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You're welcome! You're right indeed, the Belanda Hitam recruited certainly weren't voluntary conscripts, it was more a form of indentured labour or ""slavery light"". Yet the Dutch were at pains to make sure it didn't look like slavery, as otherwise the British would have ended the whole endeavour. But the reality was of course quite different.

Oddly enough, the soldiers recruited in the Gold Coast had quite a luxurious life in the Dutch East Indies, because they were classified as ""Europeans"" since they were soldiers in the military (the Dutch divided their subjects in the East Indies into two categories: Europeans and natives). They usually married an Indo girl, their children went to European schools, and they lived in European neighbourhoods. So disregarding the circumstances under which they were recruited, they weren't treated like slaves in the East Indies. Quite the contrary.   "