Get Indonesia to be a country that competes with the likes of Russia and U.S. by 1950-1980. PoD can be anywhere.
WI the Dutch had pursued a more aggressive policy in colonising the region, with the Dutch East Indies ITTL expanded to encompass the entirety of New Guinea, and to include Northern and Western Australia? The resulting Dutch East Indies attracts higher levels of immigration, both internally and from abroad (esp. China and the Far East), with British Australia's reactionary 'White Australia' policy increasing in severity as a result and exacerbating this trend, to the extent where the Dutch East Indies' portion of Australia ITTL has a higher population than the entirety of OTL's Australia by 1900.
Disputes and tensions with the British over territory lead to regional conflicts, straining relations between the two colonial powers, and the Dutch join the Central Powers in WW1. With the Dutch boosted by their additional resources and extra population, possessing a powerful modern navy and the capability to mobilise a military force in Oceania large enough to overrun the entirety of British Australia, their addition to the equation does just enough to sway the scales in favour of the Central Powers, with the Americans eventually declaring for the Central Powers in the last year of the war, and the Entente throwing in the towel in late 1917. As part of the peace treaty, British Australia is ceded by the British to the Dutch, with the colony perceived to have been a liability to the British in the war, accepted by them as preferable to losing Singapore & the Malay Peninsula, or to returning the island of Ceylon to the Dutch.
Victorious, but still largely crippled by war debts and the scars of the conflict, the Dutch have no real choice but to allow the East Indies greater autonomy, culminating in the full independence in the late 1940s of an Indonesia which encompasses OTL's Indonesia along with Australia, Papua New Guinea and East Timor, with a population comparable to that of OTL's Russia and a GDP per capita similar to that of OTL's Australia at this stage. Is it enough to compete with the likes of Russia (/the USSR) or the USA by 1980? Economically, you never know...
TBH I doubt that even the whole of Australia would be enough to make Indonesia a superpower, given that the country's mostly desert. And that's assuming that the Dutch would get involved in WW1 in the first place, which is quite unlikely. Even if the Dutch had a larger colonial empire, the British and French navies would (assuming the world had developed similarly overall to OTL) be significantly stronger than the Dutch-German-Austrian fleet, so the most likely outcome would be that the Netherlands has its access to its colonies blocked off.
What does Northern and Western Australia gain for the Dutch though considering the time period? And would it be equal to the resources required to gain and maintain their ownership of them? It just seems like a dilution of effort to me. If you want to improve the position of Indonesia whilst still having a period of Dutch control then you might want to look at the methods of government the Dutch East India Company and later Dutch colonial administration used, I seem to remember that they were less than optimal.WI the Dutch had pursued a more aggressive policy in colonising the region, with the Dutch East Indies ITTL expanded to encompass the entirety of New Guinea, and to include Northern and Western Australia?
What does Northern and Western Australia gain for the Dutch though considering the time period? And would it be equal to the resources required to gain and maintain their ownership of them? It just seems like a dilution of effort to me. If you want to improve the position of Indonesia whilst still having a period of Dutch control then you might want to look at the methods of government the Dutch East India Company and later Dutch colonial administration used, I seem to remember that they were less than optimal.
What does Northern and Western Australia gain for the Dutch though considering the time period? And would it be equal to the resources required to gain and maintain their ownership of them? It just seems like a dilution of effort to me. If you want to improve the position of Indonesia whilst still having a period of Dutch control then you might want to look at the methods of government the Dutch East India Company and later Dutch colonial administration used, I seem to remember that they were less than optimal.
Hell, large parts of Indonesia weren't even fully under Dutch control until around 1905 anyway, so that's a much better place to start than annexing large tracts of Australia.
And I kind of already mentioned that TTL's POD was the Dutch pursuing a more aggressive policy of bringing the Dutch East Indies under their control, doing so quickly enough to push on further and expand into uncolonised territories before the other colonial powers make their claims there...
Okay so the Dutch East Indies Company grabs the North-East of Australia and finds diamonds in the Kimberley region, what happens then? Best guess they're dug out of the ground then shipped back to Europe for sale and the money made is paid out by the VOC to their shareholders as part of the annual profits. If their behaviour from our timeline with regards to Indonesian resources such as with the clove industry for example where they uprooted and burned any trees that they didn't control so as to try and gain a global monopoly is anything to go by then they're going to clamp down hard to control things. Unlike in California where people were able to go out, stake a claim and try to get rich here at best the VOC will allow miners in in return for their keeping say 10% of what they find at best whilst the company keeps 90%, or more likely simply brings in low paid indentured labour or outright slaves to do the work.In the Kimberley, you don't have gold, but you have diamonds galore- in fact, one third of the world's diamonds are extracted from the mines in this region every year. If these deposits were discovered by the Dutch, the gains would be more than enough to justify the resources they'd require to colonise and maintain their ownership of the region. The real challenge would be having the Dutch ITTL doing a good enough job of it, in the early stages of colonisation, to prevent other colonial powers from marching in and seizing the region from them by force.
But at what point would they be able to economically recover them? And at what point is there going to be a large enough demand for natural resources like zinc or nickel?You've also got plentiful reserves of oil, natural gas, zinc, lead and nickel there for the taking; and of course, remember that these plentiful reserves are all situated in the region of Australia (/Nova Hollandia)...
Okay so the Dutch East Indies Company grabs the North-East of Australia and finds diamonds in the Kimberley region, what happens then? Best guess they're dug out of the ground then shipped back to Europe for sale and the money made is paid out by the VOC to their shareholders as part of the annual profits. If their behaviour from our timeline with regards to Indonesian resources such as with the clove industry for example where they uprooted and burned any trees that they didn't control so as to try and gain a global monopoly is anything to go by then they're going to clamp down hard to control things. Unlike in California where people were able to go out, stake a claim and try to get rich here at best the VOC will allow miners in in return for their keeping say 10% of what they find at best whilst the company keeps 90%, or more likely simply brings in low paid indentured labour or outright slaves to do the work.
Now they could very well reinvest some of the money they make from the diamonds into developing their Indonesian holdings more. Going on their past history and how as a private commercial company they seem to have mostly viewed the region as a resource extraction area I'm not sure we'd see large enough amounts to make much of an appreciable difference. But that's just my opinion.
But at what point would they be able to economically recover them? And at what point is there going to be a large enough demand for natural resources like zinc or nickel?
I don't really think you have any idea of the difficulties the Dutch had in taking control of the DEI. Aceh took almost 3 decades to conquer by itself, Sulawesi the entire period from 1815-1902 to fully pacify, New Guinea wasn't even under any form of Dutch administrative control until 1898 (and the Dutch only claimed the 141st parallel in response to British and German claims on the other half of New Guinea). Most of Flores and the lesser Sundas don't even appear to have entered the picture beyond some trade posts until the early 20th Century.
Not to mention that I highly doubt that any part of Dutch Australia would be joined with Indonesia anyway. OTL there were attempts to split off New Guinea and divide the archipelago on independence, considering that Australia would be a settler colony similar to the Cape initially and with the Malays and Indonesians only brought in as workers similar to, and competing with, the Chinese I really don't see any reason for the Dutch not to administer it entirely separately from an early date.
Really if you want a larger DEI-> larger Indonesia route then you're much better off trying to avoid the issues of the Napoleonic wars and Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 thus potentially bringing in the Malay peninsular and North Borneo than any adventures in Australia.
I don't think you get the point of the Dutch East indies. They were about resource extraction not about colouring in territory on a map. Yes they could have gone for new Guinea and Northern Australia but what's the point of seizing infertile inhospitable terrain? Java, Acer, the Moroccans and Sulawesi were where the money was.Perhaps if they chose not to pursue the conquests of the strongest regional powers in Aceh and Sulawesi after the nationalization of the Dutch East Indies, but instead decided to pursue earlier expansion further southwards and eastwards, into regions such as New Guinea, Nusa Tenggara, and eventually through into NW Australia, where the natives were weaker, more primitive, and easier to conquer? And if it's administered as a single region in the same way as OTL's Dutch East Indies, then you'd still have secessionist movements in the same way as those in several regions of OTL's Indonesia, but history IOTL seems to indicate that it'd still probably be granted independence as a single nation- albeit probably as a federation of states rather than a nation of provinces, with greater levels of regional autonomy.
Perhaps if they chose not to pursue the conquests of the strongest regional powers in Aceh and Sulawesi after the nationalization of the Dutch East Indies, but instead decided to pursue earlier expansion further southwards and eastwards, into regions such as New Guinea, Nusa Tenggara, and eventually through into NW Australia, where the natives were weaker, more primitive, and easier to conquer? And if it's administered as a single region in the same way as OTL's Dutch East Indies, then you'd still have secessionist movements in the same way as those in several regions of OTL's Indonesia, but history IOTL seems to indicate that it'd still probably be granted independence as a single nation- albeit probably as a federation of states rather than a nation of provinces, with greater levels of regional autonomy.
I don't think you get the point of the Dutch East indies. They were about resource extraction not about colouring in territory on a map. Yes they could have gone for new Guinea and Northern Australia but what's the point of seizing infertile inhospitable terrain? Java, Acer, the Moroccans and Sulawesi were where the money was.
I don't think you get the point of the Dutch East indies. They were about resource extraction not about colouring in territory on a map. Yes they could have gone for new Guinea and Northern Australia but what's the point of seizing infertile inhospitable terrain? Java, Acer, the Moroccans and Sulawesi were where the money was.