Talk:Quirijn Maurits Rudolph Ver Huell

Please bear with me

When I started this biography of "the smart nephew of one of the greatest traitors the Netherlands ever saw" (no, not Anton Mussert, but Carel Hendrik Ver Huell a really competent man, who unfortunately let his hero-worshipping of Napoleon get the better of him; the French have not for nothing put his name among those of the heroes in the Arc de Triomphe; the loathing he enjoyed from his Dutch contemporaries was not undeserved either) I thought it was just another run of the mill job. I finished it in an afternoon and then started on his son Alexander. But then, as fate would have it, I smelled a rat. There was too little in the official biographies about the reasons for his Military Order of William. In the Netherlands right now there is a wave of historical revisionism about the colonial past of the country. No stone is being left unturned to discover the next colonialist atrocity. This mostly concentrates on the Indonesian war of independence after World War Two. But in this frenzy older history is overlooked. The early years of the 19th century, when the Netherlands as a country (as opposed to the merchant empire of the VOC) seriously got into the business of colonizing Indonesia (in emulation of the British, it should be said, who taught them at the knee of Stamford Raffles how such a thing should be done) have their own dark secrets to uncover. So I decided to get a bit deeper into it, and I think I struck dirt, so to speak. I hope to unveil what I found in the next few days. But I heed a bit more time. So please wait a while with improving on my handiwork till I am done. I know you can do it much better than I.But you'll have much less work to do, if you first let me do mine. Ereunetes (talk) 04:38, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I have finished now, though there are always rough points to polish. The promised atrocities have indeed materialized (not that Ver Huell was personally involved, but he undoubtedly bore "command responsibility" as acting commander of the supporting naval squadron, and commanding officer of the Admiraal Evertsen. He conveniently condemns himself out of his own mouth in his memoir that I was able to quote and have included as an online source. The sources in general I find very interesting indeed. Mainly because they give an unintended intimate view of the mentality and "blind spots" (moral and otherwise) of our forebears. But I'd like to point out that they were not very different from their foreign contemporaries. Ver Huell's attitudes to the "natives" remind me of the attitudes of US cavalry officers toward Native Americans during the Indian Wars of the 19th century. Ver Huell even uses the term "Indians" toward the Moluccans (unaware of the unintended irony).Throughout "historical parallels" are rife. For instance, the descriptions of the summary executions (there was more than one, but I didn't mention them all; look for yourself in the sources) reminds me of the atrocities committed by captain Westerling in south Sulawesi in 1947. The name of the "captain Westerling" in the context of the suppression of the Ambon insurrection was "Major Meijer". But Meijer was not my subject, so he must remain fodder for another biographer. Of course, it will be clear that Ver Huell was much more than a "cancellable felon". He had undoubtedly great qualities, as I hope will emerge from the lines of this biography. And he was undoubtedly smitten with the daughter of the leader of the insurrection Matulesia/Pattimura and showed her every kindness. But this may have been a matter of his ignorance of her true role in the atrocities of the other side. Because both sides behaved abominably (though we are now inclined to gloss over the atrocities of one side and magnify those of the other). But read for yourself in the sources. I think they are much more important than my feeble scribblings. Ereunetes (talk) 23:00, 17 March 2023 (UTC)