Introduction
In recent decades, a major concern of International Relations (IR) has been the need to ‘decolonise’ the discipline as a remedy for ‘Eurocentrism’ that pervades IR’s roots, core theories, and central concepts.Footnote 1 A host of works of IR and adjacent disciplines have taken up this task,Footnote 2 and various initiatives towards ‘globalising’ and ‘worlding’ IR and exploring ‘non-Western’ and even ‘post-Western’ IR have been proposed.Footnote 3 These initiatives have gained significant traction, and critical, ‘Decolonial’ IR is arguably approaching mainstream IR status. This is in recognition of its important contributions that point to voices long marginalised and underacknowledged, allowing their addition to the discipline’s epistemological palette. To achieve this, the Decolonial IR literature focuses on identity markers to distinguish between groups and communities, including race, ethnicity, culture, nationality, and geographical origin.
This article argues that Decolonial IR, to which I broadly count works that aim to correct ‘Eurocentrism,’ through its reliance on these identity markers, is at risk of developing and perpetuating notable blind spots and making mistakes similar to those that it rightly berates Eurocentric IR for.Footnote 4 First, while pointing at several problematic binaries that undergird Eurocentric IR, Decolonial IR fails to escape from the use of binaries of its own when justifying its various projects. Moreover, rather than a mere and harmless heuristic devise, this binary thinking effectively ends up doubly marginalising communities and perspectives that had already been ignored by mainstream IR. Second, the use of these binaries allows Decolonial IR, in its pursuit of decoloniality in knowledge production, to decouple its task from the actual historical practice of decolonisation. Although the pursuit of decoloniality is presented as clearly defined along the lines of easy-to-grasp, often racially determined categories, decolonisation was a highly messy and complex affair. When analysing or interpreting it, the application of decolonial binaries along racial, cultural, or geographical lines cannot be properly justified, because identity transcended and at times outright conflicted with divisions based on racial and other markers. Acknowledging this messiness and a recoupling of decoloniality with decolonisation is necessary for a truly inclusive discipline. That is so, third, because without it Decolonial IR inevitably excludes and exposes itself to the same criticisms that it rightly levels at Eurocentric IR.
To build this argument, the next section briefly discusses Decolonial IR and its rationale, objectives, and strategies, pointing out how it relies on decolonial binaries that conflict with its own criticism of Eurocentric binaries. I rely on Decolonial IR’s justifications for its own project and turn these against it to point at its shortcomings. Furthermore, I argue that the use of these decolonial categories is enabled by a decoupling of the decolonising exercise from the actual events of decolonisation and that this decoupling, in turn, leads Decolonial IR to marginalise and ignore perspectives and experiences from those communities that do not fit its categories.
The third section illustrates this further by discussing the Indo community, a mixed-race Eurasian group that is itself the product of the colonial encounter and originated in the former Dutch East Indies, and highlighting how its story and experiences do not fit the dominant decolonial narrative. I also zoom in on one notable Indo figure, Tjalie Robinson, whose writings spoke explicitly to the uncategorisable existence of his people, who are located somewhere in-between the (former) coloniser and (formerly) colonised. In the fourth section, this allows me to then emphasise the urgency of avoiding the use of binaries – decolonial or otherwise – by pointing at what the Indos, their experiences, and the thought and writings of a character like Robinson can contribute to core concepts, questions, and themes of IR. Their perspective is unique and thus far underacknowledged, certainly by IR but also by other disciplines.
The fifth section then suggests how Decolonial IR can improve and avoid the pitfalls that the article highlights. I propose a four-step approach: developing self-awareness about Decolonial IR’s blind spots; acknowledging that the focus on race and the assumption of a clear racial divide in knowledge production and decolonising practices is not sustainable; heeding core insights of the historical turn in IR by recoupling the decolonising exercise to the historical practices and events of decolonisation; and applying contrapuntal reading to develop completer and more accurate accounts of major developments, not only to Eurocentric narratives but also to Decolonial IR’s own narratives.
I conclude that the solution for Decolonial IR’s current defect is found within its own critical methods if only it would apply these reflexively to its own project. Doing so would bring us closer to Decolonial IR’s stated objective of greater inclusivity and epistemological variety in IR.
Binary thinking in Decolonial IR
A core criticism of postcolonial studies and the Decolonial IR literature is that ‘Western,’ thought, including the canon of IR, is based on a Eurocentric modernity thinking that is grounded in binaries that place ‘the West’ in a favourable position vis-à-vis the ‘non-West’ and that these binaries are often race-based.Footnote 5 They divide the world, countries, nations, and individuals between the civilised/barbarian, developed/undeveloped, advanced/backward, modern/traditional, and more such dichotomies that purportedly have universal validity and that have historically served to justify the oppression of, and dominance over, certain groups by the ‘white West.’ The effects of this can still be felt and observed today in epistemic power relations, hence the need for the decolonising exercise.
This idea builds on the concept of decoloniality or ‘epistemological decolonisation,’ which first appeared in the work of Aníbal Quijano as a response to the ‘European paradigm of rationality/modernity.’Footnote 6 ‘Epistemic delinking’ was suggested as the ‘first step of a global move towards pluri-versality as a universal project.’Footnote 7 Decoloniality became ‘a form of struggle and survival, an epistemic and existence-based response and practice – most especially by colonised and racialized subjects – against the colonial matrix of power in all of its dimensions’ that ‘seeks to make visible, open up, and advance radically distinct perspectives and positionalities that displace Western rationality as the only framework and possibility of existence, analysis, and thought.’Footnote 8 Decoloniality is thus explicitly grounded in geocultural and racial justifications. It represents a quest to uncover the ‘histories and thought of other places,’ that is, places other than Europe.Footnote 9 It has been summarised in ‘a triple call of de-mythologizing, de-silencing, and anti-colonially de-colonizing our knowledge production or cultivation practices.’Footnote 10 Some go even further and claim that to truly decolonise knowledge, one needs to ‘deschool’ or ‘unlearn’ what Eurocentrism has taught.Footnote 11 Others emphasise rather the need to ‘confront the Eurocentric nature of IR and its status as effectively a form of modern imperial ideology,’Footnote 12 making decoloniality or the decolonising of the study of world politics a practice that is ‘rooted in a progressive ethic’ and that subjects IR’s ‘main perspectives to philosophical and empirical challenges,’Footnote 13 instead adding the subaltern perspectives that IR has long ignored.Footnote 14 More recently, colonialism and decolonisation have been understood as structures that guide social action and knowledge production rather than being historical events.Footnote 15 We should, then, interpret the latter structure of decolonisation as a correction or counterweight to the former structure of colonialism.
What may be clear is that within the rationale, objectives, and strategies of the decolonial literature, binary thinking remains central, namely one that juxtaposes the ‘West’ with the ‘non-West’ and Europe with non-Europe.Footnote 16 Although understandable as a necessary heuristic device, this binary thinking is also problematic. First, it is unclear where the boundaries between these categories may be drawn, and second, this means that the ‘struggle to overcome the Eurocentrism of IR rests on a continued reproduction of the West/non-West binary’ that undergirds this very Eurocentrism.Footnote 17 Although some, including proponents of Global IR, acknowledge this problem,Footnote 18 the West/non-West categories and accompanying binaries like dominant/marginalised, powerful/subaltern, and oppressor/oppressed pervade the Decolonial IR literature, which is evident from a random collection of its claims.
For example, we are told that ‘no aspect of the postcolonial world has remained untouched by the dialectic of colonial domination/subordination’Footnote 19 and that IR should distinguish Europe from the rest of the world not on the basis of its ‘technological, cultural, or intellectual progress’ but rather by the – apparently uniquely – European concern with ‘consolidating … domination over other parts of the world.’Footnote 20 Decolonial IR seeks to tell ‘alternative histories’ while avoiding the tendencies of ‘conventional histories to assimilate the specific, unique histories of non-European peoples within their broader concepts and controlling structures.’Footnote 21 These alternative histories seemingly allow for fruitful comparison between non-European or ‘non-Western’ subjects as far apart as Vietnamese and Cuban thinkers,Footnote 22 but ‘knowledges born in Europe are inadequate to their non-European object.’Footnote 23 I conflate a range of arguments here, which does not do them justice. However, the point is that, while doing away with colonial binaries, Decolonial IR itself is full of decolonial binaries, which are found across the breadth of postcolonial and decolonial works, much, though not all, of Global IR, and the ‘Worlding Beyond the West’ approach.Footnote 24
Furthermore, these binaries often end up being applied along the lines of ethnic, racial, cultural, geographical, and national essentialist identity markers. The ‘white,’ ‘European,’ or ‘Anglo’ ‘West’ – or ‘Global North’ – is portrayed as dominant, powerful, colonial, and the oppressor guilty of the historical wrongs of colonialism, imperialism, and the related epistemic marginalisation, whereas the ‘coloured’ ‘non-West’ or ‘Global South’ is seen as marginalised, subaltern, oppressed, and the victim of these wrongs and their reverberations.Footnote 25 Indeed, IR is accused of being ‘white,’ which justifies Decolonial IR’s emphasis on racial markers.Footnote 26 A ‘coloured’ ‘Global South’ or ‘non-West’ should be examined for its potential contributions to IR that is now dominated by a ‘white’ ‘Global North’ or ‘West.’ As Christopher Murray pointed out, this results in the ‘ethnification of world political inquiry,’ creating an ‘image of the world based on essentialist constructions of ethnic and cultural difference.’Footnote 27 Meanwhile, what subregions and countries qualify as ‘Global South’ or ‘non-Western’ remains ambiguous, to say the least, and the notable presence in both the ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ of highly mixed cultures, identities, and populations that have resulted from centuries of cultural exchange, migration, and miscegenation is hardly acknowledged as a problem. In focusing on race, ethnicity, culture, and nationalities that are perceived as marginalised (or not), ironically Decolonial IR ends up mirroring the essentialist racism it observes and seeks to correct in Eurocentric IR.Footnote 28 Indeed, ‘the color line continues to inform questions of identity and difference in international politics … through hierarchical binary categories’Footnote 29 in IR, but notably in Decolonial IR, too.Footnote 30
The observation that this continued use of binaries is problematic is not new.Footnote 31 As others have argued, even if the binaries are intended to serve analytical, heuristic purposes, the assumptions underpinning them rely on supposed ‘internally distinct’ cultural units.Footnote 32 Decolonial IR ‘uncritically conflate[s] the condition of the marginalised with an absolute ontology of non-Western agency.’Footnote 33 Being historically marginalised or oppressed is implicitly seen as mutually exclusive with the historical acts of marginalising and oppressing. Groups are seen to have experienced or done either of these, not both. Furthermore, this view involves ‘epistemic mapping’ or the ‘reduction of difference to ethnic and cultural categories’ that are ambiguous at best and bring us back to essentialism at worst.Footnote 34 Binaries are about difference, about what distinguishes one group from the other, and their use ceases to be purely heuristic when categories of inclusion and exclusion, of traditional or dominant IR versus alternative perspectives, determine whose and what knowledge deserves the discipline’s special attention. In this article, I heuristically juxtapose ‘Eurocentric’ with ‘Decolonial’ IR,Footnote 35 an example of the heuristic use of imperfect categories that, nonetheless, does not lead to epistemic violence because the argument is precisely that all thought, whether Eurocentric, decolonial, or otherwise, should be considered potentially relevant to the discipline. To quote Kimberly Hutchings, the goal is ‘not to make sure that “non-Western” voices are included’ but that ‘excluded voices are included’ whoever they belong to and whatever their identity.Footnote 36 Decolonial IR’s use of binaries is explicitly aimed at the former.
A counterargument may be that we must accept that we cannot always nuance everything and that there are also pitfalls in abandoning binary categories. They help us see, discuss, and theorise significant global or transnational dynamics.Footnote 37 If the ‘non-West,’ broadly speaking, has been marginalised in the IR discipline, should we not name that marginalisation and seek ways to ameliorate its effects? If instead, as I propose here, we emphasise the messiness of decolonisation, does that not inhibit our understanding of its larger structures and effects?
My response is that historical accuracy and nuance should always accompany the identification of broader structures. This would secure both practical, general abstractions and an appreciation of the particular, bringing IR closest to generating meaningful analytical narratives and constructing operationalisable yet empirically sound theories.Footnote 38 Put differently, IR should take seriously the marginalisation, both historical and epistemic, of large groups that it may paint with a broad brush while at the same time critically highlighting the blind spots and pitfalls that accompany claims of marginalisation based on broad, ambiguous categories like race, geography, or culture. This article consciously serves the latter purpose, aiming to constructively call out an apparent blind spot that prevails in Decolonial IR and is illustrated in later sections with the example of the Indos.
Notably, this blind spot exists despite works of Decolonial IR that problematise or nuance the use of binaries. For instance, John Hobson has pointed at ‘interstitiality’ and the co-constitutional effects of ‘dialogues’ between the ‘East’ and ‘West.’Footnote 39 Similarly, Robbie Shilliam problematised the West/non-West distinction and accompanying binaries, warning about the ‘tendency to essentialise and/or exoticise non-Western thought’ that is based on an imaginary ‘geo-cultural division of knowledge production’ that, he finds, remains grounded in Eurocentrism.Footnote 40 And Loubna El Amine has usefully suggested to replace the West/non-West division with a modern/premodern division that would avoid the ‘error of cultural essentialism.’Footnote 41 These are key contributions, even if they still take as their point of departure two distinct units (‘West’ and ‘East’ or ‘modern’ and ‘premodern’), the division between which, as these authors demonstrate, is illusory as Western and Eastern knowledge are deeply intertwined. However, this still underexposes how Decolonial IR’s application of binaries (oppressor/oppressed, dominant/marginalised, and others) along the lines of identity markers ends up not only artificially separating two categories but also itself marginalising groups and perspectives whose identities do not correspond with the assumed binary categories. Furthermore, despite these authors’ criticism of the West/non-West binary, its use still pervades the Decolonial IR literature and continues to undergird its general raison-d’être. For example, recent work has demonstrated that Global IR’s reliance on the binary continues to determine which communities are worthy of consideration in its effort to make IR more inclusive, thus leaving out others that do not fit the binary categories well.Footnote 42
Therefore, the two-step argument advanced here is that the continued use of binaries in Decolonial IR is problematic because it involves, first, a decoupling of epistemic decolonisation from the actual practice and historical events of decolonisation, which then, second, leads to new forms of epistemic marginalisation in Decolonial IR, a result that is antithetical to Decolonial IR’s core aims.
First, its epistemic exercise being based on an inaccurate representation of historical events enables a type of epistemic violence that mirrors the violence of decolonisation and is applied to, and suffered by, the same groups and communities. It is the decoupling of epistemic decolonisation from the historical events of decolonisation that allows for the clearcut divisions based on racial, ethnic, cultural, geographical, and national identity markers that constitute simplified depictions of a range of actors and their roles in the very complex and messy events of decolonisation and, indeed, colonisation.
Contrary to much of the Decolonial IR literature, historical works on decolonisation acknowledge this complexity and messiness. In its varied locations, decolonisation and its aftermath were not simply the liberation of one people from the oppression of another, two groups that we can distinguish based on their skin colour, ethnicity, culture, nationality, or geographical origin. Rather, it involved significant strife between different groups, some of which suffered marginalisation and often severe forms of political violence, including ethnic cleansing, at the hands of their compatriots.Footnote 43 Such violence can be explained as stemming from a ‘problem of identity management’: a ‘major part of the challenge of decolonization was precisely that colonial societies had many layers of identity – peasant, class, ethnic, religious, regional – that were not in the first place “national,” and often resisted subjection to the leadership of postcolonial as well as colonial elites.’Footnote 44 The conflict and struggles that this identity management problem engendered mean that celebratory accounts of decolonisation miss important, often tragic dimensions. For example, in many newly formed independent states ‘disorder and oppression, the military coup d’état and dictatorship were frequent, almost commonplace. Human rights were violated, and massive repressive measures were not unusual.’Footnote 45 Furthermore, within the struggle for liberation, there were instances of colonised people supporting imperial powers, be that in hopes of this leading to the exit of a competing imperial power, out of a sense of loyalty to the coloniser, or in the pursuit of emancipation under colonial rule.Footnote 46 Put differently, decolonisation did not happen along clearcut identity lines nor was it an event that exclusively liberated the oppressed from their oppressors.
Second, although Decolonial IR is surely aware of the messiness of decolonisation and may argue that its essentialism is strategic or the categories merely heuristic analytical tools, these clearcut categories end up perpetuating existing, and engendering new, forms of epistemic marginalisation. In fact, historical violence such as that which happened during decolonisation tends to go hand in hand with epistemic marginalisation. In the violent act itself, the silencing already happens. Although Decolonial IR is deeply interested in marginalised and subaltern perspectives and experiences, within the identity-based categories that it applies, certain perspectives and experiences nonetheless fall in-between the epistemic cracks of IR and Decolonial IR, much like certain communities became the victims of, and marginalised and forgotten during, the historical events of decolonisation and the decolonial violence between colonisers and anti-colonial forces. They were and are caught between the colonial and revolutionary and between Eurocentrism and decoloniality.
This means that Decolonial IR is at risk of making the same mistakes it rightfully accuses Eurocentric IR of. Although it is true that against conventional histories ‘what may be required is the telling of alternative histories – histories of resistance to colonial power …,’Footnote 47 it is equally true that against Decolonial IR’s treatment of decolonisation and the decolonising practices it inspires, what is needed is the telling of alternative perspectives on, and experiences of, decolonisation – perspectives that capture its detrimental effects on specific, difficult-to-categorise communities that bore the brunt of decolonisation. Not doing so would result in ‘half or parts of a history’ being ‘presented as complete and whole,’ leading to ‘a false historical account.’Footnote 48 This account would inevitably be a ‘profoundly erroneous, highly ideological representation of’ decolonisation and its deeper meaning, because it would leave ‘unexamined’ the ‘Global South’s’ and Decolonial IR’s predominant ‘representation of itself.’Footnote 49 If indeed the ‘expropriation of the expropriators’ through ‘examination of subordinate history/histories’ is necessary to recover the past, then equally it may be wise to examine the subordinate histories of decolonisation and expropriate the expropriators’ expropriators.Footnote 50 Although retrieving the visions of ‘non-Western’ thinkers on world order and IR will undoubtedly help in decolonising IR,Footnote 51 similarly the visions and thought of non-anti-colonial thinkers from any location, not just ‘the West,’ may help in nuancing our understanding of the meaning of decolonisation through the examination of alternative views from the margins of decolonising societies. After all, as Siba Grovogui rightly cautioned, ‘the ultimate aim would be to open the discipline of IR up to new imaginaries that reside in so-called local memories, arts and forms of knowledge without being wedded to nativism or native essentialism.’Footnote 52
A core argument of this article is that this essentialism has not been avoided sufficiently, even if essentialist categories have been applied primarily as heuristic conveniences. Heuristic use of binary categories, too, facilitates exclusion because it opens cracks that the marginalised can, perhaps inadvertently, fall through. The next section illustrates this by narrating the story of the Indos, capturing their experiences of marginalisation, and zooming in on the work of notable Indo writer, journalist, and thinker, Tjalie Robinson. The discussion underscores the inutility of neat, essentialist categories, but it also uncovers the fluid and contextually determined nature of epistemic power and marginalisation in relation to hybrid identities. Notably, there has been hardly any research – certainly not from within IR, but also only sporadically from within adjacent sciences such as history, anthropology, and sociology – on the Indo community. The section draws on the few exceptions to this general scholarly neglect.
Hybridity and the Indo community
The Indo community forms part of the post-World War II so-called decolonisation migrants, also referred to as return-migrants or returnees, repatriates, and postcolonial migrants.Footnote 53 Concerning communities that left former colonies once these obtained independence, decolonisation migrants came in several waves to former colonial powers. Around 300,000 left the Dutch East Indies for the Netherlands, both before and after Indonesian independence in 1949. This group had a diverse composition. Migrants who had come to the Dutch East Indies from the Netherlands and their white offspring, referred to as totoks, numbered about 80,000–100,000 around the time of World War II. Those of mixed Indo-European descent, or Indos, were the larger group, making up approximately 175,000. The rest consisted of nationals from other European countries and approximately 14,000 people with various indigenous origins who had been colonial auxiliaries. Importantly, the Dutch East Indies colonial system saw these groups as pertaining to the juridical category of ‘Europeans.’Footnote 54 Collectively, in the Netherlands, they are referred to as Indische Nederlanders (Indies-Dutch), a category that, as such, applies not to their ethnicity but to their familial-historical ties to the Dutch East Indies. Besides ethnic composition, the Indies-Dutch varied greatly in terms of their economic and social status and background. The group’s elite had a close connection to Dutch culture, and many (including both totoks and Indos) had spent time in the Netherlands, particularly for educational purposes. Meanwhile, about half of the Indies-Dutch who came to the Netherlands faced social and economic struggles, especially those with no immediate ties to metropolitan Dutch.Footnote 55 Although the focus here is on the Indo community, it is important to mention that in the Netherlands there has long existed a notion of a relatively coherent Indies-Dutch community tied together by its Indies heritage. Notably, for totoks, identifying with this community was a choice, and over time, many dissolved into Dutch white society, whereas for Indos, it was inescapably connected to their physical appearance.
Another major difference between the Indos and totoks was their initial treatment by the Dutch government. Although the latter were given permission to ‘repatriate,’ the Indos were actively encouraged to remain in Indonesia and obtain Indonesian citizenship. Post-1945, the Netherlands was recovering from World War II and then experienced high unemployment in the 1950s, which fed fears of overpopulation that combined with negative, racist stereotypes about people of Asian descent. Still, many Indos chose to migrate to the Netherlands, and those who initially remained in newly independent Indonesia came during a later wave (1957–1965) after the Sukarno government, in retaliation to the Netherlands’ refusal to give up Dutch New Guinea, made it clear that they were no longer welcome to stay. Only slightly earlier, in 1955, did the Dutch government acknowledge that all who had grown up as Dutch nationals in the former colony, even those with different (non-white) phenotypical features, were members of the Dutch community.Footnote 56
In the Netherlands, many Indos faced adaptation issues. Although most spoke Dutch and, like most Dutch, were Christians, the majority had never set foot in the country and had to acquaint themselves with new customs, norms, social relationships, and what they perceived to be an unpleasant climate. Those who arrived with the first wave furthermore encountered a country that was reeling from years of German occupation, suffered food shortages, and had experienced great material loss and destruction. With certain foodstuffs only available via ration coupons, migrants were soon seen as competitors by the local population. Their Asian looks and accent when speaking Dutch set Indos apart from the natives, which made many of them isolate in a country where they did not feel at home.
Adding to this was the almost complete lack of understanding in the Netherlands of the war experience that the Indo community, as well as the broader Dutch-Indies community (including the totoks), had gone through. In the Netherlands, the war had been first and foremost a war in Europe. This became particularly visible in the post-war establishment of memorials that aimed to contribute to a sense of national unity. The colony, where the Netherlands were busy repressing an independence struggle and which, after 1949, turned into an embarrassing chapter of Dutch history, could have no place in such memorials. Consequently, the War in the Pacific was ‘screened from national consciousness,’ leaving the Dutch-Indies community feeling neglected and ignored.Footnote 57
Their war experience had been traumatic. During the occupation of the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese demanded that Indo-Europeans declare their loyalty to Japan. Those who refused were sent to internment camps together with the totoks and prisoners of war. Conditions in the camps were horrible. Women and children were separated from their husbands and fathers, who were put to work as slave labourers under extremely harsh conditions. Beatings and torture were common. Approximately 23% of the prisoners of war and 10% of the other prisoners died, most of them of diseases and malnourishment.Footnote 58 A substantial number of Indo-European women and children managed to stay out of the camps, particularly in Java. Their lives were equally ruled by fear and the constant struggle for survival, but as Wim Willems points out, in a sense they were ‘lucky,’ because they managed to avoid the camps in which hundreds of Indies-Dutch women (totoks and Indos) fell victim to forced prostitution as so-called ‘comfort women’ for Japanese soldiers.Footnote 59 Decades later, survivors of the camps still battled with the traumas they developed during the war.Footnote 60
After the Japanese capitulation in 1945, the troubles for the Indies-Dutch were not over. Coinciding with the Bersiap, the start of the Indonesian National Revolution, the war’s end was the beginning of another period of violence and chaos in which thousands of Europeans and Indo-Europeans as well as many Chinese and members of Indonesian minority groups were murdered. Indo-Europeans became the targets of violent groups because of their presumed loyalty to the Dutch coloniser.Footnote 61 Order was more or less restored after 4 years of independence struggle ended with the transition of power to the Sukarno regime in 1949, but many Indies-Dutch felt no longer welcome in the country that was their homeland and migrated to the Netherlands.
How are we to understand the Indos, a mixed Eurasian subgroup of the Indies-Dutch? Their ambiguous status and background seem to place them outside the scope of Decolonial IR that divides subjects between categories of coloniser/colonised, West/non-West, and Global South/Global North. The Indos fit each of these somewhat but none of them entirely. They have a hybrid identity with Indonesian and Dutch roots, and they were both complicit in the colonial regime and themselves the product of colonialism. They were the victims of Japanese and Indonesian violence and repression, only to be marginalised a third time after their arrival in the Netherlands, even if eventually many managed to integrate well. Their existence is intricately connected to key concerns of IR, including World War II and its aftermath, internal conflict and revolution, self-determination, imperialism, decolonisation, and migration. Nonetheless, the Indos are a voice that has not been heard by the discipline.
The Indos’ ambiguity, which accentuates the inutility of essentialist categories in IR theorisation as well as the potential that an embrace of hybrid, marginalised groups holds for a fully decolonised IR, becomes tangible when we zoom in on the experiences and writings of Tjalie Robinson, an influential member of the Indo community. Fittingly characterised as a ‘mediator between East and West,’Footnote 62 Robinson (real name Jan Boon, also active as a writer under pseudonym Vincent Mahieu) was born in 1911 as the son of a Dutch father who migrated to the Dutch East Indies and a mixed Indo-European mother. He had been a prisoner of war under Japanese occupation, and his ties to the coloniser – his father was a soldier in the colonial army and Robinson himself had worked as a journalist for the Dutch military information service – made life tough during the Indonesian War of Independence. A person of colour, Robinson saw himself as an Indo, and initially he chose to remain in Indonesia. After independence, however, he and his family wished to migrate to the Netherlands, reportedly having to beg the Dutch government for permission to do so for 4 years.Footnote 63
Robinson’s writings gave a voice to, and captured the experience of, the hybrid Indo community, observing ‘with a mixture of irony and melancholy’ how colonial Batavia was turning into postcolonial Jakarta.Footnote 64 In his writings, the sense of loss and lack of belonging, of others’ disinterest and inattention to the Indos’ situation, and the impossible choice between two apparent – though perhaps imaginary – homelands stand out: ‘And nobody cared for Tjalie, who … continued to wrestle … with his two fatherlands that for the first time had become more than just geographical notions … Tjalie, choose! … Take one and reject the other. But Tjalie grouchily remained standing in between the two haystacks, like a small donkey.’Footnote 65 Illustrative of his and his readership’s mixed identity, after settling in the Netherlands, Robinson wrote columns for a Jakartan newspaper about his experiences as an Indo-Dutchman in the West and for a Dutch newspaper about his feelings of alienation and detachment in the Netherlands.Footnote 66 His work also took a more strident tone, embodying an attempt to reject nationalist essentialism that characterised the post-World War II era of decolonisation. Such essentialism left no room for Indos like Robinson who identified with the coloniser as well as the former colony that both expected from him complete assimilation. Furthermore, during the 1950s and 1960s, the Netherlands preferred not to look back on its colonial past, a now painful and shameful chapter of Dutch history. But to the Indos, repressing it meant the erasure of their personal past as well. Robinson’s response was to turn shame – of association with the coloniser and of being different or ‘oriental’ – into pride through a provocative embrace of the Indos’ mixed racial identity and Dutch colonial legacy. He saw the Indo diaspora as ‘tussen twee werelden’ (in-between two worlds) and as an expression of ‘mixties-schap’ (mestizaje or mixed-ness) through which he anticipated later notions of hybridity and transnationalism in social sciences discourse.Footnote 67 For example, although ‘in-betweenness’ only entered the postcolonial literature in the 1980s and Homi Bhabha made his contribution about culture’s hybridity in the 1990s, Robinson wrote about this already immediately after Indonesian independence in 1949.Footnote 68
This mixedness reflected in Robinson’s thinking that combined criticism of the West and its views of the East with conservatism that at first sight seem like odd bedfellows. As he put the Indo community on the map by launching a magazine (Tong Tong, still in circulation today under the name Moesson) and organising the annual Indo-culture festival Pasar Malam Besar (now known as Tong Tong Fair), in and through his writings, he denounced Dutch stereotyping of the East, preceding Edward Said’s argument of orientalism.Footnote 69 Agreeing with Said that such stereotypes were not merely the result of ignorance but a deliberate ploy to enable exclusion of the ‘real’ Orient, Robinson approached the topic differently. He argued not only that Europeans had used their representation of the Orient to silence and suppress the Other during colonial times but also that contemporary anti-colonial European intellectual thought about the former colonies lacked tangible on-the-ground knowledge and was based merely on books. The moral superiority that such European ‘armchair’ intellectuals assumed was for Robinson simply another example of ‘Eurocentric ignorance and arrogance.’Footnote 70 Without a real understanding of the East Indies and what had transpired there, these intellectuals, too, misguidedly saw the world through essentialist categories.
At the same time, Robinson was influenced by thinkers like Oswald Spengler and José Ortega y Gasset. He worried about the effects of modernity and individualism on social cohesion and on values of mutual respect, citizenship, and personal responsibility. He wished for a cultural renaissance but soon became disillusioned about its prospects in Europe. He was initially more optimistic during a multiyear stay in the United States, where a sizeable number of Indos had migrated after feeling ill at home in the Netherlands. The entrepreneurial mentality, a relatively unintrusive government, and the notion of the self-made man appealed to Robinson’s affinity with and nostalgia of the colonial pioneer mentality that had characterised his upbringing. However, the United States, too, would disappoint him when he observed its profound materialism and when this ‘leader of the free world’ attempted to violently impose capitalism on Vietnam.Footnote 71 Robinson’s hybridity was thus not only ethnic, cultural, or national, but it also seems to have been ideological. He fondly remembered colonial society and expressed pride about being a descendent of European conquerors, but he also supported and expressed admiration for Indonesian independence.Footnote 72
Few remember Tjalie Robinson in the Netherlands today. Most of his work is available only second-hand, and Dutch students do not read him in school. Only a small group of (post-)colonial history and literature scholars recognise the importance of his writings for giving an identity to a community in search of one. Within that community, Robinson’s belief that the hundreds of years of shared history between the Netherlands and the East Indies is one that should be remembered and even cultivated lives on, even if second- and third-generation Indos have abandoned his praise of Dutch colonialism for an emphasis on the discrimination that they endured on behalf of the Dutch state. As a paradox befitting of Robinson’s hybrid and contradictory identity and beliefs, while in the Netherlands he was often accused of being a neo- or ‘nostalgic colonialist,’ after passing away in 1974, his remains were ‘received with the highest honours in the former colony,’ his ashes scattered in a bay in Jakarta.Footnote 73
The Indos’ lessons for IR
The potential for valuable contributions to IR from voices and communities whose identities do not fit within clearcut binary categories is undeniable, as illustrated by the Indos and Robinson’s work. Their hybrid, liminal identity that caries traces of both the colonial and the colonised, the suppressor and the suppressed, as well as their dislocatedness and experiences of deterritorialisation have great ontological and epistemological implications. The Indos’ existence complicates the traditional binary perspective in IR on colonial relations and society. Not only are good/bad, suppressor/victim, and dominant/marginalised unsustainable dichotomies, the Indo community shows that colonialism was not only a wrong done by one group to another; it was also a creative encounter between cultures that produced in and of itself new perspectives, experiences, knowledge, and, in fact, communities that would not exist without colonialism, a point emphasised by Robinson himself.Footnote 74 The Indo community changes our understanding of (post-)colonialism, specifically Dutch colonialism – though we may find similar communities that originated from other colonialisms – and broader imperialism and what these concepts mean for IR. For example, Indo experiences should lead the discipline to reconsider the meaning, consequences, significance, and broader implications of decolonisation that, as earlier sections pointed out, is missing in the Decolonial IR literature. Not only was decolonisation a phenomenon that embodied something good, a moment of justice, an end to suffering, and the acquisition of self-determination, it simultaneously signified a moment of violence, repression, suffering, and the loss of a sense of place and belonging. Decolonisation was defining and formative in both a redemptive and traumatic sense for different communities.
Importantly, on-the-ground violence, repression, and marginalisation almost always go hand in hand with epistemic marginalisation. Often, the physical act of violence precedes and facilitates the epistemic act of violence when the victims lose the capability to produce and spread knowledge because of their effective marginalisation in society. This was true for those suffering violence under colonialism and is equally true for those who were targeted during the historical events of decolonisation such as the Indos. Consequently, their perspectives and experiences are underacknowledged in the Decolonial IR literature because they have not been heard or listened to and do not fit its dominant narrative, much like subaltern perspectives and experiences were ignored by Eurocentric IR earlier.
To illustrate, communities like the Indos could make important empirical contributions to existing historiographies of colonialism that are currently ethnocentric and incomplete. The same is true for the historiography of Indonesia in which the role of Indo-Europeans in political processes of emancipation has been discarded,Footnote 75 and we are likely to discover similar empirical omissions with respect to emancipation processes in other former colonies. The work and views of writers with hybrid identities such as Robinson should function as unique lenses through which to observe the transitions from pre-independence colonial to post-independence post-colonial societies. Moreover, the study of the distinct war experiences of suffering, hardship, and trauma of Indo (and Indies-Dutch) men and women during the War of the Pacific can advance feminist security studies scholarship on the gendered nature and implications of conflict, war, and occupation. Notably, this gendered nature combined with a strong racial component. It was Indo and Indies-Dutch women specifically who ended up in camps and then became the victims of sexual violence under Japanese rule in the Dutch East Indies. They became prisoners based on their European ancestry and supposed loyalty to the Dutch state. Being European was in that specific historical context a liability that produced victimhood rather than an asset of power or privilege.
This is where the greatest contribution of the Indos and similar communities to IR theory is found. Their history forces the discipline, and Decolonial IR in particular, to nuance its understanding of the role of race in IR. Although the observation of race as a core determinant of IR historically speaking and of the development of IR as a discipline has been a major recent contribution,Footnote 76 there equally may be a real risk of overemphasis on this determinant. Contrary to what some have argued, it should not necessarily ‘have been impossible to talk about postcolonialism without discussing race,’Footnote 77 because, as the Indos demonstrate unequivocally, different postcolonial experiences were not always divided along racial lines.Footnote 78 This implies that the ‘artificial distinction between discourses of race, postcoloniality, and imperialism’Footnote 79 may be less artificial than Decolonial IR presumes. There are cases and historical events, including notably those linked to colonialism and decolonisation, whose analysis and interpretation require precisely the abandonment of the linkage of clearcut racial categories with postcoloniality and imperialism. Only such a delinking, or rather a recoupling of the decolonial exercise with the messiness and complexity of the actual events of decolonisation, will lead to a complete understanding of these events and of the core questions they pose to IR. Although the connection between race and colonialism is undeniable, historically relevant, and should remain a subject of scholarly inquiry, Decolonial IR’s focus on race and use of racial categories – even as it recognises the fluidity of race and its imperfection as a clear identity marker – also risks dividing up the social world through the use of decolonial binaries applied along racial lines that do not hold up empirically. Ultimately, this results in myopia that excludes hybrid and hard-to-categorise communities like the Indos, whose existence and experience can advance our understanding of colonial and postcolonial relations in ways that an emphasis on race cannot.
Finally, the value of abandoning Decolonial IR’s binaries to enable a focus on communities like the Indos is not limited to IR’s understanding of the ‘Global South’ or ‘periphery’ alone but may advance scholarship on the ‘Global North,’ too, precisely due to the liminality and hybridity of these communities’ identities. Scholars of IR should uncover the Indos’ and others’ ‘mediator’ roles in former coloniser societies, how they shaped multiculturalism and support for and resistance to it, and how they impacted national identity formation and were impacted themselves by conflicting national identity markers. For example, the Indo community’s ties to Dutch colonialism were an ill fit with a Dutch society keen to forget its past and frame its identity around what it saw as its future: the European Community.Footnote 80 Here and elsewhere in Europe, the resulting friction between subaltern groups and an emerging, inward-looking, essentialist understanding of European civilisation has interfered in the formation of European identity with implications for studies on the European integration project.
In short, the potential to advance IR scholarship by delving from communities like the Indos is substantial, versatile, and worthy of further pursuit. Notably, engagement with such communities would constitute an important step towards ‘globalising’ the discipline, making it more inclusive and diverse, and, I would argue, fully ‘decolonising’ it, too. Particularly, it would prevent Decolonial IR from making the kind of errors it observes in Eurocentric IR.
What can be done?
There are several ways in which Decolonial IR, and with it the broader discipline of IR, can change course, still achieve its stated objectives, and meanwhile avoid marginalising those communities whose identities do not correspond neatly with decolonial binary categories. In this section, I suggest that many of Decolonial IR’s own methods and strategies can be of help if applied reflexively to its own project and not only to Eurocentric IR. Therefore, I rely on Decolonial IR’s own arguments and turn these around, applying them critically to Decolonial IR.
The first required step is to ‘develop greater recognition and self-awareness of [Decolonial IR’s] own origins and reproduction of’ the postcolonial.Footnote 81 Doing so allows Decolonial IR to acknowledge that it can easily fall into the trap that Eurocentric IR fell into earlier and that this would be undesirable. Decolonial IR’s criticism of Eurocentric IR is strong, and the methods it applies to correct Eurocentric IR are helpful; they can also be used to improve Decolonial IR, which makes plainly visible the marginalising and excluding processes it engenders and produces self-awareness that is needed for improvement.
For example, much like ‘histories and scholarship from the non-Western (colonized) world’ do not ‘offer alternative “readings” of familiar topics or texts’ but rather ‘more adequate treatments of various themes central to international being in the world and the construction of international order,’Footnote 82 histories and scholarship from hybrid and difficult-to-categorise communities can equally increase the adequacy of the way the IR discipline treats themes central to Decolonial IR. Producing alternative and more adequate accounts of subjecthood is a core objective of Decolonial IR, which it holds as a precondition for dialogue between subjects that should speak across divides.Footnote 83 However, although it observes a divide between Eurocentric and ‘non-Western’ IR, it fails to see the divides that exist within ‘non-Western’ IR between those whose voices have been dominant and those who have hardly been heard. Thus, although ‘mainstream IR … has misdescribed the origins and character of the contemporary international order,’Footnote 84 Decolonial IR may have misdescribed or misinterpreted the origins and character of decolonisation in its many forms by leaving out the accounts of certain subjects. This could result in ‘the reproduction of systems of values, norms, and institutions that are intended to preserve vested interests under the guise of truth’ not only in Eurocentric IR, but equally in Decolonial IR.Footnote 85 What Spivak referred to as the ‘axiomatics of imperialism’ may have a younger sibling in the growing axiomatics of decolonialism.Footnote 86 Much like ‘postcolonialists should … pay attention to the constitution of knowledge and archives’ because the way they are constituted has implications for ‘truth, justice, and rights,’Footnote 87 IR scholars, decolonial or other, should pay similar attention to the constitution of knowledge and archives concerning decolonisation and pre- and post-independence societies. If they do not, voices like the Indos get silenced, which amounts to ‘the evacuation of others from history’Footnote 88 that Decolonial IR precisely seeks to prevent. Furthermore, this would enable the memory of decolonisation to become about liberation and not about the violence that it was as well, much like Decolonial IR observes that ‘memory of empire metamorphoses typically as nostalgia, not as enactment of coloniality.’Footnote 89 Although it may be true that Eurocentric IR overlooks ‘the violence, genocide, and theft that marked the encounter between the rest and the West,’Footnote 90 Decolonial IR should be careful not to overlook the violence, genocide, and theft that marked the events of decolonisation. When Decolonial IR states that colonialism was not an event but a structure and that, therefore, the decolonisation of IR must also become a structure that serves as a kind of antidote,Footnote 91 there lies a real risk in this, because structures are rigid by nature and they enable as much as they constrain.
Second, much like the IR discipline should ‘reveal the imperial and racialised constitution of international relations,’Footnote 92 Decolonial IR should reveal the racialised constitution of its own approach and how it leaves out certain communities under its implicit assumption of a racial divide in IR scholarship and thought. Although it rightfully asks how it is possible that the issue of race has been ignored by the discipline for so long, Decolonial IR may equally be suffering from ‘wilful amnesia’Footnote 93 concerning the complex divisions between ‘coloured’ groups along the lines of identity markers, including culture, historical ties, kinship, and loyalty sentiments towards the coloniser.
To remedy this, as a third step, Decolonial IR should recouple its decolonial exercise to the historical and empirical events that marked the era of decolonisation, for which it can rely notably on the ‘historical turn’ in IR and heed recent calls for the closer alignment of IR with global history.Footnote 94 Doing so would avoid the ‘ahistoricism’ of presenting decolonisation as an ‘uncontested background narrative’ subject to ‘a type of motivated bias’ that supports Decolonial IR’s questionable application of binaries.Footnote 95 Instead, it would involve the study of history to ‘problematise [Decolonial IR’s] analysis of the present, and thereby reconfigure [its] research agenda.’Footnote 96 In its current form, the literature has been focused predominantly on the production of theoretical critiques and much less on empirical, historical, and descriptive work. Linking Decolonial IR to historical IR would emphasise the need for an ‘empirically driven research agenda,’ maximising chances that the ‘stories’ that undergird Decolonial IR align with the historical evidence of what occurred.Footnote 97
One core criticism of Decolonial IR has been, of course, that the ‘West’ is where theory building happens, whereas the ‘rest’ serves as a laboratory for theory testing. This is an important criticism and should be taken seriously. However, it should not make Decolonial IR abandon empirical and descriptive work. The relative emphasis on theoretical criticism may have enabled the decoupling of Decolonial IR from historical works on decolonisation that acknowledge its messiness and complexity. A recoupling with the empirical data and historical events can inspire a reconceptualisation in IR theory of decolonisation as not only a process of liberation but also one of severe disenfranchisement. That, in turn, can stimulate awareness of the decolonial exercise not only being an epistemic correction of past injustices in knowledge production but at the same time itself an act that excludes by favouring certain perspectives and ignoring others.
Importantly, the recoupling proposed here may serve itself as a bounded, historically situated move that risks anchoring analyses in the history of colonialism and decolonisation, presenting it as IR’s grand narrative point of departure. That must be avoided, as pre-colonial and indigenous thought deserves equal consideration. To fully decolonise IR, the discipline must engage with pre-colonial and non-colonial histories as much as it should contest and critically examine colonial and decolonial histories.Footnote 98
Fourth, to enable a recoupling, Decolonial IR should apply the method of contrapuntal reading, frequently suggested by Decolonial IR,Footnote 99 but not merely to the events of imperialism and colonialism but also to experiences of and during decolonisation. Contrapuntal reading was proposed by Edward Said when he pointed out that, like music’s harmony being composed of contrapuntal lines, a true understanding of the social world requires an appreciation of the contrapuntality of different perspectives that complement one another. As Pinar Bilgin summarised, Said relied on the image of ‘the exile,’ someone who naturally has a contrapuntal awareness, standing in and viewing the world from the vantage point of two (or more) different cultures, a unique perspective that others lack and thus need to be made aware of.Footnote 100 Contrapuntal awareness allows a subject to challenge dominant systems, narratives, historiographies, and epistemologies.
As such, a contrapuntal reading of imperial experiences can function as an effective method to correct Eurocentric accounts of IR. It can simultaneously be of great use in pointing at how core themes of Decolonial IR, such as race, and events that inspired this literature, such as decolonisation, can be understood and interpreted in their totality and from different vantage points. If anyone would fit Said’s image of ‘the exile,’ it would be a figure like Tjalie Robinson. Through his experiences and writings, we should ‘be able to think through and interpret together experiences [of the era of decolonisation] that are discrepant, each with its particular agenda and pace of development, its own internal formations, its internal coherence and system of external relationships, all of them coexisting and interacting with others.’Footnote 101
As stated previously, this suggested four-step approach towards strengthening Decolonial IR finds its inspiration in that literature’s own recommendations. Where Sankaran Krishna, making his point about IR’s failure to come to terms with the issue of race, recalled Said’s insistence on the need for ‘a simultaneous awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts,’Footnote 102 a contrapuntal reading of decolonisation, independence struggles, and even the assumptions of clear divides along racial lines can challenge the dominant discourse in Decolonial IR and complement it with unheard voices. As Bilgin argued, contrapuntality can then function not only as a method but also as an ethos (and metaphor), ‘orienting students of IR to heighten their awareness regarding multiple perspectives on a problem.’Footnote 103
Conclusion
Binary thinking seldom does justice to historical reality. This has certainly been true of Eurocentric accounts of historical events, but it is equally true of the decolonial literature. For the latter, some may argue that its use of binaries is heuristic, instrumental, or a form of ‘strategic essentialism,’ and not representative of its actual understanding of the postcolonial world and the divisions of power within it. This may be true in some cases – even if Decolonial IR’s rationale and self-justification give reasons to doubt this – but its use of binaries inevitably leads to exclusion and epistemic marginalisation, as this article has demonstrated. The Indos and Tjalie Robinson represent a clear and emblematic example, but they are just that, an example. Many other groups and thinkers – for example, decolonial migrant communities found in places such as Portugal, France, or the United Kingdom; those from or based in regions that are neither ‘Western’ nor exactly ‘non-Western’; otherwise marginalised communities located in the ‘West’; and subaltern voices in the ‘Global South’ for whom more privileged compatriots cannot truly speak – may find themselves equally uncategorisable along Decolonial IR’s binary lines and facing epistemic marginalisation as a consequence.Footnote 104 Luckily, it is not too late nor difficult for Decolonial IR to change course and avoid the pitfalls of parochialism.
As this article suggested, the abandonment of identity-based decolonial binaries can strengthen Decolonial IR – and by extension the larger IR discipline – by expanding its gaze beyond the easily categorisable and by including perspectives that may unsettle some of Decolonial IR’s core assumptions but that simultaneously result in more complete and honest representations, analyses, and interpretations of IR’s core concerns. Epistemology is never complete as there is an endless number of perspectives and ways of thinking and knowing that can be added. Decolonial IR’s major contribution has been to push for much greater inclusivity and variety in the IR discipline’s epistemological palette. Yet more can and should be done, and Decolonial IR already contains within it the required tools. A critical, reflexive approach to its own exercise should lead it to be self-aware and abandon the use of identity-based decolonial binaries, acknowledge that its emphasis on race is not universally applicable and justified, recouple its project to the actual messy and complex events of decolonisation, and apply contrapuntal reading not only to Eurocentric accounts but also to its own.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Tom Long, Christopher Browning, and Wim Willems for their helpful comments as well as to participants in the workshop ‘Beyond the National: Cartographies of Identity, Insecurity, and Epistemic Marginalisation,’ held at Ashoka University, Sonipat, India, on 27 February 2026. I also thank the editors and reviewers of International Theory for their very helpful and insightful suggestions. An earlier draft was presented at the 2025 British International Studies Association (BISA) annual conference. The development of this paper was supported by a Visiting Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Warwick.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
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