by Bima Satria Putra*
Ernest François Eugène Douwes Dekker, who later changed his name to Danoedirdja Setiaboedi is Indonesia’s national hero. Soekarno called him the Father of Indonesian Political Nationalism in 1949. Meanwhile, Ki Hadjar Dewantara, his gang of comrades known as the Tiga Serangkai, called Ernest, the Father of the Indonesian National Movement.
All these magnificent titles are not given carelessly. Towards the end of his life at the age of 70, Ernest said that he spent at least 17 years of his life in prison and detention due to his political activities. This started from South Africa, India, Singapore, San Francisco, and of course also the Dutch East Indies. He was also the first person in the colonies to propose the separation [read: independence] of the “Indies” from the Netherlands, and used it openly in the statute of the first revolutionary nationalist organization in the Dutch East Indies: Indische Partij. In many ways, Ernest was a pioneer, and perhaps one of the most advanced of his time. Regarding the founding of Budi Utomo, for example, his services were enormous as an older brother and provider of literature for Javanese students at the Stovia medical school. Without Ernest, the National Awakening would likely have been delayed a decade later.
Apart from all the historical facts that we already know, recent searches of literature and newspaper archives have revealed a much more controversial side of Ernest. I have to start this with Tempo magazine on special independence edition published in 2012 which discussed Ernest. The title is very appropriate: “Inspiration for the Indonesian Revolution.” Tempo interviewed historian Frans Glissenar, who has studying Ernest for 15 years and published his biography. Glissenar considered that Ernest was “not a nationalist”! He even considered Ernest an opportunist who “changed his thinking so easily" (Team Tempo, 2018:155).
We are made even more confused if we check the De Express newspaper which is managed by Ernest. In 1914, the Dutch socialist politician Hubertus van Kol, in the newspaper, sarcastically called Ernest an “anarchist of action” (anarchist van de daad) who was armed with “boycotts, bombings, dynamite and other no less sweet words like that for real," but when he was exiled to the Netherlands, Ernest instead sought refuge in the SDAP. One ISDV member stated that Ernest was not a social-democrat at all, but an anarchist-nationalist (van Dijk, 2007:458). Likewise, Indian nationalist Shyamaji Krishnavarma called him a “political anarchist” (van Dijk, 47). On many occasions, Ernest was often referred to as an anarchist, mostly with the intention of demeaning him, or more often, to oppose his ideas.
But those are just xenonyms, labels that other people apply to Ernest. Then what about Ernest? What does Ernest say about himself? When Ernest hosted three Indo friends at his home in early 1912, Ernest observed and examined their obvious energy and skill. Then he reflects on himself in contrast, as a powerful “dreamer”. His friends regretted that his energy had flowed in the wrong direction. So wrote Ernest in Bondsbald: “Let it be! The three of them, state-forming energy; I, the state-destroying one. They, the future man of distinction, the pioneers; I, the next exile” (der Veur, 2006:204).
As “the state-destroying one”, Ernest reads the Mother Earth journal managed by Emma Goldman. He advocated strikes, boycotts, sabotage, and commented positively on syndicalism. He read the Russian Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy and described Jesus as a glorious anarchist. He is even sympathetic to the idea of propaganda by the deed, for individual acts of violence and terrorism. We can discuss the connection between the ideas of anarchism from Ernest's writings another time. This time I will discuss: how is that possible? How did Indonesia's national hero know all this, one hundred years ago? To trace it, we have to go back to years that are only discussed in passing in Indonesian historiography.
In May 1910, Ernest took his small family and left Java on the German ship Kleist. When his father-in-law died, he received an inheritance and this financed his winding journey which started from the Netherlands to the Saxons, Prussia, Belgium, France, Spain, crossed to Algeria via the Balearic Islands, returned to Europe via Italy, Switzerland, Bavaria, to England. From there, he began another journey to the Scandinavian countries (Harper, 2021:153).
While in Europe, Ernest met many figures and interviewed them. He then sent the reportage to the newspaper where he worked, namely Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad during May-November 1910. Some of the figures he interviewed were Professor Edmund Leplae, Martin Hartmann, Ernest Haekel and Dutch socialist H.H. van Col. At that time, Ernest's reading covered topics in history, politics and philosophy. Some of the books Ernest read included William E.H. Lecky, Max S. Nordou, Max Kemmerlich, and Russian Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy (der Veur, 2006:137).
The results of this trip were surprising. When he returned to Bandung, Ernest published the Het Tijdschrift magazine. He made good use of his European trip. From early editions it was clear that a number of international contributors were of leftist leaning, if not anarchists and libertines; and other somewhat esoteric authors (van Dijk, 2007:47-48). Some anarchists who deserve our attention are the Indian anarchist Har Dayal, the Chinese anarchist Li Shizeng in Paris, and also the British anarchist Sir Walter W. Strickland. All of them constituted a global anti-colonialist solidarity network of the early 20th century. The main knot, Ernest knitted after he became acquainted with Shyamji Krishnavarma (1857-1930) in Paris in the summer of 1909.
Krishnavarma was a figure in the Indian movement, a Sanskrit scholar and editor of the Indian Sociologist. In 1905 he founded the Indian House in London as a headquarters to serve as a boarding house and training center for the new Indian revolutionaries. With financial assistance from wealthy Indian bourgeois patriots, he made several attempts to fund scholarships for Indian students to London. The most radical core cell was around another Indian figure, Savarkar, where they had material on how to make bombs, practice shooting and were connected to movements in India as supporters of funds, propaganda material and even smuggling firearms (Ramnath, 2011:57-59).
Krishnavarma was a revolutionary who was dubbed an “anarchist” by the media simply because he praised murder and armed violence in India's anti-colonial resistance. However, he did not always share the same political views as anarchists, and even stated that anarchism did not influence his political views. In fact, he even supported the establishment of a sovereign Hindu government. Although Khrishnavarma was not an anarchist, he maintained contact with British, American and Russian anarchists for a decade and made the anarchists his most useful main allies (Fischer-Tiné, 2014:84).
While Krishnavarma represented the camp for violent action, the opposing camp was led by another famous Indian figure, Mahatma Gandhi. He was inspired by Thoreau, Kropotkin, and most of all, the Russian Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy (Ramnath, 2011: 174). Gandhi was an advocate of non-violent resistance and led the campaign for India's independence from Britain, as well as later becoming the staunchest critic of the tactics of terrorism and armed rebellion used by other Indian activists (and this isn't just bullshit).
Madan Lal Dhingra, one of the Indian students in London staying at India House, in July 1909 shot dead William Curzon-Wyllie. Serving as head of the Secret Police and former top military officer of the British Indian army in 1909, Curzon-Wyllie was considered the perfect target because he was responsible for the strict supervision of Indian activists (Fischer-Tiné, 2014:76). At the trial Lal Dhingra had expressed his regret not for his actions, but because he had only succeeded in taking one life for the sake of his country (Ramnath, 2011:59). Krishnavarma in July that year publicly admitted that he approved of the murder and praised Lal Dhingra as a true patriot (Fischer-Tiné, 2014:161).
Lal Dhingra was eventually sentenced to death by hanging, while the Indian Sociologist was officially labeled as a dangerous publication. That's when the British anarchist, Guy Aldred, used his Bakunin Press publication to help the survival of the Indian Sociologist managed by Krishnavarma. The political differences between Indian nationalists and British anarchists were of no importance to the British government. So when the government found out about this involvement, Guy Aldred was also sentenced to 12 months in prison (Fischer-Tiné, 2014:76).
Krishnavarma, who had previously moved from London, settled in Paris, a political asylum for global revolutionaries. Ernest had read about Shyamji in the Singaporean newspaper, Straits Times, and decided to get to know him more. Ernest then visited Shyamji at his home near the Bois du Boulogne, and the two talked for an hour. When met by Ernest, Krishnavarma denied responsibility for the murder committed by Madan Lal Dhingra. Even so, Krishnavarma lectured Ernest that individual action was more important in the anti-colonial struggle than mass uprisings (Harper, 2021: 153). Ernest recalled Krishnavarma’s opinion as follows:
“He preferred individual anarchy to the combined resistance of the masses. He said that the bombing of people and so on had a greater demoralizing impact on the Government than the revolution carried out by the entire Indian nation" (van Dijk, 2007:47).
Ernest wrote a report about his meeting with Krishnavarma in the Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad with the tendentious title: "Indian Anarchism". He also published the discussion in the widely circulated Dutch newspaper, De Beweging. Here Ernest quotes Herbert Spencer, Krishnavarma's role model, to justify revolutionary violence and rebellion as the right of the oppressed. At the end of his writing Ernest wrote:
“In short: Indian extremists want consistent terrorism. There is no anarchism. They believed that the British would be driven out of India. Anarchism, they say, is the creation of the enemy. According to them, there is no anarchism in India. However, they were also ready to accept the extreme consequences of their political doctrine; namely: terror without mercy when necessary.”
Ernest was clearly very impressed with him. In Het Tijdschrift, Ernest describes Shyamji Krishnavarma as “the indomitable apostle of freedom.” He also stated that Krishnavarma was “the first famous Indian I ever met” (van Dijk, 2007:48). Through Krishnavarma, Ernest would later connect with other Indian activists.
At that time, Indian activists had become "terminal" in efforts to build a pan-Asian revolutionary alliance. In 1909, for example, the Indian Sociologist called for the formation of a pan-Asian parliament in Paris that would include “educated people from India, Osmanli [Turkey], Egypt, Japan, China, Arabia, Armenia, Persia, Siam and others found in Paris” (Fischer-Tiné, 2014:81). Although this parliamentary proposal did not materialize, Indian activists were closely connected especially to Egyptian and Turkish nationalists, including Irish activists (who shared the same fate under British colonialism). Ernest took part in this network intensively over the next few years.
One of Ernest's acquaintances was Har Dayal (1884-1939), who was in a unique theoretical position, combining anarchism with Indian nationalism based on his views on ancient Aryan culture and Buddhism. Har Dayal had been interested in Russian nihilism since 1907 (Ramnath, 2011:63-64). Having returned to India in 1908, Har Dayal had to go again to Paris due to government repression following the Maniktola bombing the same year. Long story short, he arrived in the United States in 1911 and began to build networks with anarchists, especially in San Francisco. Har Dayal also served as secretary of the San Francisco chapter of the revolutionary labor union IWW, known for its ties to anarchists and syndicalism. Together with other Indian anarchists, Har Dayal founded the Bakunin Institute which was aimed at establishing modern schools and educating anarchist propagandists (Brown, 1957: 116). In 1913, Har Dayal was involved in founding the Ghadar Party consisting of Hindus, Sikhs and Indian Muslims, aim to overthrow British colonialism.
While in San Francisco, Har Dayal became a supporter of Ricardo Flores Magón and his anarchist organization, Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), which had been waging a rebellion since January 1911. They planned to liberate Baja California from Díaz and California landowners, and return the land to the indigenous people who previously lived there. Some anarchists and socialists (including Indian activists) from the IWW union went to Mexico, although we do not know the extent of Har Dayal's involvement. It shows marginal but meaningful connections between Indian and Mexican radical groups in the years before and immediately after 1917 (for more see Carrasco, 2020).
Krishnavarma may have been the one who sparked Ernest's interest in illegalism and direct action, but it was Har Dayal who clearly provided Ernest with the theoretical material for anarchism. He only met Har Dayal face to face in the early autumn of 1914 when Ernest was studying in Switzerland in exile (Brown, 1957:179). The two may have exchanged letters beforehand, as Har Dayal contributed two articles to Het Tijdschrift to two editions in June 1912 from San Francisco. Two months later in the August 1912 issue, Ernest wrote an article reviewing articles from the journal run by Emma Goldman, Mother Earth. In a misleading manner, Ernest reviewed articles supporting syndicalism and rejecting parliamentarism as if they were his own ideas, while deliberately interjecting his opinion. Nobody that Ernest knew could possibly have sent the American anarchist journal to Bandung other than Har Dayal. Har Dayal himself corresponded with Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman's lover, and at least once in California he attended a lecture with Emma Goldman who remembered Har Dayal as a ‘great idealist’ and ‘Tolstoyan of the western world’(Brown, 1957:209).
Paris was the ideal place for the fiery Ernest, because as Ramnath (2011:62) describes it, “an unrivaled center for cross-fertilization between Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Egyptian, Lebanese and Filipino reformers, liberal and Leftist, anarchist, nationalist, and internationalist movements, which took in exiles from all over East Asia and the Ottoman Empire.” Human rights activist Roger Nash Baldwin in 1927 called Paris “the capital of the men without a country.” Accommodating all kinds of immigrants, Baldwin even claims that “never in all history have so many of them from so many lands found refuge in one place” (Goebel, 2015:2-3).
One of Het Tijdschrift contributors was Li Hoean Tsjeng, whom the editors described as a Chinese student studying philosophy in Berlin. It seems that Li Hoean Tsjeng was a pseudonym for Li Shizeng (1881-1979), a Chinese student figure who was living in Paris at that time. At that time, the Chinese Qing government in a somewhat belated attempt at reform had sent its best young men to Europe to study under the tutelage of ambassadors. Students interested in engineering and mining generally go to Brussels, while those studying law, politics and economics, mostly go to Paris. In this way, Paris became a natural locus of Chinese student radicalism (Scalpino, 1961:2).
Although some Chinese students are also in Berlin and Heidelberg in Germany, or Lucerne in Switzerland, the majority study in Paris (Harper, 2021:76). It was while in Paris that Li Shizeng read the works of Peter Kropotkin, became close to the family of the French anarchist Élisée Reclus and became a promoter of anarchist doctrine. He opened a publishing house and soybean factory which housed dozens of Chinese students who were also radicalized. They published the Hsin Shih chi [New Century] magazine which was distributed throughout the world and translated the works of anarchists into Chinese, including Kropotkin.
Krishnavarma has been monitoring developments in China with a particular interest in building Asian solidarity. In 1910 Krishnavarma met the Chinese nationalist Sun Yat-sen in Paris (Fischer-Tiné, 2014:81). The meeting was supposed to be bridged by Chinese anarchists in Paris, because Li Shizeng and other Chinese anarchists were one of the factions in the underground movement and secret society Tongmenghui [Revolutionary Alliance] founded by Sun Yat-sen in 1905 in Tokyo, which later transformed into China’s main nationalist political party, the Kuomintang. Therefore, the writings of the Chinese student Li Hoean Tsjeng in Het Tijdschrift must be Li Shizeng, who was introduced to Ernest by Krishnavarma during his efforts to establish pan-Asian contacts in Paris.
Sun Yat-sen was a nationalist who proposed the formation of a republic to replace the Chinese Empire. This should in theory result in heated opposition with Chinese anarchists who propose the abolition of the state altogether. But this alliance showed that ideological differences were put aside in favor of a vision of a new Chinese society without the Qing dynasty. Chinese anarchists in Paris provided much assistance and developed personal ties with Sun Yat-sen (Scalpino, 1961).
Tongmenghui and including anarchists in China, became the driving force for the 1911 Revolution which overthrew the Qing Dynasty which had ruled for 264 years. The local militia in Guangdong, for example, was organized by the anarchist and federalist Chen Jiongming, who launched a rebellion throughout Guangdong, capturing Huizhou and proclaiming the province's independence from the Empire. In the euphoria of this revolution, Li Shizeng contributed his writings to Ernest. The revolution allowed Paris anarchists, including Li Shizeng, to return home in 1912, and focus more on providing education in the newly founded republic.
Another person Krishnavarma introduced to Ernest was Mathilde Deromps, a Sanskrit scholar from Paris. In Ernest's autobiography, Mathilde Deromps is described as “a staunch opponent of all colonialism, and of a radical-revolutionary temperament.” As a political writer explained that “his influence was very great in the rebellious colonies in Asia, especially in India, Burma and Egypt” (Dekker & Wanasita, 1950:62). Mathilde Deromps won the award for an essay competition on the theme “How Egypt can free itself effectively from the British yoke”, organized by the Egyptian Youth League (van Dijk, 2007:48). In September 1910 Krishnavarma publicly offered 1,000 French francs as a prize to the winner. He did this as a celebration of the assassination of Egyptian prime minister Boutros Ghali by Ibrahim Nasif al Wardani, an Egyptian student who graduated in pharmacology in London (Fischer-Tiné, 2014:67).
Ghali is considered to have sided with the British in the Dhanwhali incident, which was a clash between Egyptian farmers and British troops. As a judge, he executed a farmer, who was hanged in front of his house in front of his family. This decision sparked outrage among Egyptian society and was described by the nationalist press as extremely cruel and a “symbol of tyranny”. He was also responsible for extending the Suez Canal concession to 50 years to the British. As a Coptic Christian, his policies made Ghali increasingly unpopular in Egypt, a Muslim-majority country. However, Wardani's ideological motives were not based on religion, but rather pure nationalism which opposed British colonialism. Ghali's murder was the first in a series of murders in Egypt that continued until 1915, and Wardani had been hailed as a patriot, compared to the Indian hero, Lal Dhingra, who had killed the British police chief a year earlier (Reid, 1982).
Mathilde Deromps's essay on the liberation of Egypt, is written with evocative force: there is no other way for an oppressed people to liberate themselves than through the extermination by force of arms of each individual oppressor. Some of Mathilde Deromps' writings appeared in Het Tijdschrift. He is also described as having gifted his book Les vingt-cinq récits du mauvais génie (1912) to Ernest as a form of friendship (Dekker and Wanasita, 1950:62).
From France, Ernest went to Spain, the base of the world's largest syndicalist labor movement in the first half of the 20th century. Het Tijdschrift provides clues about a writer from Barcelona named Enrique Escribano del Pino who is known to be the cartographer for maps of Morocco. But it is not yet known who Ernest met while in Spain. Nevertheless, we know that Ernest was aware of the Spanish situation when he expressed his condolences in the Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad for the executed Francisco Ferrer Guardia.
Ferrer was a prominent Spanish anarchist, a teacher behind a network of private, secular, and libertarian schools in and around Barcelona, known as the Modern School (Escuela Moderna). His pedagogy rejected the dogmatic curriculum of church and state, without grades and examinations, without segregation of the sexes, avoided punishing and rewarding students, and prioritized practical knowledge over theory that encouraged children’s observation rather than mere reading. The lessons entail visits to local factories, museums, and parks where the subject matter can be experienced firsthand. Students plan their own work and are even free to attend as they please. At the same time, his school held open lectures for workers, and he managed the publication of books on grammar, mathematics, natural and social sciences, geography, anthropology, sociology, religious mythology, and materials on anti-patriotism and colonialism.
This type of education model is now commonplace, but a hundred years ago it was very radical and even considered dangerous. Ferrer's activities were accused of being the mastermind of political instability in Spain, and made him the church's number one enemy. Ferrer was detained when accused of involvement in the attempt of murder of the king of Spain, was released again and finally arrested in July 1909 as a result of the Tragic Week. At that time, Prime Minister Antonio Maura called for conscription to send reinforcements for colonial expeditions in Morocco. Anarchists, socialists and Spanish republicans were at the forefront of opposing the plan. They called a general strike and riot soon spread in Barcelona, leaving hundreds of people dead as a result of the vicious repression of the army sent to quell it.
Although Ferrer was not involved in the rebellion, he was executed. This encouraged his name as a martyr and sparked international solidarity. One of them comes from Ernest. In an article in Jong Indië Ernest mounted a fierce defense of these Spanish anarchists. He questioned whether the riots were Ferrer's work or caused by the presence of flammable materials piled up by the dominating church and the Spanish reactionary regime. For Ernest the answer was clear. Ferrer's execution, he wrote, was “a criminal act for all humanity” (der Veur, 2006:134).
Ferrer's execution gave rise to an international radical and libertarian movement, which founded schools on his model and promoted his approach. It is not clear to what extent Ferrer inspired Ernest. However, Ernest would later become involved in education at the Ksatrian Institute after he withdrew from the political scene and worked at a school in Bandung. There Soekarno once taught. His comrade, Ki Hadjar Dewantara, opened the Tamansiswa Institute. On several occasions, Ernest also committed to “anarchist and nihilist education.” Writing in De Expres in 1912, Ernest explained that he had visited Ferrer's grave in Montjuich, reflecting on it as a world tragedy: “Francisco Ferrer, the Spanish freethinker whose death was not in vain. The blood of martyrs is the seed of progress.”
From Spain, Ernest crossed into Algeria, returning to Europe via Italy, where he apparently made contact with Guglielmo Ferrero, the Italian liberal progressive and anti-fascist historian. Ferrero was not an anarchist, but he was a supporter of civil liberties. During the Italian government's repression of anarchists in the 1890s, Ferrero argued that the way to prevent anarchist violence was to provide greater political freedom so that anarchists could channel their ideas and anger. He also believes that anarchist violence is a direct result of government oppression and therefore rejects the passing of heavy-handed laws (Pernicone & Ottanelli, 2018:178).
From Italy, Ernest headed to Switzerland. Here, we need to devote special space to discussing another figure Ernest met: Sir Walter William Strickland (1851-1938), the billionaire and nobleman, “a man without country” who held the title of 9th Baronet of the British Empire, whose family at the beginning of the century it practically owns Malta, a small island in the Mediterranean. He was similar to Kropotkin and Bakunin, because he had a noble background but changed direction to become an anti-patriotic person. Strickland is also known as an opponent of British imperialism, anti-monarchy, bohemian writer, an eccentric who was nicknamed the “Anarchist Baronet”.
In his autobiography, Ernest describes Strickland as someone whose “struggle for India and his strong sense of justice made this historian and philosopher an enemy of England, which he later left behind” (Ernest and Wanasita, 1950:76). Strickland left England in 1899 to travel. He then registered and was accepted as a citizen of the newly independent Czechoslovakia in 1918. Strickland's travels to India and Southeast Asia made him aware of what he called British despotism: “a was nothing but a camorra of infamous, bestial and obscene thieves, murderers, liars and worse.” This anti-imperialist position gained the sympathy of Indian revolutionaries, and his writings were also published in Indian Sociologist (Fischer-Tiné, 2014:76-77).
When Strickland heard of Guy Aldred's act of solidarity in trying to help the Indian Sociologist journal in the aftermath of Lal Dhingra's murder, Strickland sent Aldred a congratulatory telegram to the prison and a check for £10. When Strickland died, he also left a large inheritance to Guy Aldred, to be used for “socialist and atheist propaganda.” Guy Aldred used it to finance the reprinting of all his pamphlets, as well as buying a printing machine and a bookstore (Meltzer, 1996:60). The disbursement of this inheritance was hampered by a dispute over inheritance with the Baronet family. But as a form of respect, the Bakunin Press publishing house was renamed Strickland Press in 1939. This is a striking example when Strickland's services were considered so great that they deserved to replace the name of the famous anarchist figure who became one of the main radical publishers in England.
Ernest met privately with Strickland in a hotel room in Geneva, Switzerland to spend the night talking until dawn. Strickland also had a good relationship with Ernest until he died in 1938 in Weltevreden [Bogor] (Dekker & Wanista, 1949:76). It seems that close relationship to Strickland was one of the reasons why Ernest several years later chose to study in Switzerland during his exile. We don't know what they discussed at that night. But after Ernest returned home, Het Tijdschrift published Strickland's writings, most of which had topics related to religion.
Ernest in this respect preceded Krishnavarma, whom he himself had just met Strickland and Guy Aldred at his home in Paris in 1912 (Fischer-Tiné, 2014: 7). This meeting between nationalist revolutionaries and anarchists would be one of the initial episodes of a new chapter in the global anti-colonial struggle that became increasingly militant throughout World War I. It would take the form of a conspiracy aimed at encouraging a pan-Indian uprising against the British Empire, involving actors and interests politics (and personalities) ranged widely from Irish nationalists to Mexican guerrillas. As a result of his downfall, Ernest participates in an attempt to smuggle weapons to India whose consequences are far more serious than he thought.
Before becoming involved in the conspiracy, Ernest returned home with knowledge, materials and international contacts. He used all of this to radicalize the national liberation movement in the Dutch East Indies, by becoming an organizer and journalist for the media which driven by his own political vision. However, in the historiography, especially that available in Indonesian, this section is almost silent or briefly touched upon. As a result, the story of Danudirja Setiabudi, who we (don't) know so far, is rather naive, as if he was already revolutionary from his very nature.
In fact, from one explosion to another; from London, to Paris, to Barcelona, to Cairo, to San Francisco, to Mexico and to Bandung, Ernest breathed in a world raging by militants who killed heads of intelligence and prime ministers, revolutionary education, and overthrew dynasties. It is undeniable that such transnational networks shaped ideas and actions during the height of Ernest Douwes Dekker's political activity in the struggle for Indonesian independence. What the consequences will be for the early communist movement in Indonesia, which has been accused of having anarchist tendencies (read: Bakunin’s Ghost and 1926 Communist Uprising), may have unforeseen consequences that have not yet been revealed.
Finally, this kind of fascinating coverage, although brief and lacking in depth, provides a historical link in an odd way between Ernest and pre-independence Indonesia and the global anarchism of the early 20th century. If Setiabudi can do it, let alone us.
Reference
“Baronets Who Pioneered Indian Indipendence”, in The Word, November 1961.
“De Politieke Beginselen der Indische Extremisten Door” [Principles of Indian Extremist Politics], De Beweging, Vol.6, No.2, November 1910.
“Een noodgedwongen veerwer” [Resistance of Crackdown], in De Express, March 20, 1914.
“Het Ferrer-Drama” [Ferrer's Drama], in De Expres, March 2, 1912.
Brown, Emily C. 1957. Har Dayal: Hindu Revolutionary and Rationalist. New Delhi.
Carrasco, Daniel Kent. “Breath of Revolution: Ghadar Anti-Colonial Radicalism in North America and the Mexican Revolution.” In: South Asia: Journal Of South Asian Studies 2020, Vol.43, No.6, pp 1077–1092.
der Veur, Paul W. Van. 2006. The Lion and the Gadfly: Dutch Colonialism and the Spirit of E.F.E. Douwes Dekker. KITLV Press.
Douwes Dekker, E.F.E. and Harumi Wanasita. 1950. 70 Consecutive Jaar. Bandung: Nix & Co.
Fischer-Tiné, Harald. 2014. Shyamji Krishnavarma: Sanskrit, Sociology and Anti-Imperialism. Routledge.
Goebel, Michael. 2015. Anti-Imperial Metropolis Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism. Cambridge University Press.
Harper, Tim. 2021. Underground Asia: Global Revolutionaries and the Assault on Empire. Harvard University Press.
Meltzer, Albert 1996. I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels: Sixty Years of Commonplace Life and Anarchist Agitation. AK Press; Edinburgh, Scotland: San Francisco, California.
Pernicone, Nunzio and Fraser M. Ottanelli. 2018. Assassins against the Old Order Italian Anarchist Violence in Fin de Siècle Europe. University of Illinois.
Ramnath, Maia. 2012. Decolonizing Anarchism: An Antiauthoritarian History of India's Liberation Struggle. AK Press.
Reid, Donald M. "Political Assassination in Egypt, 1910-1954". In: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 15, no. 4 (1982), p. 625-651 (27 pp.).
Scalpino, Robert and George T. Yu. 1961. The Chinese Anarchist Movement. Berkeley, Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of International Studies, University of California.
Tempo Team. 2018. Ernest Douwes Dekker, Sang Inspirator Revolusi, pocket book series. Jakarta: KPG.
van Dijk, Kees. 2007. The Netherlands Indies and the Great War, 1914-1918. KITLV Press.
* Independent researcher, author of Dayak Mardaheka: History of a Stateless Society in the Interior of Kalimantan (2021). Still committed to writing even though he is serving a 15 year prison sentence. Take the time to read Bima’s proposal on Firefund.