Jalan Raya Pos - The Great Post Road

2015 - 2016

Jalan Raya Pos - De Grote Postweg
ISBN 978-90-825555-0-9
144 pages| 140 x 193mm
Dutch | Hardcover

€25,- excl. shipping

In what ways does the colonial past still shape modern Indonesia? According to some people in the Netherlands, Indonesia’s former colonial ruler, that history has long since been forgotten and colonialism no longer plays any meaningful role. But is that really the case?

To look for answers, I set out to cycle along Java’s oldest colonial road, the Jalan Raya Pos, or Great Post Road. It was built in 1808 under Governor-General Herman Willem Daendels. The road is well known in Indonesia, not because of Daendels’ achievement in completing its 1,100 kilometres in just a year and a half, but because of the many thousands of indigenous forced labourers who died during its construction. Daendels used brutal means to force the local population to work on the road.

On a typically Dutch bicycle, I began my journey from west to east across Java, looking for stories along the roadside. Stories that might reveal where and how the colonial past can still be felt today.

My Indo-Dutch grandmother left Indonesia for the Netherlands after the Indonesian War of Independence. Not by choice, but because there was no longer a place for Indo-Dutch people in the newly independent republic. She never returned to the country of her birth, and she never spoke about it again. She carried a history that no one would ever hear.

As I cycle along the Great Post Road, I write letters to my grandmother, telling her what the country she left in 1950 looks like today. I try to imagine the country in which she grew up, and to understand how that same country has changed since she left.

Eric Kampherbeek