Revolusi by David Van Reybrouck
David Van Reybrouck reminds us that Indonesia is the giant generally ignored by Western media unless tourists are killed or a volcano erupts. Rich in resources and strategically located, it’s the world’s largest Muslim nation, and the largest island nation. Stretched across a map, Indonesia is wider than the United States.
Revolusi tells the story of what Reybrouck calls the country’s “unprecedented event of global significance” as the first colonized country to declare independence after World War II. Actually, Indonesia is neck to neck for that honor with Vietnam, which endured an even longer struggle for independence, yet the author’s larger point is correct. Indonesia was at the forefront of decolonization in a narrative Reybrouck relates in lucid prose enlivened with many memories from survivors. Much of the research was conducted a decade or earlier before Revolusi’spublication when more members of that generation still lived.
Reybrouck is a journalist conducting a 1619 Project for his own nation, the Netherlands, by prying open the lid of a sordid past. He even references Dutch oppression in the provinces that broke away to become Belgium, but his focus is on the Dutch East Indies, as Indonesia was called before independence. He finds that the Netherlands prospered enormously from the exploited labor of the islands’ indigenous peoples. Racism was undisguised and institutionalized with a hierarchy that placed Europeans on top; mixed race, Chinese and other Asians in the middle; and everyone else at bottom. Working diligently for the rulers earned some natives a ladder to the middle level. The Dutch were not above conducting massacres to solidify their hold on the island chain.
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In other words, imperialism as usual, and as in other empires in the 20th century, policies wavered between the more benign agenda of liberal reformers and reactionaries who sought to keep their boots on the natives’ backs.
It’s a long history, reaching its climax in the armed struggle for independence after World War II, and like many big histories, there are errors at the margins. Reybrouck seems to think that Portugal still ruled Brazil as World War I began. But on Indonesia, he writes authoritatively as he sorts through multiple memories and perspectives. The ghost haunting Revolusi is the lost opportunity for the Dutch to reform and free the East Indies. Narrowminded officialdom ensured that the Indonesians would do it themselves.
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