Period of Hindu/Buddhist Kingdoms
(5th-13th centuries)
The Spread of Islam: 13th century
The Coming of the Europeans: 16th century
The Independence Movement and Modern Indonesia
Introduction
While the unified state of Indonesia is a modern
creation, the area comprising the nation has a long history and
has seen the rise and fall of many states: Hindu, Buddhist, and
Muslim. This collection of islands served for over 2000 years
as the crossroads of trade between China, Southeast Asia, India
and the Arabic states of Western Asia. Chinese, Arabic and Indian
traders plied the waters of this island nation, and trading ports
dotted the coastal states which existed and flourished because
of their excellent harbors. The most important of these coastal
states were on or near the Straits of Melaka (Malacca) on the
East and South coasts of Sumatra and on the North Java coast,
as trade between East and West passed through these straits. In
addition to these coastal trading states, a number of inland states
flourished based on the rich agricultural land which comprised
Central and East Java and the neighboring island of Bali. These
states produced the spices, foodstuffs, sandalwood and medicines
that were main items of trade.
The islands of Indonesia have long been inhabited.
In the 1890s, paleontologists discovered human fossil remains
on the island of Java, known as "Java Man;" some of
these remains were identified as pre-homo sapiens and it is believed
that homo-sapiens migrated to the islands and intermarried with
these groups creating the complexity found in modern Indonesian
ethnography. These early fossil remains may date as far back as
2 million years ago. Although Indonesia is ethnically diverse
with over 300 distinct ethnic groups identified, most Indonesians
are culturally and linguistically part of the Indo-Malaysian world,
which includes present day Malaya, Brunei, the Philippines, and
other nearby islands. Between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D., the peoples
of these islands interacted with South and East Asia, and metal
and domesticated animals were introduced.
Period of Hindu/Buddhist
Kingdoms (5th-13th centuries) 
The earliest recorded kingdoms in the Indonesian
archipelago were Hindu/Buddhist states whose ideas and practices
came from India via the trade routes and were adopted by local
rulers, who were fascinated by the religious ideas and the accompanying
rituals and civilization. These states adopted and imitated many
aspects of Indian civilization, including religious and philosophical
ideas, writing and literature, court ritual and political systems.
They controlled and dominated the economy of central Java and
the coastal regions. These Hindu/Buddhist states were prosperous
agrarian states, with hierarchical and bureaucratic practices.
The vast agricultural surpluses supported large courts which promoted
music, dance, and literature. The two great Indian epic poems,
the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, were adapted by court musicians,
dancers and puppeteers and used to transmit Javanese or Balinese
ethics and cultural values. Writing systems were based on Indian
Sanskrit. The center of these kingdoms was the present day city
of Yogyakarta, which is the center of Javanese history, philosophy
and culture. Within 30 miles of Yogyakarta are Indonesia's two
greatest religious monuments: the Buddhist temple of Borobudur
and the Hindu temple of Prambanan. Both were constructed between
the 6th and 8th centuries as centerpieces of the evolving Hindu/Buddhist
kingdoms of the area. They are evidence both of the prosperity
of the kingdoms which fashioned them and the high level of engineering
and artistic skills of their inhabitants. Both have undergone
restoration in recent years and both are designated World Heritage
Sites by the United Nations. The religion pages of this site provide
a link to the site of Borobudur which is repeated here:
http://www.borobudur.tv/index.htm.
The Spread of Islam: 13th
century
While Muslim traders were recorded in the Indonesian
archipelago beginning in the 7th century, the process of converting
the nation to Islam really got underway in the 13th century with
the conversion of the ruler of Aceh, which is located at the northern
tip of Sumatra. From this time on, other states gradually accepted
Islam, some on their own, and others by conquest. The nature of
Indonesian Islam varied greatly from state to state and these
variations still exist today. Aceh was always more publicly Islamic
and its members stricter adherents to the principles of the Qu'ran
than most other states and today it is the hotbed of Indonesian
fundamentalism. In other areas, Islam is more relaxed and still
combined with many traditional pre-Islamic beliefs. The Island
of Bali remains largely Hindu today.
Written records confirm that Islam in Indonesia
first began on the island of Sumatra and that that area was the
most heavily involved in the gradual Islamization of Indonesia.
The Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, who landed in Sumatra in 1292
on his way home from China, records the existence of the Islamic
state of Perlak, surrounded by non-Islamic neighbors. The Arab
traveler, Ibn-Battuta visited the state of Samudra on Sumatra
in 1345 and recorded that its ruler was a Sunni Muslim. By the
late 14th century, inscriptions on Sumatra were written with Arabic
letters rather than Sanskrit ones. During this period, Chinese
traders and travelers were also frequent visitors to Indonesia
and between 1405 and 1433, the great Chinese Muslim traveler,
Zheng He, used Sumatra and Java as stopovers on his seven voyages
to the Indian Ocean and beyond to the coast of Africa; his records
provide much information about the Indonesian states.
The Coming of the Europeans:
16th century
When the Europeans arrived in Southeast Asia in
the 16th century, well established states existed across the region.
These early European visitors marveled at the prosperity of Southeast
Asia, the health of its peoples, and the sophistication of its
cultures. The major Indonesian States at the time were Aceh on
the northern tip of Sumatra, as well as kingdoms on the North
coast and Central Java, and on Bali, the Malukas, and Sulawesi;
these states competed with each other, and there was a constant
flow of goods and peoples across the archipelago. The Portuguese
were the first Europeans to acquire bases in Asia and in the 16th
century they established trading posts in Goa in India, Malaka
in Malaysia, Ambon and Timor in Indonesia and Macau in China.
The Golden Age of Portuguese exploration, the 16th and the first
half of the 17th century, saw the Portuguese in a struggle with
the Islamic state for control of the spice trade and for the conversion
of souls: Portugal's twin aims were trade and conversion. The
Portuguese seized the state of Melaka on the mainland of Malaysia
and used this as a base to seize Ambon and Timor; they were involved
with repeated fights with the state of Aceh and states of the
Javanese North coast. The Portuguese goal of Christianizing Asia
was mostly unsuccessful although a small enclave in East Timor,
which survived three centuries of Dutch colonialism, remained
Roman Catholic when it was absorbed into Indonesia in 1976. The
Portuguese empire was short lived and by the end of the 16th century,
the Dutch entered the picture determined to wrest control of Indonesia
(and the rest of Asia) from Portugal.
The Dutch East India Company, formed in 1602,
and the British East India Company, formed in 1600, were rivals
for control of Asia but, as Protestant nations, united in their
attacks on Catholic Spain and Portugal. The Dutch East India Company
soon ousted Portugal from most of Indonesia, establishing their
headquarters in the major town of Jayakarta, in West Java, which
they renamed Batavia. Batavia remained the capital of the Netherlands
East Indies until the Indonesian declaration of independence in
August 1945, when it was re-named, Jakarta, becoming the capital
of the newly independent Indonesia in 1949.
The Dutch East India Company slowly extended its
control throughout the Indonesian islands in the 17th and 18th
centuries. At first, the Dutch acted like other Indonesian kingdoms,
waging war on its enemies and trading throughout the archipelago.
However, by the end of the 18th century, its superior firepower,
strategic goal of controlling the entire region, and broad power
base enabled it to defeat the local ruling elites. By 1756, the
Company controlled the whole of Java only to become bankrupt in
1796 due to corruption. The Dutch government took over its assets;
after a brief interlude of British control during the Napoleonic
Wars, the Dutch government resumed control and gradually extended
its colony to include Sumatra and Eastern Indonesia. In 1905,
the Netherlands East Indies Government took over Bali and in 1911
completed its conquest with the subjugation of Aceh. Thus, by
the beginning of the twentieth century, Dutch East Indies was
a centralized state, with power concentrated in Batavia. The colony
served to enhance the Dutch economy through the exploitation of
Indonesia's rich natural resources. The cultivation of cash crops
brought considerable riches to the Dutch state but at the same
time, this "Cultivation System" created a cycle of poverty
and overpopulation among Java's rural population. To bolster their
state, the Dutch promoted a Western educated secular elite based
on the families of the pre-colonial elites; at the same time,
they tried to prevent any notion of an Islamic state and quashed
religious leaders who appeared to be gaining political control.
The Dutch transformed the islands of Indonesia.
They disrupted the long established regional trading networks,
making external trade the exclusive preserve of the Dutch and
making inter-regional trade the preserve of the Chinese. Agriculture
was also transformed in the 19th century. The Dutch created the
"Cultivation System", by which Javanese farmers were
forced to produce such crops as sugar, indigo, coffee and tea
for sale to the state at fixed prices. These were then sold to
European markets. This system resulted in the transformation of
the subsistence economy into a market economy, the gradual impoverishment
of the farmers, and their conversion from landowners to tenants.
Sumatra was also transformed with huge tobacco and rubber plantations
carved out of the virgin forest; the discovery of oil in the 1920s
led to the creation of the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company. Much
of the labor which opened up Sumatra was Chinese and Dutch policies
encouraged Chinese immigration into the area; as a result, although
Chinese immigrants were not more than 3% of the total population,
they came to control local trade and urban commerce. The economic
transformation led to increasing urbanization, with its resulting
mass migration from rural areas and the development of large pockets
of urban poverty. Western education was introduced to provide
the skilled labor needed by the Dutch; admittance to these schools
was limited to the upper classes and, by the end of Dutch rule,
literacy in Indonesia was lower than in that of any other European
colony in Asia, except East Timor.
The Independence Movement
and Modern Indonesia
Geographically, Indonesia was a creation of the
Dutch government; the current nation includes all the territories
of the old Netherlands Indies, except for East Timor. However,
culturally and politically, it was the creation of the 20th century
nationalists who sought cultural, linguistic, and social bases
for national unity. These early nationalists were young upper
class men and women who had been educated in Western high schools
and at universities in the Netherlands. Beginning in 1910, this
movement to create an independent and unified state of Indonesia
snowballed; political parties were created, newspapers distributed,
and agitation and strikes for freedom accelerated. The Dutch responded
by arresting and imprisoning thousands of Communist and revolutionary
Indonesians. A turning point of this independence movement was
the national Youth Congress, held in 1928 in Batavia, in which
thousands of young people raised the red and white flag, recited
a National Pledge and sang a newly composed national song. The
most important of these pre-war nationalists was Sukarno, who
envisioned a new republic that would reach beyond the Dutch East
Indies and encompass Malaysia and northern Borneo.
It was the Japanese occupation of Indonesia in
the early 1940s that destroyed the Dutch regime and allowed these
nationalists to participate in politics, administration and the
military. Of course, Japan's goal was the exploitation of Indonesia's
natural resources for its own war efforts; however, it tolerated
Sukarno and the independence movement and aided him to announce
Indonesia's independence on August 17, 1945, two days after Japan's
surrender. The Dutch attempted to reassert control, resulting
in a bitter war of independence, called the National Revolution,
between 1945 and 1949. This resulted in the defeat of the Dutch
and the creation of the Republic of the United States of Indonesia
in 1950, headed by Sukarno. Sukarno enunciated 5 principles, the
Pancasila, which are the guiding principles of the government.
These rather vague principles are capable of many different interpretations
and include: belief in one God, national unity, humanitarianism,
democracy based on consensus and representation, and social justice.
Sukarno's new government had to deal with ethnic, religious, and
social divisions and a struggle between different groups for control
of the state. Essentially, four groups emerged, each with a different
vision of independent Indonesia: the parties supported either
a multi-party democracy, a consensus parliamentary system, a Marxist
state, or an Islamic state. In addition, the most powerful force
was the army which had actually defeated the Dutch. The army was
suspicious of all politicians, saw itself as the people's army
and believed it could best manage the transformation of Indonesian
society. Sukarno was an advocate of "democracy with leadership;"
when parliamentary democracy faltered in the mid 1950s, having
failed to bring prosperity to everyone, he gathered like minded
forces, especially the military, and began a program of "guided
democracy" which balanced the military and representation
from groups such as peasants, workers, Muslim scholars, etc.
By 1965, the Indonesian economy was in chaos,
inflation was rampant and much of the social infrastructure had
collapsed; in addition, political instability was furthered with
the rumors of Sukarno's illness and fears of a Communist coup.
The result was a failed coup-d'etat on September 30 by a group
of lower level army officers and a military takeover by the army
under General Suharto, who put down the coup and arrested the
leaders. This sparked a 6 month "witch-hunt" for members
of the communist party, who were blamed for the failed coup and
the accompanying murder of 6 generals. Over 400,000 people were
killed and the communist party destroyed. General Suharto became
President Suharto and restructured Indonesian politics, giving
the military a prime role.
The government insisted that Pancasila remain
the basis for Indonesian political and social organizations and
saw revitalized Islam as a great threat to their control of the
state along with Marxism and liberal democracy. The Islamic revival
of the 1970s and 1980s, in part a reflection of events in Iran
and the Arab world, has led to great diversity among Muslim thinkers,
some desiring an Islamic state but the majority accepting the
principles of Pancasila and working within this framework to develop
political, social and economic policies which reflect their religious
values. The government subjected the press and the television
to controls, licensed magazine and book publishing and attempted
to control the growth of political and religious parties. Economically,
the new government was a great success initially, with Indonesia's
move from reliance on oil to the development of export oriented
manufacturing industries, such as textile, footwear and clothing.
This economic growth helped fuel Indonesia's emergence as one
of the "newly industrializing economies" of Asia. These
economic policies also created rapid urbanization, a green revolution
in the rural areas, and the rapid growth of a middle class, which
is highly educated, internationally oriented and articulate. This
has led to a demand for democratization and political participation.
However, Suharto used his Presidency to consolidate
his power and wealth and by the mid 1990's opposition to his power
and policies had coalesced around the parties of Megawati Sukarno,
daughter of former President Sukarno, and Muslim leader, Amien
Rais. The economy, heavily weighted towards monopolies led by
cronies and family of Suharto, faltered in the mid-nineties, leading
to a crisis in 1997 and 1998 as the International Monetary Fund
refused to give emergency money to Indonesia after Suharto failed
to restructure the economy to eliminate the monopolistic and corrupt
practices as previously agreed upon. This resulted in riots, repression
and the eventual overthrow of the Suharto government. Elections
were held in 1999 and the surprise victor was Abdurrahman Wahid,
who accepted nomination just days before the election and rallied
the Islamic parties who were opposed to a woman, Megawati Sukarno,
becoming president. However, Megawti became Vice President and
after only 10 months in office, Wahid left the running of the
government to her. In 2001, amidst cries of scandal and mismanagement,
a majority of the MPs voted to remove Wahid from office and Megawati
became President. The world's most populous Islamic state now
had a woman as President.
For a good website on recent (since Independence)
history, click on:
http://www.indonesia-pusaka.com
