Customer Reviews

A History of Modern Indonesia Since c.1300 (Macmillan Asian History)

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The book is a good college level introduction to Indonesian History. It gives a good explanation behind the gradual process of Dutch colonialism and a glimpse of the difficulties since attaining independance. The book can help the reader attain a better historical understanding of the complexities behind the ongoing political turmoil. In particular, the reader can learn how both Aceh and Javanese view their history diferently and why it is so important to the Java-based govenment to maintain controll over all of the provinces in Indonesia. The book also gives glimpses of possible solutions to today's turmoil. The only flaw to the book, is that being a newer edition, the coverage from 1965 to the present is pretty skimpy and I would not recommend it for readers interested in that time period. Sadly here in the United States there are very few good books written about such an important area of the world. Most of the important books in English are written by Australians. It is to bad we only seem to learn about countries in times of crisis.

This is the standard college text for advanced study of modern Indonesian history. It is an excellent introduction, sufficiently detailed for the appropriate events, such as the 1945-49 revolution, the days of civil war turmoil in the 50s, and the 30 September Movement ("G30S" for Indonesians) in 1965. It is impeccably researched and annotated, which makes this an excellent resource for further research into Indonesian and Southeast Asian history. The text itself is sometimes slow, but I am always struck by the density of facts, figures, quotations, and citations. An excellent resource.

For a book that bills itself as a basic text I found this history oddly treading very lightly over the crimes of the modern state of Indonesia. Phrases like "there seem to have been some excesses" in connection with the massacres on East Timor begining in 1974 do not give the reader confidence - a newspaper will give your more news about the awful things the Indo. government got up to there. Other terrible stories like the repression in New Guinea and Northern Sumatra, as well as the massacres of '65 seem similarly played down. The author is appropriately critical about the distant past but loses all steam when he has to talk about the present. I ended up wondering if it is possible for a modern historian to speak frankly about Indonesia and still maintain access to the country and its archives - perhaps the author would not be allowed in if he said more? Perhaps that is the reason for the soft-pedalling.

Readers may wish to read John Pilger's articles on Indonesia, or try Norman Lewis's book "Empire of the East" as a start to a more realistic approach to this problematic and impoverished, yet alluringly beautiful country