Online exhibition Tourism in the Dutch East Indies
From travel stories, travel guides and hotel vignettes to postcards, drawings, menus, brochures, posters and photos. The collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) hold many sources that provide insight into the development of tourism in the Dutch East Indies, present-day Indonesia, from 1870 to 1945. This online exhibition highlights the various aspects of tourism in ‘the East’, from experiences of tourists and people in the tourism industry to attractions and stereotypes.
The tourist experience of course began with the departure. On board increasingly luxurious steamships, passengers not only enjoyed delicious food, but also all kinds of entertainment. Along the way, travelers often got the opportunity to visit several attractions. Once at their destination, the tourist experience of the Indies depended largely on the travelers' accommodations: shaped by the hoteliers, staff and other guests; by the architecture, design, the furnishings and the name of the establishment.
In addition to the journey and the accommodations, this exhibition also focuses on means of transport. Many journeys in the Indies were made by horse or in a sedan chair, becaue carriages were only suitable in areas with paved roads. Even in the twentieth century, the sedan chair remained popular in mountainous areas. Tourists saw it as a tourist attraction in and of itself to be carried around. Over time, the train, the bicycle, the car and the airplane were added to the travel options. After highlighting various tourist attractions, such as the well-known Telaga Warna (which plays an important role in Hella S. Haasse's Oeroeg) and the famous Borobudur, the exhibition finally focuses on various Indonesian and Indo-European tourists and tourist organisations.
View the exhibition "Tourism in the Dutch East Indies"
The exhibition is available for viewing in English and Dutch.
EnglishImproved connections
Improved transport and communication in the second half of the nineteenth century boosted the development of tourism in the Dutch East Indies, a Dutch colony at the time. More and more people dared to travel to ‘the East’. The crossing became easier and more comfortable for passengers as the steamship replaced their wind-powered predecessors. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, it was no longer necessary to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, which effectively cut the travel time between Europe and Southeast Asia in half.
‘The enchanted island’. That is how Augusta de Wit, who worked as a teacher in the Indies, described Java. For her, it was nothing less than a tropical wonderland. Even a down-to-earth person felt ‘something purple and glowing, something like sunrise coming over his thoughts’ upon arrival, she wrote in the travelogue Java. Facts and Fantasies (1905). De Wit came to the Indies as a tourist. In that, she was not unique.
Opkomst toeristische industrie
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the tourist industry in the Indies began to flourish, with more hotels, tourist offices and other facilities. Leaflets, beautifully designed posters and other widely distributed advertising created an attractive image of the Dutch Indies as a holiday destination, both for the wealthy Americans and Europeans who actually went there, and for those who stayed at home. This laid the foundation for the current mass tourism in Indonesia. Both domestic and foreign tourists were encouraged to visit the ‘fairytale land’ of Java, and later also Sumatra, Madura, Bali, Lombok, the Moluccas, Celebes (now Sulawesi) and Borneo (now Kalimantan).
Stereotypes
In addition to this rapid development, documents also show how strongly tourist images relied on racial stereotypes and how the Indonesian population, culture and nature are repeatedly reduced to commodities. Tourism was built on the discourse and infrastructure that had made the colonial conquests possible. Although dark sides such as poverty and violence are often only revealed by a contrarian reading, it is important to remember that tourist encounters, however unequal, did offer the colonized population opportunities to resist colonial rule.
Vidi-project Voicing the Colony
The online exhibition Tourism in the Dutch East Indies is the result of the NWO Vidi project Voicing the Colony. Travelers in the Dutch East Indies, 1800-1945, which is being carried out within the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) and led by Scaliger professor Rick Honings. He created this exhibition in collaboration with Nick Tomberge, PhD candidate in this project, who is preparing a dissertation entitled Tropentoerisme. Koloniale Plezierreizen in Nederland-Indië, 1870-1945, which he hopes to defend in 2025.
