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Indonesia’s Emergence

Indonesia’s emergence was both more violent and more pioneering than commonly imagined

Although the Dutch government had replaced its exploitative “cultivation” system (which obliged the subject people to grow cash crops for export) with an “ethical policy” promising educational and other development, the class division aboard the Van der Wyck reflected on-the-ground reality. His television interview had been timed to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the second police action but was postponed a month so that veterans celebrating Christmas “would not suddenly be seen by their wives and children as war criminals.” Hueting received many letters with corroborating stories, but also death threats, and was vilified as a traitor. But Van Reybrouck draws a longer bow with the argument implied in the book’s subtitle: that Indonesia was crucial to the “birth of the modern world.” Its struggle did inspire anticolonial movements in Africa, and the Bandung conference called by Sukarno in 1955 was a seminal moment for what is now known as the Global South.

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