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. She was born in The Hague and attended the Adelbert Gymnasium from 1991 to 1997.

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Studies

Hoek studied History at the University of Amsterdam and Political History at the University of Perugia in Italy. She obtained her Master of Arts from the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam, where she graduated on the Namibian struggle for independence. In 2023, she obtained her PhD from the same university with her dissertation The Battle for Bali. Violence, Resistance and Colonial State Formation 1846-1950.

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Career

Hoek lived and worked in Amsterdam, Windhoek and Cape Town. In 2021 she launched her debut The Battle for Bali. Imperialism, Resistance and Independence 1846–1950 (De Bezige Bij), for which she interviewed 128 people involved in Bali and the Netherlands and conducted extensive literature and archive research. During her seven-year research, she discovered that the Dutch army built a tangsi-system of 50 prison camps on Bali in which torture and executions were a systematic phenomenon.

 

She also shows how the struggle on the island should be understood as part of a long tradition of anti-colonial resistance and demonstrated that Bali played a key role in Dutch decolonization policy after the Second World War, as part of the Dutch-created state of East Indonesia. Until then, the focus of historians had mainly been on Java. Hoek also tells a larger story about the decolonization of the entire Dutch East Indies.

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The Battle for Bali resulted in:

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• a range of questions from the House of Representatives to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense

• reparations by the Dutch state for a group of family members whose family was executed without trial

• articles in national newspapers such as NRC Handelsblad, Trouw, Nederlands Dagblad and de Volkskrant

• national news on television and radio with RTL Nieuws and NPO Radio 1. TV Omroep West made a special

• book reviews in national newspapers such as NRC Handelsblad and Nederlands Dagblad, but also in history-related media such as Historiek and Historisch Nieuwsblad, and in Belgium in 'De lage landen'

• Pre-publications in NRC Handelsblad and De Groene Amsterdammer

• Interviews in national and regional newspapers such as Algemeen Dagblad and Den Haag Centraal

• She also appeared on national radio in Nieuwsweekend and OVT and on national television in Nieuwuur on her research on Bali and on her debut in Buitenhof TV​

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Hoek worked at the African Studies Centre (ASC) from 2005 to 2007 and conducted research in Bolivia, Zambia, Cameroon and Mali. In 2012, she conducted research in Zambia again. At that time, she had already started as a freelance journalist for Vrij Nederland, later for NRC Handelsblad and De Groene Amsterdammer. Since 2012, Hoek has published dozens of articles about the colonial past in Indonesia. She also regularly participates in postcolonial debates in debate centres and on radio and television. ​

 

In 2012, she contributed her first article about Indonesia to the request for rehabilitation of three marines who had refused to set fire to a kampong in East Java in reprisal. A few months later, a motion to that effect was submitted in the House of Representatives of the States General. Hoek managed to track down Nicoline de Hoog, a daughter of one of the marines, and told her about this history of her father for the first time. Nicoline submitted a request for verification research to the Ministry of Defense, after which her father and the two other marines were posthumously rehabilitated.

 

In 2013, Hoek conducted archival research that revealed for the first time that the Dutch army had committed war crimes in Bali. She spoke to witnesses from that time who confirmed their participation and were willing to share their story. Her findings made in the press in the Netherlands and Indonesia, and other authors included it subsequently in their work.

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In 2014, she discovered archive documents showing that Dutch authorities ran Bali as their own private kingdom during the Indonesian War of Independence and that torture was common. A damning official investigation report on corruption and intimidation in Bali was suppressed.

 

In 2015, Hoek argued in NRC Handelsblad that the Dutch historical institutes had neglected their duties for 65 years. She also made the front page of the same newspaper with an article about a Swiss dissertation by Swiss-Dutch historian Remy Limpach that refuted the 1969 'Excessennota', the official report about Dutch atrocities committed during the Indonesian War of Independence. In 2016, Hoek delved deeper into the question of why Dutch historians of the previous generation, such as Cees Fasseur who wrote the Excessennota, had adopted an evasive attitude towards the actual violence in Indonesia in her article 'Iedereen wist het, maar niemand kan het zeggen' (Everyone knew it, but nobody could say it). The article contributed to what Martin Bossenbroek called a paradigm shift and a historiographical regime change. Hoek is also referred to as part of the base of 'a new generation of historians'. ​

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Early 2016, Hoek travelled to Indonesia to investigate the attack on Rengat, Sumatra, in January 1949. The 1969 'Excessennota' estimated 80 civilian casualties and 30 soldiers killed. In Rengat, there was a monument that listed 1,500 casualties and 186 names. In the Dutch National Archives, she discovered a series of sources from 1949, such as a list of names of 120 'dead civilians', an estimate by the Dutch Resident of 400 dead and a Chinese newspaper article that reported more than 1,000 dead. A comparison of the list of names from the archive with the names on the monument alone revealed at least 270 individually known victims.

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She wrote two articles about it in NRC Handelsblad and made the Reporter Radio report The Rengat Massacre for NPO Radio 1. It was picked up the national media such as de Volkskrant, Algemeen Dagblad, Trouw, NOS and RTL Nieuws. Human rights lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld called the events in Hoek's research in a response "of the same order of magnitude as Rawagede and the massacres in South Sulawesi". It was one of the deadliest Dutch military operations in Sumatra. According to David Van Reybrouck, it may have been the largest individual war crime of the entire war. Later that year, Hoek wrote a two-part article about Rengat for Inside Indonesia. The Dutch state paid 20,000 euros in compensation to one of the widows from Kampong Skip in Rengat, whose husband was a policeman and was executed. Such compensation was only awarded if it could be demonstrated that someone was executed by Dutch soldiers in an action"of a similar gravity and nature as Rawagede and South Sulawesi". The BBC in Indonesia published an extensive article about Hoek's Rengat research on Sumatra and her earlier investigation in which she discovered war crimes in Bali.

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The Rengat article appeared in February 2016. A few months later, in July 2016, the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Netherlands Institute for Military History (NIMH) were informed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they had to prepare for a possible turnaround in parliament. Their original request in 2012 was declined by the Dutch government. Now minister Bert Koenders had become convinced that a large-scale investigation was necessary and at General Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, "things started to move" and was approved later that year.

 

Member of Parliament Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, who was politically committed to the investigation, told Hoek in an interview that 75% of the political approval for the investigation came about as a result of new facts from journalism and the lawsuits against the Dutch state, and 25% as a result of the aforementioned Swiss dissertation. After new facts about this period had been emerging 'drip by drip' in recent years, the Swiss dissertation was the proverbial 'splash' that made the bucket overflow when it was published in book form in October 2016. Hoek responded to the cabinet decision in Nieuwsuur.

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In 2016 and 2017, Hoek was a fellow at KITLV and a journalist in residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) of the KNAW. Between 2017 and 2019, she wrote a chapter in Revolutionary Worlds within the ODGOI research. When Joop Hueting, the whistleblower on war crimes during the Indonesian war of independence, died in November 2018, Hoek responded on national television in Nieuwsuur.

 

According to two-fold Libris History Prize winner Martin Bossenbroek it was a new phenomenon that articles started to appear that explicitly highlighted the Indonesian perspective on the colonial past. Between 2016 and 2019 Anne-Lot regularly advocated for recognition of the political struggle of the leaders of the Indonesian struggle for independence and other voices that had challenged the colonial system in the twentieth century. In addition, she regularly campaigned for Dutch recognition of the Indonesian independence date. In 2018, she called on Prime Minister Mark Rutte and King Willem-Alexander in NRC Handelsblad to take responsibility and make a grand gesture for the fact that the Netherlands had taken up arms against Indonesia and had long ignored their urge for independence. In early 2020, she and young historians advocated in Nieuwsuur for the king to apologize during his state visit to Indonesia. Contrary to the expectations of other experts, those apologies were made. Hoek responded to the apologies on national television in Nieuwsuur.

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In October 2020, Hoek received the ASH Valorization Prize from the University of Amsterdam for her contribution to the debate on Indonesia. That same year, she published an article in De Groene Amsterdammer which showed that the Netherlands achieved a financial benefit of more than 103 billion euros for the financing of the reconstruction with the transfer of sovereignty to Indonesia; much more than the 16 billion euros they received in Marshall aid from the United States. Writers such as David Van Reybrouck and Adriaan van Dis highlighted this research in their work, it was also published in Indonesia and picked up in science.

 

Since 2021, Hoek has been a member of the History editorial board at the Belgian magazine De Lage landen and she contributed to their book publication Nulpunt 1945. At the end of the year, De strijd om Bali (The Battle for Bali) was published, which led to a series of parliamentary questions from the House of Representatives of the States General to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence. The Dutch state awarded financial compensation to a group of relatives of Balinese who were executed without trial. ​

 

In early 2022, Maurice Swirc's De Indische Doofpot was published, just before the results of the ODGOI investigation on the Indonesian Independence War, for which he won the Brusse Prize. In his conclusion, he stated: "It has now been established - after the groundbreaking publications of Remy Limpach and Anne-Lot Hoek - that the Dutch military apparatus systematically carried out a practice of mass executions and torture in prison camps, all under the ultimate responsibility of the Dutch government in The Hague".

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Shortly after, Hoek spoke extensively during the event Freedom and Resistance. The Legacy of the Revolution is Still Alive from Beyond Walls in the Rode Hoed. She was also interviewed in the political current affairs programme Buitenhof about her debut and about the opening of Revolusi!, a major exhibition in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum about Indonesia's struggle for independence, to which she also contributed> She also spoke about the possible conclusions of the aforementioned ODGOI research, where she was the only Dutch researcher in the project who did not co-write the summary work.

 

Together with other critics and Indonesia experts, she again advocated the use of the term war crimes in response to the final conclusion of that research during an OVT special on NPO Radio 1. The research leader, Frank van Vree, changed his position during the broadcast, according to him they should have spoken of war crimes, which became national news.

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In February 2023, Hoek obtained her PhD from the University of Amsterdam. Since March, she has been a regular book reviewer for the Historische Boekencast, the podcast of Historisch Nieuwsblad. In June of that year, together with journalist Ni Ketut Sudiani and historian Ni Made Frischa Aswarini, who had supported her on several fronts in her research in Bali, she jointly published an article in NRC Handelsblad in which they advocated for the return of documents from the National Archives to Indonesia. A week later, a motion was subsequently submitted and adopted in the House of Representatives. Hoek wrote a critical essay in De Groene Amsterdammer about the House of Representatives debate that followed the results of the ODGOI investigation and responded to interim conclusions in the press. She also contributed a chapter about Balinese resistance fighters to the De Grote Indonesië exhibition in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, which opened later that year. 

 

In 2024, Hoek received a fellowship at the International Institute of Social History (IISH), where she is working on research for her new book on Namibia and South Africa. When a film about the Indonesian War of Independence from an Indonesian perspective, Djakarta 1946 (Perang Kota, This City is a Battlefield), was released in 2025, she responded on national radio NPO Radio 1 and television in Nieuwsuur.​​​​​​

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​​​​​​​​Importance Research

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Hoek's work was mentioned several times in De Kolonie Mept Terug (The Colony Strikes Back) from Libris Literature Prize winner Adriaan van Dis, who says he derived most of his insights from De strijd om Bali. He calls it an "impressive" and "astonishing" book and writes "what makes her research innovative - in addition to the many Balinese testimonies - is that she has exposed the connection between violence and politics. East Indonesia played a much more important role in the revolution than previously assumed and that is one of the reasons why so much violence was used in Bali". Until then, the focus of historians had been mainly on Java. David Van Reybrouck states that Anne-Lot Hoek has done "interesting oral history research in Sumatra and especially Bali". Maurice Swirc wrote that he drew in particular from her publications for his prize-winning book De Indische Doofpot and calls her work "groundbreaking". According to Jan Brokken, Hoek wrote "the standard work", historian and reviewer Nadia Bouras called it "already a classic", and the non-fiction book reviewer of NRC called it "perhaps the most important history book of this year".

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The jury of the Libris History Prize described The Battle for Bali as an important contribution to the scientific and social debate on colonial politics in Indonesia. From a scientific perspective, Karwan Fatah-Black described Hoek's work as a forerunner in the academic mainstream and "groundbreaking". Her important role in stimulating the debate on violence in Indonesia was also recognized academically. In 2020, she was awarded the ASH Valorization Prize from the University of Amsterdam for her work on the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia and the decolonization of Indonesia. The Huizinga Institute devoted a workshop to her book and labeled it a fascinating work for Oral Historians.

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In the Netherlands, there is little attention for Indonesian perspectives. According to former head of research at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies Peter Romijn, and Remco Raben, many Dutch historical works and documentaries have a strongly ethnocentric perspective. Indonesian sources are hardly consulted, Indonesian experiences are not or only briefly presented, and the motivations of Indonesian actors are rarely explored. They argue that, in contrast to the above, The Battle for Bali by Anne-Lot Hoek is one of the exceptional books in which the Netherlands is confronted with the consequences of violence in general and of the victims of violence in particular, and that her book also provides room for critical perspectives. Nadia Bouras argues that the perspective of the colonized has long been ignored, but that fortunately this has changed and that The Battle for Bali shows how the colonial past clashes with the self-image that the Netherlands has had of itself.

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Marjan Schwegman acknowledged Hoek's work on the hitherto underexposed role of armed Dutch civil servants in the violence during the Indonesian war of independence. She wrote this in her farewell speech The weapons of the resistance upon her resignation as head of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

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In Hoek's dissertation committee, Indonesia expert Geoffrey B. Robinson of the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) classified her work as "important, deeply researched and intellectually significant" and Jan-Bart Gewald, former director of the African Studies Center, said that what Harvard professor Caroline Elkins did with Imperial Reckoning for Kenya, Hoek has done for Bali regarding the role of the Dutch before 1950.

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Literature / Non-fiction

In November 2021, Anne-Lot Hoek made her debut with The Battle for Bali. Imperialism, Resistance and Independence 1846–1950 at De Bezige Bij. ​

 

The Battle for Bali:

• became Best History Book of the Month on NPO Radio 1

• received an honorable mention from the jury of the Brussels Prize

• was nominated from a list of more than three hundred titles in the top 5 shortlist of the Libris History Prize 2022.

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Hoek made the Dutch four-part podcast series War in Paradise: The Battle for Bali together with Arco Gnocchi about her debut. The podcast was released as a special with the Podimo podcast Alle Geschiedenis Ooit. They want to make the war clear through personal stories from four people involved.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Books

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• De strijd om Bali. Imperialisme, verzet en onafhankelijkheid 1846–1950, Anne-Lot Hoek, Nov 2021, Amsterdam, De Bezige Bij,  ISBN 9403152311

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Book Contributions

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• Atlas van Indonesië. Een cultuurgeschiedenis van het eilandenrijk. De strijd om Bali. Vrijheidsstrijders in Gianyar, Ni Ketut Sudiani, Anne-Lot Hoek and Ni Made Frischa Aswarini, Amsterdam WBOOKS, 2023,  ISBN 9789462585737

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• Revolusi! Indonesië Onafhankelijk. Harm Stevens, Amir Sidharta, Bonnie Triyana, Marion Anker (eds.), Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, 2022,  ISBN 9789045045733

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• Nulpunt 1945. De Lage Landen een mensenleven later. Een façade van zindelijk fatsoen. De Nederlandse omgang met het koloniale verleden, Anne-Lot Hoek, Ons Erfdeel Vzw, Belgium, April 2020,  ISBN 9789079705313

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• Multatuli Jaarboek 2020. Jubileumnummer '200 jaar Multatuli', Uitgeverij Verloren, 2020,  ISBN 9789087049003

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Scientific books and publications

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• Hoek, Anne-Lot (2 February 2023). Purwanto, Bambang; Frakking, Roel; Wahid, Abdul; Van Klinken, Gerry; Eickhoff, Martijn; Yulianti; Hoogenboom, Ireen (eds.). Revolutionary Worlds: Local Perspectives and Dynamics during the Indonesian Independence War, 1945-1949. Translated by Hanafi, Taufiq. Amsterdam University Press,  ISBN 9789463727587. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.399493.11.

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• Maartje Janse & Anne-Lot Hoek. Dissenting Voices: Challenging the Colonial System. (in cooperation with E. Jansz and S. Sijsma), Bridging Humanities. (2019) Vol 1: Issue 2. Sutan Sjahrir: Indonesian revolutionary, Anne-Lot Hoek, Leiden, Brill Publishers, E-SSN 2542–5099. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/25425099-00102001

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• Maartje Janse & Anne-Lot Hoek. Dissenting Voices: Challenging the Colonial System. (in cooperation with E. Jansz and S. Sijsma), Bridging Humanities. (2019) Vol 1: Issue 2, Siebe Lijftogt: a critical voice branded a traitor, Anne-Lot Hoek, Leiden, Brill Publishers, E-SSN 2542–5099. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/25425099-00102001

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• Maartje Janse & Anne-Lot Hoek. Dissenting Voices: Challenging the Colonial System. (in cooperation with E. Jansz and S. Sijsma), Bridging Humanities. (2019) Vol 1: Issue 2, Rachmad Koesoemobroto: fighting for freedom, a life imprisoned, Anne-Lot Hoek, Leiden, Brill Publishers, E-SSN 2542–5099. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/25425099-00102001

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• Maartje Janse & Anne-Lot Hoek. Dissenting Voices: Challenging the Colonial System. (in cooperation with E. Jansz and S. Sijsma), Bridging Humanities. (2019) Vol 1: Issue 2, Cees Fasseur and his critics, Anne-Lot Hoek, Leiden, Brill Publishers, E-SSN 2542–5099. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/25425099-00102001

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• Maartje Janse & Anne-Lot Hoek. Dissenting Voices: Challenging the Colonial System. (in cooperation with E. Jansz and S. Sijsma), Bridging Humanities. (2019) Vol 1: Issue 2, The way forward, Anne-Lot Hoek, Leiden, Brill Publishers, E-SSN 2542–5099. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/25425099-00102001

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• Exploring the Dutch Empire. Agents, Networks and Institutions 1600–2000, Catia Antunes and Jos Gommans (eds.), Nodal Ndola, Robert Ross and Anne-Lot Hoek, Londen, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015,  ISBN 9781474236416, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0265691417729639a

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• From Idealism to Realism: A Social History of the Dutch in Zambia 1965–2013, Anne-Lot Hoek, African Studies Centre Leiden, 2014,  ISBN 9789054481393, WorldCat: 1235771932

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• Bricks, Mortar and Capacity Building: A Socio-Cultural History of SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, Inge Brinkman in cooperation with Anne-Lot Hoek, Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2010,  ISBN 9789004187412, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004187412.i-327