Publishing house De Brug - Djambatan

In the late 1940s (following World War II) Henk van Randwijk (journalist and editor-in-chief of the Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland) and his fellow war-resistance fighter Cees de Koning (director of Vrij Nederland) began setting up a publishing house that would concentrate on those nations which became independent after the war.
Van Randwijk wanted to help the peoples who gained independence after World War to acquire knowledge. Some of the leading Dutch publishing houses - De Bezige Bij, Meulenhoff, Querido, Ten Have, Nijhoff and Brusse, and Vrij Nederland - supported this initiative and joined together in a corporation called the Uitgeverij De Brug (The Bridge). Later on they added the Indonesian word for bridge (Djambatan) to this name.

After all the preparatory work had been completed by Cees de Koning, the publishing house was officially opened on 14 July 1949 in Amsterdam. Van Randwijk and De Koning cherished ambitions for the future of De Brug. In the articles of association the publishers included their aim: to collaborate in international cultural education and to contribute to the cultural, social, and political development of the liberated peoples. They especially aimed at preparation, publication, and circulation of books, atlases, brochures, magazines, newspapers, periodicals, and series relating to the cultural, social and political life, as well as to inform the peoples of Indonesia, Surinam, and the Netherlands Antilles - and everything relating to this purpose.

During its existence De Brug-Djamabatan was internationally oriented and published (academic) books mainly about Southeast Asia, the Arabic world, the Middle East and the history of Islam. The works published were mainly of a social, political or general nature. There were many editions of books, atlases and encyclopedias, and many were in oriental languages such as Indonesian, Burmese, Singhala, and Arabic. Historical atlases were abundantly illustrated with many photographs.
One example of this was Burma in the Family of Nations, an impressive illustrated edition in 32 volumes, edited by Dr. Maung Maung. Besides, biographies of such Asian politicians as Sun Yat Sen, Gandhi, Ibn Saud, Rizal, Kemal Pasha, and Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo were published. Jan Romein, Wim Wertheim, and Henk van Randwijk edited a historical overview of Asia in the twentieth century up to 1956. This overview, called Asia Bergola, contained many photos and was in Indonesian. Later on this book, known as A World on the Move, was translated and published in English (in Dutch: Een wereld beweegt.)

Henk van Randwijk was the director of the De Brug-Djambatan until 1954. In September 1967 the publishing house moved to The Hague, and in 1982 to Utrecht. It had branches in Jakarta and Rangoon as well. In 1987 its publishing activities ceased. At the end of the 1980s the collection of De Brug-Djambatan's photographs was housed at the Institute of Modern Asian History of the University of Amsterdam, and this collection was acquired by the International Institute of Social History in the beginning of 2002.


Text: Emile Schwidder