This paper presents a preliminary survey of people coming from Hungary who were employed for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) between 1602 and 1795, drawing some conclusions from the point of view of national identity, education, social class and ethnic background. The survey was conducted using the database of sea-voyagers of the Dutch National Archive, containing detailed information of the background of the people who entered the service of the VOC. There has never been done a detailed survey of Hungarian immigrants coming to the Dutch Republic in the Early Modern period. So far, only students coming from Hungary to the Netherlands have been studied, but the majority of them have returned to their home country after university and did not stay here. The aim is to introduce the source material and its context in general, which can be the basis of further investigations. So far, almost 118 Hungarians have been identified. The majority of the Hungarians occupied modest positions on the ships and did not return from the east.

Frans Pavel Killinger was a Hungarian military and policeman, who tried to set up a coup d’état in 1901 in Suriname, colony of the Netherlands. He strongly criticized the corrupt late-colonial system and poor living conditions in Suriname, and visioned a state without army and with better living conditions for the people, led by himself. The attempt was unveiled and Killinger and his compatriots were sentenced to death. He was pardoned, spent some years in prison, and joined the Turkish army.

Between the first own household of Madelon Székely-Lulofs – the well-known writer from the Dutch East Indies – in the arable region of Deli (on the east coast of Sumatra) and her home, later on, in the centre of Budapest one can notice a number of striking parallels. In both places the grinding lack of money, the care for the right food, her contact with the servants and a huge crocodile played a prominent role.

In 1931 and 1932, Madelon Lulofs published her novels Rubber and Koelie; in 1935 Van oerwoud tot plantage appeared, a translation of the novel Őserdőktől az ültetvényekig by her spouse, László Székely, that came out in the same year. The novels give a realistic and revealing look into the harsh life on the plantations of Deli at the East Coast of Sumatra. Although the books were generally well received in the Netherlands and were considered by progressive critics to be accusations against the colonial administration, the Dutch East Indian press responded with indignation: the colony, as they concluded, was put in a bad light, which created a wrong impression amongst the general public abroad. Besides, equally importantly, these novels served as an evidence of colonial oppression for Indian nationalists, they argued. The Székely-Lulofs couple was heavily rebuked for it. The hate campaign against them was led by journalist H.C. Zentgraaff.

This article compares the literary representation of Javanese contract laborers in Suriname and Deli (Sumatra). Novels depicting the life of planters and workers, such as Madelon Székely-Lulofs’s Rubber (1931) or Koelie (1932) on Deli, are not part of the Surinamese literary canon. Instead, I use contemporary books and articles, among which publications by missionaries form an important source, and later stories and novels by authors of Surinamese descent, including Bea Vianen, Cynthia McLeod, and Karin Amatmoekrim, in which Javanese history and culture in Suriname are sketched. In contrast to Deli, in Surinamese prose the indentured labor system was only questioned in the postcolonial period.

Czechoslovakia was a new state that emerged in 1918. It combined the former Kingdom of the Bohemian Crown and former Felvidék – Upper-Hungary. In the period between the two World Wars, and especially after 1930 when the Czechoslovak shoe concern Baťa started its presence in Dutch East-Indies, a couple of novels by Dutch writers has been translated into Czech. Most of them were written by Madelon Székely-Lulofs and Johan Fabricius, the latter even visited Czechoslovakia in 1934. These novels and practical travel stories mainly by Czech entrepreneurs formed the picture of Dutch EastIndies in the mind of Czechoslovak people. Because of a lack of Dutch technic graduates, Dutch authorities recruited engineers from elsewhere, especially from Central Europe. Thus, between the beginning of the 20th century and the end of Dutch East-Indies (1949) some 80 to 100 Czechoslovaks were living in the colony in 1949. Most of them didn’t receive Dutch nationality. In 1939, they were considered to be citizens of the so-called Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia. When the Japanese occupied the colony in 1941, the Protectorate government tried to repatriate its citizens and asked Japanese authorities to spare Czechs. The Japanese treated them then as “non-belligerent enemies”. Most Czechs didn’t accept the offer to stay outside the concentration camps and either entered the camps as did their Dutch colleagues, or even participated in the very little and weak resistance against the Japanese. A very special Czech presence was the factory PT Sepatu Bata built by the Czechoslovak concern Baťa in 1939 that was interested in Indonesian rubber and saw also possibilities to enter the East-Indian market.