Dr. Azarja Harmanny
Senior Researcher
Azarja Harmanny specializes in colonial military history. He studied history, political science and journalism at Utrecht University, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi in Istanbul and Hogeschool Utrecht, and graduated from Leiden University in 2009 with an MA-degree in colonial and global history. After working as a journalist and photographer, he joined the Netherlands Institute for Military History in The Hague in 2014, where he worked on colonial warfare and the Indonesian war of independence. Harmanny obtained his PhD in 2023 at Utrecht University with a dissertation on the use and impact of heavy weapons in the Indonesian war of independence, 1945-1949.
From 2017 to 2022, Harmanny took part in the research program Independence, decolonization, violence and war in Indonesia, 1945-1949. In 2019 he was a visiting scholar at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in Amsterdam, as part of the project Comparing the wars of decolonization.
His dissertation (Utrecht University) on the use of artillery and air power in Indonesia between 1945 and 1949 was published in April, 2023 with Amsterdam University Press.
Selection of publications
- Harmanny, A. (2023). Grof geschut. Artillerie en luchtstrijdkrachten in de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog, 1945-1949. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
- Harmanny, A. (2022). De mythe van de ‘Hollandsche Methodiek’. Zware wapens in de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog. In: G. Oostindie, B. Schoenmaker & F. van Vree (Eds.), Over de grens: Nederlands extreem geweld in de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog, 1945-1949 (pp. 241-273). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
- Harmanny, A. & McAllister Linn, B. (2022). 'The Normal Order of Things': Contextualizing 'Technical Violence' in the Netherlands-Indonesia War. In: T. Brocades Zaalberg & B. Luttikhuis (Eds.), Empire’s Violent End: Comparing Dutch, British, and French Wars of Decolonization, 1945-1962 (pp. 120-140). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
- Harmanny, A. & McAllister Linn, B. (2020). 'Technisch geweld' in de Nederlands-Indonesische Oorlog. Zware wapens in de periode van dekolonisatie. BMGN — Low Countries Historical Review 135 (2), 93-110.
- Harmanny, A. (2009). Een 'voorbeeldloze tuchtiging'. Het militaire optreden van Karel van der Heijden in Atjeh, 1879. Mars et Historia 43 (3), 15-23.