via The Guardian, 05 March 2020: Prince Diponegoro’s kris (dagger) is returned to Indonesia from the Netherlands. The prince led a failed uprising against the Dutch during the Java War in the early 19th century.
Forty-five years after the Netherlands promised its return, a gold-inlaid dagger surrendered by a “rebel prince” after his failed 1830 uprising against Dutch rule in Indonesia has been handed back to Jakarta.
The kris, a dagger with a waved blade, was among a number of Prince Diponegoro’s belongings that the Netherlands’ vowed in 1975 to return, only for the cultural treasure to go missing.
The Dutch culture minister, Ingrid van Engelshoven, handed over the blade to the Indonesian embassy in The Hague this week after a two-year search by the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden of its collection.
Fery Iswandy, a cultural attache at the Indonesian embassy, said in a statement: “The kris is very important for Indonesia. Diponegoro is our national hero. This attribute of the prince expressed his status.”
