Stop them from coming
In the chaotic period until the transfer of sovereignty in 1949, 110,000 Dutch and Dutch East Indian people were evacuated to the Netherlands for their safety and to regain their strength. They were mainly the elderly and the widows and orphans of war victims. Most remained in the Netherlands for good. After the transfer of sovereignty, all non-Indonesian people had to choose between Dutch or Indonesian nationality (Warga Negara).

Several hundred thousand more Dutch and Dutch East Indian people left for the ‘mother country’, which they were often seeing for the first time. The Dutch government did everything it could to stop them from coming. After all, the post-war Netherlands was impoverished and there was a great housing shortage. Because of the conditions in Indonesia, the government nonetheless allowed new groups in time and again.

Moluccans
In 1950 and 1951, the first to arrive were civil servants and members of the military. Among them were some 12,500 Moluccans who were taken to the Netherlands ‘temporarily’ for their safety, as Indonesia refused to recognise an independent Moluccan republic.

Anti-Dutch feeling
Between 1952 and 1957, many Dutch East Indians followed, because anti-Dutch feeling was growing in Indonesia. In 1957, the Indonesian government decided that all Dutch nationals had to leave. In the years to come, tens of thousands of people who regretted their initial decision to adopt Indonesian nationality arrived in the Netherlands.

The final major group of ‘repatriates’ arrived in 1962, when New Guinea -- which up until then had been a part of the Netherlands -- also became Indonesian.