Anne-Lot Hoek (born 17 June 1978) is a Dutch historian, independent researcher and author. She writes historical non-fiction, articles and academic publications, with a focus on colonial history and the independence struggle in South-Africa, Namibia and Indonesia.
Biography Anne-Lot Hoek was born in The Hague and attended the Adelbert College gymnasium from 1991 to 1997.
Studies Hoek studied history at the University of Amsterdam and political history at the University of Perugia in Italy. She obtained her master's degree at the faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam and went on to earn a PhD in 2023 for her dissertation (The Battle for Bali. Violence, Resistance and Colonial State Formation 1846–1950).
Career Hoek has lived and worked in Amsterdam, Windhoek and Cape Town. In 2021 she launched her debut (De Bezige Bij), for which she had interviewed 128 people involved on Bali and in the Netherlands in addition to extensive archival research.
During her seven years of research she discovered, for example, that the Dutch army built a tangsi-systemDe Indische Doofpot. Waarom Nederlandse oorlogsmisdaden in Indonesie nooit zijn vervolgd, Maurice Swirc, p.507, de Arbeiderspers, 8 feb 2022, of 50 prison camps on Bali in which torture and executions were a systematic phenomenon. Her account shows how the battle for the island should be understood within a long tradition of anti-colonial violence and reveals how after World War II the island, as part of the federal state of East-Indonesia, played a key role in Dutch decolonization policy. Up until that point the focus of historians had mainly been on Java. Hoek's book also addresses the more general aspects of the decolonization of the Dutch East Indies.
resulted in a set of questions from the House of Representatives in the Netherlands, and articles in Dutch national newspapers like NRC Handelsblad, the Trouw, Nederlands Dagblad and de Volkskrant. It became national news on television and radio with subsequently RTL Nieuws and NPO Radio 1. TV channel Omroep West made a special. She received book reviews in Dutch national newspapers such as and as well as in history-related media such as and , and in Belgium in De lage landen ('The Low Countries'). Preview publications appeared in and De Groene Amsterdammer, and she was interviewed in Dutch national and regional newspapers such as Algemeen Dagblad and , and on national radio in , and OVT as she appeared on Buitenhof (TV series).
From 2005 to 2007 Hoek worked at the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASC) and performed research in Bolivia, Zambia, Cameroon and Mali.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, In 2012 she again carried out research in Zambia.From Idealism to Realism: A Social History of the Dutch in Zambia 1965–2013, Anne-Lot Hoek, African Studies Centre, 2014, At that point she was working as a freelance journalist contributing to Vrij Nederland, and later NRC Handelsblad and De Groene Amsterdammer. Since 2012 she has written more than 32 articles on Indonesia's colonial past.
In her first article on Indonesia she contributed to the request for rehabilitation for three marines who had refused to set fire to a kampong in reprisal.De brandende kampongs van Generaal Spoor, Remy Limpach, p.644-645, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 14 oktober 2016, De Indische Doofpot. Waarom Nederlandse oorlogsmisdaden in Indonesie nooit zijn vervolgd, Maurice Swirc, p.122-123, 125, de Arbeiderspers, 8 feb 2022, A few months later, a motion to this effect was submitted in the House of Representatives. In 2013, Hoek conducted archival research which revealed for the first time that the Netherlands had committed war crimes in Bali. She also interviewed several veterans who were willing to confirm these findings. This was picked up by national and international media outlets, and other authors since.De Indische Doofpot. Waarom Nederlandse oorlogsmisdaden in Indonesie nooit zijn vervolgd, Maurice Swirc, p.88, de Arbeiderspers, 8 feb 2022, De brandende kampongs van Generaal Spoor, Remy Limpach, p.382-383, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 14 oktober 2016,
In 2014, she discovered archive documents showing that the Dutch authorities ran Bali as their private kingdom during the Indonesian War of Independence. A damning official investigation report into corruption and intimidation in Bali was suppressed, as was the man who wrote it.De brandende kampongs van Generaal Spoor, Remy Limpach, p.360, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 14 oktober 2016,
In 2015, she stated that historical institutes in the Netherlands had neglected their task for 65 years. She also made headlines in with an article about a Swiss dissertation that refuted the excessive violence research from 1969.De brandende kampongs van Generaal Spoor, Remy Limpach, p.14, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 14 oktober 2016, In 2016, Hoek delved deeper into the question of why Dutch historians of the previous generation, such as the head of the excessive violence research Cees Fasseur, had taken an evasive attitude towards the actual violence in Indonesia. According to two-fold Libris History Prize winner Martin Bossenbroek the article contributed to a paradigm shift, a historiographical regime change.De wraak van Diponegoro. Begin en einde van Nederlands-Indië, Martin Bossenbroek, p. 13-14, 19, Athenaeum, 2020, Since then, Hoek has been seen as one of the persons at the baseWim Berkelaar interviewt Anne-Lot Hoek over de shortlist Libris Geschiedenisprijs nominatie van De strijd om Bali tijdens het geschiedenisfestival in de Philharmonie in Haarlem, 15 October 2022 of a new generation of historians who confront the Netherlands and its politicians with the truth.
Early 2016, Hoek traveled to Indonesia for research in Rengat on Sumatra to investigate an attack on the city in January 1949. In the Netherlands the official death toll since the Excessive Violence nota of 1969 was 80, while in Rengat there was a statue to 1,500 victims with the names of 186. In addition to interviewing witnesses, she performed research in the Dutch National Archive and discovered a range of previously unknown sources from 1949; a list with the names of 120 'fallen civilians', a statement by the Dutch Resident that the death toll was 400, and an article in a Chinese newspaper referring to more than 1,000 victims. By comparing these with sources from the Netherlands and Indonesia a new absolute minimal death count of 270 individuals emerged.
The research resulted in two articles for De Indische Doofpot. Waarom Nederlandse oorlogsmisdaden in Indonesie nooit zijn vervolgd, Maurice Swirc, p. 147-148, de Arbeiderspers, 8 feb 2022, and a radio report, The Rengat Massacre, on NPO Radio 1. It was subsequently picked up by national media such as Algemeen Dagblad, de Volkskrant, Trouw, the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting and RTL Nieuws. Human rights lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld calls the events in the research of Hoek in a reaction 'from the same size and severity as the Rawagede massacre and the massacre on South-Sulawesi' (the South Sulawesi campaign of 1946–1947). It was one of the deadliest Dutch military operations in Sumatra, possibly the largest individual war crime in the entire war according to David Van Reybrouck.Sitompul, Martin. Translation by Prihandini Anisa. A Day of Terror in Rengat , Historia.id, 13 February 2016.Revolusi. Indonesië en het ontstaan van de moderne wereld, David van Reybrouck, p.468 Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2020, Hoek also made a two-part series about Rengat for Inside Indonesia.
One of the widows from kampong Skip in Rengat, whose police office husband was executed, was compensated in 2017 by the Dutch state with an amount of Euro20,000, which was only to be granted if it could be proved that the person was executed by the Dutch military during an action "of comparable severity and nature as the Rawagede massacre and (or) South-Sulawesi". The BBC in Indonesia dedicated an extensive article to her research on Sumatra and Bali and it was picked up further.The Dutch Empire between Ideas and Practice, 1600–2000, René Koekkoek, Anne-Isabelle Richard, Arthur Weststeijn, Comparatively Exceptional: The Paradoxes of Twentieth Century Dutch Imperialism and Decolonization, Jennifer L. Foray, p.96 (105)
The Rengat article was published in February 2016. A few months later, in July 2016, the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and The Netherlands Institute of Military History (NIMH) were informed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs they should start to prepare for a possible switch in the stance by the government. Minister Bert Koenders got convinced that a large scale research was needed, and also at General Affairs, headed by prime minister Mark Rutte ‘things were moving’.
In October 2016 the Swiss dissertation was published in Dutch. At the end of 2016, Bert Koenders wrote to the House of Representatives that there is "sufficient reason for a broad-based investigation" into the violence used in Indonesia in the period 1945–1949. Member of the House of Representatives Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, who had been lobbying in favor of the investigation, told Hoek in an interview that the political approval for the government-financed research: Independence, decolonization, violence and war in Indonesia, 1945–1950 (Dutch: "ODGOI"-research) in the House was for 75% a result of new facts stemming from journalism and lawsuits against the Dutch state, and for 25% based upon the earlier mentioned Swiss dissertation. After new facts about this period have emerged 'drop by drop', the book publication of the Swiss dissertation in October 2016 was the proverbial 'splash' that made the already full bucket overflow.The battle for Bali. Imperialism, Resistance and Independence 1846–1950. Chapter 16, footnote 53, Anne-Lot Hoek Hoek responded to the cabinet decision in Nieuwsuur.
In 2016 and 2017 she was a fellow at the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies and journalist-in-residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS), both institutes of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Between 2017 and 2019 she wrote an article for Revolutionary Worlds as part of the "ODGOI"-research.Hoek, Anne-Lot, translated by Taufiq Hanafi. "State-Making Is War-Making: Military Violence and the Establishment of the State of East Indonesia in 1946.” Revolutionary Worlds: Local Perspectives and Dynamics during the Indonesian Independence War, 1945–1949, edited by Roel Frakking, Bambamg Purwanto, Yulianti, Abdul Wahid et al., Amsterdam University Press, 2023, pp. 179–98. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.399493.11. Accessed 3 Jan. 2024,
According to aforementioned Martin Bossenbroek, a new phenomenon in the Netherlands were articles that explicitly highlighted the Indonesian perspective on the colonial past. Between 2016 and 2019 Hoek advocated for recognition of the political struggle by the leaders of the Indonesian fight for independence, and other dissenting voices that had challenged the colonial system. In addition, she regularly campaigned for Dutch recognition of the date of Indonesian independence. In 2018 she called upon prime minister Mark Rutte and King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands in NRC Handelsblad to take responsibility and make a large gesture for the fact that the Netherlands had picked up their weapons against Indonesia and that their long-term desire for independence had been structurally ignored. Early 2020, she and another historian advocated on Dutch national television in Nieuwsuur in favor of an apology by the Dutch king during his state visit to Indonesia. Contrary to expectations, the apology came nevertheless. Hoek responded again in Nieuwsuur.