Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Glossary
- Introduction
- Chapter One American Foreign Policy and the End of Dutch Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia: An Overview
- Chapter Two “It’s 1776 in Indonesia”
- Chapter Three The United States and the Dutch East Indies: the Celebration of Capitalism in West and East during the 1920’s
- Chapter Four American Visions of Colonial Indonesia from the Great Depression to the Growing Fear of Japan,1930-1938
- Chapter Five The Specter of Japan and America’s Recognition of the Indonesian Archipelago’s Strategic Importance,1938-1945
- Chapter Six The Politics of Independence in the Republik Indonesia and International Reactions,1945-1949
- Chapter Seven The Emerging Cold War and American Perspectives on Decolonization in Southeast Asia in the Postwar Era
- Chapter Eight Indonesia’s Struggle for Independence and the Outside World: England, Australia, and the United States in Search of a Peaceful Solution
- Chapter Nine Armed Conflict,the United Nations’Good Offices Committee, and the Renville Agreement: America’s Involvement in Trying to Reach a Settlement
- Chapter Ten Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia and Indonesian Politics:US Foreign Policy Adrift during the Course of 1948
- Chapter Eleven Rescuing the Republic’s Moderates from Soviet Communism: Washington’s Conversion to Unequivocal Support of Indonesia’s Independence
- Epilogue
- Archival Sources and Selective Bibliography
- Sources of Illustrations
- Notes
- Index
Chapter Four - American Visions of Colonial Indonesia from the Great Depression to the Growing Fear of Japan,1930-1938
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Glossary
- Introduction
- Chapter One American Foreign Policy and the End of Dutch Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia: An Overview
- Chapter Two “It’s 1776 in Indonesia”
- Chapter Three The United States and the Dutch East Indies: the Celebration of Capitalism in West and East during the 1920’s
- Chapter Four American Visions of Colonial Indonesia from the Great Depression to the Growing Fear of Japan,1930-1938
- Chapter Five The Specter of Japan and America’s Recognition of the Indonesian Archipelago’s Strategic Importance,1938-1945
- Chapter Six The Politics of Independence in the Republik Indonesia and International Reactions,1945-1949
- Chapter Seven The Emerging Cold War and American Perspectives on Decolonization in Southeast Asia in the Postwar Era
- Chapter Eight Indonesia’s Struggle for Independence and the Outside World: England, Australia, and the United States in Search of a Peaceful Solution
- Chapter Nine Armed Conflict,the United Nations’Good Offices Committee, and the Renville Agreement: America’s Involvement in Trying to Reach a Settlement
- Chapter Ten Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia and Indonesian Politics:US Foreign Policy Adrift during the Course of 1948
- Chapter Eleven Rescuing the Republic’s Moderates from Soviet Communism: Washington’s Conversion to Unequivocal Support of Indonesia’s Independence
- Epilogue
- Archival Sources and Selective Bibliography
- Sources of Illustrations
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The decade of the 1920's unleashed a gold rush in the Dutch East Indies.These were the proverbial fat years, and in the imagination of shortsighted Western residents, this era of prosperity would last forever.Rather than preparing for the lean years that might follow, Europeans and Americans dreamed they could defy the Old Testament's warning.Almost all Westerners in Sumatra who worked on rubber or tobacco plantations or in the expanding oil industry had grown accustomed to a life of hard work and generous financial rewards.They approached their ample incomes and their equally lavish spending habits with an attitude of “easy come, easy go,”as Madelon Székely-Lulofs wrote in her controversial novel, Rubber.When rubber prices started to drop ominously after 1925, she suggested that many heedless Europeans and Americans were “devoured by an unbridled passion for speculation.”
The story from the Hebrew Bible,however,would soon prove to be prophetic. The years of astronomical profits were followed by a decade of scarcity and suffering. In the wake of the stock market crash on Wall Street during the autumn of 1929, the Great Depression gradually attained worldwide proportions. Initially, the collapse of the stock market seemed to touch only the wealthiest speculators in the United States,whose handsome profits,in many instances,were reduced to a pittance. In the daily lives of ordinary people across the vast North American continent, though, trains continued to run on schedule and the shelves of grocery stores were as well-stocked as before Wall Street's financial collapse.American farmers, whether on the Great Plains of the Midwest and in the Western or Southern regions of country, did not immediately worry about losing their cattle ranches or their corn, wheat, and cotton fields, nor did the average American worker harbor a sudden anxiety about the security of his or her employment. Banks opened on time and small-time depositors remained confident that their life savings were safe in local banks. As with previous financial panics that had shaken the capitalist system, the initial expectation was that the American economy would regain its balance and profitability once the super-rich investors in the stock market had absorbed their losses.
However, the stock market crash of 1929 turned out to be much more than a temporary financial slump.
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- American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/IndonesiaUS Foreign Policy and Indonesian Nationalism 1920–1949, pp. 83 - 99Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2002