted the Dutch audiences, on the other hand, with a radical critique of colonialism. This article recounts AKTA’s history for the first time. I focus on the writings of the committee and ask why the committee criticised the exhibi... Mehr ...