Podcast: Travels Through Time (LS 44 · TOP 1% what is this?)
Episode: Nicholas Walton: The End of the Dutch Empire (1950)
Pub date: 2026-03-31

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The Netherlands is a small nation with a big history. But in the 1940s it suffered a series of disastrous events. First came the invasion of the Nazis in 1940. Then the very next year the Japanese attacked their old empire in the east. The horrors of World War Two were then followed by the Indonesian National Revolution and, by 1950, the Dutch were a 'pocket superpower' no longer.

In this episode the journalist and hiker Nicholas Walton takes us back to examine this challenging moment in Dutch history. It was a time of reckoning with the past but also a moment of bright new beginnings.

Nicholas Walton is the author of Orange Sky, Rising Water: The Remarkable Past and Uncertain Future of the Netherlands.

Show notes

Scene One: 1 January 1950, The dining table of a typical Dutch family.

Scene Two: 12 January 1950, The Lloydkade in Rotterdam when troop ships like the SS Waterman, SS Grote Beer and SS Zuiderkruis all were bringing soldiers home to a freezing Netherlands.

Scene Three: 26 July 1950. A barracks in Indonesia. This was the official date that the KNIL, the Dutch colonial army, was officially dissolved.

Memento: A green/white temporary house as lived in by the Moluccans

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Nicholas Walton

Production: Maria Nolan

Theme music: Firelight by Minka

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