Paul Alex Blaauw

Paul Alex Blaauw, usually known as P. A. Blaauw, was an Indo politician, lawyer, and member of the Dutch East Indies Volksraad representing the Indo Europeesch Verbond from the 1920s to the 1940s. During the period of transition to Indonesian independence and the 1949 Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference he was a leader of the largest faction advocating for the rights of Indos.

Biography Early life Blaauw was born in Ambarawa, Central Java, Dutch East Indies on 3 June 1891. His father, Michiel Frederik Blaauw was born in Bemmel, Netherlands; his mother was named Jeanna Louise Smit.

Legal and political career In 1920, he returned to the Indies and took up a civil servant post in the Department of Justice. In May 1927 he was elected to the Volksraad for the Indo Europeesch Verbond. He continued to hold the post through the 1930s and until the Japanese invasion in 1942.

He resigned from the in 1947, citing irreconcilable differences between his views and those of the current leadership of the party.

During the Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference in 1949 he was one of the leaders of a faction representing Dutch and Indo people in the talks. (Of the other two smaller Indo factions at the talks, one represented the Eurasian League, and the other was a tiny faction representing the pro-Indonesian . There he continued to advocate for Indos and Dutch people living in Indonesia, working a leader of an organization called the (Association of Indies Dutch). He was also active in organizations working to ensure continued Dutch control over Netherlands New Guinea. Around 1960 he was active in another organization, NASSI , which was chaired by William Lemaire, a fellow Indo lawyer who had been a Catholic National Party member of parliament in the Netherlands and had since become a professor at Leiden University. The purpose of that organization was to support Dutch and Indo people still living in Indonesia, and to expedite their relocation to the Netherlands if necessary.