Colonial Mercenaries from the Home of Neutrality: Swiss Military Labor in the Dutch East Indies, 1850–1914

This paper focuses on a category of actors that was important to the violent process of empire formation but which has been largely neglected in recent historiographies of the new military history: colonial mercenaries. Both the French and Dutch Empires were heavily dependent on European mercenaries for their violent colonial expansion in the second half of the 19^th century, as they had too limited demographic resources of their own on the one hand, and distrusted the military prowess of indigenous troops due to their racist prejudices on the other. Numerous ‘white subalterns’ from all over Europe followed their call and regarded the colonies as an opportunity to escape personal or financial crises at home and to receive a regular income, including room and board. Among these soldiers were also about 5,800 Swiss mercenaries who served in the Dutch colonial army. They were involved in colonial wars as well as in so-called ‘punitive expeditions’. However, beyond these violent actions, they also interacted with the local population on multiple levels, entering into sexual relations with Javanese concubines and fathering children. Their service in the colonial army produced varying consequences: almost half of the Swiss soldiers died while still in service, out of the other half, a few settled in the colony after their discharge while most returned home where they tried to reintegrate into civil society—with unpredictable degrees of success. By combing approaches from both new imperial and new military history, this talk sheds light on cultural, economic and social aspects of an entangled history that includes historical actors from a neutral and non-colonizing European country, thus transcending the usual exclusive focus on imperial metropoles and their respective colonies.