Royal Netherlands East Indies Army 1936-42 (Lohnstein Marc)(Paperback)

Until 1945, Indonesia was a Dutch colony known as the Netherlands East Indies. In 1930, the area had over 60 million inhabitants and was a major exporter of oil, rubber, tin and quinine. It was a particularly strong trading partner for Japan, providing some 13 percent of Japan's oil needs--second only after the United States. Following Germany's occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, Japan decided to expand its influence in the Netherlands East Indies via diplomatic negotiations to acquire the necessary strategic goods of oil, rubber and tin. However, the negotiations did not provide Japan with the access it had hoped to gain. Up until the mid-1930s the colonial authorities considered the probability of military conflict between the major powers in Asia to be very low and that any military presence in the colony was primarily aimed at enforcing Dutch rule. This task was
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