By Bianca Dias-Halpert
Title: Memories of ‘The East’
Author: Fridus Steijlen, KITLV Press
ISBN-10: 906718199 4
ISBN-13: 9789067181990
This book offers a window into the past without having to wade through a lot of facts and data. Between 1997-2001, over 700 interviews were conducted of those who had lived through the end of colonialism in The Dutch East Indies and its aftermath. The book is a collection of abstracts of interviews and it really gives the reader the scope and breadth of the conditions and the people involved. Extremely interesting and easy to read.
For the purpose of this project, the Foundation for the Oral History of Indonesia (SMGI) was established. The people interviewed were Dutch, Indo-Europeans, Chinese, Moluccans, Menadonese, and Javanese.
An archive comprising of 2,800 hours of recording is available for consultation at the KITLV (Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology) in Leiden, NL.
Note: Not sure of the reason but the price is quite expensive. My copy was obtained in 2005 through a local university so it may be an issue of distribution.