Talk:Dutch East Indies

/Archive 3

the 2011 upgrade

dropped in & had a quick peek: nice work by deverm and merbabu! a few comments: the undressed 'heritage in indonesia' section seems a bit meaningless now. (also the coca image seems a bit pointless now) anyway i think: either summarise the current & contemporary influence of the colonial era still visible in modern indonesia -or- delete the whole section. --KARL RAN (talk) 12:26, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

The majority of that info was dispersed into separate sections on law, architecture, language, etc and into the economy section. This makes for much more coherent reading (and it avoids possible issues of balance with a section just to list "influence" which is not very encyclopedic. And, I just removed the last bit which seemed like a tidbit of someone's opinion. I'd suggest also finding a way to re-title or distribute the "Dutch Colonial Influence in netherlands" section. --Merbabu (talk) 20:41, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

gave it a first shot, still see quite a bit of potential areas for improvement. ill try to be back soon. krgds, Karl --KARL RAN (talk) 16:27, 11 March 2011 (UTC) ps. just browsed some articles to pick up a few ideas for benchmarking: British Empire in India and Company rule in India.

gave it a second shot (specifically on timeline/narrative). still a bit bothered with the many VOC refs: those shld mostly go somewhere else (seperately). ill be back. krgds, Karl --KARL RAN (talk) 13:52, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Dutch East Indies/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Lord Roem (talk) 03:08, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but this article qualifies under quick fail procedures due to at least one 'citation needed' tag. Lord Roem (talk) 03:20, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry too because you quick failed the article without valid reason. quick fail procedures clearly state that only a large number of 'citation needed' tags is reason for quick fail, not just a single one like you state. --DeVerm (talk) 02:12, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

DEI

very nice article. greatly improved from when i first read it. my compliments!

i noticed this sentence:

The colony was based on rigid racial and social categorisations with a Dutch elite living separate but linked to their native subjects.

is very prominent (and undoubtedly very true), but the statement isnt explained (or referenced for that matter) anywhere. should be interesting to elaborate on this as it seems, from the last chapter in this article, that the vast majority (75%?) of Dutch nationals in the colony were in fact native indo-europeans (i.e. eurasians).

warm regards, --Ms.Finesse (talk) 00:02, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

See the first paragraph after the table in the Social History section. It’s referenced to two sources. With regards to the Eurasian population, they were indeed, for the most part, in a social class separate to the rest of the population. --Merbabu (talk) 00:21, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Dutch East Indies/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: – Quadell ^(talk) 18:06, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Original reviewer: Si Trew (talk) 08:44, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Nominator: User:DeVerm

I have made a lot of copy edits but it is a struggle with this one. It is actually quite a good article but it is a hell of a lot of work to get it there. I assume the author is Dutch and speaks English; I am English and speak some Dutch. So I have changed things for ENglish style but this does need some work on it. I am going to save this now then do a proper GA review to note the points; I think we could get here to GA with cooperation. Si Trew (talk) 09:39, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi Simon, thanks for taking up this review! I think the main editors of the last year or so have been User:Merbabu and myself. I am the English speaking Dutchmen you were referring to but I think Merbabu lives in Australia. I have been looking at your edits and would never have come up with those (actually never noticed the problems) so your help is much appreciated :-) Let me know what I can do --DeVerm (talk) 14:40, 28 July 2011 (UTC).

I had the misfortune to get married in early August, so sorry for being away from this article for so long. I will do copy edits for English style in the article itself, but please feel free to revert any you are not happy with, if I accidentally change your meaning, A.U.B. please revert or change them back if I mistakenly change your sense. Si Trew (talk) 12:22, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

2nd review

Greetings. I am willing to take over this review. It is quite a long and involved article, and it will take me a couple of days. – Quadell ^(talk) 18:06, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

IMO (as perhaps the articles main contributor), I don't think it is ready for GA. It was nominated without consultation with other editors. There is still a lot of work to be done, and I am not sure how well that will work with a GA review in the background. However, the feedback could be useful. just saying. cheers --Merbabu (talk) 00:18, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to have to concur with Merbabu here. Due to the huge improvement/rewrite that the article is currently undergoing (50 edits in the last 4 days), I'm going to have to quickfail this article for stability issues. The article has many strengths, and after this current round of improvements are done it stands a very good chance of attaining GA status. All the best, – Quadell ^(talk) 12:47, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank íou for taking this over. It DOES need rewrite for UK style, which is whz I took so long trying to put it that way, to no good effect. It failed first time as quick delete and it will fail again. If we work together then we might get there together to get it to GA, but if Mirabu is so up his own arse that it is a good article let him take it on his own. Geen Gezuur. Si Trew (talk) 14:09, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Simon, I took the time to be very specific about the issues with your editing - note all the edit summaries I left. Perhaps I wasted my time and a hard revert would have been better? You'l also notice I made a more general comment on your talk page about your edits. I note you still haven't fixed your keyboard. --Merbabu (talk) 14:17, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Army section

Im slightly puzzled by this:

"On the eve of the Japanese invasion in December 1941, Dutch regular troops in the East Indies comprised about 1,000 officers and 34,000 men, of whom 28,000 were indigenous." ref:[54]

"At the time of disbandment (1950) the KNIL numbered 65,000, of whom 26,000 were incorporated into the new Indonesian Army. The remainder were either demobilised or transferred to the Netherlands Army." ref:[57]

I havent read the books quoted, but how did the KNIL go from 35,000 (1941) to 65,000 soldiers (1950)? Are these numbers right / correctly quoted from the refs?

--KARL RAN (talk) 23:44, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Ps. Youve been a busy bee ms.finesse. nice work, keep it coming.

personally, I don't see the need for the section. Some of the main points can be pushed into other sections abd the other details should go into the main army article. What's next? A section on the postal service!?!?! I've already started removing the repeated info, and other info that really should be in the detailed articles. The article is getting close to it's maximum size and cannot keep expanding forever. regards --Merbabu (talk) 00:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Agree managable chunks are important to keep it readable. perhaps we need some sub-sections one layer down at some places. i was thinking about that for my own contributions in the 'Law and admin' section. what is the maximum size if i may ask, merbabu?

w/rgd to this particular (KNIL) section by Msfinesse: i dont think there are "country" articles that do NOT have a section on their military. Also the cultural sections contributed by gunkarta i find belong here to give an allround picture of what DEI was. im sure the article can be slimmed down, but to be honest: i actually dont feel this picture is complete yet.

Moreover i think its nice, recomendable and important (not only for this article, but for wikipedia in general) to have "new" good faith editors involved (and stimulated to stay involved).--KARL RAN (talk) 00:55, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I do not recommend inserting sub-headings, particularly in high level summary articles such as this one. Articles such as Indonesia and (2 year old versions of) Australia are good cases in point – a single level of headings shows good discipline in information handling. It’s OK to insert sub-headings into more specific articles though. Look at The Joshua Tree for another example of single heading info only.

Also, this is not comparable to a country article – the DEI was certainly not a country - and the article can't be readily compared to country articles. Further, the info box has always been clumsy insertion that I’ve spoken against before – I’d be happy to get rid of it anyday, as a few others have suggested over the years.

The recently added sections on Art, Culture, Science and Cuisine I think are OK, but I think there can be some re-arrangement. Maybe combining them into one section could help. Some things really seem a little odd, like calling Sukarno’s Dutch language writings as “Dutch literature”.

Also, we need to keep in mind that this is an article about the Indonesian archipelago from 1800 to mid-20th century. While Dutch people or their culture was indeed part of this important, it’s only part of the picture. Remember, the Dutch were a tiny minority and not at all representative of culture and people in the archipelago during these years.

As for POV, I’ve always been wary but not completely opposed to using either Indonesian or Dutch sources – ie, the former’s POV tends to be all about “the glory of the revolution” whereas the latter’s POV is often about the “the natives/savages should be thankful the white man brought them civilisation”. There are ample non-Indonesian and non-Dutch resources to use in their place.

That’s all for now. :-) --Merbabu (talk) 01:48, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

PS - I agree that the Law and Admin section is too long, and much of the info can be pushed into linked sub articles. --Merbabu (talk) 01:59, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Map

Regarding this map, was New Guinea part of the Netherland East Indies or a separate colony? 218.250.156.249 (talk) 15:51, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Historically Western New Guinea was always the part of the whole Dutch East Indies. However unlike the western parts of Dutch East Indies (esp. Java and Sumatra) where the natives are more politically and socially advanced that resulted in natives' demand for independence resulted in Indonesian national revolution (1945-1949), the natives of Western New Guinea is far less developed that barely coming out of their tribal way of life and have no demands for independence (well.., at least at that time). As the result the return of Dutch colonial administrations after World War II faced no oppositions from natives that enable Dutch to occupy the Western New Guinea from 1949 to 1962. The Dutch controlled Western New Guinea and planned to prepared Dutch Western New Guinea as a separate national entity, separated from Indonesia. At that time the former colonial power were enabled to separate their former colonies in several independence states; for example Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei are whole former British Southeast Asian posessions that finally separated into several states. In 1962 the Republic of Indonesia enforced its previous claim that all former Dutch East Indies territory are Indonesian's, and today the territory has become Indonesian province of Papua and West Papua. Gunkarta (talk) 14:05, 11 October 2011 (UTC)