In May 1940, the Netherlands fell in a matter of days. Germany invaded on the 10th, and after fierce fighting around The Hague, at the Grebbeberg, and the bombing of Rotterdam, the Dutch surrendered. The government fled to London, but in the Dutch East Indies, it remained strikingly quiet. News of the German attack hit the Indies like a bomb.
The colonial state didn’t collapse; it simply froze. The governor-general stayed in office, emergency measures were put in place, and over 2,800 German residents were interned, along with 500 members of the Dutch Nazi movement. The question everyone whispered was: what now? If the motherland was gone, who held authority?
The governor-general and the Dutch government in exile both insisted that major constitutional changes could only be made by the Dutch parliament, which wouldn’t meet until after the war. Yet the situation forced some concessions. Indonesian activists, who had long been pushing for change, saw a crack. Could the offensive labels “Dutch East Indies” and “native” be replaced with “Indonesia” and “Indonesian”?
The administration rejected almost everything, only agreeing to swap “native” (inlander) with “indigenous” (inheems) in official documents. Surprisingly, even fierce critics of the colonial system showed sorrow over the Netherlands’ fall. Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo, a founder of Budi Utomo and the Indische Partij, had been exiled for his activism and spent twelve years in isolation on Banda Neira. After Germany conquered the Netherlands, he openly supported the Dutch administration and urged other activists to do the same.
Many followed his appeal. Despite everything, many Indonesians felt a deep emotional attachment to the country that had shaped them. But the colonial state was far from weak. The Java War in the early 19th century, the Aceh War at the end of it, and the communist uprising of 1926–1927 had shown how brutally it could respond.
By 1940, it still had a modern military with an air arm, armored cars, and efficient communication. Any rebellion without foreign support was doomed, and the cost would be enormous. On the other side, Indonesian nationalism was still young. In 1940, it wasn’t a unified movement.
The archipelago was a patchwork of hundreds of ethnic groups and religions, many with little connection to each other. Communication was limited, literacy was low, and the idea of a single Indonesian identity was barely taking shape. Nationalist leaders were mostly urban elites, students, and intellectuals, and they had no solid framework for a mass uprising. Those leaders were rational.
They knew a premature revolt would be crushed. They chose to wait, to build strength quietly, and to look for the right moment. That moment came in 1942, when Japan defeated the Dutch colonial army in a matter of months. The colonial state collapsed overnight, and the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945 created the conditions that would finally make the Indonesian Revolution possible.
The wait paid off. But it was a painful wait, and many were left to wonder how much longer they could hold on.
