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Indonesian Destinies

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In a style that ranges from academic to personal, objective to emotional, Friend presents an incisive exploration of Indonesia: its history, its people and culture. It is a remarkable synthesis of historical description and theoretical explanation drawing on many primary sources and departments of knowledge: geography, economics, social theory.

If you ever wanted to understand Indonesia holistically-not simply through the lens of economics or religion, this book should be on your list.

This book is the most comprehensive and yet not-too-hard read on Indonesian independence history that I have found. With detailed accounts of important events, vivid descriptions, and personal experience, Theodore Friend is able to weave together a compelling story about the complexity of the Indonesian history since independence. The crucial facts and theories are insightful if not eye-opening, especially for Indonesians who have not been exposed to the nation's history from an outsider perspective.

After seeing all the raving reviews of this book, I was excited to have a look myself.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a major disappointment. Its coverage of Indonesia is largely focussed on Java, with very little attention paid to other islands. What is worse, I often found the style to be very much of populist journalism, aimed at uninformed readers, based on catchy phrases and anecdotes rather than hard facts. This is particularly evident when the author does deal with the outer islands, about which his knowledge seems to be, err, limited...
To give just 2 examples:
In the chapter on Aceh, the author makes a lot of fuss about how the Grand Mosque in Banda Aceh, with its very "un-Javanese", Indian style expresses the orientation of the Acehnese towards West, rather than towards Java and the rest of Indonesia. What a poor example! He obviously failed to realize that the beautiful mosque in question was actually built by the Dutch colonialists (designed by an Italian architect), after they had destroyed the original, typically "Javanese-looking" Acehnese mosque previously standing there during their bloody conquest of Aceh, and is therefore an example of the westward orientation of the Dutch, not of the Acehnese!
In the chapter on the conflict in Ambon and the rest of Maluku, he puts much of the blame on the breakdown of traditional values due to westernization, claming the coming of cell-phones and McDonalds (among others) paved the way to the bloody events there. Oh dear... anyone familiar with Ambon (I was there in 1999 when the troubles started) will know that neither cell-phones nor McDonalds had made it to that remote island back then, so while the real roots of that conflict will probably never be fully revealed, they were certainly something rather more serious - and political.
Information from Indonesian policy-makers themselves? Well, the description of the one meeting he had with president Megawati described in the book tells us pretty much nothing besides the fact that Megawati could actually speak English!
I admit that having read such silly stuff and finding the style so populist, I put the book down without reading the whole lot.
I really think there are far better books on the history of Indonesia by more serious authors available even on Amazon, notably those by Kingsbury, Ricklefs, Taylor, and Bertrand - to name just a few.

Theodore Friend has decades of research and personal experience in this subcontinent that masquerades as a nation. Combining anecdote and informed expertise (he's written several books on Southeast Asia) pushes this book beyond a typical academic study. The data on which "Indonesian Destinies" is based is both broad and deep (perhaps too deep: Java gets more space than the outer islands), covering most facets of Indonesian history since World War Two. Friend also has a knack for addressing the issues informed US citizens associate with Indonesia---to the extent we think about this crucially important country at all: oil, gas, minerals and other economic resources; environmental concerns; Islamic radicalism; and most importantly, the ongoing internal struggle for a more just political culture and civil society, including the recent Timor tragedy. Abbreviated time-depth means that the work is not truly comprehensive, and thus complements other major studies, instead of supplanting them. These include J.G. Taylor, "Indonesia: Peoples & Histories," stronger on pre-1900 history, from an Australian perspective; and A. Reid, "Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce," which masterfully examines regional structures and continuities. Friend's lively if sometimes glib study sets a high standard, at least until Indonesians themselves are permitted to reach an global audience with their own interpretations. For this, one can begin with the novels by Pramoedya Toer, along with "The Mute's Soliloquy," his collection of prison and political writings. There is also Kartini, "Letters of a Javanese Princess," by the sadly shortlived but pioneering Indonesian feminist from a century ago.

Every single page in this book offers a glimpse into the complexity of Indonesian society. As a reader, we are brought into understanding the social events that occurred in this country through differing point of views, from the powerful government, the simple yet hopeful citizens or foreigners that either fell in love with the country or somehow managed to get themselves tied to the country. As an Indonesian myself, I am thankful to Mr.Friend for this book. It is like a glass of water quenching the thirst of knowledge on the subject that has too long been oppressed in Indonesia itself. More than anything, this book serves its purpose well that is to make readers, both Indonesian and those affiliated, to question many unfortunate social disorders that had befallen upon this country. If Indonesia is heading toward to a better society, only a study into her past will guides her future. By ignoring the mistakes from the past social disorders, Indonesia will only fall back to the same state many years to come in the future, only a matter of time. This book put out the many issues for readers to discuss, to ponder and to question. From reading the book, we know as a reader that this book is written by a writer that really cares about the issues in Indonesia.

This book is clearly a labor of immense scholarship--the author takes on the last fifty years of Indonesian history, and includes in his sweep a magisterial treatment of the country's religion, politics, and cultural layers--but it is, more importantly, a labor of love. Friend intermixes thoughtful and persuasive analysis with chapters about his own trips through the archipelago over the past thirty years. These, along with the many magnificent photographs and illustrations, give a real flavor of the place: its cultural richness and socioeconomic poverty. Truly worth the time it takes to read and ponder.

Indonesia is a vast archipelago of 17,000 islands, 14,000 of which are inhabited, stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Imagine an island chain as broad as the continental US. It is the world's most populous Muslim nation, and the fourth largest in the overall rankings. It is a nation of countless ethnic groups and one that has more than 350 spoken languages.

Theodore Friend has written an equally monumental and multifaceted work that reflects the kaleidscopic richness of Indonesia. He interviews not only presidents and generals, but ordinary people as well - people living their lives in characteristic Indonesian fashion, with grace under pressure. Friend gives very scholarly analyses of political events, religious thought, and the ebbs and flows of the economy. At times one gets the impression that this is a traveloge complete with photographs (over 100); clearly Friend has a great love for his subject.

The book roughly falls into three sections covering the last half century of Indonesian history: Sukarno (1945-65), Suharto (1965-98), and the Successors (Habibie,Whahid, and Sukarnoputri {1998-2002}). With the Cold War over, Friend is able to give us a more balanced look at the presidencies of Sukarno and Suharto. It is no longer sufficient to view the first as the bad guy and the second as the good guy. Minus the Cold War prism the realities are much more subtle. Sukarno, for his part, was up against an immense number of competing forces: a power hungry army, a Communist party, a restless Islamic movement, and the various ethnic and separatist groups that wanted more autonomy. Sukarno was a gifted orater. He was able, with the spell that he cast over his people, to shape a national ethos that spoke for many, if not all, of these competing groups. He was able to give Indonesians a sense of national identity and dignity that they never had under the Dutch and Japanese occupations. His downfall was controversial: some say it was corruption and economic mismanagement that caused it, others say it was a coup that was given the blessing, if not the outright support of the CIA and the Pentagon, since he was getting a little to cozy with the Communists. Friend judiciously gives all sides of the story and lets the reader decide.

The 1965 coup that brought Suharto to power and kept him there for the next 30 plus years was, for better or for worse, a period of stability and development. Friend is of the school of thought that an authoritarian figure that sacrifices democratic progress to economic progress is tolerable as a transitional figure. Suharto, unlike Sukarno, understood basic things: namely, that people needed to eat, that they needed jobs, and that they needed education; and he was fairly successful in delivering these public goods. During his time in power, Indonesians had three decades of economic progress.

Friend also describes the dark side of Suharto's rule that was conveniently overlooked during the Cold War. In his years in power, Suharto, his family, and the Javanese elite created a feudal system of corruption that exceded even the Marcos regime in its kleptocracy. Every foreign corporation that did business in Indonesia needed to partner with a memeber of Suharto's family or one of his cronies. The World Bank and the IMF looked the other way because Suharto kept the Communists at bay. However, the system collapsed under its own weight during the Asian financial crisis of 1998. Indonesia was hit particulary hard because of its inherent precariousness.

In the last part of the book, Friend gives us some very personal and subjective descriptions of Habibie, Wahid, and Sukarnoputri. He is very sympathetic to them given the difficulties in governing Indonesia with the imperatives (destinies) of its geography, religion, and history.

In sum Friend's view of what actually held Indonesia together for the first fifty years since independence are the following: 1) the idea of national unity, that the many diverse groups are actually one people; 2) the spread of a national language - Bahasa Indonesia - through national education; 3) the army; 4) the presidency - Sukarno for 20 years and Suharto for 30 years.