AEMI

124 AEMI JOURNAL 2015
ment’s remittances on the motherland
economy by viewing them from a loss
perspective. For example the loss of the
Netherlands East Indies (NEI) affected
the Netherlands in several ways. The
companies, railroads, and plantations
that had been built with Dutch Foreign
Direct Investment (FDI) were nationalized
and mutual trade ceased. 52 Royal
Dutch Shell was excluded from being
nationalized due to Indonesia’s need
for FDI to explore and exploit its oil.
The famous catch-phrase ‘Innovation
is the mother of invention,’ seems relevant
here if the economists who predicted
that the Dutch economy would
not have expanded to the extent it did
in the postwar era without the loss of
the East Indies are to be believed. It
prompted the Netherlands to overcome
its losses by modernising and pursuing
other business interests. These activities
restored its losses as the economy globalized.
53
At the close of WWII, the Netherlands
was not only faced with rebuilding
itself and restarting the former economy,
but also with constructing a new economy
without the support of the Netherlands
East Indies, which had helped fuel
Dutch economic prominence since the
1800s. 54 The colony consisted of 40 per
cent of all Dutch investment abroad,
was a steady source of income from
investment, and contributed up to 14
percent to the Dutch National Income.
The NEI also provided raw materials for
the Netherlands to manufacture and export.
After the Occupation of the Netherlands
by Nazi Germany it was even
more important for the Dutch government
in exile (in UK) to maintain control
over the colony’s resources such as
oil, rubber, and sugar, to aid Nazi resistance.
This they managed to do until
1942 when the Japanese invaded, and
Occupied, the NEI until August 1945,
which cut off this particular stream of
resource supplies to the allies for the remainder
of WWII. The depleted state of
European Economies due to the costs
of war, loss of the NEI and depletion
of the housing stock due to war damage
and lack of building throughout the war
years were the main catalysts driving an
unprecedented movement of people out
of Europe leading to its label mass migration
era.
Mass Migration Post WWII
This research demonstrates, how the
story of European economic and socio-cultural
expansion gained potency
from trading relationships that date back
to antiquity, the ‘Age of Exploration’
and Age of Religious expansion. These
events stimulated Europeans to move
around the discovering world as explorers,
skippers, merchants, evangelisers,
administrators, soldiers and sailors and
later as sojourners, colonists, migrants
and refugees. Sometimes, singly at other
times in diaspora their migration linked
forever to the social, cultural heritage
and economic landscape of Europeans
to countries bordering the Indian Ocean
Rim/Regions. The mobility of people
often increases after conflicts but not to
the same extent that characterized three
decades that followed on from the close
of WWII. Australia is my example here.
The bilateral immigration agreements
Australia contracted with the International
Refugee Organisation (IRO) in
1947 brought in 200,000 Displaced
Persons (DPs) from Eastern and Central