Het Nederlanderschap en de inheemsen in Nederlands-Indië

The text of art. 5 par. 1 sub 1 of the Civil Code 1838 was confusing. Deviating from earlier drafts in 1822 it read that people, born from parents established in the colonies, were Dutch. Leaving aside that all read this as only applying to those who had moved their domicile to the Netherlands (the Civil Code did not apply in the colonies), and that this only regarded private law rights, granted by the Civil Code, it still suggested that not only Europeans but also the natives of the colonies born there, particularly in the East Indies, were entitled. That became a question in 1850 when the Nationality Bill was discussed in the Parliament. Where the Civil Code had defined nationality for the private law, the Bill aimed at defining nationality in public and international law. Did the possibility of private law nationality suffice to incorporate all natives in the new public law nationality? The minister was against and they stayed out. In the Act on Dutch nationality of 1892, meant to supplant the two co-existing definitions of nationality, originally those with the possibility of private law nationality ex the Civil Code had been included in the unified nationality. Yet, in the nick of time an amendment took the natives of the East Indies out. As a result the act should have been adapted to this change but it did not and now the natives of the East Indies became foreigners. In 1910 this was remedied by an act which declared they were Dutch subjects (and thus not foreigners). However, they had always been and remained subjects. The final question is: were the natives unjustly treated? Only if they had ever expressed the wish for this. But the entire discussion was held without them and moreover, they always wanted to be independent, not Dutch.