WesWorld

2 December
Phillips has announced today that its subsidiary, Philips Electrical Co. (India) Pvt Ltd. in Kolkata will begin manufacturing radios alongside its successful lamp-manufacturing factory.

4 December
The modernisation of the escort fleet of the Navy continues unabated after years of delay. The FF46 Class frigates FF-55 and FF-56 have commissioned with the 14th Escort Flotilla at The Hague and will be followed by the DEI-built FF-57 and FF-58 which will join the 1st Escort Flotilla at Balikpapan on 8 December.

7 December
The Kongolese government announced this morning that they would finally accept the Customs Unions Bill. This completes the approvals and hopefully by 1 January 1949 a complete system will be in operation.

10 December
The steamship company Oranje Lijn has announced the commencement of a new Eastern service to Canada in addition to its usual routes to South America and East Asia.

14 December
Two new destroyers have joined the fleet today. The Z95 Class destroyers Z-111 and Z-112 have commissioned with the 4th Destroyer Flotilla at Amsterdam. Their two sister ships, Z-109 and Z-110, built in the DEI will shortly commission with the 5th Destroyer Flotilla at Soerabaja on 18 December.

16 December
A new university has been established in the East Indies. The Universiteit Negeri Gadjah Mada is in the town of Djokjakarta and has been created by merging a number of local colleges. All native groups are able to register on degree courses offered by the university. There are six faculties; Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmacy; Law, Social and Political Sciences; Engineering; Letters, Pedagogy and Philosophy; Agriculture; Veterinary Medicine.

22 December
For the first time in many years the Navy has managed to complete two submarines in one year. The O-22 and O-23 have commissioned and formed the new 8th Submarine Flotilla based at Den Helder. These are the lead vessels of the new O22 Class which has an advanced hull design for increased underwater speeds and quietness. It is thought that at least one home and one DEI-based flotilla will be formed with the new class during the remainder of this decade and during the early 1950s.

29 December

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dirk Stikker, was at his desk. He had taken an opportunity to sneak into the office and catch up on some paperwork as he recovered from the Christmas celebrations. The Prime Minister had given him one task that required his attention, a formal reply to the German Foreign Ministry's note on the certification of products produced within the Dutch Empire.

The note had caused some head shaking around the Hague and Land had been quite dismayed that Germany still seemed to be oblivious to how global empires worked. Stikker, for his part saw no difference in where goods came from as Dutch standards had been enforced in certain areas, especially foodstuffs, and for him there was no distinction, wicker furniture from Batavia, aluminium ingots from Suriname, groundnuts from the Kongo, it was immaterial as all were produced in areas where the jurisdiction of the Crown and Hague held sway. He knew that Land had further controversial reforms in the pipeline that would secure centralisation of the Empire. While the Confederation Plan to make all the areas of equal importance and rank to the Netherlands proved a step too far, there was no reason why closer political union should be abandoned.

For Stikker the hardest part was to couch all this in diplomatic language for the Germans. If they wished to cling to their bureaucratic form filling then so be it, but the government would not force them to bend their rules, he knew others were eager to snap up exports, growing economies like the USA were taking larger amounts and earning the country useful currency reserves.