[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-39970-en":3,"doc-seo-39970-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":92},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":22,"language":23,"language_code":24,"site_id":25,"html_lang":24,"table_of_contents":26,"faqs":27,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},39970,7971461740886,"Theodore","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_3d24733baf745e90a7e4bdd5f77d97b2",8,"Research & Report","Human Rights and Anticolonial Nationalism in Sjahrir’s Indonesian Contemplations","In 1945, under the pseudonym Sjahrazad, Indonesia’s first prime minister Sutan Sjahrir and his wife Maria Duchteau published Indonesian Contemplations in Dutch, reflecting on Sjahrir’s exile and incarceration in the Dutch colonial camp Boven-Digoel during the 1930s. By analyzing the book’s critique of the Dutch empire’s legal spatialities and its imagining of an Indonesian nation-state space, the article advances two claims: the necessity of scholarly readings of Indonesian writing and a challenge to the notion that national liberation and international human rights are incompatible within anticolonial nationalism.","UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)  \nHuman Rights and Anticolonial Nationalism in Sjahrir’s Indonesian Contemplations  \nBijl, P.  \nDOI  \n10.1080/1535685X.2016.1268769  \nPublication date  \n2017  \nDocument Version  \nFinal published version  \nPublished in  \nLaw and Literature  \nLicense  \nCC BY-NC-ND  \nLink to publication  \nCitation for published version (APA):  \nBijl, P. (2017) . Human Rights and Anticolonial Nationalism in Sjahrir’s Indonesian Contemplations. Law and Literature, 29(2), 247-268.  \n[https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2016.1268769](https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2016.1268769)  \nGeneral rights  \nIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons) .  \nDisclaimer/Complaints regulations  \nIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: [https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact](https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact), or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.  \nUvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam ( [http](https://dare. uva. nl)[s](https://dare. uva. nl)[://dare. uva. nl](https://dare. uva. nl))  \nDownload date:06 Jan 2025  \nHuman Rights and Anticolonial Nationalism in Sjahrir ’s Indonesian Contemplations  \nPaul Bijl  \nAbstract, In 1945 and under the pseudonym Sjahrazad, Indonesia’s ﬁrst prime minister Sutan Sjahrir and his wife Maria Duchteau published a book in Dutch entitled Indonesian Contemplations about Sjahrir’s exile to and incarceration in the 1930s in the Dutch colonial concentration camp Boven-Digoel. Through an analysis of the book’s critique of the legal spatial ities of the Dutch empire and its imagination of the space of the Indonesian nation-state, this article makes a double argument: on the one hand, for the importance of scholarly analyses of Indonesian writing on the Dutch colonial-legal project and, on the other, against the idea that national liberation and international human rights were mutually exclusive in anticolonial nationalism.  \nKeywords, human rights, anticolonial nationalism, legal geography, colonial history, history of Indonesia, history of Europe, concentration camps, humanism  \nINTRODUCTION  \nScholarly work on legal history in colonial Indonesia (1816–1942) has focused on the various legal projects – European, indigenous, and Islamic – in this Dutch colony and on individual rights struggles by Europeans.1 Through an analysis of Sjahrazad’s Indonesian Contemplations (1945) (published in Dutch as Indonesische overpeizingen; hereafter IC), this article starts to answer a different question, namely, how Indonesians living with the Dutch colonial project have themselves written about their legal positioning, and speciﬁcally about individual rights. Recent literature in the ﬁeld of human rights studies has emphasized that the discourse on human rights as we know it today emerged only after World War II in the late 1940s,“breaking through” in the 1960s or even the 1970s.2 However, before this particular discourse on human rights took the historical stage, Indonesian subjects living in the Dutch empire had already concluded that within the Dutch colonial project rights were unequally distributed and started asking tough questions about, precisely, humanity, citizenship, and rights. In the case of Sjahrazad’s book, particularly observations about the relation between individual rights and space  \nLaw & Literature, vol . 29, issue 2, pp . 247–268. issn 1535-685X, electronic issn 1541- 260","cbCaimP52spMaQwK","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaimP52spMaQwK","pdf",330174,6,1,23,"English","en",105,"# Introduction\n## Legal History and Colonial Rights\n# Source and Framing of Indonesian Contemplations\n## Inclusive Exclusion and Exorbitant Rights","[{\"question\":\"What is Indonesian Contemplations (1945) and what event does it focus on?\",\"answer\":\"Indonesian Contemplations, published under the pseudonym Sjahrazad, centers on Sutan Sjahrir’s exile and imprisonment in the Dutch colonial concentration camp Boven-Digoel during the 1930s.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the article describe the book’s critique of the Dutch colonial legal order?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that the book critiques how Dutch legal spatialities produce physical and legal in-and exclusion, while also imagining the spatiality of the Indonesian nation-state.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the article mean by the relationship between national liberation and international human rights?\",\"answer\":\"The article argues against viewing national liberation and international human rights as mutually exclusive in anticolonial nationalism, linking rights discourse to the colonial legal project rather than treating them as separate developments.\"}]",1783088614,58,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":25,"language":24,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":87,"head_meta":89,"extra_data":91,"updated_unix":28},"human-rights-and-anticolonial-nationalism-in-sjahrirs-indonesian-contemplations","",{"@graph":36,"@context":86},[37,54,69],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,48,51],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":21},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":47},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":49,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":50},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":52,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":53},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/human-rights-and-anticolonial-nationalism-in-sjahrirs-indonesian-contemplations/39970/",4,{"url":52,"name":13,"@type":55,"author":56,"headline":13,"publisher":58,"fileFormat":61,"inLanguage":24,"description":14,"dateModified":62,"datePublished":63,"encodingFormat":61,"isAccessibleForFree":64,"interactionStatistic":65},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":57},"Person",{"url":41,"name":59,"@type":60},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-07-19","2026-07-03",true,{"@type":66,"interactionType":67,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":68},"ViewAction",{"@type":70,"mainEntity":71},"FAQPage",[72,78,82],{"name":73,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":75},"What is Indonesian Contemplations (1945) and what event does it focus on?","Question",{"text":76,"@type":77},"Indonesian Contemplations, published under the pseudonym Sjahrazad, centers on Sutan Sjahrir’s exile and imprisonment in the Dutch colonial concentration camp Boven-Digoel during the 1930s.","Answer",{"name":79,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":80},"How does the article describe the book’s critique of the Dutch colonial legal order?",{"text":81,"@type":77},"It argues that the book critiques how Dutch legal spatialities produce physical and legal in-and exclusion, while also imagining the spatiality of the Indonesian nation-state.",{"name":83,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":84},"What does the article mean by the relationship between national liberation and international human rights?",{"text":85,"@type":77},"The article argues against viewing national liberation and international human rights as mutually exclusive in anticolonial nationalism, linking rights discourse to the colonial legal project rather than treating them as separate developments.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":52,"og:type":88,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":59,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":90,"canonical":52},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":25},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":93},[94,98,102,106,111,115,120,123,128,131,135],{"id":21,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":95,"show_sort_weight":96,"slug":97},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":47,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":99,"show_sort_weight":100,"slug":101},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":53,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":103,"show_sort_weight":104,"slug":105},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":107,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":108,"show_sort_weight":109,"slug":110},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":112,"show_sort_weight":113,"slug":114},"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":116,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":117,"show_sort_weight":118,"slug":119},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":121,"slug":122},30,"research-report",{"id":124,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":125,"show_sort_weight":126,"slug":127},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":126,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":129,"show_sort_weight":126,"slug":130},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":132,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":133,"show_sort_weight":132,"slug":134},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":136,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":137,"show_sort_weight":107,"slug":138},19,"General","general"]