This column appeared in the MHM newsletter of June 2015.
In May the biography ‘Jan Pieterszoon Coen, 1587-1629 Koopman-Koning in Azië’ by the historian Jur van Goor was published. I have not read the book yet, but according to an interview in the newspaper Trouw of 23 May, the historian revises the bad reputation of the VOC commander. According to Van Goor, Coen was a man who made considered decisions on the basis of the law as it then stood. The execution of forty to fifty leaders of the Banda Islands, one of the most horrific acts Coen used to obtain the trade monopoly on nutmeg, happened, according to Van Goor, because in Coen’s eyes these people had given their word and had committed treason. And the penalty for that was death.
Well, but why could Mr Coen, some 12,500 kilometres from his birthplace Hoorn, impose his sense of justice on others?
Well, but why could (and might) Mr Coen, some 12,500 kilometres from his birthplace Hoorn, impose his sense of justice on others? Thanks to his ‘decisiveness’ in Banda, Moluccans and the Moluccas remain permanently bound up with discussions about the actions of J.P. Coen, about his statue on the Rode Steen in Hoorn and about anything organised around Coen. And naturally Moluccans will then sound a critical note. The most creative critical note I remember was that of the Moluccan artist Willy Nanlohy in 1987. In that year, four centuries after Coen’s year of birth, the Westfries Museum in Hoorn commemorated its famous townsman with the exhibition ‘J.P. Coen, deeds and days in the service of the VOC’. Ruud Spruyt, the then director, was keen to involve Moluccans. In the cellars at the bottom of the museum there was room for ‘Moluccan signs’, an exhibition of Willy’s sculptures. And several Moluccan artists had been invited to the opening in the Oosterkerk in Hoorn, in the presence of Prince Claus.
Prince Claus calmly accepted the black book
Mourning cloths
When Willy was installing his sculptures and went upstairs for a moment to look at the newly installed exhibition, he got a terrible shock. What he saw was nothing but praise for the man who had wreaked such havoc in Banda. Willy could no longer simply withdraw, and covered his sculptures with black cloths as a sign of mourning. He also devised something for the opening, in which he involved me and a few Moluccan friends. Through the grapevine we heard that Moluccans from various parts of the country would come to Hoorn to disrupt the opening. To prevent Willy’s action from failing because of that, we tried to head off fierce protests. On the day of the opening, 19 May 1987, Willy appeared in the Oosterkerk in Tjakalele outfit. The second chair reserved for his partner in the front row he kept free for the spirit of his grandfather. When the programme was well under way, during the performance of a Moluccan band, Willy stood up and walked to Prince Claus to hand him a black book about Moluccan history. Claus calmly accepted the black book. After which a number of people, who had got in with forged tickets, stood up to hand out pamphlets about Willy’s action. Unlike Claus, other people present reacted rather heatedly. The Moluccan band, whose performance Willy had interrupted, was annoyed because they had not been informed beforehand. But Mr Spruyt in particular was furious. He is said to have cancelled his (free) subscription to Marinjo on the spot. While the poor Inspraakorgaan Welzijn Molukkers, which published Marinjo at the time, had nothing to do with it and knew nothing of Willy’s plans.
But Mr Spruyt in particular was furious. He is said to have cancelled his (free) subscription to Marinjo on the spot.
Willy’s action was a cry of protest against the glorification of Mr Coen and a call to pay attention to the Moluccan view of history as well. The exhibition public will have noticed little of it at the time. Director Spruyt had, after all, stripped Willy’s sculptures of their mourning cloths. The press photograph of the handing over of the black book did later make it into a (Kleio) history booklet as an illustration of the different ways of looking at VOC history. There Willy’s action was reduced to a nuancing footnote in a history lesson.
Tjakalele by full moon
In a small circle, more than a year later, an echo of Willy’s protest sounded once more, almost literally. On the evening of the last full moon in December 1988, Willy went with a group of friends to the Moluccan camp Lunetten in Vught. In the place where he was born he would symbolically bring the whole affair to an end. He had the mourning cloths with him in order to burn them and let them vanish in smoke. At 12 o’clock, midnight, the sound of several tifas rang out on the central field. In the moonlight that occasionally slipped between the clouds, and in the flickering glow of the cloths burning in an oil drum among the tifa players, Willy was seen performing a Tjakalele. Not rehearsed steps or movements, but a real mock battle with the spirits that had defiled Moluccan history. The rustle of his dancing bare feet on the grass and the swish of his parang through the air could be heard between the tifa beats reflected by the walls of the barracks. To me it was like the echo of a fight that had once begun in Banda.
*Cover photo from Marinjo no. 7, 1987
