Nederlandsch-Indië, Oud en Nieuw — “The Netherlands Indies, Old and New” — was a Dutch monthly periodical, published in The Hague by the N.V. tot Exploitatie van het Maandblad “Nederl-Indië, Oud en Nieuw” and printed by ten Hagen’s Drukkerij en Uitgeversmaatschappij N.V., that constituted the principal Dutch-language popular-scholarly vehicle for ethnographic, historical, and colonial-topical writing on the Netherlands Indies in the 1920s–1930s. It is named, in the title-page of Prof. T. J. Bezemer’s 1933 plate-atlas, as the periodical of which the Bezemer atlas was a companion volume, and it is repeatedly cited in Bezemer’s Inleiding as the place of publication of cognate scholarship on Indonesian craft — including B. M. Goslings’s article on batik at Djambi (Sumatra) in Jrg. 10 (1925–26) and the Goslings article on batik at Djambi in 15den Jaargang.
Form and orientation
The periodical was a maandblad — a monthly — and was issued in yearly volumes (jaargang). Its title, Oud en Nieuw (Old and New), signalled its editorial orientation: to combine historical and ethnographic writing on the Indies (oud) with reports on contemporary colonial-topical matters (nieuw). It was a periodical of the Dutch colonial educated public — readers of Dutch, interested in the Indies, but not necessarily specialist Indologists — and its articles were typically illustrated with photographs and short enough to be read in a single sitting. Its publisher, the N.V. tot Exploitatie van het Maandblad “Nederl-Indië, Oud en Nieuw”, was the corporate vehicle of the periodical itself; the same N.V. published the Bezemer atlas of 1933 as a stand-alone companion volume.
Cognate scholarship on Atjeh-adjacent craft
The periodical carried, in the years cited by Bezemer, several articles that bear on the Atjeh-adjacent craft context of the 1933 atlas. The clearest case is B. M. Goslings’s article on the batik industry of Djambi (south Sumatra), cited by Bezemer in his Inleiding § C (on batik) as follows: “in hetzelfde tijdschrift, 15den Jaargang, vindt men interessante mededeelingen van B. M. Goslings over het batikken op de hoofdplaats Djambi (Sumatra)” — “in the same periodical, 15th volume, one finds interesting communications by B. M. Goslings on the batik industry at the chief place Djambi (Sumatra).” Since Djambi lies on the east-Sumatran coast south of Atjeh, the Goslings article is part of the wider Sumatran craft context within which Bezemer places Atjeh; it is cited in the 1933 atlas precisely as a parallel Sumatran case to the better-known Javanese batik industry.
In Jrg. 10 (1925–26) of the same periodical — under the editorship of J. W. van Nouhuys — there appeared, again cited by Bezemer in § C of his Inleiding, communications on wax-batik among the Toradja’s of Midden-Celebes, “open[ing] the possibility that perhaps with continued research the originally-Indonesian character of batikking can yet be demonstrated.” And in 1e Jaargang (the first volume), Bezemer cites Mr. J. G. Huyser on the comparison between old and new Javanese brasswork: “Een oude bokor (Javaansche koperen kom) staat tot een nieuwe Soerabayasche schaal als een bord van Pijnacker tot een nieuw Delftsch product” — “An old bokor (Javanese brass bowl) stands to a new Soerabaya-made bowl as a Pijnacker plate stands to a new Delft product.”
Place in the colonial-scholarly infrastructure
The periodical is, in the late-colonial Dutch scholarly infrastructure, the principal popular-scholarly vehicle for ethnographic writing on the Indies. Its position in that infrastructure is parallel to that of the scholarly Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië — the Bijdragen of the Royal Institute for the Linguistics, Geography and Ethnology of the Netherlands Indies — but with a more popular orientation. Where the Bijdragen published long scholarly articles (such as P. H. van der Kemp’s Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, on which many AcehWiki entries draw), Nederlandsch-Indië, Oud en Nieuw published shorter, more heavily illustrated, more reader-friendly articles. The Bezemer atlas of 1933 is the most substantial stand-alone volume the periodical’s publisher produced; it is in effect the periodical’s summa on the subject of Indonesian craft, presented in plate-atlas form rather than as a sequence of monthly articles.
Significance for Atjeh
For Atjeh’s history, the periodical’s significance is twofold. First, it carried, in the years immediately before Bezemer’s 1933 atlas, several articles on Sumatran craft that form the immediate scholarly context for Bezemer’s documentation of Atjeh craft: the Goslings article on Djambi batik is the clearest case, but the periodical’s overall Sumatran coverage is the larger context. Second, the periodical’s publisher — the N.V. tot Exploitatie van het Maandblad “Nederl-Indië, Oud en Nieuw” — was the publisher of the Bezemer atlas itself, and so the periodical’s existence as a going concern was the institutional condition of the atlas’s publication. The 1933 atlas would not have appeared without the periodical; and the periodical’s popular-scholarly orientation shaped the atlas’s own approach — a plate-atlas addressed to the educated Dutch colonial public rather than a specialist handbook addressed to Indologists.
See Also
- Indonesische Kunstnijverheid (Bezemer 1933)
- N.V. tot Exploitatie van het Maandblad “Nederl-Indië, Oud en Nieuw”
- T. J. Bezemer
- Koninklijke Vereeniging “Koloniaal Instituut”
- Netherlands India
- Djambi
- Sumatra
- 1925
- 1933
Source
Nederlandsch-Indië, Oud en Nieuw, monthly periodical, published by the N.V. tot Exploitatie van het Maandblad “Nederl-Indië, Oud en Nieuw”, The Hague: ten Hagen’s Drukkerij en Uitgeversmaatschappij N.V. Cited in T. J. Bezemer, Indonesische Kunstnijverheid (‘s-Gravenhage: ten Hagen, 1933), pp. 7–9, 11.