2. Heritage trails: international cultural heritage policies in a European perspective Anouk Fienieg, Robert Parthesius, Brittany Groot, Rivke Jaffe, Sjoerd van der Linde and Pauline van Roosmalen 1 Almost a hundred years ago, in 1911, Jacob Cornelis van Overvoorde, an influential Dutch advocate of the preservation of old buildings, made a trip around the world to investigate the material remains of the glorious Dutch past overseas. Alarmed by the lack of awareness surrounding the material legacy of what he considered an extremely important period in Dutch history, Van Overvoorde issued an emergency call for the preservation of overseas monuments representing this period. Although these stone remains were unlike the monuments one finds in contemporary Europe, they were considered important because of their influence on indigenous art forms. Van Overvoorde (1910) was appalled by the lack of an inventory of overseas monuments, let alone an active preservation policy. According to him, the Dutch should follow the example of the British, who maintained the Dutch monuments in British India with more care than the Netherlands did its own in the Dutch East Indies. A century later, managing the remains of the past is still a topical theme. In 2002 the Netherlands celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Vereenigde Oost- Indische Compagnie (VOC, East India Company). Various Asian countries considered this decision unfortunate as, from their perspective, the anniversary should be commemorated rather than celebrated. From an Indonesian point of view, colonial oppression by the Dutch began in the seventeenth century, with the VOC, not with Dutch colonial administration in the nineteenth century. While for Indonesia this 1 The Centre for International Heritage Activities (CIE) in Amsterdam was requested by Gert Oostindie, director of the KITLV, to write a chapter on international heritage policies with regard to colonial heritage in a European perspective. For this purpose, the CIE established a working group chaired by Robert Parthesius. The participants come from different academic backgrounds but all are involved in international heritage policy. This chapter is the result of brainstorming and joint research by this group. We would like to thank all members for their input and comments, all respondents to our email questionnaire and of course Gert Oostindie for this assignment.