Colonialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was intertwined with the rise of global communications. New communications technologies were important “tools of empire” that facilitated faster flows of goods, people, and information between metropoles and peripheries, which stimulated overseas expansion of European powers and bolstered colonial connections.Footnote 1 On the other hand, colonial power structures had a great impact on the organisation of global media. In contrast with the digital world wide web of today, these means of communication were not open, because all sorts of institutions decided who had access to them, and who did not.Footnote 2 Also, the emergence of wireless radio as a long-range mass medium in the decades after the First World War was closely connected to the global history of empire. Pioneering work in the development of intercontinental radio broadcasting was done in the Netherlands, a small European country that at the time owned one of the largest overseas empires, the lion’s share of which was the Dutch East Indies. This complex status in global affairs prompted the fear that the Netherlands would lose its colonial possessions in Southeast Asia during the First World War, and the Dutch experiment with radio broadcasting was a direct result of this sense of crisis. Many people involved in this enterprise were linked to the so-called “colonial lobby,” which argued for closer ties between the Netherlands and the Indies. They considered radio a powerful medium to distribute propaganda for their cause worldwide via the ether.
This article analyses the rise of Dutch intercontinental radio in the interwar years, by probing how this new medium interacted with the power hierarchies of the Dutch empire, and addressing the broad question: how did radio function as a “tool of empire”? To answer this question, I focus on the Philips Omroep Holland Indië (Philips Broadcasting Company Holland Indies, or PHOHI), a station founded in 1927 to transmit radio from the Netherlands to its colonies, mainly to the Indies. PHOHI was not the only Dutch station that operated in the Indonesian archipelago, however. Different groups of radio amateurs in the Indies, both Dutch and Indonesian, experimented with broadcasting in the 1920s, and from 1934 onwards a regional medium-wave station called Nederlandsch-Indische Radio Omroep Maatschappij (NIROM) provided a platform for these programmes and regulated them. NIROM reached a varied audience and soon inaugurated two separate programmes for “Western” and “Eastern” listeners. Research suggests that NIROM enlarged the agency of Indonesians on the colonial airwaves, a topic that has great relevance for the study of anticolonial nationalism.Footnote 3 In contrast, PHOHI in its early years primarily reached out to Dutch colonial expats, who made up but a small proportion of the total population.Footnote 4 This (literally Eurocentric) case study of the PHOHI thus highlights the role of radio as an intercontinental medium intended to promote a form of “Dutchness.”Footnote 5
Until now, publications on the early days of Dutch colonial radio have focussed on the role of engineers responsible for the technological innovationsFootnote 6 and the institutional make-up of radio stations.Footnote 7 I extensively make use of these books, which provide helpful overviews of the topics they describe. However, they lack reflection on the question as to how radio and colonial power hierarchies in the Dutch empire related to each other; nor do they consider the contents of the broadcasts. This article attempts to address this lacuna by analysing how political considerations, both international and domestic, influenced PHOHI as an organisation and by exploring how this institutional setting affected the programme. This approach is inspired by the so-called “new imperial history,” an ever-growing body of literature on overseas empires in which “connectivity” between the colonial metropoles and peripheries is a key element.Footnote 8 This conceptual focus has been particularly fruitful in research on information networks.Footnote 9 Recent work shows that such insights from the international debate can be successfully incorporated in the study of Dutch imperial history.Footnote 10 On the other hand, because PHOHI was one of the first intercontinental broadcasting stations in history, this case study also has relevance for international scholarly debates on the related histories of radio as a global medium and imperialism.
Although the Netherlands was a forerunner in colonial radio broadcasting, it was certainly not unique, as several other European countries also sought to use the medium as a tool to strengthen their imperial bonds. The most famous example is the Empire Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which also transmitted from the metropole to overseas territories, making it an interesting point of reference. Recent literature on French and Portuguese colonial broadcasting suggests that these empires lacked such an intercontinental infrastructure and that the local radio stations in the periphery were the most important institutions, which were difficult for procolonial elites (official and non-official) to control from the metropole.Footnote 11 Both PHOHI and the Empire Service had a more centralised structure, as their broadcasting facilities were based in the metropole, which enabled the creation of programming that was primarily meant for colonial expats and contained procolonial propaganda. There were, however, also significant institutional differences as the Empire Service received a monopoly on intercontinental broadcasting and full funding from the British government, while PHOHI was a company that depended on private funds and did not receive a formal monopoly. These institutional aspects are relevant when assessing the impact of radio propaganda. In his seminal history of the BBC, Simon Potter argues that, despite its strong institutional position, the corporation did not succeed in broadcasting a homogeneous view on what imperial unity should entail. Neither was its programme interpreted the same way by listeners throughout the empire.Footnote 12 The archives of PHOHI reveal that such issues were even more urgent in the debate about Dutch colonial radio.Footnote 13
This prompts a more fundamental question: how did the goals and organisation of PHOHI shape the actual broadcasts? As a matter of fact, the greatest challenge of studying historic radio is to assess its content, because radio waves fade away and leave no historical record. This invisibility must not obscure the fact that radio was an influential medium in the late colonial age. Arguing for a “cultural history” of French colonial radio, Rebecca Scales remarks that historians of empire have too often portrayed “imperialism as a fundamental visual enterprise.” Scales invites us to look at the available material in another way. Although the actual radio signals are long gone, several written sources that can help us understand how colonial elites used auditory culture to strengthen their empires in the interwar years.Footnote 14 Considering the PHOHI case, there is plenty of relevant material to study.Footnote 15 The last section of this article explores one particular source: PHOHI publications containing selected excerpts from letters written by listeners of the station in the Indies. These publications by no means reflect the general opinion about radio in the Dutch East Indies. PHOHI’s focus on Dutch expats meant that these volumes hardly contain indigenous voices. In addition, PHOHI had a marked purpose with these publications as it wanted to mobilise support and money for its operations, thus they cannot be taken for granted as reliable source for the opinions of Dutch colonial expats. Still, they contain interesting information about certain broadcasts that PHOHI thought were popular and that it believed contributed to a greater sense of unity within the Dutch empire, a form of “Dutchness” even.
To fully understand this latter issue, it is important to consider Dutch historiography as well, particularly the debates on the multi-layered concept “neutrality.” This article shows that this concept has to be critically analysed in order to grasp its historical significance, by making a distinction between two different meanings. First, the complex international status of a small state with a big empire was central to the minds of Dutch colonials from the late nineteenth century up until the Second World War.Footnote 16 In order to preserve its position as a colonial power, the Dutch government, with broad support from Dutch society, adhered to a strict policy of neutrality, which meant no alliances with the great powers or open hostility towards other European countries. Considering the geopolitical situation, this attitude seems inescapable, and a prominent author writing on the history of Dutch foreign policy considers “neutrality” to be a “constant factor.”Footnote 17 It is important, however, to critically assess this term, as Dutch policymaking was not only a matter of realpolitik, it was an ideological construct too. After all, under the guise of neutrality the Dutch fostered a sense of racial superiority that legitimised colonial rule in the Indies.
Moreover, in the interwar years “neutrality” had another meaning too. In that period, society in the Netherlands became increasing stratified along ideological lines, a process known as “pillarisation.” There were three main “pillars” at the time—Orthodox Protestant, Catholic, and Social-Democratic—all of which had their own political parties, schools, social clubs, and—especially important here—press organs, including newly founded radio corporations.Footnote 18 Liberals in the Netherlands had a problematic relationship with pillarisation, which they thought was detrimental to the unity and strength of the nation. Instead, they argued against “party propaganda” and in favour of ideological “neutrality” to safeguard the “general interest.” Paradoxically, to propagate this principle, different groups of Liberals organised institutions that resembled those of the main pillars.Footnote 19 This article focuses on conservative Liberals, many of whom were connected to colonial business elites, who organised to influence Indies policy. They argued that ideological stratification in the Indies was even more dangerous than in the Netherlands as it would divide the Dutch colonial community internally, damaging their dominant position in the archipelago. Moreover, if indigenous groups, such as Muslims, would organise in a similar way, it could lead to religious and even racial violence, threatening social order, procolonial Liberals feared. Also, here it is important to realise that behind the common-sense arguments there was a biased vision of the Netherlands and its position in the world. The bottom line of these views was that a strong and unified Dutch empire in Southeast Asia was vital for the well-being of the nation. By addressing the multiple meanings of neutrality, geopolitical and ideological, this article provides a critical perspective on the colonial propaganda Dutch broadcasters sent into the ether during the interwar years.
The emergence of Dutch colonial radio
At first sight, the First World War was not a significant event in the history of the Netherlands and its empire because the country officially remained neutral. The government steered away from an alliance with any of the warring powers, trying to appease them all. As a result of this diplomatic balancing act, the Netherlands escaped the slaughter of the Western Front in Europe and successfully guarded its territorial integrity, both in the metropole and in the colonies. In traditional historiography, the Netherlands is often portrayed as an island of tranquillity in a swirling ocean of violence and bloodshed, a topic not worth studying. In recent years, this view of the Netherlands during the Great War is under revision, with scholars assessing the impact of the conflict on various sectors of Dutch domestic society.Footnote 20 Moreover, the overseas parts of the Dutch realm were severely affected when the British installed a naval blockade of the Netherlands and the Indies, and at one point during the war checked all ships for contraband. This measure had a marked negative impact on Dutch colonial trade as a whole. In turn, the situation led to a severe economic crisis in the Indonesian archipelago, and on several islands food riots and other disturbances caused great problems for the colonial regime and provided a stimulus for Indonesian nationalism.Footnote 21
To make things worse for Dutch colonials, the British also severely hampered the lines of communication between the Netherlands and the Indies. Most important, the British controlled all operational telegraph lines to the archipelago. Around 1870, the Dutch government had granted the British a concession to operate intercontinental telegraph communications rather than trying to set up an independent connection, which they considered too costly. As a result, the British had full control over all telegraph messages coming from and to the Indies. In peacetime, this was an efficient way of operating Dutch colonial communications, but during the war, the British installed heavy censorship and prioritized other messages, which meant that often they simply did not pass on Dutch signals. Although it appears that the British never cut off communications entirely, the Dutch could not rely on this medium anymore.Footnote 22 Moreover, the sense of being cut off had great effects on the official mind of the Dutch empire, sometimes quite literally. J. P. Graaf van Limburg Stirum, who became governor-general of the East Indies in 1916, often despaired during the first years of his term in office. Not being able to consult with the government in The Hague, he felt like the “umbilical cord” between the Netherlands and the colony in the East had been cut. His biographers consider this sense of colonial isolation and crisis to be a contributing factor for the decision by Limburg Stirum to make significant concessions to Indonesian nationalists in November 1918.Footnote 23
The situation in the First World War, however, did not simply foster defeatism amongst Dutch colonial elites. In fact, Limburg Stirum’s policies, which in the eyes of many people were too lenient (or too “ethical” as it was called then), caused much controversy in both the Indies and the Netherlands in the years that followed. The interwar era saw the rise of authoritarian policies, installed by the Indies government in Batavia and the Dutch government in The Hague, that led to outright repression of the Indonesian nationalist movement from the late 1920s onwards.Footnote 24 This shift in policy was supported by a powerful colonial lobby, led by influential businessmen who propagated the idea that the ties between the Netherlands and the Indies needed to be strengthened. They called their ideal the Rijkseenheidsgedachte (freely translated, the empire unity idea) and they used the basic principle that the Netherlands could not do without its colony in the Indonesian archipelago, a sentiment that was captured in the aphorism: “Indies torn, calamity born.”Footnote 25 In order to achieve their goals, the main sponsors of the Rijkseenheid movement, who were wealthy executives of major colonial companies, provided great sums of money to initiatives to increase awareness of the Dutch public about the overseas territorial possessions in the East, such as the Colonial Institute.Footnote 26 In addition, they financed projects that aimed to bolster the Dutch colonial presence in the Indonesian archipelago, in order to cement the ties between centre and periphery and increase the unity of the empire.
In this respect, procolonial lobbyists and opinion-makers during the interwar years were optimistic about the technological developments of the age they lived in. To use a contemporary truism: the distance between the Netherlands and its overseas possessions seemed to melt away. The advent of great ocean liners and aviation significantly reduced the travel time between Europe and Southeast Asia. Moreover, these means of transportation appealed to the public imagination, creating romantic visions of global travel.Footnote 27 Another technology that appealed to a wide audience, both within and outside of official circles, was radio technology. In the Netherlands, there was a particular interest in this technology, as a result of the traumatic experience of the communications crisis during the First World War. Wireless was to provide the Netherlands with an infrastructure that did not depend on foreign telegraph cables. Prior to 1914, the Dutch government had invested relatively little in radio technology, but in 1917 it allocated millions of guilders to set up an intercontinental wireless connection to beat the British telegraph cables. This did not succeed before the war ended, and in 1923 a direct long-wave radiotelegraphy service was put into use.Footnote 28
Meanwhile, short-wave technology developed rapidly as it proved to be more efficient and reliable. Moreover, via modulation of radio waves it was possible to transmit sound via this technology, which enabled broadcasting. The most significant experiments in this field were carried out by the Philips Company in Eindhoven. Its CEO, Anton Philips, saw great commercial opportunities for transcontinental radio broadcasting and made it a top priority. Engineers in the Philips factory endlessly experimented with short-wave wireless in their laboratory, trying to establish a solid connection with the Indies. On the evening of 11 March 1927, they played a record in front of a microphone linked to a transmitter and the next day they received a telegraph message from a radio amateur in Bandung (Java), about 12.000 kilometres away: he had received their signal loud and clear. This was the first time that sound had been transported over such a long distance via wireless.Footnote 29 In the months that followed, more successful tests were conducted with the Philips transmitter, which became known by the code PCJ.Footnote 30 On 28 April, the Philips engineers relayed a live concert from the Amsterdam Concert Hall, the orchestra performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, including the famous choir “Ode an die Freude.” Anton Philips himself introduced the broadcast to listeners in the Dutch overseas territories describing it as a small but telling example of what radio was capable of. The Philips Company was flooded with enthusiastic reactions from listeners from different places in the Dutch empire and beyond, as the signal had been received worldwide.Footnote 31 The time had come to inaugurate the Dutch colonial radio service.
The official start of Philips short-wave radio transmissions was a royal affair. On 31 May 1927, Queen Wilhelmina and Princess Juliana came to the Philips factory to inaugurate the broadcasting service to the Dutch colonies. They made two speeches each, to the West Indies and to the East Indies, which were steeped in the discourse of the Rijkseenheid movement. The queen’s speech to the Indonesian archipelago, addressed to Dutch expats there, started with a greeting from “heart to heart.” She continued with giving a short historical overview of the ties between the Netherlands and the Indies, from the pioneering days of the VOC ships in the seventeenth century to the advent of new technology in the twentieth. Although distance had been reduced as a result of the technological progress, she admired the people who left the Netherlands to help develop the Indies, leaving family and friends behind. She consoled them by praising the tasks they performed in the colony and by asserting that radio was the “meaningful embodiment of my hearty wish that the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies will be able to understand each other better.”Footnote 32
Procolonial Dutch newspapers repeated these words with gusto, emphasising the importance of unity in the empire and the civilising mission. The editors of such newspapers also praised the Dutch radio pioneers for another reason. Thanks to their work, the Netherlands did not depend on foreign powers to facilitate its colonial communications anymore. On the contrary, in the summer of 1927 the Philips Company relayed the signal of the overseas program of the BBC as the transmitter of the latter corporation in Daventry was not powerful enough yet. Although this situation lasted only a short time, it sparked bouts of national pride in the Dutch press, with journalists eagerly referring to opinion-makers in Britain who invoked images of seventeenth-century ships of the VOC conquering the world seas. According to this imagery, in the twentieth century the Netherlands ruled the airwaves.Footnote 33 The euphoria about the 1927 colonial radio connection can be explained because wireless technology ensured that no foreign power could tamper with the Dutch lines of communication, which was a great geopolitical asset that, contemporaries believed, would safeguard the country’s policy of neutrality in the future. The moment of euphoria, however, was short-lived. After the triumph of the queen’s speech, there was the difficult question as how to organise colonial radio broadcasting in the future, a question that led to a standstill of the project that lasted for years. Conflicting ideas about ideological neutrality were key here.
PHOHI
In the Spring of 1927, a few months before the queen’s inaugural speech, Anton Philips established contact with prominent colonial entrepreneurs and gathered a large amount of capital to set up a broadcasting company to exploit the radio connection with the Indies: the Philips Omroep Holland Indië. Philips and its partner company, Nederlandsche Seintoestellen Fabriek (NSF), were the main investors, followed by the largest Dutch colonial trading company (Nederlandsche Handel Maatschappij) and a prominent colonial bank (Nederlandsch-Indische Handelsbank). In addition, dozens of cultivation companies, trading houses, banks, shipping firms, and individual businessmen joined the venture. In total, PHOHI raised more than fl. 700.000 as a starting capital from these shares.Footnote 34 The board of commissioners consisted of representatives of the ten biggest shareholders (mainly connected to the biggest Dutch companies in the Indies), supplemented with three prominent figures from colonial employers’ federations.Footnote 35 Considering the list of PHOHI participants, it is safe to conclude that the broadcasting company was dominated by the Dutch colonial business lobby.
Anton Philips’s motives for setting up PHOHI mainly seem to have been commercial as he hoped that this enterprise would boost the sales of his radio hardware in overseas territories.Footnote 36 Moreover, PHOHI enabled the Philips Company, in cooperation with the NSF, to further experiment with intercontinental radio broadcasting. In the years that followed, engineers in Eindhoven developed new transmitters, located at the large PHOHI station in the town of Huizen (near the shores of the IJsselmeer, about a hundred kilometres from Eindhoven). The station, that was equipped with huge antennas, became a showcase of Dutch cutting-edge radio technology, powered by Philips. This image was advertised in several publications, featuring pictures of the impressive radio masts against the backdrop of the endless Dutch skies.Footnote 37 Many of Philips’s associates in the PHOHI-project had different interests, however. Most of his colleagues on the board of commissioners had close ties with the Rijkseenheid movement. In the following years, they repeatedly insisted they had founded PHOHI out of patriotism, not to make money. They had pledged large sums to the radio company without expecting a return on their investment, although they expressed the hope that the station would be able to support itself financially in the long term. According to them, the main goal of PHOHI was to strengthen the Dutch colonial presence in the East Indies.
On 7 June 1927, barely a week after the royal inauguration of the radio connection to the East Indies, the PHOHI board of commissioners sent a memorandum to the government, in which they set out the goals of the broadcasting company. The transmission of sound via radio waves, they argued, would be of great geostrategic and commercial value, as it enabled direct communication between high-ranking officials and business leaders in the Netherlands and the Indies via telephone. But there was also a great public interest involved—and this was PHOHI’s priority. The possibility of hearing voices from the Netherlands would remove an important psychological barrier for many Dutch citizens to live and work in the overseas territories in the East, a place that was far removed from their loved ones. In other words, the radio connection would stimulate migration and as such strengthen the “Dutch element” in the Indies.Footnote 38 In another memorandum, the PHOHI commissioners referred to the enthusiasm of Dutch colonials in the Indies about the first short-wave broadcasts by Philips. According to them, these reactions showed that there was a great desire for a radio station “that permanently will be able to supply the colonies with good music, as well as lectures and up-to-the-minute reports.”Footnote 39 From the start, PHOHI presented itself as an organisation that fulfilled a patriotic duty by strengthening the ties between the Netherlands and its colonies and, moreover, accommodated common Dutch expats who craved for a lifeline with their country of origins.
In the following years, PHOHI continued to present itself in this fashion, emphasising the public role it fulfilled. This was the central idea in the draft concession that PHOHI submitted to the government in the summer of 1927.Footnote 40 In the concession and in other documents, music is mentioned as the main type of broadcast, supplemented by “communications of commercial, educational, relaxing, useful and edifying nature.”Footnote 41 Such quotes indicate that PHOHI commissioners thought that the company was to provide the Dutch public in the colonies with a radio programme that would make their lives as agreeable as possible by taking their minds of day-to-day worries. Political broadcasts were not to be allowed on the airwaves of PHOHI, as they would spoil the leisure time of colonials. PHOHI commissioners particularly wanted to prevent the Social-Democratic broadcasting company, VARA, from getting airtime. They feared that its “perfidious” broadcasts could mobilise the working classes in the Indonesian archipelago, leading to social disturbances, or even revolution.Footnote 42 The commissioners were also suspicious of religious broadcasts, which could lead to unwanted divisions in colonial society. Church services and religious music were to be allowed, but missionary statements were not, as these could lead to tensions between the different denominations within the Dutch colonial community and, more generally, to hatred between colonial Christians and indigenous Muslims in the Indies.Footnote 43 In order to safeguard the contents of the radio programme, the commissioners argued that PHOHI should get a monopoly on the broadcasts from the Netherlands to the Indies.
There were conflicting reactions to the draft concession of the PHOHI in government circles. Officials at the Ministry of Colonial Affairs in The Hague and the Indies government in Batavia supported the proposal of PHOHI to get a monopoly on broadcasts between the Netherlands and the Indies to ensure that “party propaganda” was avoided at all costs. In other departments and in the Dutch parliament, however, there was opposition to this fundamental principle. Exactly at the time of the first colonial broadcasts, a new radio law was being prepared in the Netherlands that ensured that the different pillarised broadcasting corporations had access to the airwaves “in proportion.” The president of the orthodox Protestant NCRV argued that the same principle should apply to colonial radio transmissions and therefore opposed the PHOHI concession. The minister of transport and public works, who was responsible for the implementation of the radio law, agreed with these protests and suggested that PHOHI transmit broadcasts from other organisations via its radio frequencies.Footnote 44 The commissioners, however, categorically refused and a conflict started. The matter was brought before the Radio Council (Radio Raad), an organisation in formation including representatives of all pillars that was to implement the radio law.Footnote 45 In the years that followed, the Radio Council did not reach a verdict on the PHOHI concession and the conflict deepened, with the different parties involved lobbying for their cause.Footnote 46
In January 1929, the Radio Council requested information about the preferences of the radio listeners in the Indies. Subsequently the Indies organisation for post telegraphy and telephony (PTT) received the order to send a survey to all radio owners in the archipelago asking them what kind of programs they would like to listen to. Out of approximately 1700 owners in 1929 (at the time mainly Dutch colonials), about 430 people answered. Seventy-two percent of the respondents indicated that they primarily wanted “relaxation,” leaving other categories far behind, such as “news” (10 percent), “courses” (7 percent), “religious music” (5.5 percent) and “women’s and children’s programs” (5 percent). According to this survey, only 0.5 percent of the listeners wanted “political news.”Footnote 47 These figures supported the assertion of PHOHI that the public in the Indies did not want to hear politics on the radio.
In addition, the colonial authorities took the opportunity to air their support for the PHOHI monopoly on the broadcasts between the Netherlands and the Indies. In the letter accompanying the survey distributed to radio owners, the Indies PTT indicated that one organisation would get the monopoly on broadcasting in the Indies—which was quite a manipulative statement considering the political debate in the Netherlands on this issue at the time.Footnote 48 In a letter accompanying the results of the survey the minister of colonial affairs reiterated to the Radio Council that pillarisation of colonial broadcasting was not wanted. He quoted a telegram from the Indies PTT: “Public [in Indies] is averse to religious sectarianism and party politics on Dutch footing.”Footnote 49 Although it is impossible to assess the true public opinion in Indies concerning radiobroadcasts from these sources, it is interesting to note here that the colonial authorities clearly argued that radio owners in the Indies supported the main principles of the PHOHI draft concession. Despite these arguments, however, the Radio Council advised allocating 38.5 percent of the airtime from the Netherlands to the Indies to the pillarised broadcasting corporations in April 1930. The PHOHI commissioners were furious about this ruling, especially about the fact that the Social-Democratic VARA was to be allowed 10 percent airtime.Footnote 50 This fit of anger resulted in a complete standstill of the radio project when PHOHI announced a direct suspension of its broadcasts from the Netherlands to the Indies on 1 July 1930.
Behind closed doors, the commissioners of PHOHI continued to negotiate with representatives of different government bodies. The commissioners remained committed to their cause of facilitating radio broadcasts to the Indies. Indeed, it became even more urgent as radio owners in the Indies tuned in to foreign stations, such as Radio Saigon and (even worse from the commissioners’ perspective) Radio Moscow. Commissioners repeatedly pointed out that it was a national interest to get the PHOHI broadcasts going again.Footnote 51 Finally, in December 1932 PHOHI and the Radio Council struck a deal. Although PHOHI did not get its monopoly, having to make available one-third of the airtime to other broadcasting corporations, strict supervision would be implemented to ensure that unwanted political statements did not enter the colonial airwaves. This supervision was carried out by a sub-body of the Radio Council, the Indië Programma Commissie (Indies Programme Committee, or IPC). The president of the Radio Council presided over this body assisted by his secretary and one other member of the Council. In addition, the three main pillarised broadcasting corporations appointed one member each and PHOHI two. The official task of the IPC was to exclude “broadcasts threatening the safety of the state, public order and public decency, and also political broadcasts and broadcasts of a propagandistic nature concerning religion.”Footnote 52 The committee exerted preventive censorship: the members read all the texts of regular shows, which had to be submitted ten days before the planned broadcasts, and they had the authority to stop texts from being read or to order amendments.
The PHOHI commissioners were content with the strict job description of the censorship committee, noting that the candidate members seemed to be committed to implement “a very narrow description of the broadcasts, as had been proposed by PHOHI.”Footnote 53 They decided to restart the broadcasts on 1 January 1933. Although the Great Depression had severely hit Dutch colonial trade during the two-and-a-half year suspension, the companies that sponsored PHOHI remained willing to provide enough money to enable the broadcasts to the Indies (although the annual budget was significantly smaller than before). Moreover, it soon appeared that the implementation of the IPC had the effects the commissioners had hoped for. Most important for them, the Social Democratic broadcasting corporation, VARA, did not apply for airtime on the PHOHI transmitter, as it would not be able to propagate its principles. Also, the large orthodox Protestant corporation, NCRV, quit after one broadcast, for reasons unknown. Only the Catholic corporation KRO and the small liberal Protestant corporation VPRO were active in the following years.Footnote 54 The detailed reports of its activities show that the IPC fulfilled its task meticulously. During its existence, between April 1933 and May 1940, the committee banned approximately 1 percent of all texts it considered and ordered amendments to approximately 12 percent. One historian has concluded that this shows that the system left little room for controversy, and she argues that radio writers censored themselves before they submitted texts to the IPC.Footnote 55
The IPC also fitted the goals of PHOHI in another way. Its external members were required to have lived and worked in the Indies. The idea was that, because of their personal experience, they could better understand what Dutch listeners in the archipelago wanted, and what not. In September 1933, the chairman of the IPC explained the purpose of the committee to the listeners of PHOHI in a radio broadcast. Although the IPC tried to respect freedom of speech, which was mentioned as an important Dutch value, “unlimited freedom … is unthinkable and to be sure for the Indies untenable.” Aside from their formal assignment, the committee members considered it to be their duty to see that the programs “satisfied the public wishes and needs [in the overseas territories] as much as possible.” This meant that the IPC had to be in “living contact” with listeners, which was difficult because it had to operate “in secret.” Therefore the IPC chairman asked the listeners to write letters to PHOHI in which they gave their opinion about the programme, which the IPC could use to assess the impact of radio on the daily lives of the peoples in the colonies.Footnote 56 This statement fitted the notion, propagated by PHOHI representatives and colonial authorities in 1927–32, that listeners in the Indies did not want political controversy on the airwaves. Instead, colonial radio was to bolster the ties between the Netherlands and the Indies and strengthen the Dutch colonial “element” by providing entertainment and a link with the Netherlands. In later years, this remained the core idea behind the programme and marketing of PHOHI.
“Jungle radio” and other taglines
In January 1933, PHOHI started transmitting again, providing a 2.5-hour broadcast five times a week, which was received in the Indies during the evenings. The composition of the programme was based on the 1929 survey, with 60 percent “relaxation” (music and entertainment), 15 percent courses and informative talks, 15 percent news, and 10 percent religious programs (church services and music).Footnote 57 In line with previous policy, the target audience was the community of Dutch colonial expats in the Indies. The programme of PHOHI always started with the national anthem of the Netherlands and was mainly in the Dutch language to give these listeners a taste of their country of origin. In addition, PHOHI provided special broadcasts of momentous events in the Netherlands, such as football matches of the national team, the queen’s annual speech in parliament and the celebration of Saint Nicolas on 5 December. Also, a part of the music programme was meant to take the listeners’ mind back to the Netherlands—concerts played on the carillon of the Palace on Dam Square in Amsterdam, for example. Referring to such a concert, the marketing division of Philips described an imaginary scene of an expat family after a hard day’s work. Radio allowed these people to relax in the evenings, and to the family members “suffering from the nasty disease called ‘homesickness’ … radio brings as powerful medicine the jingle jangle of the bells of the Palace on Dam Square.”Footnote 58
In the early years of PHOHI, the company’s marketing emphasised this heroic image of hard-working colonials to whom it provided relaxation. PHOHI presented itself as “jungle radio” (rimboe radio) as it reached out to expat listeners in the outposts of the Dutch colonial empire. Although none of the early PHOHI broadcasts has survived, it seems that they regularly featured this one-liner to give the audience a sense of recognition. Published material like the PHOHI radio guide also contained articles that referred to this imagery. In addition, PHOHI encouraged listeners to give their opinions by regularly asking for reports on the quality of the radio reception and the contents of the shows. According to the company, it received “a substantial number” of letters from the Indies and it started publishing anthologies containing selected excerpts from these documents from 1934 onwards. The goal of these publications was to show “how much people in the East and West-Indies empathised with events in the Motherland and what great task awaits the Phohi here as coworker in strengthening the ties between the Netherlands and the Indies.”Footnote 59
Looking at the content of these volumes, it appears that different listeners engaged with the taglines PHOHI sent through the ether. Several excerpts that PHOHI selected for publication referred to the image of “jungle radio,” for example. A planter from East Sumatra wrote to one of the PHOHI presenters on behalf of his colleagues, “who in fact stay more or less in the jungle.” It was very nice for them “to hear that cosy voice of yours. Good old Phohi, you really make us feel happy here and give us the experience of being one with the Motherland.”Footnote 60 Another listener, reporting from the metropolis of Batavia, quite a different place, reported that he recently bought a radio and that he received PHOHI well, despite the fact that he only had a small antenna on his veranda. In that sense he agreed with the Philips Company’s advertisements that with a radio “one could bring the world in one’s house.” However, he did not agree with the slogan “jungle radio.” “Why do you call Phohi the ‘jungle radio’? She is more, sir, she symbolises Holland, she is Holland! That is how I experience the sensation.”Footnote 61
The selected remarks about the contents of the PHOHI programme also give the impression that the broadcasts actively connected Dutch listeners with events that happened in their land of origins. A topic that was mentioned often in the PHOHI publications was the coverage of football matches of the Dutch national team. These broadcasts started in December 1933 in the run-up to the World Cup that was played the following spring. During these broadcasts, groups of friends and colleagues gathered around a radio set to cheer for the Netherlands.Footnote 62 Sports commentator Han Hollander became a popular presenter. One listener, who revealed himself as a former football player, praised Hollander’s report of the World Cup match between the Netherlands and Belgium on 29 April 1934. “[It] was more perfect than ever before: CALM and SYMPATHETIC—NEUTRAL during the whole match.”Footnote 63 In this way, Dutch colonial expats could empathise with their team and they did so in a sophisticated way. Even after the loss of the Netherlands against Switzerland in the second round of the World Cup, listeners wrote to politely thank PHOHI for the exciting broadcast.Footnote 64
Radio items about more day-to-day events also seem to have been appreciated. In several letters, Dutch expats in the Indies mentioned how much they valued weather reports from the Netherlands. One listener in Medan, in Sumatra, wrote that he enjoyed this kind of information as it was so “typically Dutch…. If you tell us that it is November-weather, rain and storm or fog also, then we look at each other and say: how nice it is to witness such a November-storm.”Footnote 65 A week later, a family in West Java heard a report about heavy fog that blocked sight. “My wife [of the letter-writer] said: I hope that Jan does not get in an accident. Jan is our eldest boy, who goes to school in Utrecht. During a later report about fair, sultry weather the conclusion was drawn that Jan probably would go to school without a coat. You can imagine what this long-distant voice means to us.”Footnote 66 PHOHI experimented with formats to address such sentiments. In 1935, it started with a show called “Microphone Beginners” (Microfoon debutantjes), during which children who stayed in the Netherlands read out letters to their parents in the Indies. Judging the reactions PHOHI received, this show was very much appreciated by the listeners, particularly those whose children were granted airtime. One of them mentioned how important it was for him to hear his daughter, to whom he had not spoken in a year. “All progress in technology that makes the distance, even though it is just in our minds, smaller is immediately experienced by us as intensive.”Footnote 67
Such remarks fitted another metaphor that PHOHI propagated in the 1930s, when the radio company presented itself as a “bridge between motherland and colonies” (brug tusschen moederland en koloniën). In 1934–36 this image became the central feature of a campaign to raise more money for the station, which still depended on subsidies from colonial companies. Listeners in the Indies were asked to provide a “rivet” (klinknagel) in the form of a donation, to help strengthen the “bridge” with the Netherlands. This call appeared regularly in the PHOHI radio guide and was probably often repeated on the airwaves too. In 1934, the campaign was even taken directly to the PHOHI audience in the colony when star presenter Eduard Startz visited the archipelago on a goodwill mission. A polyglot jack-of-all-trades, Startz joined the Philips company as a translator in 1927 but soon became presenter of the experimental PCJ broadcasts. He performed with much positive energy and rebranded the acronym of the transmitter as “Peace, Cheer, and Joy”. As such, some scholars consider Startz to be one of the world’s first disc jockeys.Footnote 68 When PHOHI started transmitting in January 1933 Startz became one of the main presenters, and judging from the letters in the first PHOHI publication, he was quite popular with the Indies audience from the start.Footnote 69
Indeed, Startz received a warm welcome in the Indies where he arrived by plane in August 1934. The following seven weeks he toured the archipelago, giving thirty-three lectures in different towns. The main focus was on Java, but he also visited Celebes (Sulawesi), Borneo (Kalimantan), and Sumatra. Colonial newspapers reported that everywhere he performed, the room was filled to maximum capacity. During his talks, Startz set out the history of PHOHI, emphasising the pioneering role of the Dutch on the airwaves, referring to many of the images that appeared in PHOHI publications. His performance was popular and lucid, and he often repeated the one-liners and puns from his shows. Startz’s talk was followed by a film showing the transmitter in Huizen, the portraits of several presenters, and pictures of big events that PHOHI had covered.Footnote 70 All this information must have been quite familiar to regular listeners of PHOHI. Still the newspapers reported that audiences greatly enjoyed Startz’s delivery and appreciated the fact that they finally had a chance of meeting “Eddie” in person.Footnote 71 They could literally see what they normally listened to.
Despite the apparent success of Startz’s tour in the Indies, the klinknagel campaign did not have the desired effect. In the following years, PHOHI did not manage to secure a substantial income from listeners’ contributions. The tone of the editors of the PHOHI guide stiffened somewhat, arguing that it was only fair that Indies listeners should pay for the radio shows that were mainly made for them. Without contributions, PHOHI warned, the company would go bankrupt, which would end the transmissions from the Netherlands to the Indies. In the end, PHOHI remained dependent on colonial companies to keep providing funds, which they did despite the economic hardships at the time. Apparently, the executives connected to the Rijkseenheid movement continued to believe that radio broadcasts from the Netherlands would contribute to stability in the Indies and, by extension, to their own prosperity.
Conclusion
The history of PHOHI was intertwined with the complex geopolitical status of the Netherlands—a small country with a big empire—in the interwar years. This situation prompted a strict policy of neutrality based on the constant fear that one of the great powers would violate Dutch sovereignty in Europe or its overseas territories. In fact, the development of Dutch radio technology was a direct result of the First World War, when the existing colonial lines of communication had been severely hampered by the belligerent powers. The wireless was to provide an instrument to strengthen the unity of the Dutch empire, which would not depend on other colonial powers. This was the core idea of the procolonial lobbyists of the Rijkseenheid movement that founded and funded PHOHI. In this sense, it resembled other transcontinental broadcasting stations that emerged at the time, such as the Empire Service of the BBC. This last consideration reveals, however, that Dutch “neutrality” was not a simple, unambiguous concept, based on a realistic assessment of the international situation. Rather it was an ideological construct based on a sense of Dutch colonial mission. A group of wealthy businessmen facilitated PHOHI broadcasts to strengthen the Dutch colonial presence in the Indies and therefore the station must be seen primarily as a “tool of empire.”
When looking at the history of PHOHI it is also important to consider another meaning of neutrality. Its founders thought that pillarization was detrimental for colonial society in the Indies and tried to ban all “party propaganda” from their frequencies. Although they failed to secure a monopoly on broadcasts from the metropole to the periphery, they eagerly agreed with a strict form of control, which was meant to ban “political” statements. As a result of this censorship by invitation, the Social-Democratic corporation VARA, dreaded by PHOHI’s sponsors, did not provide broadcasts. In addition the programme of PHOHI in its early days was aimed at Dutch expats, mainly bringing them music and items about “typical” Dutch things and events. The company actively propagated this image in its broadcasts, which were larded with popular taglines and puns. Although the programme might seem “non-political” at first sight, the underlying purpose was to support Dutch expats in the Indies and thus bolster colonial order. The available sources in the PHOHI collections, which reflect the company’s perspective, do not indicate the extent to which public opinion in the Indies as a whole was affected by the broadcasts. Looking at the disappointing outcomes of the klinknagel campaign, it can even be argued that even the regular listeners of the radio station were not loyal as they largely failed to financially support it. Still, PHOHI created a great amount of propaganda that supported the Dutch colonial presence in Southeast Asia.
In addition to these considerations, it is important to realise that many items of the PHOHI shows continued to reverberate through the ether in the years that followed, forming the basis of a new type of broadcast. The radio station was received not only in the Dutch colonies but worldwide. In the mid-1930s, PHOHI received an increasing number of letters from non-Dutch listeners who regularly tuned in. Eduard Startz, who spoke seven languages fluently, started to address these new audiences in his shows inviting them to “keep in touch with the Dutch.”Footnote 72 In the wake of this development, PHOHI made plans to exploit a world service to promote the Netherlands abroad. In 1937, the Radio Council ruled that this world service was to become a public service. Another lengthy decision-making process followed, and before the plans had been approved by parliament the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi Germany, after which PHOHI was dismantled in the summer of 1940. After the Second World War, Dutch international broadcasts were facilitated by Radio Netherlands Worldwide, a public broadcasting corporation funded by the government. Despite these great institutional changes, there was significant continuity with the PHOHI company. Significantly, Startz became one of the star presenters of Radio Netherlands Worldwide and ran his one-man show “Happy Station” (which he had started in the 1930s) up until his retirement in 1969. By then the Dutch colonial state in Southeast Asia had been dismantled for two decades. Still it is important to realise that the popular, “neutral” tone of Dutch international broadcasting had its origins in a time when radio was a tool of empire.
