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. 

 

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​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.

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In 2026, she made nationwide headlines again. She brought to light that Donald Pols had been chairman of the right-wing extremist student movement ASF, which prevented Nelson Mandela from speaking at the University of Pretoria in April 1991. While researching a new book on the apartheid past in South Africa and Namibia, she received a tip about a photo of Pols during a protest, where he is standing next to a large flag of his ASF organisation. The flag bears the Odal Rune symbol, which is also used by elements of the SS and neo-Nazi groups. She delved deeper into the matter and discovered, among other things, Associated Press footage of the 1991 meeting showing Pols holding the ANC flag aloft and setting it on fire. She discovered a report by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in which Pols is mentioned by a controversial member of his group, who admitted that their goal was to "disrupt, if necessary by force," the meeting where Mandela was to deliver his reconciling speech. She also found an article in the Chicago Tribune in which Pols stated after the meeting that singing anti-apartheid songs was enough "to stir up the emotions of every right-thinking white person." Using, among others, a source in South Africa from that time, she established that the person in the footage was Pols and subsequently approached the press. She published an article about the apartheid past in Trouw ("Historian Anne-Lot Hoek discovered the concealed past of former Milieudefensie leader Donald Pols") and brought her observations and findings—a whole series of sources, archival documents, historical articles, and film and photographic material—to the public via the NRC in a front-page article. When the data from her investigation became public, his new employer was so deeply affected that it was decided not to continue with him. Pols looks back on this period within his youth with disgust. Hoek spoke about her investigation and revelations on TV programs like Eva Jinek on NPO1, RTL Nieuws, the NOS Journaal, and in newspaper de Volkskrant. Pols responded in Trouw and NRC to the impact of Hoek's findings. They also resulted in the resignation of the entire Supervisory Board of Pols' former employer, Milieudefensie, as they were aware of his extreme right past but did not take any action.

 

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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