All About Kido

Well... I live in Indonesia.. i knew that my country is not such too popular in the world... But... leaving a story, culture and histories about my country are a good idea... ready to read!!! well...

Indonesian Republik Indonesia country located off the coast of the Southeast Asian mainland in the Indian and Pacific oceans. It is an archipelago that lies across the Equator and spans a distance equivalent to one-eighth of the Earth's circumference. Its islands can be grouped into the Greater Sunda Islands of Sumatra (Sumatera), Java (Jawa), the southern extent of Borneo known as Kalimantan, and Celebes (Sulawesi); the Lesser Sunda Islands (Nusa Tenggara) of Bali and a chain of islands that runs eastward through Timor; the Moluccas (Maluku) between Celebes and the island of New Guinea; and the western extent of New Guinea known as Papua (formerly Irian Barat), which from 1973 to 2002 was called Irian Jaya. The capital, Jakarta, is located near the northwestern coast of Java.

The country is the largest in Southeast Asia, with a maximum dimension from east to west of about 3,200 miles (5,100 km) and an extent from north to south of 1,100 miles (1,800 km). It is composed of some 13,670 islands, of which more than 7,000 are uninhabited. Almost three-fourths of Indonesia's area is included in the three largest islands of Borneo (of which about three-fourths is part of Indonesia), Sumatra, and the Papua portion of New Guinea. Nearly all of the total land area is accounted for with the addition of Celebes and Java and the Moluccas.

Indonesia was formerly known as the Dutch, or Netherlands, East Indies; the islands were first named Indonesia in modern times by a German geographer in 1884, although this name is thought to derive from Indos Nesos, “Indian Islands,” in the ancient trading language of the region. After a period of occupation by the Japanese (1942–45) during World War II, Indonesia declared its independence from The Netherlands in 1945. Its struggle for independence, however, continued until 1949; and it was not until the official recognition by the United Nations of Irian Barat as a part of Indonesia in 1969 and the incorporation of the former Portuguese territory of East Timor in 1975–76 that the nation took on its present form. However, East Timor declared its independence from Indonesia in 1999 and became fully sovereign in 2002.

The Indonesian archipelago represents one of the most unusual areas in the world, encompassing a major juncture of the Earth's tectonic plates, the dividing line between two faunal realms, and the meeting point for the peoples and cultures of mainland Asia and Oceania. These factors have created a highly diverse environment and society in which the only common elements are the susceptibility to seismic and volcanic activity, close proximity to the sea, and a moist, tropical climate.

In its economic development the country still relies heavily on its petroleum products, of which it is the major producer in Asia; its agricultural capacity—particularly rice cultivation—and the export of such cash crops as coconuts, rubber, and tea; its rich deposits of tin and other minerals; and timber. Manufacturing has increased in importance, however, both for domestic consumption and for export goods.

Indonesia is the most populous country in Southeast Asia and the fourth most populous in the world, and it is advantageously located between mainland Asia and Australia. As such, the country has a critical role to play in the development of its part of the world. In keeping with its size and importance, it is active in such regional and international groupings as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the United Nations.

The major Indonesian islands are characterized by rugged volcanic mountains, covered by dense tropical forests, which slope down to coastal plains often covered by thick alluvial swamps and bordered by shallow seas and coral reefs. Cultivated land is mainly devoted to rice, which in many areas is grown on mountain terraces, or to such cash crops as rubber. In the highly populated areas palm-shaded villages are scattered among green rice terraces, which are overlooked by the forest-clad cone of an active volcano.

Geologic framework
The physical structure of Indonesia is unique and complicated because it encompasses the junction of three major sections of the Earth's crust and involves a complex series of shelves, volcanic mountain chains, and deep-sea trenches. The island of Borneo and the arc of islands including Sumatra, Java, Bali, and the Lesser Sunda chain sit on the Sunda Shelf, a southward extension of the continental mass of Asia. The shelf is bounded on the south and west by deep-sea trenches such as the Java Trench (24,442 feet [7,450 metres] deep at its lowest point) that form the true continental boundary. The island of New Guinea and adjacent islands, possibly including Halmahera Island, sit on the Sahul Shelf, which is a northwestern extension of the Australian continental mass; the shelf is bounded to the northeast by a series of deep-sea troughs and to the northwest by troughs, a chain of coral reefs, and a series of submarine ridges. The third major unit of the Earth's crust in Indonesia is an extension of the belt of mountains of Japan and the Philippines that runs south between Borneo and New Guinea. It includes a series of mountain volcanoes and deep-sea trenches on and around Celebes and the Moluccas.

The interrelation of these units is not clearly understood. The present land-sea relations are somewhat misleading, because the seas that lie on the Sunda Shelf and on the Sahul Shelf are shallow and of geologically recent origin; they rest on the continental mass rather than on a true ocean floor. The Sunda Shelf in the vicinity of the Java Sea has relatively low relief, contains several coral reefs, and is not volcanic. The mountain system that is welded along the South China and Celebes seas of this shelf and which comprises the outer edge of the continental mass of Asia, however, is an area of strong relief and is perhaps the most active volcanic zone in the world.

The outer, or southern, side of the chain of islands from Sumatra through Java and the Lesser Sundas forms the active leading edge of the Southeast Asian landmass. It is characterized by active volcanoes, bounded on the south and west by a series of deep-sea trenches and grading off on the north, or inner, edge to swamps, lowlands, and the shallow Java Sea. This sheltered sea was formed at the close of the Pleistocene Epoch (the Pleistocene lasted from about 1,800,000 to 10,000 years ago), and there is evidence of former land bridges that facilitated the migration of plants and animals from the Asian continent.

Relief
Islands of the Sunda Shelf

Borneo, the third largest island in the world and the main island on the Sunda Shelf, is hilly and mountainous. Its relief, however, seldom exceeds 5,600 feet (1,700 metres) above sea level, and most of the island is below 1,000 feet (300 metres). Structural trends are not as well defined as on adjacent islands, although a broad mountain system runs roughly from northeast to southwest. It includes the island's highest peak of Mount Kinabalu, which rises to 13,455 feet (4,101 metres) in Sabah, Malaysia. Indonesian Borneo, or Kalimantan, constitutes about three-fourths of the island and is mainly mountainous and forested, with coastal alluvial swamps.

The Riau Islands lie east of Sumatra. They have a granite core and can be considered a physical extension of the Malay Peninsula. Like Malaysia, they are rich in tin, which is recovered both on land and offshore, mainly off the islands of Bangka, Billiton (Belitung), and Singkep.

Sumatra is flanked on its outer (western) edge by a string of nonvolcanic islands, including Simeulue, Nias, and the Mentawai group, none of which is densely populated. Sumatra runs from northwest to southeast for a length of more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) and a maximum width, including offshore islands, of about 325 miles (525 km) and is bisected by the Equator. The island divides into four main physical regions: the narrow coastal plain along the west; the Barisan Mountains, which extend the length of the island close to its western edge and include 10 active volcanoes; an inner nonvolcanic zone of low hills grading down toward the stable platform of the Asian mainland; and the broad alluvial lowland, as much as 150 miles (240 km) wide and no more than 100 feet (30 metres) above sea level, that constitutes the eastern half of the island.

Much of eastern Sumatra is a low-lying swampy forest that is difficult to penetrate, which seriously impedes the development of the inland area. The mountain watershed is close to the west coast, and much of the soil cover in the hills and lowlands is built up by debris from the volcanoes. There are a number of beautiful lakes in Sumatra, the most famous of which is Lake Toba, which lies in the north at an elevation of 2,953 feet (900 metres) above sea level and covers some 440 square miles (1,140 square km).

Java is some 660 miles (1,060 km) long and has a maximum width of about 125 miles (200 km). Its physical divisions are not as distinct as those of Sumatra, because the continental shelf drops sharply to the Indian Ocean in the southern part of the island. Java can be divided into five latitudinal physiographic regions. A series of limestone platforms extend along the southern coast; in some areas they form an eroded karst region (i.e., marked by sinks interspersed with abrupt ridges, irregular rocks, caverns, and underground streams) that makes communication and habitation difficult. A mountain belt just to the north is partially composed of sediments derived from eroded volcanoes and includes a number of alluvial basins that are heavily cultivated, as around Bandung and Garut. The belt of volcanoes through the centre of the island constitutes the third region and contains more than 55 active cones and 22 volcanoes with a geologically recent history of eruption. A northern alluvial belt, the fourth region, spreads across the Sunda Shelf toward the sea and is extended by delta formations, particularly during volcanic activity. There are deep inland extensions of the alluvial region, which in central Java cut through to the southern coast. Finally, there is a second limestone platform area along the northern coast of Madura and the adjacent section of eastern Java.

The many islands east of Java are much smaller, less densely populated, and less developed than Java. The physiography in Bali and Lombok is similar to that of eastern Java. The Lesser Sunda chain continues through the Sumbawa and Flores islands, narrowing progressively until it appears on a map as a spine of volcanic islands that loops northeast into the Banda Islands. The same volcanic system may be considered to reappear in northern Celebes. Sumba and Timor form an outer (southerly) fringe of nonvolcanic islands, which resemble those off the western edge of the Sunda Shelf near Sumatra.

Islands of the Sahul Shelf

The islands of the Sahul Shelf appear to have a physiographic structure similar to those of the Sunda Shelf. They include the northern Moluccas (see below) and New Guinea. The western portion of New Guinea constitutes the Indonesian province of Papua, which accounts for more than one-fifth of the total area of Indonesia but only about 1 percent of the country's population. Papua is a remote region with a spectacular and varied landscape. Mangrove swamps seal much of the southern and western coastline, while the Maoke Mountains—including Jaya Peak, which at 16,502 feet (5,030 metres) is the highest point in Indonesia—form a natural barrier across the central area. There is a narrow coastal plain in the north. More than two-thirds of the province is heavily forested.

Celebes and the Moluccas

Celebes shows some evidence of being squeezed between the conflicting forces of the more stable surrounding masses of the Sunda and Sahul shelves. Its complex shape somewhat resembles a capital K, with an extremely long peninsula running northeast from its north-south backbone. There are, therefore, three large gulfs: Tomini (or Gorontalo) to the north, Tolo to the east, and Bone to the south. The coastline is long in relation to the size of the island. Celebes consists of ranges of mountains cut by deep rift valleys, many of which contain lakes. The island is fringed by coral reefs and is bordered by deep sea troughs in the south. Its northeastern arm, the Minahasa Peninsula, is volcanic and structurally different from the rest of the island, which is composed of a complex of igneous and metamorphic rocks.

The Moluccas consist of a group of approximately 1,000 islands with a combined area that is two-thirds the size of Java. Halmahera Island is the largest of the group, followed by Ceram and Buru. The Moluccas lie in the same geologically unstable zone as Celebes, although the northern islands are associated more with the Sahul Shelf. Halmahera Island in the north and the islands of the Banda Sea are volcanic, the latter group also experiencing a high frequency of earthquakes. Most of the northern and central Moluccas have dense vegetation and rugged mountainous interiors where elevations often exceed 3,000 feet (900 metres). The Moluccas were synonymous with the “Spice Islands,” and, especially during the 16th and 17th centuries, the islands of Ternate, Tidore, Ambon, and Banda Besar were a source of cloves, nutmeg, and mace.

Volcanoes

There are some 220 active volcanoes in Indonesia and many hundreds that are considered extinct. They run in a crescent-shaped line along the outer margin of the country through Sumatra and Java as far as Flores and then loop north through the Banda Sea to a junction with the volcanoes of northern Celebes.

Volcanoes play a major role in soil development and enrichment, and there is a strong relationship between agricultural development, density of population, and location of volcanoes. Of the 80 volcanoes that have a recent history of eruption, the greatest concentration (22) is on Java. The greatest population densities occur in such areas as the region south and east of Mount Merapi in central Java, where the soil is enriched by volcanic ash and debris. The same pattern occurs on Bali and in northern Sumatra, where the rich soils are directly related to flows from volcanic eruptions. The chemical composition of the ejecta, however, is not uniform throughout the country; in central and southern Sumatra, for example, the ash and lava are largely acidic, and the resulting soils are relatively poor.

Volcanic eruptions are by no means uncommon. Mount Merapi, which rises to 9,550 feet (2,911 metres) near Yogyakarta (Jogjakarta), erupts frequently—often causing extensive destruction to roads, fields, and villages but always greatly benefiting the soil. Mount Kelud (5,679 feet [1,731 metres]), near Kediri in eastern Java, can be particularly devastating, because the water in its large crater lake is thrown out during eruption, causing great mudflows (lahars) that rush down into the plains and sweep all before them.

Perhaps the best-known volcano is Krakatoa (Krakatau), situated in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java, which erupted disastrously in 1883. All life on the surrounding island group was destroyed. The eruptions caused tidal waves throughout Southeast Asia, killing tens of thousands of people, and ash clouds that circled the Earth decreased solar radiation and produced spectacular sunsets for more than a year. Another major incident occurred in 1963 when Mount Agung in Bali erupted violently after having been dormant for more than 140 years.

Drainage

Because of its insularity, Indonesia has no large rivers comparable to those on the Asian mainland. Indonesian rivers generally are relatively short and flow from interior mountains to the sea. The Kapuas (710 miles [1,140 km] long), Barito (560 miles [900 km]), and Mahakam (480 miles [770 km]) rivers of Kalimantan are among the longest, but shifting sandbars across their mouths reduce their importance for transportation. Papua, most of which receives heavy rainfall, is drained by a number of large rivers, including the Baliem, the Mamberamo, and the Digul.

The seas surrounding Indonesia, however, must also be viewed as a dominant physical feature, having an important effect on climate, transportation, and the development of culture. They serve both as channels of communication and as barriers protecting distinctive features. The shallow seas between many of the islands are a significant resource of offshore petroleum, natural gas, and other minerals and of food.

Soils

Indonesia illustrates the relation between climate and source rock in the formation of soils. The rocks on Java are primarily andesitic volcanics (dark gray rocks consisting essentially of the minerals oligoclase or feldspar), while rhyolites (the acidic lava form of granite) are dominant on Sumatra, granites on the Riau Islands, granites and sediments in Kalimantan, and sediments in Papua. The resulting soils in humid regions are mainly lateritic (containing iron oxides and aluminum hydroxide) and of varying fertility depending on the source rock; they include heavy black or gray-black margalite soils and limestone soils. Black soils occur in regions with a distinct dry season, and highly localized soils include the fertile ando soils, which developed on the andesitic volcanic sediments of the northeastern coast of Sumatra.

In general, the perpetual high temperatures and heavy precipitation throughout much of Indonesia have caused rapid erosion and deep chemical weathering and leaching, which usually produce impoverished soil. In areas covered with tropical rainforests, such as Kalimantan, the soils are protected by the forest cycle; as plants die, they decompose rapidly, releasing nutrients that are reabsorbed by new vegetation growth. Although such soils support a luxuriant growth, they cannot support a large agricultural population because clearing the forest breaks the cycle and can lead to accelerated soil deterioration.

Minerals that are leached from the soil are replaced by alluvial deposition from rivers, as in some parts of Kalimantan, or by deposition in impounded water or rice terraces. Most valuable in Indonesia is the volcanic ash, which is transported by wind and deposited as a layer of homogeneous, fresh inorganic material over wide areas; it is also carried as suspended material in streams and irrigation channels. The best soils are derived from or enriched by basic andesitic volcanic material, the ejecta from rhyolitic volcanoes being less rich. The andesitic volcanoes occur in Sumatra, Java, and western Celebes.

Climate

The climate of Indonesia is controlled by its island structure and position astride the Equator, which assure high, even temperatures, and by its location between the two landmasses of Asia and Australia, which strongly influences the monsoonal rainfall patterns. Temperatures are uniformly high and are a function of elevation rather than latitude. They are highest along the coast, where mean annual temperatures range from 74 to 88 °F (23 to 31 °C) and are moderated considerably above 2,000 feet (600 metres). The only area high enough to receive snow is the Maoke Mountains of Papua. The diurnal difference of temperature in Jakarta is at least five times as great as the difference between high and low temperatures of January and July; the highest temperature ever recorded in Jakarta was 99 °F (37 °C), and the lowest was 66 °F (19 °C).

Rainfall is more varied in extremes and distribution. Most of Indonesia receives heavy precipitation throughout the year, the greatest amounts occurring from December to March. From central Java eastward toward Australia, however, the dry season (June to October) is progressively more pronounced; on the islands of Timor and Sumba, there is little rain during these months. The highest amount of rainfall occurs in the mountainous regions of Sumatra, Kalimantan, Celebes, and Papua, where more than 120 inches (3,000 mm) falls annually. The rest of Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Papua; western and central Java; and much of Celebes and the Moluccas average at least 80 inches (2,000 mm) of rainfall per year. Eastern Java, Bali, southern and central Celebes, and Timor generally receive between 60 and 80 inches (1,500 and 2,000 mm); while the Lesser Sunda Islands that are closest to Australia have only 40 to 60 inches (1,000 to 1,500 mm).

The absolute daily maximum of rainfall can be extremely high, with a number of stations recording between 20 and 28 inches (500 and 700 mm). Local variations, caused in large part by geographic features, are great. Jakarta, for example, near sea level, has a mean annual rainfall of 70 inches (1,750 mm), while Bogor, which is 30 miles (50 km) south toward the mountains, at an elevation of about 790 feet (240 metres), records nearly 170 inches (4,300 mm) of rainfall.

Seasonal variations are caused by monsoonal Asian air drifts and the convergence of tropical air masses from both north and south of the Equator along an intertropical front of low pressure. The monsoon pattern in any given part of the archipelago depends on location either north or south of the Equator, proximity to Australia or mainland Asia, and the position of the intertropical front. During December, January, and February, the west monsoon, reflecting Asian influence, brings heavy rain to southern Sumatra, Java, and the Lesser Sunda Islands. In June, July, and August, these areas are affected by the east monsoon, which brings dry air from Australia. Only the Lesser Sunda Islands and eastern Java have a well-developed dry season, which increases in length toward Australia. By the time the east monsoon has crossed the Equator—becoming the southwest monsoon of the Northern Hemisphere—its winds have become humid and a source of rain. Sumatra and Kalimantan, which are located close to the Equator and far from Australia, have no dry season, although precipitation tends to be slightly lower during July and August. Strong cyclones and typhoons, which normally occur in higher latitudes, are absent in Indonesia, but afternoon thunderstorms are common.

Plant life

Much of Indonesia is still covered with the natural growth of tropical rainforest, of which only a fraction is primeval forest. Papua and eastern Kalimantan are mostly forest-covered, while on the densely populated islands of Java and Bali, a much smaller part of the land is covered with forest.

The vegetation is similar to that of the Philippines, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea. There are some 40,000 species of flowering plants, including 5,000 species of orchids, as well as the monster flower (Rafflesia arnoldii), which is the world's largest flower. There are more than 3,000 tree species, including durian, sandalwood, illupi nut, valuable timber varieties such as teak and ironwood, and rattans. More than 6,000 species are exploited for economic purposes, either directly or indirectly. Major timber operations are located in Kalimantan, where the trees are not differentiated but are referred to as “broad-leaved species”; they include, for example, meranti, which has a soft, lightweight, pinkish to darkish red wood. Teak, which is also broad-leaved, comes mainly from Java.

The most important vegetation type is the mixed lowland and hill tropical rainforest, which occurs below 5,000 feet (1,500 metres). It is characterized by a large number of species, including high-canopied and buttressed trees and woody, thick-stemmed lianas (climbing plants). Epiphytes (plants that derive nourishment from the air and usually live on another plant) such as orchids and ferns, saprophytes (plants that live on dead or decaying matter), and parasites are well developed. Above 5,000 feet this forest gives way to temperate upland forest dominated by oak, laurel, tea, and magnolia species. Another typical feature of Indonesian vegetation is the mangrove forest, characterized by the formation of stilt- or prop-rooted trees, which grow only in salty or brackish water along muddy shores. Mangrove swamps are extensively developed along the shallow seas on eastern Sumatra, southern Kalimantan, and southeastern Papua.

Animal life

Indonesia is located in the transitional zone between two of the world's major faunal regions: the Oriental of Asia in the west and the Australasian of Australia and New Guinea in the east. The boundary of these realms, called Wallace's Line, runs between Borneo and Celebes in the north and Bali and Lombok in the south. To the west the Asian animal community includes such mammals as the rhinoceros, the orangutan, the tapir, the tiger, and the elephant. Animals related to Australian fauna include birds such as cockatoos, bowerbirds, and birds of paradise, as well as marsupials such as bandicoots (small insectivorous, herbivorous, marsupial mammals) and cuscuses (brightly coloured, woolly-haired arboreal marsupials).

Many of the islands contain endemic species. Among these are such birds as the Javanese peacock and the Sumatran drongo. A certain mountain goat lives only on the rugged slopes of the Barisan Mountains of Sumatra. A unique species of proboscis monkey is unique to Kalimantan, and the babirusa (a large wild pig) and the anoa (a small wild ox with nearly straight horns) can be found only in Celebes. A giant lizard—the prehistoric Komodo dragon, which attains a length of 12 feet (3.7 metres)—occurs on two small islands, Rinca and Komodo, between Sumbawa and Flores.

Some of these endemic species have become exceedingly rare. Most of the remaining single-horned Java rhinoceroses, for example, are now restricted to the Ujon Kulon National Park on the western tip of Java. This nearly extinct species is one of the world's most highly protected forms of wildlife. Another such endangered species is the orangutan, which is native to Borneo and Sumatra. Orangutan rehabilitation centres have been established on the edge of the Mount Leuser National Park in northern Sumatra and in a game preserve on Cape Puting in southern Kalimantan in an effort to prevent the capture and slaughter of the animals and to train those that have been held captive to return to the wild.

Indonesia has an enormous and varied insect life that includes many unusual species. Examples include giant walkingsticks that can attain 8 inches (20 cm) in length, walking leaves, huge atlas beetles, elegant luna moths, and beautiful bird-wing swallowtails.

Traditional regions

The island structure of Indonesia provides natural boundaries that strongly influence the traditional regions. On the smaller islands administrative and traditional regions generally overlap, while on the larger islands the administrative structure generally harmonizes with traditional and cultural divisions.

The four provinces of Java, and the special autonomous district of Yogyakarta, represent the most populous and culturally sophisticated part of the country and illustrate the overlap of traditional and administrative regions. Jawa Tengah (Central Java) is the geographic, cultural, and historical focus of the island. Yogyakarta is a stronghold of Javanese culture and maintains a traditional sultan ruler; a variety of Javanese historic monuments (candi) are located in the vicinity, including the great Buddhist monument of Borobuḍur. Jawa Tengah and Jawa Timur (East Java) are densely settled, largely agricultural areas dominated by ethnic Javanese. The major port, trading, and industrial city of Surabaya is Jawa Timur's largest city and the second largest in Indonesia; Semarang assumes these functions in Jawa Tengah. Jawa Barat (West Java) and Banten at the island's western tip constitute the land of the Sundanese, who are related to but quite distinct from the Javanese in language and tradition. In addition, Java contains the strongly contrasting metropolitan district (daerah khusus ibukota) of Jakarta, which does not coincide with cultural or traditional patterns.

The provinces on Sumatra (eight provinces plus the special autonomous district of Aceh) also have a degree of traditional integrity. Located in the north, Aceh is a region of strict Muslims who were long noted for their resistance to European influence. Sumatera Utara (North Sumatra), with its major city of Medan, includes a rich plantation area along the coast and, at a higher elevation, the region inhabited by the Batak, who were largely isolated until the 19th century. Riau and Jambi, oil-rich provinces in the east, are inhabited by Malay people and are the areas in which the Indonesian language developed. Sumatera Barat (West Sumatra) is the region of the Minangkabau people, who are devout Muslims and are noted for their matrilineal society, in which property is passed on through the female line. Lampung and Bengkulu provinces, in the southern part of Sumatra, are the sites of major oil fields. The southeastern provinces of Sumatera Seletan and Bangka-Bengkulu are primarily agricultural.

On Kalimantan, as elsewhere, there is a contrast between the coast and the inland region. Chinese and Malays dominate the coastal regions, while a variety of Dayak tribes live in the interior, where they engage in traditional shifting cultivation. A similar pattern applies in Papua and on many of the other islands where maritime-trading communities have been developed along the coast and agrarian, noncommercial societies, with strongly developed and highly localized customs, inhabit the interior.

East of Java each island or group of islands has maintained its own distinct character, in many cases strongly influenced by religion. Bali—with its long tradition of Hindu and Buddhist influences rooted in animism—is quite different in character and customs from any other part of Indonesia. Lombok is partly Hindu, but the influence of Islam is stronger. Sumbawa is Muslim, Flores is largely Roman Catholic, and Timor contains strong Protestant groups. These variations also prevail in Celebes and the Moluccas, where the Makasarese and Buginese of southern Celebes are Muslims noted as seafarers and shipbuilders, while the Menadonese in northern Celebes (on the Minahasa Peninsula) and the Ambonese are Christian.

The barriers of the mountains and the sea have protected the character and traditions of many groups. Away from the major cities and areas of dense population, there are significant variations from one valley to the next and almost from one village to the next. In many cases the tribal groups—the Toraja of Celebes, the Dayak of Kalimantan, and the Gayo, Lampung, and Batak peoples of Sumatra—were relatively untouched by outside influences until the arrival of Christian missionaries during the 19th century, and even today they display a wide range of cultures.

Settlement patterns
Rural settlement

Photograph:Temporary housing in a Toraja village, constructed for guests and relatives attending a funeral, …

* Temporary housing in a Toraja village, constructed for guests and relatives attending a funeral, …

Indonesia is primarily a rural country, with the majority of the population living in agricultural areas. About two-thirds of the total population inhabits the islands of Java, Madura, and Bali, which have a highly sophisticated rural structure that is based largely on wet-rice cultivation. Other areas of high rural population are found in parts of Sumatra and Celebes. Most of the rest of the country is sparsely settled by tribal groups who engage in subsistence agriculture.

The Javanese rural village is the most common settlement. Paddy rice fields cover the flat land and in many places rise up the hillsides in terraces. Scattered throughout are clusters of coconut, palm, and fruit trees, which indicate the location of the villages. In the heavily populated areas of central and eastern Java, there are thousands of such villages, some of which have sizable populations.

The people of each village form a group that is homogeneous both in economic condition and in social interest and outlook. In many cases, and particularly in irrigated areas, there is much mutual exchange of labour. Overpopulation in the densely populated areas has led to a decrease in size of the average farm and to an increase in the numbers of landless rural inhabitants, who work mainly as farm labourers or sharecroppers.

Each village has a stream or well as its source of water, a mosque and elementary school, and a network of swept-earth paths. There is little formal commercial activity; goods are obtained from peddlers and small shops (warungs) or from the market towns, which often are also local government centres. Houses are well separated and are normally of frame and bamboo with roofs of red tile or coconut fibres; houses constructed of locally made bricks are increasingly common, especially among the wealthier families. Goats, chickens, banana and papaya trees, and a host of small children are characteristic of village life.

Rural structure varies considerably from region to region. Balinese villages are clusters of walled family complexes with Hindu shrines, public buildings, and larger temples. The Batak villages around Lake Toba in northern Sumatra, Minangkabau villages in western Sumatra, Toraja villages in southern Celebes, and Dayak longhouses in Kalimantan have their characteristic structure and building style. The social pattern also varies considerably. On Java the pattern is very simple, with few organized groupings above the level of the household, while on neighbouring Bali there are strong groups related to working, dancing, and other functions, many of which are associated with Hindu festivals.

The rural mode of life is controlled by the growing season and by the productivity of the land. It ranges from the seminomadic shifting cultivation of tribal groups, through cassava and sago gardening, smallholder plantations, and irrigated rice farming, to large mechanized plantations. In some cases these activities are combined with some form of cottage industry. Most Indonesians are small-scale, independent peasant farmers who operate at or near the subsistence level and sell some produce but usually do not accumulate substantial capital. In general, the villages are small, independent, and largely self-sufficient.

Urban settlement

The overall level of urbanization in Indonesia is low in relation to other countries that are at a comparable stage of economic growth. This can be explained in part by the phenomenon of nonpermanent, or “circular,” migration on Java and elsewhere: individuals from rural families live and work in the cities, but they return to their homes at least once every six months. Although there is some regional variation in urban growth rates, generally cities of every population size are growing rapidly.

Few of the cities—except Jakarta, Surabaya, and Medan—have the heterogeneity of a true urban centre. Instead, they are the economic, governmental, cultural, and social centres for highly populated and distinct regions. The growth of the cities has not been accompanied by a parallel growth of industry, and the outlook of much of the urban population is still rural. Large parts of the population, even in Jakarta, live in replicas of rural villages, or kampongs, characterized by rural customs. Urban dwellers generally are better off than their rural counterparts, and urban services have gradually improved; but the availability of adequate housing, potable water, and public transportation services has remained a critical concern.

Four of Indonesia's five largest cities—Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, and Bekasi—are on Java; the other, Medan, is located on Sumatra. These five cities may be considered metropolitan areas rather than large provincial towns, since they contain the major government, financial, and business offices. Other large cities, such as Semarang, Yogyakarta, and Palembang, are centres of provincial government and of local trade and, with the exception of Semarang, have limited international ties or contact with foreigners.

The cities have individual characters. Jakarta, as the capital and centre of finance, has fine government buildings, broad avenues and large fountains, and an increasing number of multistory hotels and office buildings. Surabaya is a major port and industrial city. Bandung, a former resort area and military centre, has much light industry and a number of universities. Bekasi is a rapidly growing city in the Jakarta urban area. Semarang is the administrative capital and commercial hub of central Java. Yogyakarta, which was the capital of the revolutionary government between 1946 and 1949, is the seat of the ruling family of the sultan of Yogyakarta and remains the centre of Javanese culture. It also is the site of a major university, Gadja (Gajah) Mada, and of schools of art, traditional dance, and music and is the centre of the batik cloth industry. In Sumatra, Medan and its port city of Belawan constitute the commercial centre for the rich northern agricultural districts, and Palembang, Sumatra's second largest city, is the port for the oil industry and for a variety of other industries in the south.

The social composition of Indonesia's cities is highly diverse and reflects the heavy flow of migration from rural areas. The most varied of these is Jakarta: while many people may have been born or raised there, they often continue to refer to themselves in terms of their regional heritage—such as Batak, Javanese, or Minangkabau—and it is not uncommon for them to use their local languages at home.

The social and economic character of Indonesian cities is a continuing topic of study. A social hierarchy exists that is roughly composed of an elite group of government officials, military officers, and business leaders with a Western orientation; a growing middle class of civil servants, teachers, and other professionals and skilled workers who are significantly underpaid and must struggle to maintain their economic position; and a larger number of poorly educated unskilled labourers, traders, and other members of the informal economy who strongly identify with their villages and frequently move back and forth to engage in economic pursuits in both areas. This three-tiered hierarchy also conforms closely to an economic structure that is based on various government opportunities and on formal and informal business activities.

A transient foreign element of diplomats and company representatives plays a minor role in city structure. The permanent foreign element—mainly of Chinese, Indian, and Arab business families—is more fully integrated, but each group maintains its own contacts and patterns of life. The Indonesians gradually are developing an urban culture. This notion, perhaps more appropriately viewed as urban sophistication, is most conspicuous in Jakarta, with its strong international contacts. Since association with this international culture implies a degree of wealth, it is largely confined to the families of officials, professionals, and prominent businessmen. The lower-income groups, on the other hand, retain their basic ethnic cultures, strengthened by trips to home villages during times of harvest or during the Muslim month of Ramaḍān (a period of fasting and atonement).

Although Indonesia's social structure is decentralized, its administrative structure is highly centralized, with Jakarta the headquarters of the central government. Most taxes, including land and real estate taxes, are collected by the central government, on which city and provincial governments must depend for their revenue. Efforts have been made, however, to decentralize some government functions, particularly with respect to finance and to the management and delivery of various services.

The Indonesian national motto, “Bhinneka tunggal ika” (“Unity in diversity”), makes reference to the extraordinary diversity of the Indonesian population: there are more than 300 different ethnic groups and 250 distinct languages, and most of the major world religions are practiced there, in addition to a wide range of indigenous ones. Within this diversity there are certain groupings and concentrations; thus, most of the people are of Malay ancestry, speak languages that have an Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) base, and profess Islam. The largest of the subgroups is the Javanese, whose language is also the most dominant.

Indonesia is situated at the meeting point of two of the world's major population groups, Asians in the west and Melanesians in the east. The great majority of Indonesians are related to the peoples of East Asia, although over the centuries there has also been considerable mixing with Arabs, Indians, and Europeans. In the eastern islands, however, most of the people are of Melanesian origin.

Ethnic groups
The western islands

The diverse ethnic populations of western Indonesia may be grouped into three broad groups: an inland wet-rice society, coastal peoples, and tribal groups. The first group, the strongly Hinduized wet-rice growers of inland Java and Bali, make up more than two-thirds of the national population. With an ancient, highly sophisticated culture of strong social and agricultural traditions, it includes the Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, and Balinese peoples. The second group, the Islamic coastal peoples, is ethnically heterogeneous and includes the Malays from Sumatra and, from southern Celebes, the Makasarese, who are found in all coastal towns but are a stronger influence outside Java. The third group, the tribal peoples, including the Toraja and Dayak, has developed in inland areas where the climate will not support wet-rice cultivation and where shifting cultivation is practiced; these various groups tend to be small and isolated and have developed a wide range of cultures.

There are also a number of other major ethnic groups that do not fit into this cultural categorization. They include the Batak and Minangkabau in Sumatra and the Minahasa in northern Celebes.

The eastern islands

Eastern Indonesia is characterized by the traditional Melanesian cultural division between coastal, or “beach,” peoples and interior, or “bush,” peoples. The Moluccas reflect this pattern, although their proximity to the western islands makes them a more complex ethnographic and linguistic area. The islands are populated by a number of distinct ethnic groups. Typical of the coastal peoples are the Ambonese, who live along the coasts of Ambon and neighbouring islands, including western Ceram. Many of the people living in the mountainous interior regions are called Alfurs, or Alfuros; some of these groups have been relocated to coastal areas, but—unlike the coastal peoples—they do not engage in fishing activities.

The people of Papua, the native Papuans, display much more strongly the distinction between coastal and interior groups. Those in the foothills and on the coast have affinities with other Melanesian peoples to the east and south of New Guinea. In addition, Indonesians from the western islands have mixed with indigenous peoples in the coastal trading settlements. The people of the interior, on the other hand, have been isolated and insular for a long period of time. The interior Papuans are highly distinct from other Indonesians in terms of culture, language, and history. Some groups, in fact, continue to have little contact with the outside world and inhabit nearly inaccessible areas, where they follow a way of life that has hardly changed in centuries. They live in small clans, and their dialects, customs, and social structure display a degree of complexity that is not found among the indigenous coastal peoples.

Nonindigenous peoples

The largest nonindigenous group is the Chinese, who account for only about 2 percent of the total population but control perhaps 75 percent of the nation's wealth. Most of the Chinese have lived in Indonesia for generations. The majority of them, the peranakans, do not speak Chinese, have Indonesian surnames, and through intermarrying with Indonesians have developed distinct dialects and customs. A smaller segment of the Chinese population, the totoks, are clearly Chinese-oriented in terms of language, religion, and custom. Of the total Chinese population, most live in the towns and cities of Java and Sumatra, where they are engaged in trade. The Chinese also form a significant fraction of the population in western Kalimantan, where many are farmers and fishermen, and in the Riau Islands, where a large number are engaged in mining.

Most of the former Dutch and Eurasian residents left Indonesia after independence. Indians, Arabs, and other Europeans are relatively unimportant in numbers, although their influence in business and other elements of Western culture is apparent in the major cities.

Languages

Most of the languages spoken in Indonesia have an Austronesian base. The major exceptions are those of Papua and some of the Moluccas, where Papuan languages are used. The Austronesian language family is broken into 18 major groups within which languages are closely related though distinctly different. On Java there are three major languages—Javanese, Sundanese, and Madurese—while on Sumatra there are 15, many of which are divided into a number of distinct dialects. Within the Toraja group, a relatively small population in the interior of Celebes, there are six languages. In eastern Indonesia each island has its own language, which is often not understood on the neighbouring islands.

The national language, Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), evolved from a Malay dialect spoken in the Riau-Jambi area of eastern Sumatra; it has much in common with other Malay dialects that have long served as regional lingua francas. Since it is a relatively simple and widely used language that was not associated with one of the dominant ethnic groups, Bahasa Indonesia has been accepted without serious question and has served as a strong force of national unification. It is now learned by all children in the schools, where the local language is the medium of instruction during the first two years and Bahasa Indonesia is used for the remaining years. In 1972 a uniform revised spelling was agreed to between Indonesia and Malaysia so that communications could be improved and literature more freely exchanged between the two countries.

Religions

The vast majority of the population professes Islam, which in most cases is strongly influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, and older pagan and animistic beliefs. The Hindu population lives mainly on Bali, and there are Christians scattered throughout the country, more than two-thirds of whom are Protestant and the remainder mainly Roman Catholic. Most Chinese practice Buddhism and Confucianism. In remote areas some tribal religions are practiced.

Successive layers of religious beliefs reach back to the rituals and magic of the original settlers. Remains of Homo erectus (originally called Pithecanthropus, or Java man) have been found in central Java. There are remnants of an aboriginal people in southern Sumatra. The present population is descended from a series of waves of migrants from Asia, especially southwestern China. There is little recorded history before the 7th century AD, although there is evidence of earlier cultures (Śrivijaya) in Sumatra.

The earliest recorded Indonesian history shows extensive religious influences from India; the early Indonesian states that centred on Java or Sumatra evolved through many forms of Hinduism and Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. During the 9th century AD, both Hinduism and Buddhism were practiced as court religions; Shiva (Śiva) and Buddha were looked upon as manifestations of the same spiritual being. The blending of the two religions continued until the 14th century, when Islam was introduced along the coasts by Muslim traders from India. Throughout all the religious changes on the court level, the common people adopted part of each new religion as an additional layer over their basic traditional and animistic beliefs. Although Islam has become the dominant religion, it includes elements of all past beliefs.

The major religions were all introduced on the coast and, except in such open areas as Java and southern Sumatra, penetrated slowly inland. Regions such as central Kalimantan and Papua, the mountains of northern Sumatra, and the interiors of other mountainous islands remained virtually untouched by outside religions. Ritualistic head-hunting in Kalimantan and Celebes and cannibalism in northern Sumatra were practiced until the arrival of Christian missionaries in the late 19th century.

Islam is most strictly practiced in Aceh, western Sumatra, western Java, southeastern Kalimantan, and some of the Lesser Sunda Islands. Away from these strongholds the people consider themselves to be Muslims, but most do not follow the full ritual of fasting and prayers. On Java only about one-third of the Muslims follow orthodox practices; they are referred to as the santri. Members of the old Javanese aristocracy, including a majority of white-collar workers, are termed priyayi. A third, syncretistic tradition, called abangan, is strongly influenced by traditional and ancestral spirits and is closely associated with the peasants. Ritual ceremonies, selamatans, are held on all special occasions; the head of a bull is buried at the dedication of a new building; and the many rituals connected with birth, death, and marriage are carefully observed by people at all levels.

Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world in terms of population. The distribution and density of the population vary considerably from region to region; the islands of Java, Bali, and Madura account for some two-thirds of the total population. Overall, the population has nearly doubled since 1960, with a moderately high rate of growth, but there have been significant regional contrasts in this rate. In Java, for example, population growth has been significantly less than in the outer islands. A sharp decline in fertility rates has also been in progress throughout Indonesia. The two major factors for this decline have been an increase in the age when people marry and the rapid introduction of birth-control methods. Lower fertility has been especially conspicuous in central Java. Mortality rates have also declined substantially since the 1950s, largely because of improved health care, better dietary and nutrition practices, and improvements in housing and water quality. The rates of infant and child mortality have also declined.

Indonesia's age structure is typical of many developing countries, with nearly one-third of the population under 15 years of age. The older component of the population is increasing, but the proportion of those 65 years or older is considerably less than in more economically developed countries. Life expectancies at birth are about 65 years for males and 69 years for females.

Two major migration patterns have become discernible. The first involves the growing flow of people into urban areas, particularly Jakarta, which has resulted in an overall increase in the proportion of the population living in cities. Temporary, or circular, migration between rural and urban areas in connection with employment has also become common. The second pattern is of people leaving Java for the outer islands. The central government has facilitated much of this movement (called transmigration) by sponsoring a program of resettling landless Javanese in sparsely populated areas.

The economy

Indonesia has played a modest role in the world economy since independence, and its importance has been considerably less than its size, resources, and geographic position would seem to warrant. The country is a major exporter of crude petroleum and natural gas. In addition, Indonesia is one of the world's main suppliers of rubber and a less-significant producer of a wide range of other commodities, such as coffee, tea, tobacco, copra, spices (cloves and nutmeg), and oil-palm products. Nearly all commodity production comes from large estates. Widespread exploration for deposits of oil and other minerals has resulted in a number of large-scale projects that have contributed substantially to general development funds. Although the projects have tended to reinforce the general position of Indonesia as a supplier of raw materials to world markets, the country has also become an important producer of manufactured goods for domestic consumption and export.

The corollary of the primary economy is that the country has remained a major importer of manufactured goods and of the technical skills and knowledge required for development. For many years there was relatively little industrial development, and the industrial base remained somewhat small, mostly concerned with mineral and forestry production and with food processing. There was little evidence of much growth in indigenous entrepreneurial activity in manufacturing. Domestic economic resources were limited, and there was a heavy dependence on inflows of foreign aid and private capital to finance large-scale development. However, this began to change in the late 1980s, and there has been a dramatic increase in the industrial sector that has caused agriculture's contribution to the national income to decline. Manufacturing surpassed agriculture, in terms of percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), in the early 1990s.

Indonesia's labour force has nevertheless remained predominantly agricultural. Independent peasant farmers account for the larger part of production—notably of rice and other food crops—and a major proportion of export crops; the estate sector is responsible for the rest of production, which is mainly for export. Organized labour has been weak and has suffered from the repressions of early years in which the main trade union, the All-Indonesia Labour Federation (since 1985 the All-Indonesia Union of Workers), was tied to the Communist Party of Indonesia. Large politically motivated associations of farmers were loosely knit and did little to promote the welfare of their members. Some Indonesian businessmen have banded together to agitate against the advantages allegedly given to nonnationals, but their organizations have been of negligible importance. The government has sought to incorporate functional groups such as those of farmers and fishermen into a quasi-governmental political party, and many organizations and associations (including minority religious groups, such as the Buddhists, and women's organizations) have joined.

Economic mismanagement and the subordination of development to political ideals during the first 16 years of independence led to financial chaos and to a serious deterioration in the capital stock. With a major change of economic direction after Suharto assumed power in the mid-1960s, some measure of stability was regained, and the conditions for an orderly policy of rehabilitation and economic development were established.

Since the mid-1960s the government has played a crucial role in development, but the private sector has become more influential. The overall goal has been the creation of a mixed economy. From 1969 to 1997 a series of five-year plans emphasized the government's role in developing the economic infrastructure of the country, notably in agriculture, irrigation, transportation, and communications. Thus, the government, together with foreign aid, was a major force in projects where private enterprise had not been forthcoming. These included the state-owned oil company Pertamina, fertilizer production that supports agriculture, and the cement, chemical, paper, and textile-spinning industries. The emphasis in the public sector increasingly was on independent, self-financing state enterprises. The remainder of major investments in exploration and exploitation of natural resources or in new manufacturing industries were left to the private sector, subject to overall government supervision and contracts. Defense, though given low priority, has been a substantial drain on the country's resources.

This consistent approach to development has carried its own risks. Its emphasis has been on soundness, and it has depended heavily on foreign aid and foreign technical assistance. One problem with such an orthodox emphasis on the role of private enterprise has been that it has led to an inequitable distribution of income. Increasingly, however, private enterprise has been allowed to expand, and this has led to considerable growth in manufacturing industries.

A major restraint on development has been a swollen and ill-paid bureaucracy. The government's ability to organize and implement development projects has also been limited by lack of experience and by the unreliability and inadequacy of statistical and other information. A large inflow of foreign technical assistance has been necessary to help devise economic programs and projects, often as a condition of external capital aid. Low pay and poor working conditions have fostered corruption that has distorted development and imposed a substantial burden.

Resources

Indonesia has a large, and in many cases unprospected, variety of mineral deposits, including those of petroleum, natural gas, tin, manganese, copper, nickel, bauxite, and coal. Tin deposits are found on the islands of Bangka, Singkep, and Billiton (Belitung) and off the southwestern shore of Kalimantan, and there is nickel on Celebes, Halmahera, and other islands of the Moluccas and in Papua. Manganese deposits are located in central Java and on Sumatra, Kalimantan, Celebes, and Timor. There are copper deposits in the Jayawijaya Mountains of Papua. The Riau Islands, Bangka and Singkep islands, and Kalimantan have bauxite, and coal is found on Sumatra and Kalimantan. There are also deposits of iron, sulfur, gold, and silver. Large-scale coal, petroleum, and natural gas deposits provide ready raw material for thermal-energy generation.

Mining and forestry

Mining provides about one-eighth of GDP. It employs only a limited workforce, but through exports and taxation it contributes substantially to foreign-exchange earnings and development. In the past, petroleum and tin were the most important, although coal, bauxite, gold, silver, and other minerals have been mined. Indonesia now produces copper, nickel, manganese, and other commodities.

Petroleum and natural gas are produced in Sumatra and Kalimantan and from offshore sites in the Java and South China seas. Refinery production since 1968 has been in the hands of Pertamina. Foreign oil companies, however, operate under a production-sharing formula, by which the ownership of the oil resources remains with the government of Indonesia and the foreign companies act as contractors, supplying the necessary capital. Indonesia has greatly expanded its production of coal, which is mined in southern and western Sumatra.

The islands of Bangka, Billiton, and Singkep were mined for tin long before World War II. Production is dominated by state companies. Nickel is produced on Celebes, in Papua, and in the Moluccas. Bauxite is mined on the Riau Islands and in western Kalimantan and is processed at an aluminum smelter—the first in Southeast Asia—at Kualatanjung in northern Sumatra.

Indonesia has some of the world's largest tracts of exploitable tropical forest, and since the 1960s the timber industry has grown rapidly. This rapid exploitation has caused considerable damage, however, and has prompted the Indonesian government to curtail clear-cutting of trees and to implement reforestation programs. There are several small areas of deciduous forest and plantations (mostly teak), but most of the trees are tropical hardwoods. The production of plywood and veneers has become important for both domestic consumption and export.

Agriculture and fishing

The consistent monsoon climate and almost even distribution of rainfall in Indonesia make it possible for the same types of crops to be grown throughout the country. Only about one-tenth of the total land surface, however, is devoted to agriculture. Intensive cultivation is restricted to Java, Bali, Lombok, and certain areas of Sumatra and Celebes. In Java much of the cultivated land is in rice, mainly along the northern coastal and central plains. In the drier section of eastern Java, crops such as corn (maize), cassava, sweet potatoes, peanuts (groundnuts), and soybeans dominate the small farms, although such cash crops as tobacco and coffee are also grown on plantations.

Development in Sumatra and in the outer islands is less intensive and consists primarily of estate-raised cash crops. Sumatra accounts for more than half the total area under estate production, which is located mainly on the northeastern coast of the island. Around Medan there are extensive plantations producing tobacco, rubber, palm oil, kapok, tea, cloves, and coffee, none of which is native to the region. Rice, corn, and cassava are grown in the Padang area in the west and around the oil fields near Palembang in the southeast.

There has been a shift from rice toward other less-demanding basic subsistence crops, such as cassava. Rice has remained the cornerstone of peasant agriculture, however, and increased production of it has been the most important single aim of every five-year plan. Yields have been increased through various Bimingan Massal, or Bimas (“Mass Guidance”), schemes designed to promote the use of high-yielding varieties and fertilizer by increasing the availability of credit.

Rubber has remained the major commodity, although replanting has been a long-term process, and—in contrast to neighbouring Malaysia—the estates have failed to modernize to the same degree. Oil palms have been increasing in importance, however, and the ailing sugar industry has been rehabilitated to increase production for domestic consumption.

Fisheries have been developed on a small scale. With the aid of Japan, there has been an increase in both production and exports. A large part of the inland catch is from irrigation canals; marine fish account for most of the total catch, although aquaculture is growing in importance.

Industry

Import substitution and support for the agricultural sector were long the two major aims of industrial policy. Import substitution was geared to commodities such as food, textiles, fertilizers, and cement, and a large-scale, broadly based industrialization policy was not attempted until the late 1980s. The result was tremendous growth in the manufacturing sector, which now accounts for more than one-fourth of GDP.

Traditionally, the largest industries, many of them state-owned, have been those that process agricultural and mineral products. The estate groups and companies normally control their own facilities, and Pertamina controls petroleum refining. A significant proportion of manufacturing, however, is done by medium- and small-scale privately owned enterprises, which supply consumer goods. Much of the small-scale industry is owned by the Chinese community. These small-scale workshops manufacture such consumer goods and general products as furniture, household equipment, textiles, and printed matter. The main centre of private industry is western Java, although considerable development has also taken place in Jakarta. Since the mid-1980s there has also been a major shift toward developing large-scale and high-technology industries, such as telecommunications, electronics, and automobile manufacturing.

One of the country's major industries based on imported raw materials is textile manufacturing. The spinning mills are largely either state-owned or in the hands of foreign concerns, while the weaving and finishing factories, which are centred in Bandung, are largely small-scale and privately owned by local entrepreneurs. Batik production—an Indonesian method of hand-printing textiles—is concentrated in central Java. Although production of batik remains a major cottage industry, there are also a number of larger-scale operations.

Finance

Generally, the aims of the government's credit and fiscal policies have been to provide the conditions for private incentive within the context of financial orthodoxy. Subsidized credit and interest rates, however, have been used in accordance with general government priorities. Consumption and trade credit have been generated largely within the trading system, but there are also a range of private banking and moneylending facilities. Apart from these, the private financial sector has been weak and has played only a modest role in mobilizing domestic resources. A strong effort has been made to deregulate the financial system, and foreign investment and aid, subject to development conditions, have been welcomed. The foreign-exchange system in Indonesia has been greatly simplified, and incentives have been provided for foreign investment.

Bank Indonesia, the central bank, is responsible for issuing the rupiah, the national currency. Other public (government-owned) institutions include Bank Mandiri, which was established in 1999 by the merger of Bank Ekspor Impor Indonesia (the export-import bank), Bank Bumi Daya (for the estates and forestry), Bank Pembangunan Indonesia (for development), and Bank Dagang Negara (for foreign exchange); Bank Rakyat Indonesia, which specializes in rural credit; Bank Negara Indonesia, which specializes in industrial credit; and Bank Tabungan Negara, the state savings bank. Each bank is diversified and operates independently. Foreign banks also operate in Indonesia. Nonbanking financial institutions are restricted. Indonesia also has stock exchanges at Jakarta and Surabaya.

Commerce and trade

A complex and reasonably well-developed commercial sector has been formed, based on the marketing and exporting of agricultural produce and on supplying consumer goods and services to the domestic market. It has been dominated by the Chinese community, although indigenous participation and unofficial army activity at the lower levels have grown.

Petroleum and natural gas, basic manufactures (wood products and textile yarns and fabrics), and wearing apparel and footwear are Indonesia's major exports. Other agricultural exports include rubber, coffee, copra, tea, pepper, tobacco, and oil-palm products. Imports consist largely of machinery and transport equipment, mineral fuels, chemicals, and basic manufactures. Indonesia's most important trading partners are Japan, the United States, Singapore, South Korea, and China. For years the country has had a favourable balance of trade. Tourism has grown in economic importance and as a source of foreign exchange.

Transportation

Because Indonesia is an island country, sea transport plays a key role in the movement of raw materials and agricultural products from their sources to markets. The physical nature of the country has favoured the development of strong sea links for freight and strong air links for passengers. Many parts of Indonesia have not been adequately served by the transport network, a factor that has critically hampered economic development.

Roads and railways

On the islands road transport is dominant. The only islands with adequate land transportation networks are Java, Madura, and Sumatra. On Java, where existing rail and road organization is good and is capable of being expanded to meet growing needs, emphasis has been placed on road transport because of the short distances involved. Road traffic can be increased rapidly as roads are improved and trucks imported, while railroad traffic continues to be hampered by the poor condition of rolling stock. There is, however, an important role for railways for both freight and passengers, because the high population density of Java places a limitation on new road construction.

The Indonesian State Railway (Perusahaan Jawatan Kereta Api, or PJKA) operates on Java, Madura, and Sumatra. Geographic features and commodity composition have reduced the competitive position of the railroad. There has been little demand for long-distance bulk movement, normally the mainstay of railroad operation but in Indonesia handled by shipping.

Most of the paved roads are on Java and Madura, where the network of highways is adequate to meet traffic needs in most areas. Much of the remaining paved mileage is on Sumatra and Bali. Western and central Kalimantan and Celebes have some good roads, but in Papua and the Moluccas there are few road interconnections between major settled areas.

Water and air transport

Most of the major population centres are close to the sea, where they can be served and linked by coastal and interisland shipping services. The adjacent seas are relatively calm because Indonesia is outside the belt of typhoons and high winds, and, even where docking facilities are not available, it is usually possible for ships to anchor and discharge and load from lighters and other craft.

There are numerous ports, some of which have facilities and water depths that allow ships of more than 500 tons to load and unload at quayside. The major dry-cargo ports are Tanjungperiuk (Tanjungpriok), the outport of Jakarta; Tanjungperak, the outport of Surabaya; and Belawan, the outport of Medan. Palembang in southern Sumatra is the major petroleum port. Other major ports include Semarang and Cirebon on Java, Telukbayur (the outport of Padang) on Sumatra, Manado on Celebes, Ambon in the Moluccas, Jayapura in Papua, and Banjarmasin on Kalimantan. The main commodities carried are petroleum and petroleum products, rice, copra, cement, flour, fertilizer, coconut oil, salt, rubber, asphalt, logs, and lumber.

International air services are confined to Jakarta in Java, Medan in Sumatra, and Denpasar in Bali. Major cities in Sumatra have limited service to Malaysia, Yogyakarta has limited service to Japan, and Jayapura in Papua has limited service to Papua New Guinea. Scheduled services within the country are provided by several companies, the most important of which are Garuda Indonesia, the national airline, and Merpati Nusantara, which is partially subsidized by the government. There are also several nonscheduled airlines.

Administration and social conditions
Government

The Republic of Indonesia was proclaimed in 1945. Its jurisdiction included the present area from Sabang in Sumatra to Merauke in Papua, or the entire area of the former Dutch (or Netherlands) East Indies. The Netherlands retained possession of a large part of this region, however, and a provisional capital was established in Yogyakarta, which was the stronghold of the revolution.

With the close of the struggle for independence in 1949, the Republic of the United States of Indonesia was established. The federal system did not last, however, and in 1950 the federated governments unanimously decided to return to a republican form of government. After some difficulties the Republic of Indonesia returned to the constitution of 1945 by presidential decree.

Constitutional framework

Executive power lies in the president, who is assisted by a vice president. Until 2002 both were elected every five years by the People's Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat; MPR), but in that year a new law decreed that beginning in 2004 the president and vice president would be directly elected. In addition, legislation passed in 1999 limits the president to two five-year terms. The ministers and heads of departments are appointed and dismissed by the president, who is also responsible for the supreme command of the army, the navy, and the air force. The president has the authority to issue regulations, to implement acts, and to make agreements with foreign countries.

Besides holding executive power, the president is the leader of the legislative branch, the People's Representation Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat; DPR), and in case of emergency may issue governmental regulations with the consent of the DPR as a substitute for legislative acts. If such governmental regulation does not get the consent of the DPR, it is considered revoked.

The MPR is the highest authority in the state, with the primary responsibilities of determining the constitution and the broad lines of governmental policy. It consists of 700 members, including representatives from the DPR, regional delegates, and representatives of political parties and functional groups such as farmers, businessmen, the armed forces, and students, appointed by the president on the basis of nominations from those respective groups. The term of office of the MPR is five years, and the assembly sits at least once every five years.

The DPR consists of 500 members, 400 of whom are elected on a proportional system and 100 of whom are appointed by the respective groups as representatives of political parties and functional groups. The body sits once a year, and its members serve a term of five years. The Regional Council of Representatives (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah) forms the government for each region, the regulations and composition of which are determined along lines similar to those of the DPR.

The president is advised and assisted by a cabinet of ministers from the various government departments. Ministries include those for broad areas such as economic, financial, and industrial affairs; foreign affairs; defense; social welfare; supervision of development; research and technology; and administrative reform. Each minister is assisted by a secretary-general, one or more directors general, an inspector general (if appropriate), and a staff of special assistants.

Local government

Indonesia is divided into 27 propinsi (provinces), the two daerah istimewa (special autonomous districts) of Aceh and Yogyakarta, each of which is headed by a governor, and the daerah khusus ibukata (metropolitan district) of Jakarta Raya. There are four provinces on Java, eight on Sumatra, four on Kalimantan, five on Celebes, three on Bali and the Lesser Sunda Islands (or east Indonesia), two for the Moluccas, and one on Papua (although efforts have been made to divide Papua into three provinces, one of which, West Irian Jaya, was declared in 2003).

The some 350 second-order divisions, kabupaten (regencies), are each headed by a governor and have provincial legislatures. There are also about 3,300 third-order divisions, kecamatan (districts), and several dozen cities that have obtained autonomous status and have been recognized as kotamadya (municipalities). These regional units are all headed by officials of the central government. Kampongs, or villages, and desas, or groups of villages, are headed by officials who are elected locally and provide the link between the people and the central government on the district level. Regional and local government depend heavily on the central government, which controls most appointments and collects the majority of the revenues.

The political process

The election law states that all citizens who have reached the minimum age of 17 or who have married may vote in general elections. All those who have reached the age of 21 may stand for elections. Voting is direct and by secret ballot.

The first election after independence was held in 1955. Almost 170 political parties and factions contested, and 4 major parties obtained the majority of the votes. The election was carried out with little disturbance, but the resulting government was gradually set aside during the closing years of the regime of Sukarno—Indonesia's first national figure and first president, from 1949 to 1967—as the concept of a “Guided Democracy” took hold. At one point there were almost 100 ministries, each competing to build a more impressive edifice. The structure collapsed with an attempted coup d'état in 1965, which led to the downfall of Sukarno.

After a period of stabilization and restructuring in which the armed forces played a major role, the second election of the DPR was held in 1971. Contesting this election were nine political parties and the Joint Secretariat of Functional Groups (Sekretariat Bersama Golongan Karya; Sekber Golkar, or Golkar), a government-sponsored organization of nonaffiliated functional groups. These groups include nonparty associations of peasants, fishermen, civil servants, cooperatives, religious groups, students, the armed forces, and veterans that are allowed to contest the elections on the same level as political parties. After the 1965 disturbances the Golkar took on a stronger role, and the various groups combined into Golkar to present a united front for the 1971 elections, strongly supported by both the government and the military. It is, however, impossible to understand the political working on all levels in Indonesia without being aware of the concept of mufakat, or “consensus,” arrived at on the basis of extensive consultations (musyawarah) aimed at reaching unanimous agreement. Decisions are seldom arbitrary or made by one person but are the result of extensive discussions. This is the traditional approach to all problems.

Under the Suharto regime many parties combined to form two officially recognized entities, the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan; PPP) and the Indonesian Democratic Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia; PDI). Parties proliferated following the fall of Suharto in 1998. Notable among these were PDI-Struggle (PDI-P), now the dominant faction of the PDI; Golkar, which was formally constituted as a party; and the Islamic-based National Awakening Party (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa; PKB).

Justice

The judicial system consists of a Supreme Court (Mahkamah Agung) in Jakarta, which is the final court of appeal; high courts located in principal cities on Java, Sumatra, Celebes, Kalimantan, Bali, the Moluccas, and Papua, which deal with appeals from district courts; and more than 250 district courts.

There are four judicial spheres (for general, religious, military, and administrative matters), each with its own courts. The religious, military, and administrative courts deal with special cases or particular groups of people, while the general deal with normal cases, both civil and criminal.

There is one codified criminal law for all of Indonesia; the Dutch codified civil code is applied to foreigners. For Indonesians the civil law is the uncodified hukum adat, or “local customary law,” which varies from one district or ethnic group to another.

Armed forces

The Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia (Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia) is not a colonial inheritance but was founded as a national armed force soon after independence. It consists of the army, the navy, the air force, and the state police. The navy has a small number of cruisers, submarines, destroyers, and frigates, as well as many smaller craft. Military service is not compulsory, except for university students.

Education

At independence educational opportunities for Indonesians were limited even on the primary and secondary levels and were practically nonexistent on the university level. Since the 1940s the government has placed great emphasis on mass education, and the majority of the children now enter primary schools. The great majority of the people are literate.

Responsibility for education is centred in the Ministry of National Education; the ministries of Religious Affairs, of Agriculture, and of Forestry also have extensive educational programs, and most other ministries have training and upgrading programs in specific areas.

The educational system involves six years of primary education, followed by three years of junior and three years of senior secondary schools. Each level is divided into general, vocational, technical, and agricultural curricula.

Higher education includes many public universities, including one in each province; institutes and teacher-training colleges, as well as other institutes and academies controlled by various government ministries; and numerous private institutions of higher learning. Because of the great problem of maintaining adequate staff and standards in such a widespread system, the Ministry of Education and Culture has established five consortia, consisting of representatives from the main universities, to deal with agriculture, science and technology, medicine, social sciences, and education. Major universities include the Bogor Agricultural University, the Bandung Institute of Technology, the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, and Airlangga University in Surabaya.

Health and welfare

The government has made efforts in socialized medicine through the establishment of comprehensive district medical centres. The most complete district centres combine existing clinics with maternal and child-health centres and provide services for family planning, school health, nutrition, communicable-disease control, health statistics, environmental health, health education, dental health, and public-health nursing. These centres also supervise the community and village health centres (puskesmas), which are the primary health providers in rural areas. In an effort to improve access to health care for people whose health is most at risk, however, an integrated health-service post concept (posyandu) has emerged. These posts are more widely available than the village health centres and offer a variety of services to women and children in particular, ranging from immunizations and nutrition counseling to family planning.

Health conditions in Indonesia are closely related to problems of diet. The major communicable diseases are well under control, although outbreaks of cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, and leprosy occur. The diet of most people consists of rice, vegetables, and a small amount of fish. One of the most serious problems is the shortage of medical and paramedical personnel, mainly nurses and midwives. An indigenous midwife (dukun beranak), often with limited training, assists at most of the births in Indonesia; extensive training programs have been set up to bring the dukun beranak toward the standards of qualified midwives. Medical training is offered at some state schools and a number of private schools.

The concept of family planning runs counter to traditional views, and there was much resistance to such programs when they were introduced. A massive attempt has been made to provide information on family planning to women of childbearing age, with clinics that are run by the Ministry of Health. This program has achieved considerable success, particularly in Java and Bali, and has come to be considered a model in Asia.

Housing

In rural areas the floors of dwellings consist of pounded earth or concrete, or else of raised wood floors, while wooden framing supports walls of woven bamboo matting, and the roofs are of dried palm fibre or tiles. In urban areas floors are of cement or tile, the framing of the dwellings is of teak or meranti wood, the walls are of brick and plaster, and the roofs are of tile or shingle. Although most of the population is nonurban, the major housing problems are in the cities, where new arrivals crowd into squalid slums. In their desire to escape the restraints of the traditional rural life and seek the opportunities of the cities, most immigrants find living conditions that are less attractive than those of the country.

Jakarta is the most modern city in Indonesia and also the one with the greatest problems. It lacks a dependable supply of electricity, gas, and water, an adequate telephone system, a waste-disposal system, and adequate school and health facilities. There is a severe housing shortage, with the gap being filled by substandard, temporary housing that does not require building permits. Subsidized housing is provided largely by employers, including government ministries, for a limited number of key employees, although efforts by the government are being made to provide more low-cost housing to a wider group of people.

Cultural life

Indonesia exhibits a rich diversity of cultural forms that range from those of the old Malay, which are preserved mainly in the remote interiors of Sumatra and Borneo, through the traditional Javanese and Balinese forms, which are heavily influenced by the Hindu stories of the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, to the modern culture that has evolved from this complex heritage. The American art historian Claire Holt, in Art in Indonesia (1967), has divided cultural life into three overlapping spheres: “the Heritage,” which includes the statues and monuments of the ancient cultures; “Living Tradition,” which covers the traditional theatre using shadow plays (wayang kulit), puppets (wayang golek), or human actors (wayang orang or wayang wong) and the use of new media to express traditional concepts as in the painting and sculpture of Bali; and “Modern Art,” which encompasses new forms of painting, sculpture, drama, and dance. For much of the population, particularly in the rural areas, “Living Tradition” is a valid term; for the cultural heritage centred around traditional, highly stylized, and semi-ritualistic forms, such as the shadow play, strongly influences all aspects of their lives.

The ancient culture

From the 8th through the 10th century AD, extensive temple complexes (tjandis; candis) were built in central Java, most of which are now buried or in ruins. The government is actively engaged in restoration.

The remains of the first of the great central Javanese monuments, the Śaivite temple of the Diyeng (Dieng) Plateau, date to the early 8th century. The Śailendra dynasty, which ruled Java and Sumatra (8th–9th century), built the great Mahāyāna Buddhist monuments, including that of Borobuḍur, around AD 800. Late in the 9th century the kings of Mataram built the Hindu monuments around Prambanan. Lara Yonggrang (Lara Jonggrang) Temple, commonly called Prambanan Temple, is the best-preserved of a series of Hindu temple complexes in the region. It consists of six main temples; three large ones along the west, dedicated to Śiva, Vishnu, and Brahmā, contain fine statues. Of the three smaller temples along the east, the middle one contains a statue of Nandi, the bull of Śiva. The main temples are heavily ornamented with stone carvings of the gods and other heavenly beings, and there is a series of relief panels depicting the Rāmāyaṇa story.

Borobuḍur is often considered the most significant monument in the Southern Hemisphere and one of the finest Buddhist monuments in the world. It stands on a hill about 20 miles northwest of Yogyakarta and rises to a height of 115 feet from its base, which measures 403 feet square. The monument consists of a lower structure of six square terraces and an upper structure of three circular terraces, combining the ancient symbols of the circle for the heavens and the square for the earth. In the centre of each side of the square terraces is a staircase leading to the next level. The inner wall on each level has niches containing statues of Buddha, whose life is depicted in the bas-reliefs that cover both inner walls and balustrades. The circular terraces are not decorated and contain 72 bell-shaped stupas, each containing a statue of Buddha. In the centre of the upper terrace is the main stupa, which stands 23 feet high. It was opened in 1842, but no statues or relics were found.

Between the 10th and 16th centuries, the centre of power shifted to eastern Java. Literature in ancient Javanese (kawi) flourished during this period, and a number of large temple complexes were constructed, none of which, however, approached the grandeur of Borobuḍur or Prambanan. The most imposing complex is Panataran Temple near Blitar, which was constructed at the peak of the Majapahit period in the 14th century. With the ascendancy of Islām in the 16th century, the temples fell into ruins, and the main continuity of Hindu influence shifted to Bali.

Traditional arts

The “Living Tradition” is best represented by the various ways in which the Indian legends of the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata permeate society. It is in evidence in many Asian countries, but nowhere stronger than in the highly populated rural areas of Java and Bali. The same situations and poses in the carvings on Prambanan are seen in the wayang (“play”) performances in contemporary villages and cities. The Indonesian word wayang (wajang) refers to the flat leather puppet used in shadow plays; in its broader sense it has come to mean the performance itself, whether it involves leather or wooden puppets or human actors.

In puppet performances the narration and dialogue are recited by a storyteller (dalang), who manipulates the puppets and is the artist of the performance. When leather puppets are used, the audience can sit either in front of or behind a screen, thus viewing either the puppets or their shadows. When people perform these dramas, they often wear masks (wayang topeng). The performances are accompanied by a gamelan orchestra, which consists almost entirely of percussion instruments such as gongs, the xylophone-like gender and gambang, a two-stringed instrument called a rebab, and a bamboo flute (suling).

Bali long has been of special interest culturally because its Hindu traditions have been preserved, undisturbed by the spread of Islām. Sculpture, wood carving, and painting continue to evolve in an environment that encourages the development of the most colourful and exotic forms. Although continually changing, these forms remain true to the basic traditions and religious beliefs of the people.

There are probably as many distinct dance styles in Indonesia as there are languages and dialects. The most advanced are found on Java, where one of the best-known troupes is the kraton (sultan's palace) of Yogyakarta, and on Bali, where many villages have their own dance troupes. The dances have common roots and characteristics, including many kneeling and crouching postures; little running, leaping, or spinning; much use of the hands, fingers, and eyes; and, with the exception of some Balinese dances, a slow tempo. Elaborate and traditional costumes are customary, with emphasis on the headdress, which may include flowers, horns, feathers, or incense sticks. Both men and women participate, the men's dances being more varied and vigorous. Although the stylized dances, such as the Balinese legong or the Javanese serimpi, are the best known, traditional dance styles are found throughout the country. They include the candle and umbrella dances of central Sumatra, the hobbyhorse dances of Java, the trance dances of many regions, and the more ancient tribal dances of the interior of Kalimantan and the eastern islands.

Decorative arts include carvings in stone, wood, bone, and ivory, woven and dyed fabrics, and metalwork. Although some of these owe much to other parts of Southeast Asia, the various sections of Indonesia have produced individual styles. The commemorative and symbolic motifs of both the Dong-Son culture of Indochina and the late Chou dynasty of China have strongly influenced Indonesian art. Textile design is regarded as the most varied and attractive artistic achievement.

Batik making, practiced almost exclusively on Java, involves a complex wax-resistance process in which all parts of a cloth that are not to be dyed are coated on both sides with wax before the cloth is dipped into the dye. Using a penlike wax holder called a canting, it is possible to create intricate and elaborate designs. It is a time-consuming process, and those batik fabrics that are made entirely by hand take several weeks to complete. Much modern batik is made using copper stamps (caps) to apply the wax, thereby greatly speeding up the process and lowering the cost.

On woven fabric, which is made everywhere from Sumatra through the eastern islands, the most characteristic element is the key-shaped figure combined with other geometric figures. The rhombus (an equilateral parallelogram usually having oblique angles) frequently occurs together with straight lines, equilateral triangles, squares, or circles, which permits an enormous number of variations, including stylized representations of human beings and animals. Each island or region has its characteristic patterns, which serve to identify the area in which the cloth is made.

The art of weaving is highly developed. It includes the famous ikat method, in which the thread is dyed selectively before weaving by binding fibres around groups of threads so that they will not take up colour when the thread is dipped in the dyebath. This process may be applied to the warp, which is most common and is found in Sumatra, Borneo, and Sumba. Weft ikat is found mainly in south Sumatra, and the complex process of double ikat is still carried on in Tenganan in Bali, where such cloth has great ceremonial significance.

The National Museum in Jakarta has an extensive collection of Indonesian carvings, textiles, and artifacts; in addition, it contains models of traditional houses and villages from various parts of the country. The Jakarta Museum displays historic material of the city. There are a number of other museums throughout the country, the most notable of which are the Radya Pustaka in Surakarta (Solo, or Sala) in central Java, the Museum Bali in Denpasar, and the Ratna Warta Fine Arts Museum in Ubud in Bali. The Presidential Palace in Bogor, which has a fine collection of Indonesian art, is located adjacent to the Botanical Gardens.

Modern art forms

In contrast to these traditional forms of cultural expression, modern art forms are not as well developed, although several trends are discernible. A generation of Indonesian choreographers has emerged since independence educated at the performing arts academies. These people are familiar with Western classical and modern dance, and they have adapted traditional dance works for modern audiences. A specific example is the performance style called the sendratari, which is essentially a form of traditional dance drama that utilizes modern movements and costumes. This particular event is performed in the Prambanan temple complex.

In the late 19th century a landscape painting style evolved in Indonesia that imitated Western works. Since the 1950s, however, a genuine Indonesian form of expression, derived from Western techniques, has grown and flourished. The artists creating these works, which are done in oil and batik, are concentrated largely in Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and Bali. A tradition of Indonesian contemporary writing has also been developing, spurred in large part by the adoption of the modern Indonesian language.

HISTORY

The Indonesian archipelago stretches for more than 3,000 miles east to west and is the largest island complex in the world. The sea has inevitably influenced Indonesian history. Not surprisingly, the boat became a pervasive metaphor in literary and oral tradition and in the arts in Indonesia. Monsoon winds, blowing north and south of the equator, have facilitated communication within the archipelago and with the rest of maritime Asia; the warm rainfall has nourished rich vegetation. In early times the timber and spices of Java and the eastern islands were known afar, as were also the resins from the exceptionally wet equatorial jungle in the western islands of Sumatra and Borneo. Not long after the beginning of the Christian era, goods were already being shipped overseas, and navigable rivers brought the Indonesian hinterland into touch with distant markets.

Easy overseas communication did not, however, result in the formation of territorially large kingdoms. The many estuaries of Sumatra and Borneo, facing the inland seas, possessed an abundance of nutritious seafood that made possible a settled mode of life, and the contacts between the people of one estuary and their neighbours were more important to them than those they could make with overseas lands. Indonesian maritime history is the story of the efforts of local groups, endowed with more or less comparable resources, to protect their separate identities. The same local interests prevailed on the island of Java, where the lava-enriched soil, watered by gently flowing rivers, encouraged wet-rice production and a patchwork pattern of settled areas in the river valleys separated by mountains and jungle. Long before records begin, many of these coastal and riverine groups were evolving an elementary form of hierarchy, accompanied by the craftsmen's tokens of rank. No single group was large enough to overrun and occupy neighbouring territories; its energies were absorbed rather by an ever more intensive exploitation of its own natural resources. Those living on or close to the sea knew that geographic isolation was out of the question but regarded their maritime environment as a means of enhancing their well-being through imports or new skills. Looking outward, far from inculcating a sense of belonging to larger communities, encouraged the pursuit of local interests. Thus, the structure of Indonesian written and oral sources suggests to historians that the origins of kingdoms on the coasts of the Java Sea were associated with the success of local heroes in turning the arrival of foreign trading treasure to their advantage.

Indonesian place-names have frequently remained unchanged since the beginning of documented history. In these often nearby places, each leader saw himself at the centre of the world that mattered to him, which was not, until later, the archipelago or even a single island but his own strip of coast or river valley. Some centres achieved local hegemony but never to the extent of extinguishing permanently the pretensions of rival centres. Thus, the early history of Indonesia is compounded of many regional histories that only gradually impinge on each other.

The historical fragmentation of the archipelago, sustained by its rich climate and accentuated rather than offset by easy access to the outside world, is reflected in its languages. Scholars have debated the location of the areas outside Indonesia from which the speakers of the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) languages originally came: the Asian mainland and the Pacific islands have been proposed.

What is significant for the historian, however, is that the speakers of these languages almost certainly drifted into the region in small groups over long periods of time and did not suddenly assume a common identity when they reached the coasts and rivers of the archipelago. On the contrary, they remained scattered groups, sometimes coexisting with descendants of earlier Pleistocene populations, who, in their turn, had also learned to make economic use of their environment over an immense span of cultural time. The perhaps 200 languages within the Western, or Indonesian, branch of the Austronesian family are an index of the manner in which the peoples of the Indonesian archipelago submitted to the realities of their landscape.

The historian, examining stone or metal inscriptions, which, together with surviving copies of early religious texts, are the important sources of documentary information, must remember that the evidence is always concerned with specific places. Comprehensive narrative histories of extensive areas cannot be written. The reality behind interregional relationships must often remain a riddle. The historian's task is the study of cultural history in widely scattered groups of society rather than narrative accounts of still very indistinct kingdoms; it is the investigation of beliefs shared by the ruling classes and the peasantry and of the points of contact between them. The ideas of men of rank were articulated in architecture and literature, reflecting varying degrees of exposure to influences outside the archipelago, but all groups of the population subscribed to basic assumptions concerning dependence of people on the goodwill of the gods.

Indonesian "Hinduism"

It may one day be shown by students of prehistory that Indonesians were sailing to other parts of Asia long ago. Records of foreign trade, however, begin only in the early centuries AD. A study of the Roman historian Pliny the Elder's Natural History suggests that, in the 1st century AD, Indonesian outriggers were engaged in trade with the east coast of Africa. Indonesian settlements may have existed at that time in Madagascar, an island with distinct Indonesian cultural traits. The geographer Ptolemy, in the following century, incorporated information from Indian merchants in his Guide to Geography concerning “Iabadiou,” presumably referring to Java, and “Malaiou,” which, with its variants, may refer to Malayu in southeastern Sumatra.

Regular voyages between Indonesia and China did not begin before the 5th century AD. Chinese literature in the 5th and 6th centuries refers to western Indonesian tree produce, including camphor from northern Sumatra, and also to two resins that seem to have been added to the seaborne trade in western Asian resins and were known in China as “Persian resins from the south ocean.” Indonesian shippers were probably exploiting the economic difficulties southern China was suffering at the time because it had been cut off from the ancient Central Asian trade route. Certain small estuary kingdoms were beginning to prosper as international entrepôts. Their location is unknown, though Palembang's commercial prominence in the 7th century suggests that the Malays of southeastern Sumatra had been active in the “Persian” trade with southern China.

Hindu religious conceptions

The cultural effects of these commercial exchanges, usually described as “Hinduization,” have been discussed for many years. It is now held that Hinduism was brought to Indonesia not by traders, as was formerly thought, but by Brahmans who taught the Śaivite message of personal immortality. Sanskrit inscriptions, attributed to the 5th and 6th centuries, have been found in eastern Kalimantan, a considerable distance from the international trade route, and also in western Java. They reveal that Indian literati, or their Indonesian disciples, were honoured in some royal courts. The rulers were prominent rakas, heads of groups of villages in areas where irrigation and other needs had brought into being intervillage relationships and supravillage authority. The inscriptions, and also Chinese sources, indicate that some rulers were involved in warfare and must have been seeking to extend their influence. The Śaivite Brahmans supervised the worship of Śiva's phallic symbol, the lingam (liṅga), in order to tap the god's favours on behalf of their royal patrons. These Brahmans were representatives of an increasingly influential devotional movement (bhakti) in contemporary Indian Hinduism; they probably also taught their patrons how to achieve a personal relationship with the god through “austerity, strength, and self-restraint,” in the words of one inscription from Borneo. The rulers, therefore, were encouraged to attribute their worldly successes to Śiva's grace; the grace was obtained through devotional exercises lovingly offered to Śiva and probably regarded as the guarantee of a superior status in the life after death. These Śaivite cults, marks of a privileged spiritual life, would have been a source of prestige and royal authority.

Indonesian religious conceptions

The question must be asked, however, to what extent such religious ideas were comprehensible to those who first heard them. Indonesians, who had been accustomed to constructing terraced mountainlike temples—symbolizing holy mountains—for the burial and worship of the dead, would not have been perplexed by the Brahmans' doctrine that Śiva also dwelt on a holy mountain. Natural stones, already placed on mountain terraces for the ritual of megalithic worship, would have been easily identified with Śiva's natural stone lingam, the most prestigious of all lingams. Indonesians, who were already concerned with the passage rites and welfare of the dead, and who considered the elaborate rituals of metalworking as a metaphor for spiritual transmutation and liberation of the soul, would have paid particular attention to Hindu devotional techniques for achieving immortality in Śiva's abode. The meditative ascetic of Hinduism may have been preceded in Indonesia by the trance-inducing shaman (priest-healer). Again, the notion that water was a purifying agent because it had been purified by Śiva's creative energy on his mountaintop would have been intelligible to mountain-worshiping Indonesians, especially if they already endowed the water flowing from their own gods' mountain peaks with divinely fertilizing qualities.

Indonesian religious conceptions must certainly have supplied the perspectives of those who first listened to the Brahmans. Confidence in the Brahmans, honoured especially as teachers (gurus), would have depended on their demonstrating means of achieving religious goals already recognized as important in the indigenous system of beliefs. The Brahmans' role was probably prepared during earlier visits by Buddhist missionaries, who also shared the Indian concern for religious salvation.

But Indonesian circumstances and motivation underlay the adoption of Indian forms. The use of Hindu terminology in the inscriptions represents no more than Indonesian attempts to find suitable metaphoric expressions from the sacred Sanskrit literature for describing their own realities. Sanskrit literature, imported from India on manuscripts or by feats of memory, would have been especially culled when courtly literati were seeking to describe those rulers who had achieved an intensive personal relationship with Śiva. One must not be deceived by the accumulating acquaintance with Indian civilization reflected in Indonesian inscriptions and Javanese literature. The Indonesians, like others in early Southeast Asia, had no difficulty in identifying themselves with the universal values of “Hindu” civilization represented by the sacred literature. Indian literary and legal works were to provide useful guidelines for Indonesian creative writing, but they did not bring about a thoroughgoing “Hinduization” of the archipelago any more than Indian Brahmans were responsible for the formation of the early kingdoms of the archipelago.

In the final analysis, therefore, India should be regarded as an arsenal of religious skills, the use of which was subordinated to the ends of the Indonesians. Expanding communication meant that increasing numbers of Indonesians became interested in Indian thought. The first reasonably well-documented period of maritime Malay history provides further evidence of the Indonesian adaptation of Indian religious conceptions.

The kingdom of Śrīvijaya is first mentioned in the writings of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim I-ching, who visited it in 671 after a voyage of less than 20 days from Canton. He was on the first stage of his journey to the great teaching centre of Nālandā in northeastern India. The ruler of Śrīvijaya assisted I-ching on his journey. Archaeological surveys undertaken since the late 1970s immediately to the west of Palembang city—an area now being overtaken by suburban development—have revealed such a quantity of materials as to make it practically certain that this was Śrīvijaya's heartland in the 7th and subsequent three centuries. Surface remains of more than a thousand shards of Chinese ceramics, two-thirds of which are datable from the 8th to the 10th century, have been recovered from several sites. Shards from the 11th to the 14th century found elsewhere in the neighbourhood may represent shifts of political and commercial activity in the Palembang area. Shards found on nearby Seguntang Hill (Bukit Seguntang), on the other hand, span all these centuries. A piece of Romano-Indian rouletted ware, attributable to the early centuries AD, has been dug up in Palembang near the river; the same ware has been found in Java near Jakarta. Moreover, new stone statues have been found, and the sheer bulk of Buddhist and Hindu statuary now recovered from the Musi River basin has suggested to at least one art historian that the basin must have contained the site of a polity near the sea that enjoyed considerable international contacts. Only Palembang suggests itself as the site in question. Finally, stupa remains have been unearthed at the foot of Seguntang Hill. These discoveries reinforce the textual evidence that Palembang was the heartland of this empire.

Buddhism in Palembang

Śrīvijaya-Palembang's importance has been established by Arab and Chinese historical sources spanning a long period of time. Its own records, in the form of Old Malay inscriptions, are limited almost entirely to the second half of the 7th century (682–686). The inscriptions reveal that the ruler was served by a hierarchy of officials and that he possessed wealth. The period when the inscriptions were written was an agitated one. Battles are mentioned, and the ruler had to reckon with disaffection and intrigues at his capital. Indeed, the main theme of the inscriptions is a curse on those who broke a loyalty oath administered by drinking holy water. The penalty for disloyalty was death, but those who obeyed the ruler were promised eternal bliss.

I-ching recommended Palembang, with more than a thousand monks, as an excellent centre to begin studying Buddhist texts. The 7th-century inscriptions, however, are concerned with less scholarly features of Buddhism. They deal with Tantric aids to magical power (see below), in the form of yantra symbols, which were distributed by the ruler as favours to faithful servants. Some of his adversaries disposed of them, too. Especially interesting as evidence of the influence of Buddhism within the context of royal power is the Talang Tuwo inscription of 684, which records the king's prayer that a park he has endowed may give merit to all living beings. The language and style of this inscription, incorporating Indian Tantric conceptions, make it clear that the ruler was presenting himself as a bodhisattva—one who was to become a Buddha himself—teaching the several stages toward supreme enlightenment. Here is the first instance in the archipelago's history of a ruler's assumption of the role of religious leader.

The inscriptions show that the teachings of the Tantric school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, with its magical procedures for achieving supernatural ends, had reached Palembang before the end of the 7th century. Tantric Buddhism came into prominence in India only in the 7th century, and the synchronism of its appearance in Palembang reflects not only the regularity of shipping contacts between Sumatra and India but, more importantly, the Malays' quick perception of the contribution of Tantric Buddhism as a source of personal spiritual power. The word for “curse” in the inscriptions is Malay, and it is reasonable to suppose that the Malays grafted Tantric techniques onto indigenous magical procedures. The vitality of Malay religion is probably also reflected in the prestige of the sacred Seguntang Hill near Palembang, which was visited by those in search of spiritual power. Seguntang Hill would not suddenly have become such a centre as a result of traffic in Tantric conceptions during the 7th century. In other words, the disturbances reflected in the inscriptions are less likely to have been the growing pains of a rising kingdom than the efforts of an already important kingdom to achieve, or perhaps recover, hegemony in southern Sumatra.

The maritime influence

Special circumstances affecting Śrīvijaya-Palembang toward the end of the 7th century are consistent with this conclusion. In the centuries before the Chinese undertook long voyages overseas, they relied on foreign shipping for their imports, and foreign merchants, trading with China, required a safe base in Indonesia before sailing on to China. This seaborne trade, regarded in China as “tributary” trade with the “emperors' barbarian vassals,” had developed during the 5th and 6th centuries but languished in the second half of the 6th century as a result of the civil war in China that preceded the rise of the Sui and T'ang dynasties. Chinese records for the first half of the 7th century mention several small harbour kingdoms in the region, especially in northeastern Sumatra, that were pretending to be Chinese vassals. The rulers of Palembang, hoping for a revival of trade under the new T'ang dynasty, must have been anxious to monopolize the China trade and eliminate their rivals. They succeeded in doing this. Before I-ching left Southeast Asia in 695, Śrīvijaya was in control of the Strait of Malacca; the ruler's determination to control all harbours in the region that might compete in the China trade explains his militancy, as shown in the Old Malay inscriptions.

The subsequent power of the maharajas of Śrīvijaya depended on their alliance with those who possessed warships. The fact that Arab accounts make no mention of piracy in the islands at the southern end of the Strait of Malacca suggests that the seafaring inhabitants of these islands identified their interests with those of the maharajas, refraining from molesting merchant ships and cooperating in controlling Śrīvijaya's potential competitors in northern Sumatra. The maharajas offered their loyal subjects wealth, posts of honour, and—according to the inscriptions—supernatural rewards. But the grouping of maritime Malays in this geographically fragmented region survived only as long as the Palembang entrepôt was prosperous and its ruler offered enough largess to hold the elements together. His bounty, however, depended on the survival of the Chinese tributary trading system, which needed a great entrepôt in western Indonesia. Early Malay history is, to an important extent, the history of a Sino-Malay alliance. The maharajas benefited from the China trade, while the emperors could permit themselves the conceit that the maharajas were reliable imperial agents.

The Palembang rulers' exact span of territorial influence is unknown. The Banka Strait and the offshore islands at the southern entrance of the Strait of Malacca would have been essential to their maritime power. According to the 7th-century inscriptions, the rulers also had influence in southern Sumatra on the Sunda Strait. Elsewhere in the hinterland, including what became known as Malayu in the Hari River basin, their authority would have been exercised by alliances with local chiefs or by force and always with decreasing effect the further these areas were from Palembang.

Malay unity under the leadership of the maharajas was inevitably undermined when, as early as the 10th century, Chinese private ships began to sail to centres of production in the archipelago, with the result that the Chinese market no longer depended on a single Indonesian entrepôt. Toward the end of the 11th century, Śrīvijaya-Palembang ceased to be the chief estuary kingdom in Sumatra. Hegemony had passed, for unknown reasons, to the neighbouring estuary town of Jambi, which was probably controlled by the great Minangkabau country of Malayu in the interior. With the decline of the tributary trade with China, a number of harbours in the region became centres of international trade. Malayu-Jambi never had the opportunity to build up naval resources as Śrīvijaya-Palembang had done, and in the 13th century a Javanese prince took advantage of the power vacuum.

Eastern Javanese inscriptions throw little light on happenings before the 10th century, but the evidence from south-central Java, and especially from the Kedu Plain in the 8th and 9th centuries, is more abundant. This period in central Java is associated with the Śailendra princes and their rivals. An Old Malay inscription from north-central Java, attributed to the 7th century, establishes that the Śailendras were of Indonesian origin and not, as was once suspected, from mainland Southeast Asia. In the middle of the 9th century the ruler of Śrīvijaya-Palembang was a Śailendra who boasted of his Javanese ancestors; the name Śailendra also appears on the undated face of an inscription on the isthmus of the Malay Peninsula; the other face of the inscription—dated 775—is in honour of the ruler of Śrīvijaya.

In spite of ambiguous references to Śailendra connections overseas, there is no solid evidence that the territories of the central Javanese rulers at this time extended far beyond central Java, including its north coast. Yet the agricultural wealth of this small kingdom sustained vast religious undertakings; the monuments of the Kedu Plain are the most famous in Indonesia. The Borobuḍur temple complex, in honour of Mahāyāna Buddhism, contains 2,000,000 cubic feet (57,000 cubic metres) of stone and includes 27,000 square feet (2,600 square metres) of stone bas-relief. Its construction extended from the late 8th century to the fourth or fifth decade of the 9th. Śiva's great temple at Prambanan, though not associated with the Śailendra family, is less than 50 miles (80 kilometres) away, and an inscription dating to 856 marks what may be its foundation stone. The two monuments, which have much in common, help to explain the religious impulses in earlier Javanese history.

Borobuḍur is a terraced temple surmounted by stupas, or stone towers; the terraces resemble Indonesian burial foundations, indicating that Borobuḍur was regarded as the symbol of the final resting place of its founder, a Śailendra, who was united after his death with the Buddha. The Prambanan temple complex is also associated with a dead king. The inscription of 856 mentions a royal funeral ceremony and shows that the dead king had joined Śiva, just as the founder of the Borobuḍur monument had joined the Buddha. Divine attributes, however, had been ascribed to kings during their lifetimes. A Mahāyāna inscription of this period shows that a ruler was said to have the purifying powers of a bodhisattva, the status assumed by the ruler of Śrīvijaya in the 7th century; a 9th-century Śaivite inscription from the Kedu Plain describes a ruler as being “a portion of Śiva.”

The divine qualities of these kings, whether of Mahāyāna or of Śaivite persuasion, had important implications in Javanese history and probably in the history of all parts of the archipelago that professed the forms of Indian religion. The ruler was now and henceforth seen as one who had achieved union with the supreme god in his lifetime. Kingship was divine only because the king's soul was the host of the supreme god and because all the king's actions were bound to be the god's actions. He was not a god-king; he was the god. No godlike action was more important than extending the means of personal salvation to others, always in the form of union with the god. The bas-relief of the Borobuḍur monument, illustrating Mahāyāna texts and especially the Gaṇḍavyūha—the tale of the tireless pilgrim in search of enlightenment—is a gigantic exposition of the Mahāyāna path to salvation taken by the king; it may be thought of as a yantra, or instrument to promote meditation and ultimate union with the Buddha. But Borobuḍur can also be identified as a circle, or mandala, of supreme mystical power that signified the Void of the Vairocana Buddha according to the Vajrayāna persuasion of Tantric Buddhism. The mandala was intended to protect the Śailendra realm for all time. The pedagogical symbolism of the Prambanan temple complex is revealed in its iconography, dominated by the image of the four-armed Śiva, the Great Teacher—the customary Indonesian representation of the supreme deity. Prambanan affirms the Śaivite path to salvation; the path is indicated in the inscription of 856, which implies that the king had practiced asceticism, the form of worship most acceptable to Śiva. Śaivism in Java as well as Mahāyāna Buddhism had become hospitable to Tantric influences. An almost contemporary inscription from the Ratubaka Plateau, which is not far from the Prambanan complex, alludes to special rites for awakening Śiva's divine energy through the medium of a ritual consort.

These royal tombs taught the means of salvation. The royal role on earth was similar. The kings, not the religious elite, bore the responsibility of ensuring that all could worship the gods, whether under Indian or Indonesian names. Every god in the land was either a manifestation of Śiva or a subordinate member of Śiva's pantheon, and worship therefore implied homage to the king, who was part of the god. The growing together, as a result of Tantric influences, of Śaivism and Mahāyāna Buddhism meant that, over the centuries, the divine character of the king became continually elaborated. His responsibility was the compassionate one of maintaining his kingdom as a holy land. The bodhisattva-king was moved by pity, as were all bodhisattvas, while the Śiva-like king, as an inscription of the 9th century indicates, was also honoured for his compassion. Compassion was expressed by providing an environment wherein religion could flourish. Keeping the peace, protecting the numerous holy sites, encouraging religious learning, and above all performing purification rituals to render the land acceptable to the gods were different aspects of a single mission: the teaching of the religious significance of life on earth. The lonely status of the ruler did not separate him from the religious aspirations of his subjects; Prambanan provides a recognition of the community of interest between ruler and ruled. The 856 inscription states that a tank of purifying water, filled by a diverted river, was made available as a pilgrimage centre for spiritual blessings. Hermitages had been built at the Prambanan complex, and the inscription states that they were “to be beautiful in order to be imitated.”

The great monuments of the 9th century suggest something of the cultural ambience within which events took place. One new development in central Java was that capable local rulers, called raka, were gradually able, when opportunities arose, to fragment the lands of some raka and absorb the lands of others. At the same time, they established lines of communication between themselves and the villages in order to guarantee revenue and preserve a balance between their own demands and the interests of the independent and prosperous agricultural communities. When a ruler manifested divine qualities, he would attract those who were confident that they were earning religious merit when they supported him. Local princes from all over the Kedu Plain constructed small shrines around the main Prambanan temple in a manner reminiscent of a congregation gathered around a religious leader. The inscription of 856 states that they built “cheerfully.”

Eastern Java and the archipelago from 1019 to 1292

Map/Still:Sites associated with early Indonesian history.

* Sites associated with early Indonesian history.

After the beginning of the 10th century, inscriptions and monuments in central Java cease. For more than 500 years little is known of developments in central Java, and nothing of what happened in western Java or in the eastern hook of the island. The evidence for these years comes almost exclusively from the Brantas River valley and the adjacent valleys of eastern Java. This abrupt shift in the historian's focus of attention has never been satisfactorily explained.

Government and politics

Eastern Java did not form a natural political unit. No single town emerged that was so exceptionally endowed in local resources as to become a permanent capital; instead, the residencies of defeated kings were abandoned, and the sites of some of them are unknown. The problems of government in these conditions are illustrated by the events of the 11th century. In 1016 the overlord's city was destroyed in what an inscription of 1041 (called the “Calcutta” inscription) described as “the destruction of the world,” and the kingdom fell apart. The most recent explanation of the episode is that a Javanese vassal had rebelled. The kingdom was restored by the dead king's son-in-law Airlangga (Erlangga), a half-Balinese prince. From 1017 to 1019 he lived with hermits, probably practicing asceticism. In 1019 he was hailed as ruler of the small principality of Pasuruan near the Brantas delta, but he could not take the military offensive until 1028 and his final success was not before 1035. His victories gradually established his claims to divine power. Airlangga dispatched his last enemy by provoking an uprising against him in the manner taught by Kauilya, the master of Indian statecraft who recommended the use of subversion against an enemy. In his “Calcutta” inscription Airlangga expressed the hope that all in the land would now be able to lead religious lives.

He then undid the results of his achievement. Foreseeing that two of his sons might quarrel, he divided his kingdom so that one son should rule over the southern part, known as Panjalu, Kaḍiri, or Daha, and the other over the northern part, Janggala. The consequences of this decision are mourned in a 14th-century poem, the Nāgarakerāgama. Airlangga's sons refused to honour their father's intentions. Fighting broke out, and the Kaḍiri rulers were unable to establish their uneasy domination over the kingdom until the early 12th century.

The chain of command between the capital and the villages—and the number of officials involved—had grown since the central Java period. The ideal of a greater Javanese unity, protected by a divine king, was probably cherished most by the villagers, since they especially would benefit from peace and safe internal communications. Inscriptions sometimes acknowledge the king's gratitude for villagers' assistance in times of need. The villages were prosperous centres of local government. As a result of increasing contacts with the royal court, village society had now become more stratified, with elaborate signs of status. But local lords could make difficulties for the villages by tampering with the flow of the river or exacting heavy tolls from traders. In comparison with these vexations, the royal right to the villagers' services and part of their produce was probably not resented. No document was more respected than the inscription that recorded a village's privileges.

The king's chief secular responsibility was to safeguard his subjects' lands, including the estates of the temples and monasteries that were so conspicuous a feature of the Javanese landscape. When the king wanted to build a temple on wet-rice land he was expected to buy the land, not confiscate it. At court he was assisted by a small group of high officials, among whom his heir seems to have been the most important. Officials were rewarded with appanages from royal lands, for the king, like his noble vassals, was also a regional lord. The council of officials passed on royal decisions to subordinates. Officials made a circuit of the country and visited village elders. Royal rule was probably not harsh; the protests that have been preserved were probably prompted by unusually weak government. A reasonable relationship between ruler and villagers may be seen in a Balinese inscription of 1025 that records a king's sale of his hunting land to a village after the villagers had complained of their lack of land. Village elders sat with the officers of royal law in order to guarantee fair trials and verdicts reflecting the consensus of local opinion. Customary law was incorporated in the royal statutes. Aggrieved individuals could appeal to the king for redress; groups of villages sought his assistance for large-scale irrigation works. The villages paid taxes to the ruler, who thus enjoyed an economic advantage over other regional lords. Everything depended on the ruler's energy and a general agreement that his government served the interests of all.

The Kaḍiri princes of the 12th century ruled over a land that was never free from rebellion. In 1222 Kertajaya was defeated by an adventurer, Angrok, and a new capital was located at Kutaraja, later renamed Singhasāri, near to the harbours of east Java. The changed economic circumstances in the archipelago as a whole must now be taken into account, since they have an important bearing on the internal history of Java in the 13th and 14th centuries.

The empire of Kertanagara

Long before the 12th century, Chinese shipping had become capable of distant voyages, and Chinese merchants sailed directly to the numerous producing centres in the archipelago. The eastern Javanese ports became more prosperous than ever before. A smaller entrepôt trade also developed on the coasts of Sumatra and Borneo and in the offshore islands at the southern entrance to the Strait of Malacca. Heaps of Chinese ceramics of the 12th to 14th century provide remarkable testimony to an important trading centre at Kota Cina near modern Medan on the northeast coast of Sumatra. In consequence, the Minangkabau princes in the hinterland of central Sumatra, heirs to the pretensions of the great overlords of Śrīvijaya-Palembang, were deprived of the opportunity of developing their port of Jambi as a rich and powerful trading centre. A power vacuum existed in the seas of western Indonesia, and the Javanese kings aspired to fill it.

Java had probably long been regarded as the centre of a brilliant civilization. Old Javanese became the language of the inscriptions of the island of Bali in the 11th century, and in many parts of the archipelago the contacts of trade must have spread Java's reputation as an island of scholars. A study of the grafting of Tantric ritual onto a megalithic shrine at Bongkisam in Sarawak, some time after the 9th century, provides a glimpse of cultural diffusion at work on the maritime fringes of Indonesia. Javanese cultural influence in other islands almost certainly preceded political domination.

Disunity in the Malay world and the cultural fame of Java are not sufficient to explain why the Javanese king Kertanagara (reigned 1268–92) chose to impose his authority on Malayu in southern Sumatra in 1275. It has been suggested that the king's concern was to protect Indonesia from the threat of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan by organizing a religious alliance. But Kertanagara probably imposed his political authority as well, though his demands would have been limited to expressions of homage and tribute.

The king's activities overseas were almost certainly intended to enhance his prestige in Java itself, where he was never free from enemies. His political priorities are reflected in a Sanskrit inscription of 1289, attached to an image of the king in the guise of the wrathful Akṣobhya Buddha, claiming that he had restored unity to Java; his overseas exploits are not mentioned.

The precise doctrinal contents of Kertanagara's Tantric cult are unknown. In his lifetime and after his death his supporters revered him as a Śiva-Buddha. They believed that he had tapped within himself demonic forces that enabled him to destroy the demons who sought to divide Java. The 14th-century poet Prapañcā, author of the Nāgarakerāgama and a worshiper of Kertanagara, on one occasion refers to the king as the “Vairocana Buddha” and associates him with a ritual consort, who is, however, the consort of Akṣobhya Buddha. Prapañcā also admires the king's scholarly zeal and especially his assiduous performance of religious exercises for the good of mankind. The role of the royal ascetic had long been a familiar feature of Javanese kingship. The king who had been buried in the 9th-century mausoleum of Prambanan was identified with Śiva, the teacher of asceticism. Early in the 13th century King Angrok, according to a later chronicle, regarded himself as the Bhaāra Guru and therefore as Śiva, the patron of ascetics. Śaivite and Mahāyāna priests were under royal supervision from at least as early as the 10th century, and the Tantric concept of a Śiva-Buddha, taught by Kertanagara, would not have been regarded as extraordinary. Javanese religious speculation had come to interpret Śaivism and the Mahāyāna as identical programs for personal salvation, with complementary gods. Union with divinity, to be achieved here and now, was the goal of all ascetics, including the king, who was regarded as the paragon of ascetic skill. Kertanagara's religious status, as well as his political problems and policies, are by no means eccentric features in early Javanese history; particular circumstances, stemming from Chinese participation in maritime trade in the archipelago, enabled him to exercise his divine power beyond Java itself. In the 14th century the homage of overseas rulers to the Javanese king was taken for granted.

The Majapahit era

In 1289 Kertanagara maltreated Kublai Khan's envoy, who had been sent to demand the Javanese king's submission. The Mongol emperor organized a punitive expedition in 1292, but Kertanagara had been killed by a Kaḍiri rebel, Jayakatwang, before the invaders landed. Jayakatwang in his turn was quickly overthrown by Kertanagara's son-in-law, later known as Kertarajasa, who used the Mongols to his own advantage and then forced them to withdraw in confusion. The capital city was now established at Majapahit. For some years the new ruler and his son, who regarded themselves as successors of Kertanagara, had to suppress rebellions in Java; not until 1319 was Majapahit's authority firmly established in Java with the assistance of the renowned soldier Gajah Mada. Gajah Mada was the chief officer of state during the reign of Kertanagara's daughter (c. 1329–50), and in these years Javanese influence was restored in Bali, Sumatra, and Borneo. Kertanagara's great-grandson, Hayam Wuruk, became king in 1350 under the name of Rajasanagara.

Hayam Wuruk's reign (1350–89) is remembered in the archipelago as the most glorious period in Javanese history. Prapañcā's poem, the Nāgarakerāgama, written in 1365 and surviving in a manuscript found in Lombok at the end of the 19th century, provides a rare glimpse of the kingdom from a contemporary point of view. The poem, originally called the Deśa warṇana, or “The Description of the Country,” describes itself as a “literary temple” and endeavours to show how royal divinity permeates the world, cleansing it of impurities and enabling all to fulfill their obligations to the gods and therefore to the holy land—the now undivided kingdom of Java. The poem resembles an act of worship rather than a chronicle. The poet does not conceal his intention of venerating the king, and, in the tradition of Javanese poetry, he may have begun it under the stimulus of pious meditation intended to bring him into contact with divine influences embodied in the king.

The core territories of Hayam Wuruk's polity were probably considerably more extensive than those of his predecessors. Important territorial rulers, bound to the royal family by marriage, were brought under surveillance by incorporation in the court administration. A network of royal religious foundations was focused on the capital. But the question remains whether a genuinely more centralized and enduring structure of government was introduced or whether the unity of the realm and the ruler's authority still depended on the ruler's personal prestige. Prapañcā, at least, does not ascribe to him an unrealistic degree of authority, even though his poem is an undisguised representation of the attributes of royal divinity and effects of divine rule in Java. Subordinate officials traveled around the kingdom, asserting the royal authority in such matters as taxes and the control of religious foundations. A sign of the king's prestige was his decision to undertake a land survey to ensure that his subjects' privileges were being maintained. In the absence of an elaborate system of administration, the authority of the government was strengthened by the ubiquity of its representatives, and no one set a more strenuous example than the king himself. According to Prapañcā, “the prince was not for long in the royal residence,” and much of the poem is an account of royal progresses. In this way Hayam Wuruk was able to assert his influence in restless areas, enforce homage from territorial lords, reassure village elders by his visits, verify land rights, collect tribute, worship at Mahāyāna, Śaivite, and ancient Javanese holy sites, and visit holy men in the countryside for his own spiritual enlightenment. His indefatigable traveling, at least in the earlier years of his reign, meant that many of his subjects had the opportunity of coming into the presence of one whom they regarded as the receptacle of divinity.

One of the most interesting sections of the Nāgarakerṭāgama concerns the annual New Year ceremony, when the purifying powers of the king were reinforced by the administration of holy water. The ceremony, attended by scholarly Indian visitors, enables the poet to assert that the only famous countries were Java and India because both contained many religious experts. At no time in the year was the king's religious role more emphatically recognized than at the New Year, when the notables of the kingdom, the envoys of vassals, and village leaders came to Majapahit to pay homage and be reminded of their duties. The ceremony ended with speeches to the visitors on the need to keep the peace and maintain the rice fields. The king explained that only when the capital was supported by the countryside was it safe from attack by “foreign islands.”

Since the poem venerates the king, it is not surprising that more than 80 places in the archipelago are described as vassal territories and that the mainland kingdoms, with the exception of Vietnam, are said to be protected by the king. Prapañcā, believing that the king's glory extends in all directions, delineates in detail the actual limits of relevant space from a 14th-century Javanese point of view. No fewer than 25 places in Sumatra are mentioned, and the Spice Islands, whose product was a source of royal wealth, are well represented. On the other hand, northern Celebes (Sulawesi) and the Philippines are not mentioned.

During Hayam Wuruk's lifetime Javanese overseas prestige was undoubtedly considerable, though the king demanded no more than homage and tribute from his more important vassals, such as the ruler of Malayu in Sumatra. In 1377, when a new Malayu ruler dared to seek investiture from the founder of the Ming dynasty in China, Hayam Wuruk's envoys in Nanking convinced the emperor that Malayu was not an independent country. Javanese influence in the archipelago, however, depended on the ruler's authority in Java itself. When Hayam Wuruk died in 1389, the Palembang ruler in southeastern Sumatra saw his opportunity for repudiating his vassal status. He had noted the Ming dynasty's restoration of the long-abandoned tributary trading system and its prohibition of Chinese voyages to Southeast Asia and supposed that foreign traders would again need the sort of entrepôt facilities in western Indonesia that Śrīvijaya-Palembang had provided centuries earlier. He may even have announced himself as a bodhisattva and heir of the maharajas of Śrīvijaya. The Javanese expelled him from Palembang, whence he fled to Singapore and then to Malacca on the Malay Peninsula.

Islāmic influence in Indonesia

Foreign Muslims had traded in Indonesia and China for many centuries; a Muslim tombstone in eastern Java bears a date corresponding to 1082. But substantial evidence of Islām in Indonesia begins only in northern Sumatra at the end of the 13th century. Two small Muslim trading kingdoms existed by that time at Samudra-Pasai and Perlak. A royal tomb at Samudra, of 1297, is inscribed entirely in Arabic. By the 15th century the beachheads of Islām in Indonesia had multiplied with the emergence of several harbour kingdoms, ruled by local Muslim princes, on the north coast of Java and elsewhere along the main trading route as far east as Ternate and Tidore in the Moluccas.

The establishment of the first Muslim centres in Indonesia was probably a result of commercial circumstances. By the 13th century, in the absence of a strong and stable entrepôt in western Indonesia, foreign traders were drawn to harbours on the northern Sumatran shores of the Bay of Bengal, distant from the dangerous pirate lairs at the southern end of the Strait of Malacca. Northern Sumatra had a hinterland rich in gold and forest produce, and pepper was being cultivated at the beginning of the 15th century. It was accessible to all archipelago merchants who wanted to meet ships from the Indian Ocean. By the end of the 14th century, Samudra-Pasai had become a wealthy commercial centre, giving way in the early 15th century to the better protected harbour of Malacca on the southwest coast of the Malay Peninsula. Javanese middlemen, converging on Malacca, ensured its importance.

Pasai's economic and political fame depended almost entirely on foreigners. Muslim traders and teachers were probably associated with its administration from the beginning and were bound to introduce the religious institutions that made foreign Muslims feel at home. The first Muslim beachheads in Indonesia, and especially Pasai, were to a considerable extent genuine Muslim creations that commanded the loyalty of the local population and encouraged scholarly activities. There were similar new harbour kingdoms on the northern coast of Java. Tomé Pires, author of the Suma Oriental, writing not long after 1511, stresses the obscure ethnic origins of the founders of Cheribon, Demak, Japara, and Gresik. These Javanese kingdoms existed to serve the commerce with the extensive Muslim world and especially with Malacca, an importer of Javanese rice. The rulers of Malacca, though of prestigious Palembang origin, had accepted Islām precisely in order to attract Muslim and Javanese traders to their port.

New men could now be expected to contribute impulses to Indonesian life. The northern Sumatran and Javanese coasts seem hitherto to have been on the fringe of the Śaivite-Mahāyāna cultures of southern Sumatra and eastern Java. For the first time in Indonesian history, the possibility existed that the inhabitants of formerly peripheral regions would begin to influence the course of events, inspired by Islām's assertion of the equality of all believers and supported by very profitable communications with the Muslim world throughout Asia.

But Indonesian history is the history of many distinct and often greatly separated regions. The history of early Indonesian Islām is no exception. What happened in the 15th and 16th centuries cannot be explained simply in terms of the influence of new ideas. The political ambitions of many regional princes intervened, and a variety of often rapidly changing and sometimes disturbed situations developed. The historian looks in vain for a uniform pattern of early Muslim life in the archipelago.

Aceh (Acheh), which succeeded Pasai in the 16th century as the leading harbour kingdom in northern Sumatra, became a self-consciously Muslim state, though a persuasive case has been made for the persistence as late as the 17th century of “Hindu” notions of divine kingship familiar in Java. Aceh had contacts with Muslim India and its own heterodox school of Muslim mysticism; its sultans sought an alliance with the Ottoman Turks against the Portuguese, who had conquered Malacca in 1511. The Malay princes of Malacca installed Muslim vassals on the east coast of Sumatra in the 15th century, but when Malacca was captured by the Portuguese the princes transferred their capital southward to Johore and gradually became involved in a conflict not only with the Portuguese but also with the Achinese for control of the Strait of Malacca. Aceh, for its part, was unable to impose its faith on the Batak highlanders in the interior. The single and notable gain for Islām in Sumatra was in the Minangkabau country, where Śaivite-Mahāyāna Tantric cults had flourished in the 14th century. Islām's penetration of Minangkabau by way of the Achinese west coast of Sumatra was far advanced by the beginning of the 17th century. Minangkabau, a land of enterprising and mobile traders, was later to exercise a significant influence in the affairs of the archipelago.

Muslims in Java

The Sumatran beachheads of Islām had commercial ties with other parts of the region, but they were not closely involved in events outside their immediate neighbourhoods. In Java, on the other hand, where the distance between the Muslim coastal fringe and the interior was negligible, a tense situation developed. The Muslims did not overthrow the kingdom of Majapahit (see above). Majapahit, weakened by feuds within its royal family and increasingly denied the benefits of overseas commerce, merely withered away and disappeared in the early 16th century. The passing of its hegemony left a power vacuum in Java that set in train a conflict between Islām and the aristocratic traditions of the interior.

In later centuries, the Javanese inland elite chose to bridge over the events of the 15th and 16th centuries and see a continuity between Majapahit and Mataram, the great kingdom of 17th-century Java. This vision of the past, however, conceals a very troubled period in Javanese history. The militant mood of coastal Islām may be seen in the enforced imposition of the new faith on western Java and also on Palembang in southern Sumatra. Similarly, the impact of Islām may be gauged by the fury of the 17th-century Mataram kings against the princes and Muslim notables of the northern coast.

The conflict seems to have begun with the determination of the Demak coastal rulers in the first half of the 16th century to rule over a great Javanese kingdom. The coastal princes, especially as their harbours grew richer and their dynasties older and more confident, came to see themselves not only as Muslim leaders but as Javanese princes. Their pretensions are reflected in Tomé Pires' statement that they cultivated the “knightly” habits of the ancient aristocracy. But when Demak sought to expand inland, bringing with it Islām, its armies were halted in the mid-16th century by Pajang. Some years later, Mataram, another principality in central Java, came to the fore. The climax of the conflict was in the first half of the 17th century, when Agung, ruler of Mataram, took the offensive and destroyed the coastal states and with them the basis of Javanese overseas trade.

It is unlikely that this bitter struggle was fought only for religious reasons. Islām came to Indonesia from India, perhaps from southern India, and the mood of heterodox mystic Ṣūfī sects of Islām was probably not foreign to the Javanese ascetics. Ṣūfī “saint” (walī) and Javanese guru eventually would have understood and respected each other's yearning for personal union with God. The Javanese tradition, in which small groups of disciples were initiated by a teacher into higher wisdom, was paralleled by the Ṣūfī teaching methods. For Muslim theologian and Javanese scholar alike the concern was always less with the nature of God than with skills for communicating with him. Arabic texts tended eventually to be recited as meditative aids, just as the Tantric mantras once had been.

The earliest Javanese disciples of Islām were, however, not the thoughtful representatives of earlier religious systems in Java but humble men of the coast who had been left outside the traditional teachings of the courts and the anchorites. These men doubtless saw in Islām a simple message of hope, offering them not only a congenial personal faith but also opportunities of secular advancement in a trading society where rank was not as important as fervour. Early Muslim literature has a theme of the wandering adventurer who comes from obscure origins, makes good, and seeks the consolations of Islām. For Muslim disciples such as these the times offered boundless means for achieving success, either in trade or in the service of ambitious princes. These princes, parvenu aristocrats and also the product of Islām, needed guardians of their conscience, courtly advisers, and, above all, military commanders. For the new elite the progress of coastal Islām brought both spiritual and material gain.

All of this must have been greatly disturbing to those in the interior who had been nurtured in older traditions and saw no reason for abandoning their Śaivite-Mahāyāna values. For the aristocrats of the interior, the memories of Majapahit's hierarchical system of government under a godlike king represented standards of civilized behaviour that must be asserted at all cost against the forces of confusion released by the coastal population. Contacts between wandering dervishes and the peasants, at a time of acute distress caused by warfare, and the pretensions of Muslim court officials, some of whom claimed a privileged religious status without precedent in Javanese history, must have seemed to threaten the foundations of society. The ruler of the interior kingdom of Pajang is depicted in the Javanese chronicles as an ascetic and as the son and grandson of ascetics. He was, in this respect, a true Javanese king. When, several generations later, the ruler of Mataram destroyed the coastal states he was seeking to destroy the forces that disunited Java. This was in the tradition of earlier Javanese kings. His conquests were as much a part of his mission as Kertanagara's had been in the 13th century.

Thereafter Islām was permitted to survive only on Javanese royal terms. Its innovating effects were postponed until the end of the 19th century. It was now one of several religious activities and therefore tolerable in Javanese eyes. Muslim officials in the court of Mataram became well-rewarded and obedient servants of the ruler. In time, scholars returned to the study of the earlier genre of Javanese literature, including texts that taught the nature of government according to the values of the “Hindu-Javanese” world. In the countryside, Islām remained influential in time of social distress, preaching to aggrieved peasants of the coming of the Messiah. As a literary influence Islām survived in the form of mystical texts and poems, romantic tales, and also in borrowings by later inland-court historians of material from the “Universal Histories” (Sĕrat Kaṇḍa) of the coastal culture. The borrowings are testimony of the impact of what had happened in the 15th and 16th centuries, which later historians could reinterpret but not ignore.

The history of 16th-century Java is still not fully understood, but Portuguese intervention seems to have been unimportant. The Portuguese survived chiefly as private traders, and, by the end of the century, the level of Muslim Indonesian trade with the Middle East, and thence with Europe, was greater than it had ever been. In the neighbourhood of the Strait of Malacca, Aceh and Johore were struggling for overlordship, and the scene in Java was being prepared for the final phase in the struggle between coastal Islām and the inland aristocracy. The outcome might have been the emergence of greater Indonesian unities under cover of Javanese claims to leadership. The situation was altered by the appearance of the Dutch at the end of the century.

The fall of Malacca to the Portuguese in 1511 is often taken as a turning point in Indonesian history. Over the next century Portuguese efforts were to be directed to securing control of the trade of the Spice Islands. At the end of the 16th century, Dutch and British interests in the region gave rise to a series of voyages: those of James Lancaster in 1591, Cornelis de Houtman in 1595 and again in 1598, Jacob van Neck in 1598, Lancaster again in 1601, and others. In 1602 the Dutch East India Company (formal name United East India Company [Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie; VOC]) received its charter, two years after the formation of the English East India Company; it began to attempt to exclude European competitors from the Indies, control the trade carried on by indigenous Asian traders, and establish its own commercial monopoly.

Monopoly itself was not, of course, an innovation. Aceh, for example, had controlled trade on the northwest and east coasts of Sumatra. The company's monopoly, however, was more extensive and came to form the basis of the Dutch territorial empire. For these reasons many historians have tended to see 1511 or 1600 as the beginning of a period of European domination lasting until the 20th century.

Since the 1930s, however, some historians have criticized the view of Indonesian history that judges Europeans to have been the major factor in shaping the history of the Indies from the 17th century onward. By contrast, they have stressed an essential continuity of Indonesian history and have argued that the VOC at first made little change in traditional political or commercial patterns. Traditional Asian commerce, according to one view, was a noncapitalistic peddling trade, financed by patrician classes in Asian countries and conducted by innumerable small traders who collected spices and pepper in the Indies for disposal in the port cities of Asia. In this view the VOC was seen, in effect, as merely another merchant prince, gradually inserting itself into the existing trade patterns of the Spice Islands and accommodating itself to them. As Batavia became the headquarters from which it established factories in the Spice Islands and elsewhere, the company gradually became a territorial power but was, at first, only one power among others and not yet ruler of the Indies. Only during the 19th century did new economic forces, the product of industrial capitalism, burst upon the Indies and submerge them under a new wave of European imperialism.

The theory is an overstatement. If the coming of the Europeans did not represent a sharp break in the continuity of Indonesian history, it did, at least, initiate changes that, in the long run, were to be of enormous importance. The VOC itself represented a new type of power in the Indies: it formed a single organization, traded across a vast area, possessed superior military force, and, in time, employed a bureaucracy of servants to look after its concerns in the Indies. In sum, it could impose its will upon other rulers and force them to accept its trading conditions. Under the governor-generalship of Jan Pieterszoon Coen and his successors, particularly Anthony van Diemen (1636–45) and Joan Maetsuyker (1653–78), the company laid the foundations of the Dutch commercial empire and became the paramount power of the archipelago.

The process was gradual. Historians now have tended to bypass the indigenous-external antithesis and to refer instead to a general commercial expansion throughout Southeast Asia from the 15th to 17th century—an “age of commerce” involving native as well as foreign participants. During this period the VOC did go far toward establishing its commercial control in the Indies. It captured Malacca from the Portuguese (1641), confined the British, after a period of fierce rivalry, to a factory at Bencoolen in southwestern Sumatra, and established a network of factories in the eastern islands. Though it may have wished to limit its activities to trade, the company was soon drawn into local politics in Java and elsewhere, and, in becoming the arbiter in dynastic disputes or in conflicts between rival rulers, it inevitably emerged as the main political entity in the islands.

In the 1620s Sultan Agung, ruler of the central Javanese kingdom of Mataram and representative of the old and highly sophisticated Javanese civilization, sought to extend his power over Bantam in western Java. This brought him into conflict with the Dutch, and he laid siege to the Dutch fortress at Batavia. Though Agung's forces were eventually compelled to withdraw, the result of the confrontation was inconclusive and left both the Dutch and Javanese warily respectful of each other's strength. But during the following century internal dissensions in Mataram led to increasing Dutch involvement, and in the early 18th century a series of wars of succession among pretenders to the throne of Mataram hastened the process. In return for its services in 1674 to Amangkurat I, Sultan Agung's successor, and to his successor, Amangkurat II, shortly afterward, the VOC received the cession of the Preanger regions of western Java.

This was the first of a series of major territorial advances. In 1704 Dutch forces assisted in replacing Amangkurat III with his uncle, Pakubuwono I, in return for which further territory was ceded. In this way almost all of Java gradually passed under Dutch control, and by 1755 only a remnant of the kingdom of Mataram remained. This was divided into two principalities, Jogjakarta and Surakarta, which survived until the end of Dutch rule. In an attempt to control the pepper trade in Sumatra, the VOC established footholds in western Sumatra and in Jambi and Palembang over the course of the 17th century, and it interfered in local conflicts in support of rulers who favoured it; but the main Dutch expansion there did not take place until the 19th century.

In acquiring territorial responsibilities, the company did not at first establish a close administrative system of its own in the areas that passed under its direct control. In effect, the VOC replaced the sovereign of the royal court and, in so doing, inherited the existing structure of authority. An indigenous aristocracy administered the collection of tribute on behalf of the company, and only gradually was this system converted into a formalized bureaucracy. The VOC, like the royal court before it, drew revenue in the form of produce from the peasantry within its domain.

To implement its commercial monopoly, the VOC established company factories (trading posts) for the collection of produce, pressured individual rulers to do business solely with the company, controlled the sources of supply of particular products (clove production, for example, was limited to Ambon, nutmeg and mace to the Banda Islands) and, in the 18th century, pushed through a system of so-called forced deliveries and contingencies. Contingencies constituted a form of tax payable in kind in areas under the direct control of the company; forced deliveries were produce that native cultivators were compelled to grow and sell to the company at a set price. There was little difference between the devices. In theory, forced deliveries were thought of as a form of trade in which goods were exchanged, but they were, in fact, as the British scholar J.S. Furnivall has described it, “tribute disguised as trade,” while contingencies were “tribute undisguised.” In effect, the whole system of company trade was designed to extract produce from the Indies for disposal on a European market, but without stimulating any fundamental technological change in the area's economy. The profits belonged to the company, not to the producers. The indigenous traders of the region were pushed aside by the VOC as it gained control of more and more of the export trade of the archipelago. The growth of Batavia resulted, for example, in the decline of the north coast ports of Java, through which much of the spice trade had been channeled since before the 15th century. In this way the traditional pattern of trade was checked and distorted.

During the 18th century, the VOC ran into financial difficulties from a variety of causes: the breach of the company's monopoly by “smuggling,” the growing administrative costs as the company came to shoulder greater responsibilities of government, and the corruption of the company's servants. In 1799 the Dutch government of the Batavian Republic wound up the affairs of the company.

The French and British in Java, 1806–15

The fall of the Netherlands to France during the Revolutionary Wars and the dissolution of the company led in due course to significant changes in the administration of the Indies. Under Napoleon's “Kingdom of Holland,” one of his marshals, Herman Willem Daendels, was appointed as governor-general. Daendels strengthened Javanese defenses, raised new forces, built new roads within Java, and improved the internal administration of the island. He attempted to formalize the position of the Javanese regents, subordinating them to Dutch prefects and emphasizing their character as civil servants of a central government rather than as semi-independent local rulers.

In 1811 Java fell to a British East India Company force under Lord Minto, governor-general of India, who, after the surrender, appointed Thomas Stamford Raffles as lieutenant governor. Raffles approached his task in the conviction that British administrative principles, modeled in part on those developed in Bengal, could liberate the Javanese from the tyranny of Dutch methods; he believed that liberal economic principles, by ending compulsory cultivation, could simultaneously expand Javanese agricultural production, improve revenue, and make the island a market for British goods. Along with his doctrinaire liberalism, he brought to his task a respect for Javanese society. Before his appointment, he had been a student of Malay literature and culture, and during his period in Batavia he encouraged the study of the society he found about him. Raffles rediscovered the ruins of the great Buddhist temple Borobuḍur in central Java and published his History of Java in 1817, a year after his return to England.

Raffles carried further the administrative centralization begun by Daendels and planned to group the regencies of Java into 16 residencies. By declaring all lands the property of the government and by requiring cultivators to pay a land rent for its use, he proposed to end the compulsory production system. This, he believed, would free the peasants from servility to their “feudal” rulers and from the burden of forced deliveries to the Dutch and allow them to expand their production under the stimulus of ordinary economic motives. Unfortunately, Raffles oversimplified the complexities of traditional land tenure. He misread the position of the regents, whom he at first wrongly believed to be a class of feudal landholders rather than an official aristocracy. (The regents, in fact, had no proprietary rights in the land of their subjects.) He was concerned to replace what he saw as a tribute system, paid in the form of forced deliveries, by the payment of a fixed and regular rent that would leave the landholders more free to enjoy the fruits of their enterprise than they had been in the past. But despite a series of adjustments in his original plan, Raffles failed to devise an effective means of applying his theories before the return of Java to Dutch hands as part of the general settlement following the defeat of Napoleon.

Dutch rule from 1815 to c. 1920

Before the 19th century, Indonesian societies had experienced considerable pressure from Europeans, but they had not been submerged by Western influences. The political order of Mataram had been eroded, and the first steps had been taken toward administrative centralization in Java. In the outer islands, local rulers had been forced to submit in some measure to the will of Batavia. The trading patterns of the archipelago had been changed and constricted. Nevertheless, these were superficial developments when seen against the continuing coherence and stability of Indonesian societies. They were superficial, also, compared with the Western impact still to come.

When the Dutch returned to Indonesia after the Napoleonic Wars, their main concern was to make the colony at least self-supporting. During the interregnum, both exports and revenue had declined sharply, despite Raffles' hopes for his land-rent system. The costs of government in Java were rising as a result of the growing complexity of administration. In restoring their authority, the Dutch retained the main outlines of the system of residencies, regencies, and lower administrative divisions, though they did not, at first, follow exactly the attempts of Daendels and Raffles to turn the regents into salaried officials, specifically responsible to the residents. Rather, they saw the regent as the “younger brother” of the resident. This difference in theory was perhaps of slight practical effect, since the tendency in lower levels of territorial administration continued in the direction of an increasingly centralized control. Several factors contributed to the trend: one was the need to deal with a series of disturbances, particularly in Java and western Sumatra, but also on a lesser scale in Celebes, Borneo, and the Moluccas; a second was the new economic policy, adopted in 1830, which placed new economic responsibilities on local officials.

The Java War of 1825–30 sprang from a number of causes. In part, it was the product of the disappointed ambitions of its leader, Prince Diponegoro, who had been passed over for the succession to the throne of Jogjakarta. In part, it sprang from resentment among the aristocratic landholders of Jogjakarta, whose contracts for the lease of their lands to Europeans had been canceled by the governor-general. There was support, too, from Islāmic leaders. And there were also, no doubt, hidden factors of the kind often to be found in cases of agrarian protest in Java—factors such as the messianic expectation of the coming of a Just Ruler who would restore the harmony of the kingdom. From these varied causes there sprang a revolt that, through the skillful use of guerrilla tactics, continued to challenge Dutch authority for five years, until the Dutch treacherously seized Diponegoro during truce negotiations and exiled him to Celebes.

About the same time, the Dutch in western Sumatra were drawn into the so-called Padri War (named for Pedir, a town in Aceh through which Muslim pilgrims usually returned home). Basically, this was a religious struggle between revivalist Islāmic leaders in Minangkabau and the adat (customary law) leaders of the community. Under Tuanku Imam Bonjol, the Padri forces resisted Dutch pressure from the early 1820s until 1837. The effect of this involvement was inevitably to strengthen the Dutch administrative commitment in western Sumatra.

The Cultivation System

The formation in 1824 of the Netherlands Trading Society (Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij; NHM), a company embracing all merchants engaged in the Indies trade and supported by the Netherlands government with the king as its chief shareholder, did not produce the hoped-for commercial expansion. In 1830, however, a newly appointed governor-general, Johannes van den Bosch, devised a new method by which the government could tap the resources of the Indies. This was the so-called Cultivation (or Culture) System (Cultuurstelsel).

The Cultivation System provided that a village set aside a fifth of its cultivable land for the production of export crops. These crops were to be delivered to the government in lieu of tax. Land rent was to continue at the same time as a complementary part of the system and as a measure of the amount to be produced by each village. Thus, if a village, through the growing of export crops on a fifth of its land, returned an amount in excess of the land rent for which it had been assessed, it would be free of land rent and would be reimbursed to the extent of the excess; on the other hand, if a village produced less than the assessed amount of land rent, it would have to make up the difference.

From the government's point of view, the Cultivation System was an overwhelming success. Exports soared, rising from 13 million guldens in 1830 to 74 million a decade later. The products were disposed of through the Netherlands Trading Society, and between 1840 and 1880 their sale brought to the Dutch treasury an annual average of 18 million guldens, approximately a third of the Dutch budget. The effects of the system for the Javanese were, however, of more dubious value. Though its founder believed that, by stimulating agricultural production, the Cultivation System would ultimately benefit the people of Java as well as the home government, it came to be considered, in later years, both by Dutch critics and by outside observers, as a particularly harsh and burdensome policy. Van den Bosch's expectations were not entirely false. The policy did extend village production in certain areas, and the population of Java increased from 6 million to 9.5 million during the full operation of the system. The range of exports from Java was extended. Indigo and sugar were the first items to be made the subject of compulsory cultivation; coffee, tea, tobacco, and pepper were subsequently added. Nevertheless, the system placed a heavy burden on the cultivators and tended to accentuate social and economic differences within rural society. Dominant peasants, members of a rural elite, were able to manipulate the system to their advantage. And while the Cultivation System brought the Indies into contact with a wider overseas market, the Indies government stood between producer and market, and the annual surplus added to Dutch, not Javanese, prosperity. The system did nothing to stimulate technological change or economic development for the Javanese people. An increasing commercial role was played not by the indigenous population but by the Chinese who fitted into colonial rule as a separate caste, engaged in tax farming, moneylending, and small trading.

There were other consequences. The Cultivation System accentuated the differences between Java and the outer islands, and in Java it led to a considerable tightening of the administrative system. The regent became the kingpin of the system, responsible to the resident for the delivery of crops from his regency. In some cases, regents, secure in the knowledge they were backed by Dutch power, imposed additional burdens upon their subjects—a development that received trenchant criticism in the novel Max Havelaar (1860), written under the pseudonym Multatuli by the Dutch writer Eduard Douwes Dekker, a former official of the Indies government. But the long-term effect of the new functions imposed on regents was to reduce their independence and to hasten the process, started by Daendels, by which a loosely structured administrative aristocracy was gradually converted into a salaried civil service. Regents were no longer able to draw their revenues from their subjects, and the lines of authority were clearly drawn. Regents, aided by a junior Dutch official (the controleur), became clearly responsible to the Dutch residents above. By 1860 the administrative divisions of Java had been firmly established, and the service that staffed them had acquired the character it was essentially to preserve for the remainder of the colonial period.

In the 1860s the Cultivation System came under attack not only from humanitarian quarters but also from private business interests in The Netherlands. The latter appealed to liberal economic principles in support of their right to share in the riches of the Indies; and their pressure was effective. Though the Cultivation System was not abolished and continued for a number of years to make its contribution to the Dutch treasury, the decision was taken to encourage also the entry of private capital. The Liberal Policy, as it was called, was effectively inaugurated in 1870 by the adoption of an agrarian law that provided that European investors could acquire land under long-term leasehold, either from Indonesian landholders, or in the case of unoccupied land, from the government. Certain safeguards were provided for the Indonesian landholder: the provision that Europeans lease, rather than purchase, land was intended to prevent the alienation of Indonesian land, and the government was charged with the responsibility also of preventing Europeans from leasing land needed for the subsistence of village populations.

Within this framework Dutch capital began to flow to the Indies on a scale that was to transform the character of the Indonesian economy and society. During the next 60 years there was a 10-fold increase in the value of exports (from 107 million guldens to 1.16 billion). There was a change, also, in kinds of products exported. Such exports as coffee, sugar, tea, and tobacco continued to expand; but such industrial raw materials as rubber, copra, tin, and oil soon came to dominate the export economy. These remarkable developments were, in large measure, the product of a totally different system of production. Under the company, during the interregnum, and, later, under the Dutch crown working through the Cultivation System, export crops were grown by Indonesian cultivators on their own land. Under the Liberal Policy, however, the new crops were the subject of estate production. Much economic expansion took place in Sumatra rather than Java, and Sumatra's east-coast residency became the seat of a vast new plantation economy. The estates were company-owned, and the economic developments of the late 19th century were indeed the product of corporate, rather than individual, enterprise.

Dutch territorial expansion

Rapid economic development was accompanied by territorial expansion. Though the Dutch had established their control effectively over Java by the mid-18th century and though they had gradually expanded their original holdings in Sumatra over the course of the 19th, their control over the rest of the archipelago was patchy and incomplete. It was exercised, in the main, through agreements with local rulers rather than through direct control over territory. In the closing years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th rapid moves were made to round out the Dutch empire and extend it effectively over the whole of the Indies. In northern Sumatra, warfare with the people of Aceh lasted with varying degrees of intensity from 1873 to 1908 and brought the northern tip of Sumatra under Dutch control. In Celebes and the Moluccas, where the Dutch had for long exercised a general authority, a new instrument—the Short Declaration (in contrast to the earlier Long Contract)—bound local rulers to accept the control of Batavia. Dutch authority was extended in this way over Bone and Luwu in the Celebes, over central Borneo, over Bali and the Lesser Sunda Islands, and over Ternate, Ceram, and Buru in the Moluccas. Footholds were established also over parts of West New Guinea. Communications were developed—roads and railways in Java and Sumatra and expanded shipping services to link Java to the outer islands—to serve the needs of the new plantation economy. Between 1870 and 1910 the Dutch had thus effectively completed the process of converting the Indies into a unified colonial dependency and, indeed, of laying the foundations of the future Indonesian republic.

The “new imperialism” of the late 19th century may be seen as part of a worldwide movement whereby the industrial countries of western Europe partitioned among themselves the hitherto undeveloped areas of the globe. In Africa and in the South Pacific, in Burma (Myanmar), Indochina, and Malaya, as well as in Indonesia, a new “forward movement” was taking place that stood in dramatic contrast to the earlier patterns of commercial empire. If the European presence created a watershed in Indonesian history, it is to be discerned about 1870 rather than in 1600.

The social impact of these developments upon Indonesian society was tremendous. The economic and political expansion brought a new Dutch population to the Indies: civil servants to staff the growing services of government, managers to run the new estates, and clerks to staff the import-export houses and other businesses. These came to form a European enclave within the major cities and accentuated the lines of social division in what was increasingly a caste society divided along racial lines. The Dutch, however, were never a purely expatriate community whose members were anxious to retire as soon as possible to The Netherlands. Many of them regarded the Indies as their home. Their sense of belonging was very different, for example, from that of the British in India, and it was to give an added bitterness to the later struggle to retain the colony after World War II. From the Indonesian point of view, the growing cities became the home of a new urban way of life and stimulated social change. A new elite emerged under the influence of the expanding Western impact. So did a new class of unskilled and semiskilled workers who found employment as domestic servants or as labourers in the light industries that began to develop. Rural society, though more sheltered, was also altered by the currents of change. Although the agrarian law and the later labour legislation had provisions to protect existing customary rights over land and to guarantee fairness of contracts for labourers, the mere fact of contract employment on the estates affected the village society from which workers were drawn and played its part in hastening the growth of a rootless and disoriented population, divorced increasingly from the shelter of traditional village society but not absorbed into the new urban culture.

The Ethical Policy

Liberals confidently assumed that, just as freedom of enterprise would maximize welfare at home, so the application of European capital to the task of developing colonial resources would gradually improve the lot of colonial peoples. By the end of the 19th century, the 30 years of the Liberal Policy in Indonesia did not appear to have achieved that miracle. By the end of the century, growing criticism of the Dutch record in the Indies was given particularly influential expression by C.T. van Deventer, a Liberal Democratic member of the States General, who argued that The Netherlands had been draining wealth from the Indies and had incurred thereby a “Debt of Honour” that should be repaid. His suggestion was that The Netherlands should turn from its strictly laissez-faire policy in the Indies and pursue instead a positive welfare program supported by funds from the metropolitan treasury. In 1901 a change of government in The Netherlands provided the opportunity for a new departure in policy along the lines suggested by van Deventer. According to the Ethical Policy, as it was called, financial assistance from The Netherlands was to be devoted to the extension of health and education services and to the provision of agricultural extension services designed to stimulate the growth of the village economy.

The Ethical Policy was seen by its most fervent supporters as a noble experiment designed to transform Indonesian society, to enable a new elite to share in the riches of Western civilization, and to bring the colony into the modern world. Its ultimate goals were, of course, not clearly defined. Van Deventer looked to the emergence of a Westernized elite who would be “indebted to the Netherlands for its prosperity and higher Culture” and who would gratefully recognize the fact. Others hoped for the growth, by “cultural synthesis,” of a new East Indian society based on blending of elements of Indonesian and Western cultures and able to enjoy a large measure of autonomy within the framework of the Dutch empire.

Despite these rather grandiose visions, the achievements of the Ethical Policy were much more modest. It neither checked declining living standards nor promoted an agrarian revolution. It did, however, provide agricultural assistance and advice, but this was directed to the improvement of techniques of irrigation and cultivation within the existing wet-rice technology of Java. Its effect, therefore, was to confirm the gulf between the European economy of the estates, mines, oil wells, and large-scale commerce and the traditional, largely subsistence, Indonesian economy of wet-rice or shifting cultivation. In education, a little was done to provide a greater degree of opportunity at primary, secondary, and even tertiary levels, but at the end of the 1930s only a handful of high school graduates was produced locally, and the literacy rate was calculated at just over 6 percent.

The goals of the Ethical Policy were set too high, and the devices adopted to implement them were too modest. Given the inertia of traditional societies, it was not to be expected that a new order would be created as easily as the proponents of the policy had hoped. Nevertheless, during the years of its operation, the Indies did see the release of tremendous forces of social change. These resulted, however, not from the conscious plans of the Ethical Policy but from the undirected force of Western economic development. Java's population, which had risen from about 6 million to almost 30 million over the course of the 19th century, increased to more than 40 million by 1920. The population increase, together with urbanization, the penetration of a money economy to the village level, and the labour demands of Western enterprise combined to disrupt traditional patterns. Where the Ethical Policy was most effective, despite the limitations of its educational achievement, was in producing a small educated elite who could give expression to the frustration of the masses in a society torn loose from its traditional moorings. Western currents of thought had their impact also within Islāmic circles, where modernist ideas sought to reconcile the demands of Islām and the needs of the 20th century. It is against this background that a self-conscious nationalist movement began to develop.

Toward independence
The rise of nationalism

Indonesian nationalism in the 20th century must be distinguished from earlier movements of protest: the Padri War, the Java War, and the many smaller examples of sporadic agrarian unrest had been “prenationalistic” movements, the products of local grievances. By contrast, the nationalism of the early 20th century was the product of the new imperialism and was part of wider currents of unrest affecting many parts of Africa and Asia. In Indonesia nationalism was concerned not merely with resistance to Dutch rule but with new perceptions of nationhood, embracing the ethnic diversity of the archipelago and looking to the restructuring of traditional patterns of authority in order to enable the creation of Indonesia as a modern state. It derived in part from specific discontents, the economic discriminations of colonial rule, the psychological hurt arising from the slights of social discrimination, and a new awareness of the all-pervading nature of Dutch authority. Important too was the emergence of the new elite, educated but lacking adequate employment opportunities to match that education, Westernized but retaining still its ties with traditional society.

The formation in 1908 of Budi Utomo (“High Endeavour”) is often taken as the beginning of organized nationalism. Founded by Wahidin Sudirohusodo, a retired Javanese doctor, Budi Utomo was an elitist society, the aims of which—though cultural rather than political—included a concern to secure an accommodation between traditional culture and the modern world. Numerically more important was Sarekat Islām (“Islāmic Association”), founded in 1912. Under its charismatic chairman, Omar Said Tjokroaminoto, the organization expanded rapidly, claiming a membership of 2,500,000 by 1919. Later research suggests that the real figure was likely to have been no more than 400,000, but even with this greatly reduced estimate Sarekat Islām was clearly much larger than any other movement of the time. In 1912 the Indies Party (Indische Partij)—primarily a Eurasian party—was founded by E.F.E. Douwes Dekker; banned a year later, it was succeeded by another Eurasian party, Insulinde. In 1914 the Dutchman Hendricus Sneevliet founded the Indies Social Democratic Association, which became a communist party in 1920 and adopted the name Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia; PKI) in 1924.

By the end of World War I, there were thus a variety of organizations in existence, broadly nationalist in aim, though differing in their tactics and immediate goals and in the sharpness of their perceptions of independent nationhood. In the absence of firm party discipline, it was common for individuals to belong simultaneously to more than one organization, and, in particular, the presence of Indonesian Social Democratic Association members in Sarekat Islām enabled them to work as a “bloc within” the larger movement. The idea that the time was not yet ripe for communist parties to assume independent leadership of colonial nationalism later led the Comintern to formulate the strategy of cooperation with anti-imperialist “bourgeois” parties.

At the end of World War I, the Dutch, in an effort to give substance to their promise to associate the Indonesian community more closely with government, created the People's Council (Volksraad). Composed of a mixture of appointed and elected representatives of the three racial divisions defined by the government—Dutch, Indonesian, and “foreign Asiatic”—the People's Council provided opportunities for debate and criticism but no real control over the government of the Indies. Some nationalist leaders were prepared to accept seats in the assembly, but others refused, insisting that concessions could be obtained only through uncompromising struggle.

In 1921 the tension within Sarekat Islām between its more conservative leaders and the communists came to a head in a discipline resolution that insisted that members of Sarekat Islām belong to no other party; this, in effect, expelled the communist “bloc within,” and there followed a fierce rivalry between the two for control of the grassroots membership of the organization. The PKI, once it had committed itself to independent action, began to move toward a policy of unilateral opposition to the colonial regime. Without the support of the Comintern, and even without complete unanimity within its own ranks, it launched a revolt in Java at the end of 1926 and in western Sumatra at the beginning of 1927. These movements, which had elements of traditional protest as well as of genuine communist insurrection, were easily crushed by the Indies government, and communist activity was effectively ended for the remainder of the colonial period.

The defeat of the communist revolt and the earlier decline of Sarekat Islām left the way open for a new nationalist organization, and in 1926 a “general study club” was founded in Bandung, with a newly graduated engineer, Sukarno, as its secretary. The club began to reshape the idea of nationalism in a manner calculated to appeal to Indonesia's new urban elite. After the failure of the ideologically based movements of Islām and communism, nationalist thinking was directed to the idea simply of a struggle for independence, without any precommitment to a particular political or social order afterward. Such a goal, it was believed, could appeal to all, including Muslims and communists, who could at least support a common struggle for independence, even if they differed fundamentally about what was to follow. Nationalism, in this sense, became the idea that the young Sukarno used as the basis of his attempt to unify the several streams of anticolonial feeling. The ideas of the Bandung Study Club were reinforced by currents of thought emanating from Indonesian students in Holland. Their organization, reorganized in 1922 under the name Indonesian Union (Perhimpunan Indonesia), became a centre of radical nationalist thought, and in the mid-1920s students returning from Holland joined forces with like-minded groups at home.

The new nationalism required a new organization for its expression, and in July 1927 the Indonesian Nationalist Association, later the Indonesian Nationalist Party (Partai Nasional Indonesia; PNI), was formed under the chairmanship of Sukarno. The PNI was based on the idea of noncooperation with the Indies government and was thus distinguished from those groups, such as Sarekat Islām, that were prepared to accept People's Council membership. Sukarno, however, while seeking to create a basis of mass support for the PNI, also attempted with some success to work together with more moderate leaders and succeeded in forming a broadly based, if rather precarious, association of nationalist organizations.

At the end of 1929, Sukarno was arrested with some of his colleagues and was tried, convicted, and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. He was released at the end of 1931, but by then the united movement he had helped to create had begun to disintegrate. The PNI dissolved itself and reformed as Partindo. A number of other groups came to join in a new organization, the Indonesian National Education Club, known as the New PNI. While Partindo saw itself as a mass party on the lines of the old PNI, the New PNI, under the leadership of Mohammad Hatta and Sutan Sjahrir, aimed at training cadres who could maintain a continuing leadership of the movement and who could thus prevent it from being so easily immobilized by the arrest of its leaders.

In 1933 Sukarno was arrested again and exiled to Flores and later to Bencoolen (Bengkulu) in southern Sumatra. Repressive action followed against other party leaders, including Hatta and Sjahrir, who were also exiled. In the later 1930s nationalist leaders were forced to cooperate with the Dutch, and such moderate parties as Parindra accepted People's Council membership. In 1937 a more radical party, Gerindo, was formed, but it considered support of The Netherlands against the threat of Nazism more important than the question of independence.

War in Europe and the Pacific changed the situation. The fall of the Indies to the Japanese onslaught early in 1942 broke the continuity of Dutch rule and provided a completely new environment for nationalist activity.

Japanese occupation

Japanese military authorities in Java, having interned Dutch administrative personnel, found it necessary to use Indonesians in many administrative positions, which thus gave them opportunities that had been denied them under the Dutch. In order to secure popular acceptance of their rule, the Japanese sought also to enlist the support of both nationalist and Islāmic leaders. Under this policy Sukarno and Hatta both accepted positions in the military administration.

Though initially welcomed as liberators, the Japanese gradually established themselves as harsh overlords. Their policies fluctuated according to the exigencies of the war, but in general their primary object was to make the Indies serve Japanese war needs. Nationalist leaders, however, felt able to trade support for political concessions. Sukarno was able to convince the administration that Indonesian support could be mobilized only through an organization that would represent genuine Indonesian aspirations. In March 1943 such an organization, Putera (Pusat Tenaga Rakjat; “Centre of the People's Power”), was inaugurated under his chairmanship. While the new organization enabled Sukarno to establish himself more clearly as the leader of the nation and while it enabled him to develop more effective lines of communication to the people, it also placed upon him the responsibility of trying to sustain Indonesian support for Japan through, among other things, the romusha (forced-labour) program. Later in the year Indonesian opinion was given a further forum in a Central Advisory Council and a series of local councils. At a different level, Indonesian youths were able to acquire a sense of corporate identity through membership in the several youth organizations established by the Japanese. Of great importance also was the creation in October 1943 of a volunteer defense force composed of and officered by Indonesians trained by the Japanese. The Sukarela Tentara Pembela Tanah Air (Peta) was to become the core of the republic's army during the revolution.

In March 1944 the Japanese, feeling that Putera had served Indonesian rather than Japanese interests, replaced it with a “people's loyalty organization” (Djawa Hokokai), which was kept under much closer control. Six months later the Japanese premier announced the Japanese intention to prepare the Indies for self-government. In August 1945, on the eve of the Japanese surrender, Sukarno and Hatta were summoned to Saigon, Vietnam, where Terauchi Hisaichi, commander of Southeast Asia, promised an immediate transfer of independence.

On their return to Djakarta (Jakarta; formerly Batavia), Sukarno and Hatta were under pressure to declare independence unilaterally. This pressure reached its climax in the kidnapping of the two men, for a day, by some of Djakarta's youth leaders. After the news of the Japanese surrender had been confirmed, Sukarno proclaimed independence on the morning of Aug. 17, 1945.

The revolution

The proclamation touched off a series of risings across Java that convinced the British troops entrusted with receiving the surrender of Japanese forces that the self-proclaimed republic was to be taken seriously. At the level of central government, the constitution adopted by republican leaders was presidential in form, but a widely representative Central Indonesian National Committee became, in effect, an ad hoc parliament. Sukarno, as president, agreed to follow parliamentary conventions by making his cabinets dependent upon their ability to command the committee's confidence.

The spontaneous character of the Indonesian Revolution was demonstrated by a number of incidents, notably in the struggle for Bandung in late 1945 and early 1946 and in the Battle of Surabaya in November 1945, in which Indonesian fighters resisted superior British forces for three weeks. Though the Dutch had expected to reassert their control over their colony without question and though they were able to play upon outer-island fears of the Java-based republic, they eventually were compelled to negotiate with republican representatives led by Sjahrir, who by then was prime minister. The Linggadjati Agreement (1946–47), by which the Dutch agreed to transfer sovereignty in due course to a federal Indonesia, appeared to offer a solution to the conflict. (The Dutch claimed that a federation was necessary because of the diversity of the Indies and the difference between heavily populated Java and the more sparsely populated outer islands.) Differing interpretations, however, made the agreement a dead letter from the beginning. In July 1947 the Dutch, in an attempt to settle matters by force, initiated what they termed a police action against the republic. Its effect was to evoke UN intervention in the form of a Good Offices Committee, and it ended in the precarious Renville Agreement of January 1948. In December 1948 a second police action was launched.

Meanwhile, the government of the republic faced some domestic opposition. In 1946 a left-wing plot was organized by followers of Ibrahim Datuk Tan Malaka, who opposed the policy of negotiation with the Dutch. This so-called July 3rd Affair was easily crushed. In September 1948 a more serious challenge in the form of a communist revolt (the Madiun Affair) was also defeated.

The second police action aroused American concern. It also closed Indonesian ranks firmly behind the republic. In these circumstances The Netherlands, at a roundtable conference at The Hague, finally agreed in August 1949 to transfer sovereignty over its colony (with the exception of western New Guinea) to an independent United States of Indonesia in December 1949; a decision about the ultimate fate of western New Guinea (Irian Barat, from 1969 to 2002 Irian Jaya, now Papua) was to be the subject of future negotiation.

Independent Indonesia to 1965
The years of constitutional democracy

The initial federal constitution of 1949 was replaced in 1950 by a unitary but still provisional constitution. It was parliamentary in character and assigned an essentially figurehead role to the president. From the revolutionary period, Indonesia had inherited a multiparty system. The main parties after independence were the major Muslim party, Masyumi (Masjumi); the Muslim theologians' party, Nahdatul Ulama (NU), which seceded from Masyumi in 1952; the Nationalist Party (PNI); the Communist Party (PKI); the “national communist” party, Murba; the lesser Muslim parties, Perti and Partai Sarekat Islām Indonesia (PSII); and the Socialist Party (PSI). Until the first elections were held, in 1955, Parliament was filled by appointment under a gentlemen's agreement between parties as to their probable electoral strengths. The elections of 1955, a remarkable and technically successful experiment in the exercise of political choice by a largely nonliterate population, confirmed the position of Masyumi, NU, the PNI, and the PKI as the country's four leading political parties.

With the exception of the PKI, the parties did not represent clearly opposing interests or programs, though some broad bases of support could be seen. The PNI was particularly strong in the ranks of the civil service, while Masyumi tended to find its support in market towns and among the trading classes; NU was stronger in rural areas. The PSI, an influential party until it was virtually eliminated in the elections, had strong support in the higher ranks of the army and bureaucracy. Also important was the regional distribution of party strengths. The PNI, NU, and the PKI were essentially Java-based parties, while Masyumi drew most of its strength from outside Java, particularly in western Sumatra and southwestern Celebes (Sulawesi). Its support within Java was to be found mainly in Jawa Barat (West Java) province, the home of the Sundanese and not of the ethnic Javanese. This unevenness in party strengths meant that political rivalry in the early years of independence tended to have a regional flavour, a fact that was of importance when regional resistance to the centre reached the point of open revolt in 1958. In simplified terms, it is possible to see, in the regional distribution of party strengths, a broad opposition between the hierarchical, rice-based society of Java and the more strongly Muslim areas where commerce rather than agriculture was (and still is) dominant. Any interpretation of political conflicts in Indonesia also must take account of the extent to which the parties and their suborganizations reflected major cultural streams (aliran) in Indonesian society rather than interests, classes, or even regions. In addition to Masyumi's suspicion of the Javanese parties, the division within Java between santri (devout Muslims) and abangan (reflecting an earlier, pre-Muslim syncretism) is important in understanding the rivalry of NU and Masyumi on the one hand and the PNI and the PKI on the other.

In the early and mid-1950s, there was a rapid succession of governments—Hatta (December 1949–August 1950), Mohammad Natsir (September 1950–March 1951), Sukiman Wirjosandjojo (April 1951–February 1952), Wilopo (April 1952–June 1953), Ali Sastroamidjojo (July 1953–July 1955), Burhanuddin Harahap (August 1955–March 1956), and Ali's second government (March 1956–March 1957). This instability created a growing disillusionment with the fruits of independence and a sense of contrast between the heroism of the revolution and the self-seeking party rivalry that followed it. In particular, conflict between the export-producing outer islands and the heavily populated island of Java was becoming more marked. In December 1956 these factors of discontent led to movements of regional dissidence, supported by local military commanders, in western Sumatra, the Minahasa Peninsula of northern Celebes, and elsewhere.

Introduction of Guided Democracy

Against this background, Sukarno, resentful of his circumscribed position as figurehead president, began to move toward a greater interference with constitutional processes. In February 1957 he announced his own “Concept” for Indonesia. Criticizing Western liberal democracy as unsuited to Indonesian circumstances, he called for a political system of “democracy with guidance” based on indigenous procedures. The Indonesian way of deciding important questions, he argued, was by way of prolonged deliberation (musyawarah) designed to achieve a consensus (mufakat); this was the procedure at the village level, and it should be the model for the nation. He proposed a government based on the four main parties plus a national council representing not merely political parties but functional groups—workers, peasants, intelligentsia, national entrepreneurs, religious organizations, armed services, youth organizations, women's organizations, etc.—in which, under presidential guidance, a national consensus could express itself.

The next two years were a period of almost continuous crisis. The resignation of the second Ali government was followed by a proclamation of a “state of war and siege” and the formation of a nonpartisan government under Djuanda. At the end of 1957, in a series of direct actions across the country, Dutch property was seized as part of a campaign for the recovery of Irian Barat, and the government in due course took over responsibility for the running of these enterprises. The army itself was drawn into the management of estates, and military entrepreneurs came, in time, to play a continuing economic role.

Early in the following year, leaders from western Sumatra launched a direct challenge to Jakarta in the form of an alternative government of the republic, the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia. The rebellion, supported by some senior Masyumi leaders, was backed also by the military commander of Sulawesi Utara (North Celebes) province. The central government acted swiftly and successfully to suppress the rebellion. In this changed situation—with the regions defeated, the parties discredited, and the army's prestige enhanced by its success against the rebels—Sukarno once more took up the idea of Guided Democracy. With the support of the army chief of staff, General A.H. Nasution, he proposed a return to the 1945 constitution, a presidential type of government within which he believed it would be possible to implement the principles of deliberation and consensus. When the Constituent Assembly (elected in 1955 to draft a permanent constitution) failed to agree to this proposal, Sukarno introduced it by presidential decree on July 5, 1959.

Sukarno's policies

Under the 1945 constitution, Sukarno possessed executive responsibility as well as ceremonial functions as head of state. He quickly created a new government with Djuanda Kartawidjaja, now first minister, at its head. Pending elections under a new electoral law, he appointed members in accordance with the functional representation principle to the bodies for which the constitution provided: the People's Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat; MPR) and the Supreme Advisory Council (Dewan Pertimbangan Agung; DPA). In 1960, when the parliament rejected the government's budget, he replaced it with a provisional nominated parliament.

Sukarno's central purpose was the preservation of national unity and the restoration of a sense of national identity, goals he pursued through an increasingly flamboyant style. Sukarno's concern with symbols of greatness—expressed in grandiose buildings, national monuments, and evocative slogans and in such occasions as the Fourth Asian Games (1962), to which Indonesia was host—was not accompanied by an attempt to come to grips with the nation's economic problems. The damage done to the economy by the seizure of Dutch enterprises in 1957 and the wasteful extravagances of his later search for grandeur was justified in his eyes as integral to the task of making Indonesians proud of themselves and of their independence. Nevertheless, he was careless of the economic consequences of his policies. He appeared to show no recognition of foreign indebtedness, declining exports, or the inflation that reached new rates of acceleration in the early 1960s.

Sukarno's power during the years of Guided Democracy depended in great measure on the preservation of a balance between the army and the PKI. Sukarno consistently protected the PKI from moves made against it by the army, and the period was one of growth in the communists' prestige. He opposed military attempts to prohibit its congresses and to suppress its newspapers. He banned movements opposing the party and advanced PKI leaders to positions within the national leadership. To many observers he appeared to be preparing the way for the communists to come to power. To others he appeared merely to be redressing a balance that was in constant danger of being tilted against the PKI.

In foreign policy Indonesia adopted a neutralist stance. At the Asian-African Conference in 1955 (the Bandung Conference), the country staked a claim to Third World leadership. By the early 1960s, however, Indonesia was moving to a new international position. In ideological terms Sukarno had sketched the world, as he saw it, in terms of a conflict between Nefos and Oldefos (New Emerging and Old Established Forces). In this analysis was embodied his continuing hostility to the West.

In 1962 Indonesia's campaign to recover Irian Barat, which the Dutch had retained in 1949, achieved final success. An agreement was reached with The Netherlands for the transfer of the territory to Indonesia after a period of temporary UN administration, though with provision for the inhabitants of the territory to make an “Act of Free Choice” before the end of 1969. (This was eventually effected by representative councils, which confirmed Irian Barat's continuance as part of Indonesia.) The resolution of this issue was followed, however, by the development of Indonesia's opposition to the formation of Malaysia and its commitment, after an erratic series of changes of mood, to a policy of “confrontation” toward the new Malaysian federation in September 1963. The confrontation policy was followed by Indonesia's sudden withdrawal from the UN in January 1965 in reaction to the seating of Malaysia on the Security Council.

Indonesia since 1965
The coup and after

On the night of Sept. 30, 1965, a group of army conspirators kidnapped and murdered six army generals. A seventh, Nasution, escaped. The following morning the 30th September Movement announced that it had seized power to forestall a coup against the president by a council of generals. In the meantime, General Suharto, commander of the army's strategic reserve, began to gather the reins of power into his own hands. By evening he had seized the initiative from the conspirators.

The PKI maintained that the coup attempt was an internal affair of the army. The army leadership insisted that it was part of a PKI plot to seize power, and in the following months communists across Java and in Bali were slaughtered, with estimates of those killed ranging from 80,000 to more than 1,000,000. With the destruction of the PKI, one of the elements of balance that had supported the Sukarno regime was eliminated, and the president himself, though he had much strong support, came under increasing pressure. In March 1966, against a background of student action, the army forced him to delegate extensive powers to Suharto, now chief of staff of the army. With these powers Suharto banned the PKI and moved gradually to consolidate his position as the effective head of government. In March 1967 the MPR appointed Suharto acting president, and in March 1968 he was appointed to the presidency in his own right. Sukarno was kept under house arrest until his death on June 21, 1970.

Suharto's New Order

Suharto was concerned to reverse many of Sukarno's policies. The confrontation with Malaysia was quickly ended, and Indonesia rejoined the United Nations. In addition, Indonesia was a major participant in the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967. Domestically, the support of the army enabled Suharto to achieve a political stability that had been lacking under Sukarno. But the major policies initiated by Suharto's New Order had to do with economic rehabilitation. Successful negotiations secured a rescheduling of Indonesia's foreign debts and attracted aid through an intergovernmental group of donor countries. The complex regulations governing economic activity were simplified. In 1967 a new foreign investment law provided a framework for new private capital investment.

Economic development

The results of the new economic policies were soon apparent. The inflation rate was quickly reduced, and the national currency, the rupiah, was stabilized. Manufacturing expanded rapidly. Oil production increased, thanks partly to exploration by a number of new foreign companies operating through Pertamina, the gigantic state oil corporation. (Pertamina's position as the centrepiece of Indonesia's economic expansion ended in 1975, however, when because of indebtedness it had to be rescued by the government.) Military entrepreneurs played a significant part in these developments. In the mid-1980s the decline in oil prices led to a shift in economic direction toward encouraging private-sector investment and emphasizing manufactured exports as a replacement for the traditional reliance on oil and commodity exports.

These new policies had their critics, both inside and outside the country. To some it seemed that the republic was becoming economically dependent on Western capital and, in particular, on large transnational corporations, that direct foreign investment had created an Indonesian comprador class that battened on foreign companies, and that new wealth had exaggerated existing inequalities rather than removing them. Alternatively, it was argued that long-term improvement depended on the economic growth that would flow from policies designed to encourage large-scale investment rather than small-scale, labour-intensive developments.

The economic achievements of New Order policies were spectacular, and, during the 1970s and '80s, they transformed the developmental patterns of the archipelago. New investment was especially obvious outside Java. Historically the political centre and the economic hub of the Indies, Java seemed to retain that position within the modern republic, commanding about three-fourths of all new investment projects (excluding oil exploration) from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The expansion of manufacturing over that period was also concentrated in Java. This apparent dominance, however, was undermined by the density of Java's population. In per capita terms its share of foreign investment was outstripped by some of the outer provinces. Sumatera Utara, the home of the great plantation expansion of the late 19th century, added oil and natural gas exploration and mining to its estate agriculture. Mining and oil had an even greater impact on the development of Aceh, Riau, and Kalimantan Timur, as well as Irian Jaya (Papua). In per capita terms Kalimantan Timur, with timber and oil, natural gas, and coal, attracted high levels of both foreign and domestic investment and became one of the most rapidly developing provinces of the republic. By contrast, the Nusa Tenggara Barat, Nusa Tenggara Timur (West and East Lesser Sunda), and Timor Timur were the poorest and least-developed provinces in both absolute and per capita terms. Successive five-year plans emphasized the importance of redressing regional disparities and spreading economic growth more evenly.

Changes in Indonesian society

The economic successes of the Suharto regime were accompanied by some shifts in the balance of Indonesian society. Observers hesitated to apply the term middle class either to the emerging elite of the late colonial period or to the small traders of coastal ports or market towns of Indonesia. With its suggestion of substantial commercial activity, the term seemed not to fit the elite, which under the Dutch appeared rather as an administrative or bureaucratic class linked—both in Java and elsewhere—to an earlier aristocracy. In addition, indigenous traders lacked the wealth associated with a bourgeoisie.

The picture was further complicated by the special position of the Chinese in rural and urban trade. The increased Chinese immigration in the 20th century confirmed the distinction between peranakan and totok communities (i.e., between those who had been in Indonesia for a number of generations and had adopted Indonesian customs and language and those who had arrived more recently, retained their language, and remained more conscious of being Chinese). Unevenly spread across the archipelago and an ethnic minority playing a distinct economic role, the Chinese were likely to attract Indonesian hostility. After independence—and in spite of occasional outbreaks of anti-Chinese feeling—they continued to expand their participation both in retail trade and in large-scale commerce and finance.

Social change accelerated under the New Order. Along with the decline of the position of traditional aristocracies went the growth of a new bureaucracy, the rise of the army both in politics and administration and in commercial activity, the establishment of an Indonesian business class, and the presence of Chinese business interests, the latter sometimes in association with civilian or military Indonesian entrepreneurs. These developments suggested that a new—albeit extremely diverse—middle class was emerging, defined in part by economic function, by access to political power, and by a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption. Whether it was one class or several and whether the term should cover, simultaneously, wealthy capitalists and small rural traders, senior bureaucrats and low-level clerks, and military officers and civil professionals continued to be a matter for debate.

These developments tended to confirm, rather than to modify, the structure of power in Suharto's Indonesia.

Political developments

Politically, the New Order continued to be a stable regime partly because of economic development across the archipelago but mainly because it was underpinned from the beginning by military power. It would be incorrect to describe it as a military regime, and Suharto, in the early years of his presidency, was concerned to observe constitutional forms. His initial government had strong civilian components in the persons of Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX of Yogyakarta and Adam Malik (both of whom later served as vice president). But military strength, allied closely with bureaucracy, was apparent nonetheless, and the government developed clear authoritarian characteristics.

Suharto acted to control and discipline, and ultimately to rationalize, the political parties. In 1973 the four Muslim parties (Parmusi, formed as a successor to Masyumi, together with the NU, PSII, and Perti) were amalgamated to form the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan; PPP), and the five non-Muslim parties (PNI, Parkindo, Katholik, IPKI, and Murba) were amalgamated to form the Indonesian Democratic Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia; PDI). More formidable than either was a government-sponsored organization, the Joint Secretariat of Functional Groups (Sekretariat Bersama Golongan Karya; Sekber Golkar, or Golkar). In theory, Golkar was a nonpartisan organization representing, like Sukarno's functional groups, the elements of which the nation was composed; in practice, it was a government party, and its sweeping electoral successes owned much to pressure brought to bear on voters by government agencies. In 1971 it secured 236 seats out of 360 in the DPR, and its dominance was confirmed in subsequent elections in 1977, 1982, and 1987. Important also as a measure of political control was the government's imposition of the Pancasila, or the Five Principles (belief in one God, nationalism, humanitarianism, democracy, and social justice), as the national ideology.

Between 1971 and 1998 parliamentary elections were followed by the unopposed reelection of Suharto for successive presidential terms. These results were not achieved without effort. Suharto's economic policies and, in particular, the attempt to spread development more evenly across the archipelago contributed to reducing the strong regional feelings of the 1950s, though there remained perceptions that the regime was dominated by Java. A special case was Irian Jaya, where the government had to contend with the resistance of the Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka; OPM), even after the 1969 Act of Free Choice, with numerous outbreaks of violence over the years. Encouragement of immigration there from Java and elsewhere and extended educational opportunities intended to make Irian Jaya more fully a part of Indonesia were seen as examples of cultural imperialism. The exploitation of the resources of the province—oil, natural gas, copper, and timber—was also a source of resentment.

Unlike Irian Jaya, which had always been claimed by Indonesia as a part of the republic, the Portuguese colony of Timor had not been the subject of any such claim until political changes in Portugal threw the future of the colony into doubt. In 1975–76 Indonesia forcibly intervened and established Timor Timur (East Timor) as an Indonesian province in a fashion that evoked domestic as well as foreign criticism and left the government facing a continuing, and particularly harsh, effort to quell Fretilin (Frente Revolucionário de Este Timor Independente), the resistance movement struggling for an independent East Timor. Subsequently, tens of thousands of pro-independence East Timorese died resisting Indonesian control.

In addition to these areas of specific resistance, there has been some Islāmic opposition to the regime. Muslim thought has tended increasingly to blur the old stereotyped distinction between modernist and traditionalist, or fundamentalist, thinking. Though these shifts dealt essentially with theological issues, their effect was felt as a movement of Islāmic renewal both within and outside the PPP. Focused initially on dislike of the essentially secular ideology of Pancasila, the PPP came to represent a more general ambivalence. There were also some intellectual and student criticisms of the corruption built into the structure of the economy, which was seen as reaching into the highest levels of government. There were examples of open discontent, as when students chose the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei in 1974 to initiate demonstrations against Suharto and against the role of foreign capital in Indonesia; the demonstrations developed into open rioting in Jakarta. In 1978, before the reelection of Suharto for a third term, the government closed sections of the press and arrested student leaders.

Political lines of division within Indonesian society have not been easy to define, but, insofar as they have contained elements of rivalry between centre and regions, opposition between Muslims and non-Muslims, tensions between different strands of Islām, and, in Java, the division between santri and abangan, as well as between rich and poor, they have reflected divisions of long standing.

International relations

Indonesia's domestic stability has been accompanied by moderation in external policies. The country's standing as a Third World leader was enhanced in 1985 when it hosted a second Asian-African Conference to commemorate the one held in 1955. In conjunction with the government of Papua New Guinea, Indonesia sought to contain incidents on the border between Irian Jaya and Papua New Guinea. In 1989 it reached agreement with Australia on the exploitation of seabed resources between the two countries. More generally, Indonesia participated increasingly in the affairs of the region. Through ASEAN it took a firm stand against Vietnam's invasion and occupation of Cambodia and in 1989–90 played a major part in exploring the possibilities of a negotiated resolution of the Indochina problem.

John David Legge
After Suharto

In May 1998 Suharto resigned in the face of student protests over his handling of a growing Asian economic crisis and the massive riots triggered when security forces killed several unarmed students. He was succeeded by his protégé and vice president, B.J. Habibie, who instituted political reforms and authorized a referendum in East Timor for the people there to choose between special autonomy and independence. After almost four-fifths of voters supported independence in the 1999 referendum, the Indonesian parliament rescinded the country's 1976 annexation of the territory. East Timor was returned to its preannexation status as a non-self-governing territory, though this time under UN supervision, and achieved full sovereignty in 2002.

Following Suharto's departure, many of the restrictions against political parties were lifted, and scores of new parties were formed. About four dozen of them participated in parliamentary elections held in June 1999. Although the party led by Megawati Sukarnoputri (the eldest daughter of former president Sukarno) won the largest proportion of seats (about 30 percent), Muslim leader Abdurrahman Wahid was elected president by the People's Consultative Assembly. He took office in October, with Sukarnoputri as his vice president. Wahid supported some democratic reforms, but he was implicated in scandals and was removed from office in July 2001; Sukarnoputri replaced him.

The heady atmosphere accompanying Indonesia's political changes was tempered by the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, which strongly affected the country's economy. Recovery was subsequently slow but steady. Tourism, a growing and increasingly significant component of the economy, was adversely affected by a terrorist bombing in Bali in 2002 that killed some 200 people, many of them Western tourists. In addition, the government had to contend with growing separatist movements in Aceh and the Moluccas as well as the ongoing struggle in Irian Jaya. The latter province was given some local autonomy in 2001, and its name was changed to Papua the following year. However, the central government then proposed dividing Papua into three new provinces in an attempt to fragment the separatist movement.

Continuing economic problems, violence associated with separatists, and political corruption all eroded confidence in Sukarnoputri's government. In July 2004 she survived the initial round of voting in the country's first-ever direct presidential election but was easily defeated by her opponent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (her former security minister), in a September runoff vote. Yudhoyono's administration soon faced a major crisis when in late December a severe earthquake off the northwest coast of Sumatra triggered a large tsunami that inundated the island's western coastal areas, notably in Aceh province, causing widespread death and destruction.

Additional Reading
Geography
General overviews are provided by Charles A. Fisher, South-East Asia: A Social, Economic, and Political Geography, 2nd ed. (1966), a classic work with a dated though very useful perspective on Indonesia that details economic, social, and political as well as physical variations; G.J. Missen, Viewpoint on Indonesia: A Geographical Study (1972), an older but well-written historical economic geography that traces agriculture, both traditional and commercial, from the Dutch period until independence and discusses the problems of the economy and urbanization; Donald W. Fryer and James C. Jackson, Indonesia (1977), a broad survey of the physical environment and an analysis of the country's complex history, with an exploration of the dichotomy between indigenous agriculture and the modern economy, especially oil; Hassan Shadily (ed.), Ensiklopedi Indonesia, 7 vol. (1980–84); Frederica M. Bunge (ed.), Indonesia: A Country Study, 4th ed. (1983); and the relevant section in The Far East and Australasia (annual).

R.W. Van Bemmelen, The Geology of Indonesia, 2 vol. in 3 (1949, reprinted 1970), is an exhaustive survey of the country's geology and natural resources, with detailed information on individual islands. Also useful are Warren Hamilton, Tectonics of the Indonesian Region (1979); and E.C.J. Mohr, F.A. Von Baren, and J. Van Schuylenborgh, Tropical Soils: A Comprehensive Study of Their Genesis, 3rd rev. and enlarged ed. (1973), with most examples drawn from Indonesia. Detailed regional studies include Anthony J. Whitten, Muslimin Mustafa, and Gregory S. Henderson, The Ecology of Sulawesi (1987); and Anthony J. Whitten et al., The Ecology of Sumatra (1987).

W.F. Wertheim, Indonesian Society in Transition: A Study of Social Change, 2nd rev. ed. (1959, reprinted 1980); and Ruth T. McVey (ed.), Indonesia (1963), provide introductions to Indonesian society. N. Iskandar, Some Monographic Studies on the Population of Indonesia (1970), contains a review of the 1961 census and projections; see also Widjojo Nitisastro, Population Trends in Indonesia (1970), which covers the period 1775–1961 and predicts trends through 1991. Universitas Indonesia, The Population of Indonesia (1974), is the World Population Year monograph commissioned by the UN Committee for International Coordination of National Research in Demography; and Werner Rutz, Cities and Towns in Indonesia (1987; originally published in German, 1985), is a study of urbanization based on the 1980 census. Christine Drake, National Integration in Indonesia: Patterns and Policies (1989), examines integration and cohesiveness in a country with a varied social fabric; and Victor T. King (ed.), Essays on Borneo Societies (1978), discusses the Dayak peoples.

Hal Hill, Foreign Investment and Industrialization in Indonesia (1988), is a good analysis of historical and current economic development. Hal Hill (ed.), Unity and Diversity: Regional Economic Development in Indonesia Since 1970 (1989), focuses on problems and progress in regional development, with chapters on each province. Colin MacAndrews (ed.), Central Government and Local Development in Indonesia (1986), discusses the evolution of development policies under the New Order government, with attention to increasing trends toward decentralized decison making and to how the government works and how development policies are implemented at the national and local levels. Graeme J. Hugo et al., The Demographic Dimension in Indonesian Development (1987), analyzes in detail population growth and trends, fertility and mortality, mobility and urbanization, and the growth of the labour force. Wolf Donner, Land Use and Environment in Indonesia (1987), describes the geographic and demographic setting and analyzes the social and environmental “catastrophe” confronting Java; it also analyzes the environmental side effects of nonagricultural land use development. Thomas R. Leinbach and Chia Lin Sien, South-East Asian Transport: Issues in Development (1989), offers a developmental approach to the evolution of transport in the region; the Indonesian chapter traces investment and planning and discusses air, road, rail, and sea sectors. A useful work on Indonesian government and politics is Benedict Anderson and Audrey Kahin (eds.), Interpreting Indonesian Politics (1982).

Cultural material is presented in Miguel Covarrubias, Island of Bali (1937, reissued 1986); Ruth T. McVey (ed.), Indonesia (1963), a scholarly reference work; Niels A. Douwes Dekker, Tanah Air Kita: A Book on the Country and People of Indonesia, 5th rev. ed. (1965?), a popular pictorial review of the islands but one that contains an accurate cultural description; Frits A. Wagner, Indonesia: The Art of an Island Group, rev. ed., trans. from Dutch (1967); Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change (1967); and Jacques Dumarçay, Borobudur, trans. from French (1978, reprinted 1983).

Thomas R. Leinbach
History
General treatments of Indonesian history in the context of the broader history of Southeast Asia include D.G.E. Hall, A History of South-East Asia, 4th ed. (1981); Paul Wheatley, Nāgara and Commandery: Origins of the Southeast Asian Urban Traditions (1983); Kenneth R. Hall, Maritime Trade and State Development in Early Southeast Asia (1985); and David Steinberg (ed.), In Search of Southeast Asia: A Modern History, rev. ed. (1987). Histories of the country alone may be found in Bernard H.M. Vlekke, Nusantara: A History of Indonesia, rev. ed. (1959); Benjamin Higgins and Jean Higgins, Indonesia: The Crisis of the Millstones (1963); Ailsa Zainu'ddin, A Short History of Indonesia, 2nd ed. (1980); M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, c. 1300 to the Present (1981); and Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia (1959). J.D. Legge, Indonesia, 3rd ed. (1980), examines some historiographical problems.

F.D.K. Bosch, Selected Studies in Indonesian Archaeology (1961), contains selected translations of some of Bosch's distinguished contributions to the study of Indonesian culture. G. Coedès, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia (1968, reissued 1975; originally published in French, 1944), has sections dealing with Indonesia that introduce basic information on early Indonesian history and discuss its implications in a judicious manner. N.J. Krom, Hindoe-javaansche Geschiedenis, 2nd ed. (1931), is the first and a very detailed critical account of information on early Indonesian history; though parts of the work are now dated, it remains the basic work on the subject. Theodoor G. Pigeaud (ed.), Java in the 14th Century: A Study in Cultural History, 3rd ed. rev., 5 vol. (1960–63), a translation of the 14th-century Nāgarakeṛtāgama, accompanied by an extensive commentary, is indispensable reading for the study of Java, especially in the 13th and 14th centuries. Soedjatmoko et al. (eds.), An Introduction to Indonesian Historiography (1965), is an important survey and discussion of the skills and contributions of a variety of scholarly disciplines in the field of Indonesian history. The attention being given to the study of early Java is reflected in Jan Wissman Christie, “Raja and Rama: The Classical State in Early Java,” in Lorraine Gesick (ed.), Centers, Symbols, and Hierarchies: Essays on the Classical States of Southeast Asia (1983), pp. 9–44. On the continuing study of Śrīvijaya, consult O.W. Wolters, “Studying Śrīvijaya,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 52(2):1–32 (December 1979); and Pierre-Yves Manguin (comp.), Bibliography for Sriwijayan Studies (1989).

For a discussion of trade patterns of the early period of European contact, see J.C. Van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History, 2nd ed., trans. from Dutch (1960); M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago Between 1500 and About 1630 (1962); and Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680 (1988– ). M.C. Ricklefs, Jogjakarta Under Sultan Mangkubumi, 1749–1792: A History of the Division of Java (1974), examines 18th-century Javanese politics against the background of the Dutch presence. Christine Dobbin, Islamic Revivalism in a Changing Peasant Economy: Central Sumatra, 1784–1847 (1983); and Heather Sutherland, The Making of a Bureaucratic Elite: The Colonial Transformation of the Javanese Priyayi (1979), examine social change in the 19th century in Sumatra and Java, respectively. Jean Gelman Taylor, The Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia (1983), explores European adaptation to the local scene in the 18th and 19th centuries. Clive Day, The Policy and Administration of the Dutch in Java (1904, reprinted as The Dutch in Java, 1972), remains an interesting treatment of the Cultivation System and Liberal Policy. The best survey in English of Dutch economic policies in the 19th and 20th centuries is still J.S. Furnivall, Netherlands India (1939, reissued 1983). See also G.C. Allen and Audrey G. Donnithorne, Western Enterprise in Indonesia and Malaya: A Study in Economic Development (1954, reprinted 1968); and the collection of Dutch economic writings published as Indonesian Economics: The Concept of Dualism in Theory and Policy, 2nd ed. (1966). Robert Van Niel, The Emergence of the Modern Indonesian Elite (1960, reissued 1984), studies the theory and operation of the Ethical Policy. Deliar Noer, The Modernist Muslim Movement in Indonesia, 1900–1942 (1973), surveys Islāmic thought in the late colonial period.

George McTurnan Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (1952, reissued 1970), remains the standard study of the rise of nationalism and the struggle for independence. For a more recent survey of the revolution, see Anthony Reid, The Indonesian National Revolution, 1945–1950 (1974, reprinted 1986). Ruth T. McVey, The Rise of Indonesian Communism (1965), is an authoritative history of the Indonesian Communist Party to the revolts of 1926–27. Bernhard Dahm, Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence (1969; originally published in German, 1966), explores the development of Sukarno's thinking up to 1945. The Japanese occupation is examined in Harry J. Benda, The Crescent and the Rising Sun: Indonesian Islam Under the Japanese Occupation, 1942–1945 (1958, reissued 1983); and Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, Some Aspects of Indonesian Politics Under the Japanese Occupation: 1944–1945 (1961). Anderson's Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944–1946 (1972), gives a close study of the opening period of revolution. The standard account of the early years of independence is Herbert Feith, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (1962). Daniel S. Lev, The Transition to Guided Democracy (1966), carries the story from 1957 to 1959; and Rex Mortimer, Indonesian Communism Under Sukarno (1974), continues from 1959 to 1965. J.D. Legge, Sukarno: A Political Biography, 2nd ed. (1984), also covers the period. J.A.C. Mackie, Konfrontasi: The Indonesia-Malaysia Dispute, 1963–1966 (1974), examines closely a significant episode of Indonesian foreign policy. The essays in Claire Holt (ed.), Culture and Politics in Indonesia (1972), provide illuminating treatment of aspects of modern Indonesian history and culture. The role of the army is examined in Harold Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia, rev. ed. (1988). The New Order is discussed by Karl D. Jackson and Lucian W. Pye (eds.), Political Power and Communications in Indonesia (1978). Richard Robison, Indonesia: The Rise of Capital (1986), gives a radical interpretation of New Order economic policy. David Reeve, Golkar of Indonesia: An Alternative to the Party System (1985), examines the background to the political ideas of the New Order. Charles A. Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis (1983), is a study of the modern Chinese community. The journals Indonesia (semiannual) and The South East Asian Review (semiannual) contain useful articles on current scholarship.

All About Kido

Thursday, May 21, 2009

my 5th nephew has been born, a handsome baby!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

[diary] my accident!!!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

really boringd day

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

my stupid day

Friday, May 1, 2009

[diary] Am i fool?

Thursday, April 30, 2009

All things you have to know about my country - INDONESIA

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