This catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition Images of the Indonesian War of Independence, 1945-1949 in Leiden University Library. This exhibition displays a selection of the material in the library's Special Collections, including a large number of objects from the collections of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV-KNAW). The exhibition features a diverse range of sources, from posters and drawings to photographs, and from first-hand personal accounts on paper or in recorded interviews to documents with a more official status produced by the belligerent parties. The exhibition is divided into six themes. Exceptional examples of the various sources have been selected for each theme. Together, they form an impression of that theme from a range of perspectives.

KITLV and Leiden University Library came up with the idea for the exhibition, in part to tie in with the publication of the results of the study ‘Independence, Decolonization, Violence and War in Indonesia, 1945-1950’ (https://www.ind45-50.org/en). This research programme was funded by the Dutch government and carried out by KITLV, the Netherlands Institute of Military History (NIMH) and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The research for the exhibition itself was carried out by three Master's students – Sander van der Horst, Linde Lammers and Melle van Maanen – all three interns at KITLV who were seconded to the library. They were supervised by Gert Oostindie (KITLV) and Doris Jedamski, Anouk Mansfeld and Jef Schaeps (Leiden University Library). Unless specified otherwise, all the texts in this catalogue were written by them. A significant addition to the team in a later stage of the research was Muhammad Yuanda Zara. He is an alumnus of Leiden University (MA) and the University of Amsterdam (PhD) and now works at Yogyakarta State University as a historian. He is responsible for the introduction and the texts describing the Indonesian-language pamphlets. We also thank Esther Captain, Marije Plomp and Fridus Steijlen for their gentle advice.

* The reader should note that the Dutch and Indonesian quotes were transcribed (before translation) from the original documents without alterations, aside from occasional changes in punctuation, the use of capitals and obvious typographical errors. Elsewhere, the modern Indonesian spelling has been used for the names of people and geographical locations.