After making Majaphait one of the last reads of last years Cannonball Read, I decided to keep with my South East Asian history roll with Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World by David van Reybrouck.
As you can see, I’m also continuing with my long standard interest in Australia’s immediate northern neighbor. It just boggles the mind that such a large, diverse country has such a small impact on the public consciousness. I think a lot of this has to do with the events that plagued the country in the late 19th century until the late 1990’s. But these events could have played out very differently. In Revolusi, van Reybrouck gives the story of Indonesias struggle for independence from western powers.
To give us context, van Reybrouck starts his book well, well, before the event that lead to independence, with a brief rundown of the pre-history of the archipelago, the arrival of the austronesian peoples, the Buddhist/Hindu/Islamic divides and the arrival of the ‘western’ powers. The most dominant of these was not even the Dutch state, per se, but the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC, whose only aim was to draw a profit. Brutally. Despite a short French and British interregnum, the Dutch retained power of the region after they sent Napoleon his marching orders. And they continued their brutal behavior:
“A quarter to a third of the coolies died before completing their contracts. And all this because gentlemen on the far side of the globe enjoyed puffing on cigars.”
One of the tools van Reybrouck uses here to explain the structure of Dutch rule is the analogy of a steamship whose traveller are all strictly segregated by class status; you are either a “European”, a “foreign oriental” or a “native”. This analogy all ties back to 1936 sinking of a Dutch steamship detailed in the books prologue—an indication, perhaps, that this form of colonial stratification was doomed to eventually fail.
This is where we get to the main focus of the book: the years between 1930 and 1950. The depth of research van Reybrouck undertook for this period is astounding. He relies heavily on first-person accounts to drive the narrative forward. How heavily? Van Reybrouck interviewed over 180 people over five years and across multiple countries. Throughout these interviews, it’s clear how heterogeneous people’s experiences of these times were*. But no matter who or when van Reybrouck is discussing throughout this time, violence is never far behind.
It is perhaps not surprising, then, that many Indonesians initially welcomed the Japanese invasion in 1942. But for those familiar with World War II history in the Pacific, the brutality of the Japanese occupation is well known. Any hope of a pan-Asian alliance between the Indonesians and the Japanese was quickly crushed. And millions died.
These events lead to a group young Indonesian revolutionaries and nationalists (including the charismatic Sukarno) who had been thoroughly cynicalised. When the Dutch came crawling back after the end of the war, the Indonesian nationalists wanted nothing to do with them and independence was rapidly declared within days of the Japanese withdrawal. The young nationalists rightly eschewed any paternalistic or ‘benefitic’ offers from greater powers, because it quickly became evident that most European powers were not really in their corner; the Dutch did not formally hand over power until December 27, 1949. In the interim, there had been a British occupation, the battle of Surabaya and multiple insurgencies. This was not just a fight between the Indonesians and the Dutch; if anyone else had a vested interest, they made it known:
But in addition to that vertical component, there are always numerous horizontal processes. Neighboring countries play a role, allies, local militias, regional players, international organizations and so on. These should not be filtered out. If we do that, we continue to use the Western nation state and its colonial borders as a frame of reference. Then we are still working in the nineteenth century.
What is most interesting though is mentioned in the aftermath of the revolution. Despite the fact that it took four years, the severance between Indonesia and their colonialist occupiers was very complete. And it was the first of many; it can be argued that Indonesian revolution was the first domino that lead to chain of other countries declaring independence from other European powers.
This leads us to the hope and then the tragedy of Bandung. A mere 10 years after their initial Declaration of Independence, in April ’55, Indonesia’s Sukarno and India’s Nehru organized the Bandung Conference, or the the Asia-Africa Conference of Bandung—which deliberately excluded ‘western’ powers. A meeting of countries that declared that they were not America, or Russia, but instead the Third World. And they wanted no part of the current imperialism.
In the long term, this did not play out as people had hoped. In the case of Indonesia, much of the idealism espoused at the Bandung Conference died with the fall of Sukarno and the rise of Suharto’s dictatorship—an event that shifted Indonesian politics from one of hope to one of fear, serving as a blueprint for how Western powers could facilitate a coup.
This also ties back to my earlier point: Indonesia simply does not hold a significant place in modern consciousness, despite the instrumental role the Indonesian Revolution played in shaping the modern world. The subsequent Suharto dictatorship—one that we (the west) were very likely responsible for facilitating—further buried its historical impact.
van Reybrouck leaves us with his own mediations of Colonialism, and how the issue now may be less geographical and more temporal—by exploiting the environment and committing ourselves to political turmoil now, we are potentially subjugating and brutalizing the world our children might inherit.
Those words fort came out in the original Dutch Edition in 2020. In the first few weeks of 2025, they really hit hard as a clear, considered explanation of what the tech-broligarchy are attempting at this moment
Revolusi is both a a fascinating narrative history and a pertinent one. Highly recommended.***
