Beyond Isolation: A Study on the Punitive Camps of Boven-Digoel

Abstract

This research project examines the consequences of incorporating the history of the Boven-Digoel exile camps into the historiography of Dutch colonial state expansion in New Guinea between 1926 and 1942. This project describes the Digoel camp, especially Tanah Merah, as a frontier where methods of expansionist governance were tested and perfected for future colonization. Rather than overt violence, the camps relied on surveillance, material deprivation, and psychological manipulation to coerce exiles into becoming colonists. This study challenges the notion of Digoel as a space of relative freedom, instead, the study shows how coercion was a product of daily life through systemic means, by the disciplinary effects of malaria control policy for instance. By adding this layer to the history of the Digoel camps this project aims at showing that the violence suffered by the exiles was not a product of exceptional circumstances, but part of the larger project of the Dutch colonization of New Guinea. The disciplinary system set in place to control and reform exiles has only been studied as an exceptional phenomenon. By embedding the history of the Digoel camps into the history of Dutch colonization of New Guinea this research project hopes to free the historiography of Digoel from its isolation and place it in the context of Dutch colonial fantasy.