Jacobin Radio The Dig: Nusantara Ep. 1 — The Long Arc of Dutch Colonialism
Mar 23, 2026
Made Supriyatma, researcher on Indonesian politics and civil-military relations, and Rihanna Subianto, communication scholar of Indonesian left history, trace centuries of Dutch corporate and state domination. They discuss VOC brutality, monopoly spice wars, cultivation systems, plantation and oil expansion, racial legal hierarchies, and the bureaucratic roots of Indonesian nationalism.
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Indonesia Built Global Capitalism And Led Anti Colonialism
- Indonesia's modern political significance grew from centuries of European colonial plunder that shaped global capitalism.
- Rihanna Subianto highlights the PKI's 1965 massacre and Bandung 1955 as moments showing Indonesia's central role in anti-colonial movements.
Study Indonesia To Grasp Global Capitalism
- Study Indonesia to understand capitalism because its resources and struggles were integral from the start.
- Rihanna Subianto urges the global left to study Indonesian colonial exploitation and the large anti-colonial movements led until 1965.
VOC As A Corporate Floating State
- The VOC created a corporate colonial model with state powers that prioritized monopolies over settlement.
- Rihanna Subianto stresses VOC's joint-stock finance, minting money, treaty and war powers made it a 'floating state' of early capitalist imperialism.
