Dutch Colonialism in Indonesia

​Indonesia had successfully declared its independence since 17 August 1945. But long before, there were some countries that colonized Nusantara.

​In 1512, The Portugese came to Maluku, Indonesia searching for natural resources and promoting Christianity. With their strong military, they occupied Timor, Solor and Flores.

In 1596, The Dutch first came to Indonesia led by Cornelis de Houtman. .

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After Dutch realized that Nusantara is rich of spices, some Dutch company were competing each other to get more profit. Therefore, Dutch government decided to unite all the companies and established VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) at 1602.

During Dutch colonization in Nusantara, they applied a system called "monopoly". Monopoly trade is a system that requires people to only sell the spices to Dutch/VOC.

​In 1675 VOC was dismissed because there were many people doing corruption in this organization which led them to bankruptcy.

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