Anne-Lot Hoek is a Dutch historian, researcher and author. She focuses on the colonial past and the struggle for independence in South Africa, Namibia and Indonesia. 

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In 2021, she debuted with The Battle for Bali: Imperialism, Resistance, and Independence (Bezige Bij). It was chosen as History Book of the Month on Radio 1's historical program OVT, received a rare honorable mention by the jury of the Brusse Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Libris History Prize. In 2023, she received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam. She is a research fellow at the International Institute for Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam and is working on publications on the historical relationship between the Netherlands and South Africa/Namibia.

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Hoek studied History at the University of Amsterdam and Political History at the Università degli Studi di Perugia in Italy. Her thesis focused on human rights violations by SWAPO during the Namibian struggle for independence. After she returned from Namibia she subsequently worked at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, where she collaborated on academic research into the history of a development organization. To this end, she traveled for extended periods to Cameroon, Mali, Zambia, and Bolivia to conduct oral history research at local communities.

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In 2012, Hoek began as an investigative journalist at Vrij Nederland. There she started researching and publishing about the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-1949), on which she later wrote extensively for NRC and De Groene Amsterdammer. In addition to sharp opinion pieces and essays on how the Dutch state and Dutch historians dealt with the colonial past, her in-depth research revealed important news items, such as the war crimes committed in Bali and Sumatra, and the fact that Sukarno contributed more to post-war reconstruction of the Netherlands than the Marshall Plan. Her revelation of new research findings, that extreme violence during the war in Indonesia was structural, also landed on the front page of NRC. She devoted considerable attention to the Indonesian and Dutch advocates of the Indonesian revolution.

 

Her research and publications led to inquiries by members of parliament, political calls for large scale historical research into the Indonesian War of Independence, contributed to the rehabilitation of marines who refused to commit war crimes, financial compensation for relatives whose family members had been executed without trial on Bali and during The Rengat Massacre on Sumatra and apologies from the Dutch government of Indonesia by the Prime Minister.

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In The Battle for Bali, Hoek uses extensive archival research and oral history to demonstrate how the struggle should be understood as part of a long tradition of anti-colonial resistance. She also demonstrates that Bali, as part of the Dutch-created state of East Indonesia, played a key role in Dutch decolonization policies after World War II. Until then, historians had primarily focused on Java. She also discovered that the Dutch army built a tangsi system of 50 prison camps on Bali, where torture and executions were systematic. Hoek's book tells a broader story about the decolonization of the entire Dutch East Indies. The Battle for Bali has been widely acclaimed in the media and academic world and is currently being translated into Indonesian and English. It will be published in Indonesia, the United Kingdom, The United States, Canada, Europe and Australia.

 

Hoek also reviews history books for the Historical Book Podcast of a national Historical Magazine. In addition to lectures and presentations, she regularly contributes to public debates, such as in De Groene Amsterdammer, NRC, OVT (NPO Radio 1), Nieuwsuur, Buitenhof and on the BBC.​​​​​​​​​

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