Dutch Ethical Policy

In 1901, Dutch Queen Wilhelmina announced that the Netherlands accepted an ethical responsibility for the welfare of their colonial subjects.

The announcement was a sharp contrast with the former official doctrine that Indonesia was a win-gewest (region for making a profit) and also marked the start of modern development policy.

The journalist Pieter Brooshooft (1845-1921),[3] wrote about the moral duty of the Dutch to provide more for the peoples of the East Indies.

Lawyers and politicians supportive of Brooshooft's campaigning had an audience with Queen Wilhelmina and argued that the Netherlands owed the peoples of the Indies a 'debt of honour'.

[3] In 1901, the Queen, under the advice of her prime minister of the Christian Anti-Revolutionary Party, Abraham Kuyper, formally declared a benevolent "Ethical Policy", which was aimed at bringing progress and prosperity to the East Indies.

[4] Proponents of the policy argued that financial transfers should not be made to the Netherlands if the conditions of the indigenous people on the archipelago were poor.

The policy first introduced the concept of transmigration from the overpopulated Java to the less densely-populated areas of Sumatra and Kalimantan with government-sponsored schemes from 1905 onwards.