Product Description
"Gangsters and Revolutionaries" is the first full-length study of one of the "people's armies" which emerged from the chaotic end of World War II in Indonesia to join the struggle for Indonesian independence in 1945. The study traces the story of the People's Militia of Greater Jakarta from its origins in a loose network of petty criminals and labour bosses in the slums of urban Jakarta and the feudal estates of the surrounding countryside to its destruction at the hands of the Indonesian army in the late 1940s. This book is important for the light it sheds on the social basis of the Indonesian revolution, especially on the ways in which the revolutionary forces made use of existing social structures in mobilizing a popular following. It also highlights the difficult transformation of revolutionary power into staff power and the painful process by which the new Indonesian state discarded and suppressed groups which had been instrumental in its own rise to power. By careful use of archival records, contemporary newspapers and interviews with survivors, the book also revises many commonly held views of the early history of the Indonesian army, showing a tangled politics in which regular and irregular units, general staff officers and the Ministry of Defence vied for influence and struggled to formulate a strategy for guerilla war. Dr Cribb introduces the reader to a host of unexpected but fascinating characters, from the cat-eating General Musopo and the implacable Haji Darip to the gangster unit which saw service with the Dutch as Her Majesty's Irregular Troops. This book is intended for students and researchers in South East Asian history, development studies, peasant studies, and revolution.
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