Colonial Mercenaries: Swiss Military Labour and the Dutch East Indies, c. 1848–1914

Abstract

This dissertation follows the traces of around 5,800 Swiss mercenaries who entered the service of the Dutch Colonial Army (KNIL) between 1848 and 1914. In doing so, it explores three closely related sets of questions. First, to what extent did these military labour migrants contribute to the formation of the Dutch colonial empire in Southeast Asia as well as to the development of a transimperial infrastructure that served to recruit and manage mercenaries for Dutch service throughout Europe. Second, this dissertation examines how these ‘Swiss Tools of Empire’ interacted with and integrated into colonised societies in the Dutch East Indies. The third set of questions addresses the multi-layered social, cultural and economic impact of these Swiss imperial careers on nineteenth-century Switzerland. In answering this far-reaching ensemble of questions, this dissertation pursues three historiographical goals. First, it expands Swiss mercenaries' opulent but temporally and spatially limited history. While most works on Swiss mercenary history focus on early modern Europe, this work points to two hitherto neglected dimensions. On the one hand, it shows that mercenary history is also part of modern Switzerland, which was founded in 1848. On the other hand, it shows that Swiss mercenaries were involved in the expansion of the Dutch colonial empire. Although they did not create this colonial empire on their own, they made a significant contribution to it. Secondly, the present work converses with recent contributions in New Imperial History by highlighting the pan-European character of colonialism. The colonial careers of the Swiss mercenaries are exemplary for the other 65,000 or so mercenaries from the territories of present-day Germany, France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Poland and Denmark. The Swiss mercenaries can be used to sketch out the importance of the Dutch Empire for the European hinterland. On the one hand, the colonial empire offered many young migrant workers the prospect of a regular income, room and board. On the other hand, the commitment of the mercenaries also left traces in their home countries. Thus, colonial pension money, disability payments and estates flowed into the remotest valleys in the Alps. Social structures such as families or circles of friends were torn apart by emigration, while others were forged anew, be it through new comradeships or through concubinage with an Indo-European or Asian woman. Colonial soldiering also left its mark at a cultural level in the European hinterland. In letters, memoirs and on postcards, the mercenaries reproduced racist mental images of colonial discourses and spread them to the lowest strata of Swiss rural and urban society. Thirdly, at a theoretical level, this work brings about a constructive dialogue between the hitherto disparate methodological approaches of New Military History and those of the New Imperial History. In the course of this dialectical confrontation, fundamental problems of these two fields of research will be discussed and, building on this, the extent to which they can mutually benefit from each other will be determined. To achieve these goals, this dissertation is divided into six chapters. After an introduction that defines this study's research objectives and scope, a chapter on the structural change of the transimperial mercenary market of the nineteenth century follows. In this, the Dutch demand for mercenaries is brought into relation with the Swiss supply. The subsequent chapter follows the traces of the young men from the moment they made their decision to emigrate, through the troop depots in the Netherlands and their service in the Dutch East Indies, until their discharge or death. This chapter focuses on the motives as well as the social worlds in which the mercenaries moved. Instead of the men, the fourth chapter follows the money flows that extended from the Dutch East Indies to rural Switzerland. Signature bonuses, pension payments and bequests are used to explore the role of colonial money for the lower social classes and to trace the development of a transnational bureaucracy. Chapter five examines the ‘colonial gaze’ of the mercenaries and explores the production of colonial images and stereotypes through letters and memoirs, and of its dissemination within Swiss society. Finally, in a brief conclusion, the historiographical goals formulated at the beginning are discussed once again and the limitations of the present work are discussed.