Plenty of Dutch neighbourhoods are named after a colonial war. Few are as direct about it as this one. When Utrecht began building on the land behind the railway in the eighteen-nineties, the council chose street names from the : Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Bali, Riouw and Lombok, all fixed between 1892 and 1895.
In 1894 the sailed for the island of Lombok on a punitive expedition. Soldiers gathered at the barracks on the Croeselaan and the Mineurslaan, a short walk from here, before they left. The outcome sent the country into a patriotic rush, and Utrecht ran one of the largest committees in the Netherlands collecting money for it. By around 1900 the name of a single street had spread across the entire neighbourhood.
What happened on Lombok itself dropped out of view for a long time. The street names are still here, and people have been arguing about them since the nineteen-eighties.
In those same years the top end of the neighbourhood faced demolition. Longtime residents and recently arrived resisted together, behind a slogan saying they would decide for themselves what happened here. The houses stayed.
Want to see more of this Utrecht? Pick one of our walking routes through the city and walk it whenever it suits you.
Sources. Story: Oud-Utrecht, Wijkentour Lombok (2023); indischebuurten.nl on Utrecht street naming 1892-1895; Utrecht Time Machine, Kanaalstraat in Lombok; Bitterzoete Route on the KNIL barracks and the Lombok expedition; Het Utrechts Archief. Photos: Source photo: Goosen, D.C., fotograaf Het Utrechts Archief
