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Past
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Intellectuals and aristocrats were the earliest nationalists, the peasants have always accepted authority in Indonesian history, no matter whose. Diponegoro, the eldest son of a Javanese sultan, would have to be the first nationalist leader. In 1825, after the Dutch had built a road across his estate and committed various other abuses, he embarked on a holy war against them. The man was a masterful guerilla tactician, and both sides waged a costly war of attrition and scorched earth policy in which 15,000 Dutchmen and 250,000 Indonesians died, mostly from diseases. At one point during this war the Dutch even considered pulling out of Java. Diponegoro fought for 5 years until he was treacherously lured into negptiating and arrested. His face is now on coins, and street signs and an Army Division are named after him. Certainly he's become the nationalists' most important symbol. But it was the daughter of a nobleman, Raden Kartini, who first expressed publicly in the beginning of this century the right of Indonesians to have the same access to knowledge and western ideas as Europeans had. Although filled with self-pity at being a pampered princess, her Letters written to a liberal Dutch couple and first published in 1911 were sensitive, visionary and full of fire. They cause people in both Europe and Asia to wake up to the new spirit that was in the air. Indonesians knew that something was in the wind for Asia when little Japan defeated the colossus Russia in 1905. Indonesia didn't pass completely into Dutch hands until 1911, and as soon as the Dutch got it altogether, they started to lose it. In the mistaken belief that to-know-us-is-tolove-us, Indonesians were sent to Holland for education, and by providing education for Indonesians, the Dutch had made themselves redundant. By the time WW I came, a number of nationalist organizations had sprung up suddenly and almost simultaneously, indicating the extreme dissatisfaction that the Javanese masses had for the colonial regime. The Javanese were waiting for a ratu adil, a Righteous Prince who would free them from their oppressors. Budi Utomo (High Endeavor), formed in 1908, was a society whose members came largely from the western-educated Javanese elite. A religious organization called Muhammadiyah followed in 1912, an attempt to blend western technology and culture with Islamic thought. But these were intellectuals' societies and had little to do with the ordinary man. An organization of middle-class traders started the Sarekat Islam (Muslim Society) on a nation-wide basis in 1912. Originally intended to help Indonesian batik and textile businessmen meet growing Chinese competition, Sarekat Islam grew at a spectacular rate into the first mass political organization in Indonesia; by 1917 it had 800,000 members. Momentum was building up. The PNI (Indonesian National Party) was started in 1926, an ex-engineer named Sukarno as its chairman. With his oratorical power and dominating charismatic style, Sukamo soon emerged as Indonesia's most forceful political personality. PNI wanted complete independence for the Indonesian people, a government elected by them and responsible to them. It advocated this right through non-cooperation. But with the world depression of 1929, the Dutch were determined to make up for all their losses by increasing the exploitation of Indonesia's natural resources. A police state was imposed throughout the islands and increasingly repressive measures against nationalist leaders were becoming effective with men like Sukamo, Hatta, and Sjahrir arrested, exiled, released, then re-arrested. Anti-Dutch feelings grew. The Dutch broke up political parties and waived petitions. In January 1942 the Japanese landed troops on Celebes and Borneo and by early March they had overrun Java. The Indonesians were at first gratified that these other Asians had overthrown the Dutch. The Japanese at once backed the nationalists and orthodox Muslims, the two groups who had been most opposed to Dutch rule. The new masters even spoke reassuringly of one day granting Indonesia its independence. But the Japanese soon showed themselves to be even more ruthless, fascist and cruel than the Dutch had ever been. They were an occupying military power; workers were made to bow to Japanese soldiers and forced to wear identification tags. They conscripted tens of thousands of slave laborers who never returned and rounded up Indonesian women to work as prostitutes. Indonesia was included in their 'Greater Southeast Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' which just meant that it was to be exploited of every possible resource. Jakarta was stripped clean of tons of wrought iron fences and ornament to be sent back to Japan and smelted down to make pig iron for the war machine. During their occupation, the Japanese encouraged Indonesian nationalism and allowed political boards to form, but only with the intention of using them for their own war aims. Sukarno was retained by the Japanese to help them govern the people and he used the opportunity to educate the masses, injecting them with nationalist fervor at every chance. The Japanese promoted Bahasa Indonesia in order to use it to spread their propaganda to the smallest villages. But the language only grew to become a gigantic symbol and became disseminated on an ever wider basis, unifying the islands even more tightly. The Japanese also created an armed homeguard which was later to become the revolutionary militia which would fight the Dutch upon their return. As the war progressed and the Japanese began losing the battles, more and more power passed into the hands of Indonesians. Eleven days after Hiroshima, on Aug. 17, 1945, Sukarno and Hatta declared independence and the Republic of Indonesia was born. The war ended, the British were charged with the thankless task of disarming the Japanese and maintaining order. The shattered Dutch colonial army, weakened by the war, tried desparately to regain a foothold on their precious islands and even duped the English into fighting for them, culminating in the furious month long Battle of Surabaya. In January 1946, Sukarno considered Jakarta too vulnerable and moved the republic's capital to Yogya where he could depend more upon Yogya's powerful sultan for support. In April of that year negotiations began between the Dutch and the Indonesians to decide the question of independence, the Dutch only using the resulting pacts and treaties to buy time and to gain international support. Dutch troops embarked on 'pacification' exercises, attacking many key cities on Java and Sumatra in July 1947 and butchering thousands. In Dec. 1948 Yogya was bombed and strafed, then occupied by Dutch shock troops, Sukarno taken into protective custody again. Endless guerilla attacks were launched against the Dutch. Outraged, soon world opinion was rallying behind the new republic and the United Nations was applying pressures. It was also discovered that the amount of money the Dutch were spending to regain the islands and to crush the patriots was embarrassingly close to the sum which the USA had given Holland in Marshal Plan war reconstruction aid. After the US Congress decided that its backing was against US principles, the USA withdrew its support. Indonesian republicans controlled the highways, the food supply, the villages, and what they could not control they burned or blew up. Finally, on Dec. 27, 1948, the Dutch transfered sovereignty to a free Indonesia.
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