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On 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender that also brought an end to the Second World War in Asia, Indonesia declared its independence. The declaration was not recognized by the Netherlands, which resorted to force in its attempt to take control of the inevitable process of decolonization. This led to four years of difficult negotiations and bitter warfare.

In 2005, the Dutch government declared that the Netherlands should never have waged the war. The government’s 1969 position on the violence used by the Dutch armed forces during the war remained unchanged, however: although there had been ‘excesses’, on the whole the armed forces had behaved ‘correctly’. As the indications of Dutch extreme violence mounted, this official position proved increasingly difficult to maintain. In 2016, the Dutch government therefore decided to fund a broad study on the dynamics of the violence. The most important conclusions of that research programme are summarized in this book. The authors show that the Dutch armed forces used extreme violence on a structural basis, and that this was concealed both at the time and for many years after the war by the Dutch government and by society more broadly. All of this – like the entire colonial history – is at odds with the rose-tinted self-image of the Netherlands.

In the Netherlands, the Indonesian War of Independence has long been referred to in veiled terms such as ‘police actions’. In reality, it was a proper war fought with modern weapons. The Dutch armed forces wielded an iron fist in order to crush the Indonesian ‘rebellion’, widely deploying artillery, attack aircraft and naval guns. What were the consequences of such bombing and shelling in a war fought amongst the population? In what situations did the Dutch deploy these means and to what extent did they attempt to minimize civilian casualties? Now, for the first time, the use of artillery and air power in the struggle for independence has been systematically researched. Iron Fist offers both statistical overviews as well as analyses of battles where heavy weapons were used on a large scale. The relation between the deployment of fire support and the use of force in general is also examined. This book embodies a vital contribution to our knowledge of the nature and extent of violent transgressions by Dutch forces in the Indonesian War of Independence.