American policies toward the decolonization of the Dutch East Indies during the years following World War II did not emerge from an empty void.Throughout the decades of the 1920's and 1930’s, members of the US diplomatic corps forwarded a steady stream of assessments from Batavia, Surabaya and Medan to the State Department. These dispatches reflected the geopolitical concerns of the foreign policy establishment in Washington, in which oil, rubber, tin, and tobacco interests as well as a range of other economic investments figured prominently. The impact of consular reports concerning the Dutch East Indies was muted as far as guiding the actual implementation of American measures in the Pacific region was concerned. Most often, US foreign policy tended to be crafted in the corridors of power of the State Department and the White House. Nonetheless, diplomatic reports from Batavia and other cities in the Dutch East Indies mirrored fluctuations in official attitudes and concerns in Washington. US Foreign Service officers in the field tried their best to respond to the issues that seemed to preoccupy their superiors.

The correspondence of US diplomats overseas reproduced conventional American impressions of distant or exotic places across the globe, even if their political insights were sometimes shallow.However,their dispatches echoed public sentiment regarding the legitimacy of European imperialism in general.In this regard, the US Consul General in Batavia or his deputy Consuls in Medan and Surabaya were not unique. In the process of defending America's economic interests and defining the nation's political aspirations in many regions of the world, Foreign Service officers relied not only on perceptions of “the official mind” but also heeded an array of more nebulous popular prejudices – which held true, of course, for the conduct of diplomatic relations by other democratic nations as well.

Accordingly,US Foreign Service officers’descriptions of the political and economic conditions in the Indonesian archipelago during the two decades before World War II served as a barometer, albeit an imprecise one, of shifting American visions of the Dutch East Indies.Their reports during the 1920's expressed mostly admiration for the efficacious and profitable Dutch colonial management of the Indonesian archipelago.