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Indonesia
Indonesia, country located off the coast of
TABLE OF CONTENTS
mainland Southeast Asia in the Indian and Pacific
oceans. It is an archipelago that lies across the • Introduction
Equator and spans a distance equivalent to one-
• Land
eighth of Earth’s circumference. Its islands can be
• People
Indonesia grouped into the Greater Sunda Islands of Sumatra
• Economy
(Sumatera), Java (Jawa), the southern extent of
• Government and society
Borneo (Kalimantan), and Celebes (Sulawesi); the
• Cultural life
Lesser Sunda Islands (Nusa Tenggara) of Bali and a
• History
chain of islands that runs eastward through Timor;
the Moluccas (Maluku) between Celebes and the
Mount Bromo island of New Guinea; and the western extent of
New Guinea (generally known as Papua). The capital, Jakarta, is located near
the northwestern coast of Java. In the early 21st century Indonesia was the most populous country in
Southeast Asia and the fourth most populous in the world.

Indonesia was formerly known as the Dutch East Indies (or Netherlands East
Indies). Although Indonesia did not become the country’s official name until the
time of independence, the name was used as early as 1884 by a German
geographer; it is thought to derive from the Greek indos, meaning “India,” and
nesos, meaning “island.” After a period of occupation by the Japanese (1942–45)
Indonesia during World War II, Indonesia declared its independence from the Netherlands
in 1945. Its struggle for independence, however, continued until 1949, when the
Dutch officially recognized Indonesian sovereignty. It was not until the United Nations (UN) acknowledged
the western segment of New Guinea as part of Indonesia in 1969 that the country took on its present form.
The former Portuguese territory of East Timor (Timor-Leste) was incorporated into Indonesia in 1976.
Following a UN-organized referendum in 1999, however, East Timor declared its independence and became
fully sovereign in 2002.

The Indonesian archipelago represents one of the most unusual areas in the
world: it encompasses a major juncture of Earth’s tectonic plates, spans two
faunal realms, and has for millennia served as a nexus of the peoples and
cultures of Oceania and mainland Asia. These factors have created a highly
diverse environment and society that sometimes seem united only by
Mount Bromo susceptibility to seismic and volcanic activity, close proximity to the sea, and a
moist, tropical climate. Nevertheless, a centralized government and a common
language have provided Indonesia with some sense of unity. Furthermore, in keeping with its role as an
economic and cultural crossroads, the country is active in numerous international trade and security
organizations, such as ASEAN, OPEC, and the UN.

Land
Indonesia is the largest country 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 shares a border with
Malaysia in the northern part of Borneo and with Papua New Guinea in the centre of New Guinea. Indonesia
is composed of some 17,500 islands, of which more than 7,000 are uninhabited. Almost three-fourths of
Indonesia’s area is embraced by Sumatra, Kalimantan, and western New Guinea; Celebes, Java, and the
Moluccas account for most of the country’s remaining area.

Relief
The major Indonesian islands are characterized by densely forested volcanic mountains in the interior that
slope downward to coastal plains covered by thick alluvial swamps that, in turn, dissolve into shallow seas

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and coral reefs. Beneath this surface the unique and complex physical structure
of Indonesia encompasses the junction of three major sections of the Earth’s
crust and involves a complicated series of shelves, volcanic mountain chains,
and deep-sea trenches. The island of Borneo and the island arc that includes
Sumatra, Java, Bali, and the Lesser Sunda chain sit on the Sunda Shelf, a
Indonesia 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 (about 24,440
feet [7,450 metres] deep at its lowest point), which form the true continental boundary. New Guinea and its
adjacent islands, possibly including the island of Halmahera, 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 oceanic
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 that forms Japan and the
Philippines; the mountains run southward between Borneo and New Guinea and include a series of volcanoes
and deep-sea trenches on and around Celebes and the Moluccas.

The relation between these three landmasses is not clearly understood. The present land-sea formations are
somewhat misleading because the seas that lie on the Sunda and Sahul shelves 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 stretches along the South China and Celebes seas of this shelf and that marks the
outer edge of the continental mass of Asia, however, is an area of strong relief and is one of the most active
volcanic zones in the world.

The outer (southern) side of the chain of islands from Sumatra through Java and
the Lesser Sundas forms the leading edge of the Southeast Asian landmass. It is
characterized by active volcanoes, bounded to the south and west by a series of
deep-sea trenches. On the inner (northern) side of the islands the volcanic
mountains grade into swamps, lowlands, and the shallow Java Sea. This
Mount Agung sheltered sea was formed at the close of the Pleistocene Epoch (about 12,000
years ago), and there is evidence of former land bridges, which facilitated the
migration of plants and animals from the Asian continent.

Islands of the Sunda Shelf

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and the main island on the Sunda Shelf. Mount Kinabalu, the
highest peak in the Southeast Asian archipelago, is not actually in Indonesia. It rises to 13,455 feet (4,101
metres) in the northeastern corner of the island, in the Malaysian state of Sabah. Otherwise, the island’s
relief seldom exceeds an elevation of 5,600 feet (1,700 metres), and most of the island lies below 1,000 feet
(300 metres). Structural trends are not as well-defined as on adjacent islands, although a broad mountain
system (which includes Mount Kinabalu) runs roughly from northeast to southwest. Kalimantan, which
constitutes about three-fourths of the island, consists mostly of undulating lowlands, with alluvial swamps
near the coast and forest-covered mountains in the deep interior.

The Riau archipelago lies to the east of Sumatra, near the southern outlet of the Strait of Malacca. These
islands have a granite core and can be considered a physical extension of the Malay Peninsula. With the
exception of some highlands in the western and southern regions, the islands of the Riau group generally
consist of low-lying swampy terrain.

Sumatra spans the Equator, stretching from northwest to southeast for more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km),
with a maximum width (including offshore islands) of some 325 miles (525 km). It 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. The Sumatran mainland 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 a number of active volcanoes; an inner nonvolcanic zone of low hills grading down
toward the stable platform of the Asian mainland; and the broad alluvial lowland, lying no more than 100 feet

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(30 metres) above sea level, that constitutes the eastern half of the island. Much of the eastern lowland is a
swampy forest that is difficult to penetrate.

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. The
first region, a series of limestone platforms, extends along the southern coast; in some areas the platforms
form an eroded karst region (i.e., marked by sinks interspersed with abrupt ridges, irregular rocks, caverns,
and underground streams) that makes travel and habitation difficult. A mountain belt just to the north, in the
western segment of the island, forms the second region; it is partially composed of sediments derived from
eroded volcanoes and includes a number of heavily cultivated alluvial basins, especially around the cities of
Bandung and Garut. The belt of volcanoes that runs through the centre of the island constitutes the third
region; it contains some 50 active cones and nearly 20 volcanoes that have erupted since the turn of the 20th
century. 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 this
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 (an island off the northeastern coast of Java) and the
adjacent section of eastern Java.

The many islands of the Lesser Sundas to the east of Java are much smaller, less densely populated, and less
developed than Java. The physiography of Bali and Lombok is similar to that of eastern Java. The Lesser
Sunda Islands continue through Sumbawa and Flores, narrowing progressively until they appear on a map as
a spine of volcanic islands that loops northeast into the Banda Islands. The same volcanic system reappears
in northern Celebes. Sumba and Timor form an outer (southern) fringe of nonvolcanic islands that resembles
the chain 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 and New Guinea. The western portion of New Guinea consists of the
Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua (Papua Barat), which together account for more than one-fifth
of the total area of Indonesia but are home to only a tiny percentage of the country’s population. The two
provinces cover 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 16,024 feet
(4,884 metres) is the highest point in Indonesia—form a natural barrier across the central area. There is a
narrow coastal plain in the north. Much of the region 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. The land 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 oceanic 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 roughly 1,000 islands with a combined area that is about 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, is volcanic, as are the islands of the Banda Sea, which are
frequently rocked by earthquakes. Most of the northern and central Moluccas have dense vegetation and
rugged mountainous interiors where elevations often exceed 3,000 feet (900 metres). Once commonly known
as the “Spice Islands,” the Moluccas—especially Ternate, Tidore, Ambon, and Banda Besar—were a source of

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cloves, nutmeg, and mace, particularly during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Volcanoes
There are over 100 active volcanoes in Indonesia and hundreds more 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, then north through the
Banda Sea to a junction with the volcanoes of northern Celebes. Volcanic
eruptions are by no means uncommon. Mount Merapi, which rises to 9,551 feet
Mount Merapi (2,911 metres) near Yogyakarta (Jogjakarta) in central Java, 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 that rush down into the plains and sweep away all that is 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
Krakatoa (Krakatau) volcano sunsets for more than a year. Another major incident occurred in 1963, when
Mount Agung on Bali erupted violently after having been dormant for more than
140 years. In 2006 the drilling of an exploratory petroleum well triggered the
eruption of an unusual mud volcano in a heavily populated region of eastern
Java. Hot mud flowed voluminously from the well for the next several years,
ultimately engulfing dozens of villages, obstructing roads and railways, and
eruption of Krakatoa displacing tens of thousands of residents. In 2010 Mount Sinabung, in northern
Sumatra, erupted after more than 400 years of dormancy, forcing tens of
thousands to evacuate their homes.

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
Telen River reduce their importance for large-vessel transportation. Western New Guinea,
most of which receives heavy rainfall, is drained by a number of large rivers,
including the Baliem, the Mamberamo, and the Digul.

There are a number of notable lakes on Sumatra, the most famous of which is Lake Toba, which lies in the
north at an elevation of about 3,000 feet (900 metres) above sea level and covers some 440 square miles
(1,140 square km). Celebes also has several large, deep lakes, including Lakes Towuti and Matama in the
southern part of the island and Lake Poso in the centre.

The seas surrounding Indonesia must also be viewed as important hydrologic features that serve both as
channels of communication and as barriers protecting distinctive cultural and environmental features of the
islands. The shallow seas between many of the islands are a significant source of offshore petroleum, natural
gas, minerals, and 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 in the Riau

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archipelago, granites and sediments in Kalimantan, and sediments in western New Guinea. 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.

Among the most fertile soils are the ando soils, which developed on the andesitic volcanic sediments of the
northeastern coast of Sumatra. Highly fertile soils, also derived from or enriched by basic andesitic volcanic
material, occur on Java and Celebes as well. Valuable volcanic ash 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. 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.

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.

Climate
The climate of Indonesia is determined partly by its island structure and its position astride the Equator,
which assure high, even temperatures. In addition, its location between the two landmasses of Asia and
Australia exposes it to seasonal patterns of precipitation brought by monsoon winds.

Regional temperature variation is a function of elevation rather than latitude. Temperatures are highest along
the coast, where mean annual readings range from the mid-70s to the upper 80s °F (low 20s to low 30s °C).
Regions above 2,000 feet (600 metres) are significantly cooler, but only the Maoke Mountains of Papua are
high enough to receive snow. The diurnal difference of temperature in Jakarta is at least five times as great as
the difference between the high and low temperatures of January and July; on an exceptionally hot day in
Jakarta the temperature may reach nearly 100 °F (38 °C), while on an especially cool one it may drop to
about 65 °F (18 °C).

Precipitation is more varied in extremes and distribution. Most of Indonesia receives heavy rainfall
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; the islands of
Timor and Sumba receive little rain during these months. The highest amount of precipitation occurs in the
mountainous regions of Sumatra, Kalimantan, Celebes, and western New Guinea, where annual rainfall totals
more than 120 inches (3,000 mm). The rest of Kalimantan, Sumatra, western New Guinea, 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 get only 40 to 60 inches
(1,000 to 1,500 mm).

The absolute daily maximum of precipitation 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. For example, Jakarta, which is near sea level, has a mean annual rainfall of 70 inches (1,750 mm),
while just 30 miles (50 km) to the south, at an elevation of about 790 feet (240 metres), Bogor records nearly
170 inches (4,300 mm).

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 from the Asian mainland 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

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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 and animal life

Indonesia’s 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 [see
Rafflesiaceae]), which is the world’s largest flower. There are more than 3,000
tree species, including durian, which bears large, armoured, odorous yet edible
durian fruit fruit; sandalwood; Shorea macrophylla, which yields illipe nuts, a fruit that
contains a fat substance similar to cocoa butter; and valuable timber varieties
such as teak and ironwood. Woody rattan (supplejack) vines are abundant in Indonesia’s forests. Thousands
of plant species are exploited for economic purposes, either directly or indirectly.

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 (1,500 metres) 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 the southeastern
segment of western New Guinea.

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 Australian 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 rhinoceroses, orangutans, tapirs, tigers,
and elephants. 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, the Sumatran serow (Capricornis sumatraensis), lives on the
rugged slopes of the Barisan Mountains of Sumatra. A unique species of proboscis monkey is endemic to
Kalimantan, and the babirusa (a large wild pig) and the tamarau (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)—lives 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 Javan
rhinoceroses, for example, are now restricted to the Ujung 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. Several orangutan
rehabilitation centres and programs have been established 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, leaf insects (walking leaves), huge atlas beetles,
elegant luna moths, and beautiful birdwing and swallowtail butterflies.

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Thousands of species of fish are found in Indonesia’s inland waters, and hundreds of these are endemic to the
region. Many freshwater and marine fish are used for food, while many others, such as small gouramis,
barbs, and anemone fish (clown fish), are bred as ornamental aquarium fish. The unusual flying gurnard, with
its oversized pectoral fins, is common off the coasts of Sulawesi.

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

The Indonesian national motto, “Bhinneka tunggal ika” (“Unity in diversity”), makes reference to the
extraordinary diversity of the Indonesian population that has emerged from the ongoing confluence of
peoples, languages, and cultures. The country includes more than 300 different ethnic groups and more than
twice as many distinct languages, and most of the major world religions, as well as a wide range of
indigenous ones, are practiced there. Notwithstanding this diversity, most of the people are of Malay
ancestry, speak Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) languages, and profess Islam.

Ethnic groups
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 highland groups of the
larger islands—Borneo, Sumatra, and Celebes—were relatively untouched by
Indonesia: Ethnic international influences until the arrival of Christian missionaries during the
composition
19th century; these upland peoples continue to reflect great cultural diversity.
Each island or group of islands east of Java also has maintained its own distinct
character, in many cases strongly influenced by different religions. In particular, Bali—with its long tradition
of Hindu and Buddhist influences rooted in local religious practices—is quite different in character and
customs from any other part of Indonesia.

Western islands
The diverse ethnic populations of western Indonesia generally may be grouped into three broad categories.
These are the inland wet-rice (irrigated rice) societies, the coastal trading, farming, and fishing peoples, and
the inland societies of shifting cultivators.

The first group, the historically Hinduized (but now primarily Muslim) wet-rice growers of inland Java,
Madura, and Bali, make up nearly three-fifths of the national population. With an ancient culture informed by
strong social and agricultural traditions, it includes the Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, and Balinese
peoples.

The Javanese constitute Indonesia’s largest ethnic group, accounting for roughly one-third of the total
population. Most Javanese live in the densely settled, irrigated agricultural regions of central and eastern
Java—the most populous parts of the country. The cities of Yogyakarta and Surakarta (Solo), in the centre of
the island, are strongholds of Javanese culture and maintain traditional rulers, although these leaders have
no real political power. Java’s western region, including the city of Bandung, is the homeland of the
Sundanese, who are related to but quite distinct from the Javanese in language and tradition. The Sundanese
are the second largest ethnic group in Indonesia.

The island of Madura, northeast of Java, is the homeland of the Madurese,

Indonesia’s third largest ethnic group. In addition to cultivating wet-rice
paddies, many Madurese raise cattle. The Balinese, who live just to the east of
Java on Bali, are known for their intricate irrigation systems and terraced rice
fields. Of the historically Hinduized communities in Indonesia, the Balinese are

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Pura Ulun the only nonimmigrant practitioners of Hinduism.

The second group, the more strongly Islamized coastal peoples, is ethnically heterogeneous and includes the
Malays from Sumatra and, from southern Celebes, the Makassarese and Bugis. The Sumatran Malays inhabit
Aceh, a strongly Muslim region at the extreme northern tip of Sumatra that has long been noted for its
resistance to European influence; a rich plantation area to the south of Aceh, along Sumatra’s northern coast;
and Bangka and Belitung (Billiton), two primarily agricultural islands off the southeastern coast of Sumatra.
The Makassarese and Bugis live primarily in the coastal regions of southern Celebes. Like most Indonesian
peoples, they are rice farmers; however, they are also maritime peoples with a strong tradition of boat
making. The Makassarese and Bugis have a pronounced presence in coastal towns throughout Indonesia,
although their influence has been strongest outside Java.

The third group, the inland shifting cultivators, plant swiddens—fields that are
cleared, cultivated for a few seasons, and then abandoned for several years to
allow the soil to regenerate—in areas where the climate will not support wet-
rice farming. These communities tend to be small and relatively isolated, and
they represent a wide array of cultures. The most prominent of the swiddeners
men planting a rice swidden are the Toraja of southern Celebes, the Batak of the highlands of northern
Sumatra, and the various communities of the interior of Kalimantan, such as the
Kenyah, Kayan, Ngaju, and Embaloh, who officially (and collectively) are called Dayak.

There are two major ethnic groups in the western islands of Indonesia that do not fit into this broad scheme
of cultural categorization. The Minangkabau, a community of devout Muslim wet-rice farmers in west-central
Sumatra, hold a unique position in Indonesia as a matrilineal society, whereby inheritance and descent are
reckoned through the female line. The Menadonese (Minahasan) of northern Celebes are also atypical in that
they are a historically Hinduized, predominantly Christian coastal community.

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. Some of the people living in
the mountainous interior regions have been relocated to coastal areas, but—unlike the coastal peoples—they
do not usually engage in fishing activities.

The distinction between coastal and interior peoples is especially salient in western New Guinea, where
maritime trading communities live along the coast, while agrarian, noncommercial societies with strongly
developed and highly localized customs inhabit the interior. Those in the foothills and on the coast have
affinities with other Melanesian cultures 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, such as the Asmat and the Dani, on the other hand, remained isolated for a longer period of time.
Some groups continue to live in remote areas, where interaction with peoples and cultures beyond their
proximate surroundings is limited. Most Papuans of the interior regions live in small communities and
maintain a complex of dialects, customs, and social structures that is distinct from that of the coastal peoples.

Chinese and other Indonesian peoples

The Chinese account for a small but significant portion of the total population and are regarded as an anchor
of the country’s economy. Most of the Chinese have lived in Indonesia for generations. The majority of them
are of mixed (peranakan) heritage, do not speak Chinese, have Indonesian surnames, and through
intermarrying with Indonesians have developed distinct dialects and customs. A smaller community
considered to be of totally (totok) Chinese descent is 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 engage in trade. The Chinese also form a significant fraction of the population in western Kalimantan,

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where many are farmers, fishermen, and urban workers. In the Riau archipelago, many continue a tradition
of mining that has spanned generations.

Most of the former Dutch and Eurasian (locally known as Indo) residents left Indonesia after independence.
Today, Indians and Europeans are relatively unimportant in numbers, although their influence in business and
other areas of Indonesian society is apparent in the major cities.

Until the early 21st century the Indonesian population was administratively divided into “indigenous”
(pribumi) and “nonindigenous” (non-pribumi) peoples. The concept of such a separation had its origin in the
Dutch colonial administration’s categorization of the population on the basis of ancestry. Especially under the
Suharto presidency, the term non-pribumi served primarily to mark those Indonesians who were of Chinese
(or part Chinese) descent, regardless of the length of time they and their families had resided on Indonesian
soil. The “nonindigenous” label ultimately blocked certain Indonesians from the highest government, military,
and academic positions; it also posed obstacles to their obtaining passports and identity cards. In July 2006,
however, landmark legislation eliminated the pribumi–non-pribumi distinction. Anyone who was born an
Indonesian citizen and had never held citizenship in another country was simply—and officially—Indonesian.

Languages
Most of the several hundred languages spoken in Indonesia have an Austronesian base. The major exceptions
are found in western New Guinea and some of the Moluccas, where different Papuan languages are used. The
Austronesian language family is broken into several 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 dozens, many of which are divided into distinct dialects. Within the Toraja
group, a relatively small population in the interior of Celebes, several languages are spoken. In eastern
Indonesia each island has its own language, which is often not understood on the neighbouring islands.
Similarly, languages often differ from one village to the next in the interior of Kalimantan.

Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) is the national language. It evolved from a literary style of Malay language
that was used in the royal houses of the Riau-Jambi area of eastern Sumatra, but it also has much in common
with other Malay dialects that have long served as regional lingua francas. The differences between standard
Malay and standard Indonesian reside largely in their idioms and in certain items of vocabulary. In 1972
Indonesia and Malaysia agreed on a uniform revised spelling of the language so that communications could
be improved and literature more freely exchanged between the two countries.

Because it has no distinctive expressions based on social hierarchy and is not associated with one of the
dominant ethnic groups, the Indonesian language has been accepted without serious question and has served
as a strong force of national unification. Since the early 20th century it has been the main language of print
in different parts of the country; it also served as the medium of political communication among members of
the nationalist movement leading up to the revolution and declaration of independence in 1945. Writers of
ethnic Chinese and Sumatran origins produced novels, plays, and poetry in the language, from which a
modern Indonesian literature was born. Today the Indonesian language is the mother tongue for some city
dwellers and a second language for most Indonesians. It is the medium of instruction in universities, and it is
used in scientific, philosophical, and legal writings and debates. Radio stations, television channels, and films
employ it (they rarely use local languages), and most popular songs with a national audience are written in
the Indonesian language as well. (There are, however, locally popular groups that write and perform songs in
regional languages and dialects.)

Religions
Nearly nine-tenths of the Indonesian population professes Islam. There are,
however, pockets of Christians scattered throughout the country, particularly in
Flores, Timor, northern Celebes, the interior of Kalimantan, and the Moluccas.
Most are Protestant or independent Christian, and the remainder are mainly
Roman Catholic. Many Chinese in the cities are also Christian, but some follow
Indonesia: Religious affiliation Buddhism or Confucianism, sometimes blended with Christianity. Hindus

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account for less than 2 percent of all Indonesians, although Hinduism is the dominant religion on Bali and has
many adherents in Lombok. Local religions are practiced in some remote areas.

The major religions of Indonesia were all introduced on the coast and, except in
such open areas as Java and southern Sumatra (which were free of natural
impediments), penetrated slowly inland. Regions such as central Kalimantan
and western New Guinea, the mountains of northern Sumatra, and the interiors
of other mountainous islands long remained virtually untouched by outside
Palembang religions. However, much 20th-century Christian missionary activity has focused
on these inland-dwelling peoples.

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 CE, both Hinduism and Buddhism were practiced as
court religions; Shiva and Buddha were looked upon as manifestations of the
stupas at Borobudur same spiritual being. The blending of the two religions continued until the 14th
century, when Islam, brought by Muslim traders primarily from South Asia,
emerged as the dominant religion along the coasts of Java and Sumatra. By the 15th century, Islam had
gained a firm footing in coastal areas of other islands of the archipelago as well.

Throughout all the religious changes on the court level, the common people adopted part of each new religion
as an additional layer on top of their traditional local beliefs. Consequently, Islam is expressed differently in
Indonesia than it is in the Middle East. The religion is most strictly practiced in Aceh, western Sumatra,
western Java, southeastern Kalimantan, and some of the Lesser Sunda Islands. On Java, Muslims who follow
orthodox practices are referred to as the santri. By contrast, the abangan adhere to a more syncretic
tradition, strongly influenced by ancestral beliefs and practices. With the growth of a more religion-conscious
middle class, especially since the late 20th century, the abangan way of believing has been in retreat, while
more-orthodox Muslim practices have been on the rise. However, the many local rituals connected with birth,
death, and marriage are carefully observed by people at all levels, and ceremonies (selamatan) are held on all
special occasions.

Settlement patterns
Rural settlement
Nearly half of Indonesia’s population lives in rural areas. Because volcanoes
play a major role in soil development and enrichment, there is a strong
relationship between agricultural development, density of population, and
location of volcanoes. The greatest concentration of active volcanoes is on Java,
and the greatest population densities occur in areas such as those to the south
Indonesia: Urban-rural and east of Mount Merapi, 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 islands of Java, Madura, and Bali have a highly
systematized 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 small
communities that engage in subsistence agriculture.

On Java the most common settlement is the rural village, with its rice paddies
that spread across the flatland and in many places rise up the hillsides in
terraces. Scattered throughout the countryside are clusters of coconut, palm,
and fruit trees, which indicate the location of villages. In the heavily populated
areas of central and eastern Java, there are thousands of such settlements,
Java, Indonesia some of which have sizable populations.

The people of each village form a group that is homogeneous both in economic conditions and in social

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interest and outlook. In many cases, 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,
sharecroppers, or temporary workers in the cities.
Bali, Indonesia: rice paddies
Each Javanese village has a stream or a well as its source of water, a mosque
and an elementary school, and a network of swept-earth paths. There is little formal commercial activity;
goods are obtained from peddlers and small shops (warung) 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. Some Dayak

settlements in Kalimantan, for instance, have maintained traditional multiunit
longhouses, often alongside the newer single-family homes—the construction of
which has been strongly encouraged by the government. Balinese villages are
clusters of walled family complexes with Hindu shrines, public buildings, and
North Kalimantan, Indonesia: larger temples. The Batak villages around Lake Toba in northern Sumatra, the
longhouse
Minangkabau villages in western Sumatra, and the Toraja villages in southern
Celebes all have their characteristic structures and building styles as well.

Like settlement structure, rural social patterns vary considerably across the
Indonesian archipelago. On Java there are few organized groupings above the
level of the household, while villages on neighbouring Bali have an array of
groups related to working, dancing, and other functions, many of which are
associated with Hindu festivals. Many Dayak communities use a system of
Toraja reciprocal labour to work the rice fields during particularly labour-intensive
phases of the agricultural cycle (e.g., clearing, planting, and harvesting).

The rural mode of life is controlled by the growing season and by the productivity of the land. Farming
practices range from the shifting agriculture of many inland groups through small-scale farming (of sago,
cassava, rice, and other crops) to the mechanized agriculture of large plantations. In some cases these
activities are combined with some form of cottage industry. Most rural Indonesians are small-scale 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. Nevertheless, although there is some regional variation in urban
growth rates, cities of every population size are, for the most part, growing rapidly.

With the exception of most of the largest urban areas (e.g., Jakarta, Surabaya, and Medan), few of Indonesia’s
cities 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 settlements that amount to urban kampongs (villages),
maintaining rural customs. Urban dwellers generally have a higher standard of living than their rural
counterparts, 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,

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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, Padang, Palembang, and Makassar (Ujungpandang), are centres of provincial government
and of local trade and, with the exception of Semarang, have relatively limited international ties.

The cities have individual characters. Jakarta, as the country’s capital, largest
city, and centre of finance, has well-maintained and historic buildings, broad
avenues and large fountains, and an increasing number of high-rise hotels and
office buildings. Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city—roughly one-fourth
the size of Jakarta’s urban centre—is a major port and industrial hub. Bandung,
women producing batik cloth a former resort area and military centre, has much light industry, mostly related
to garment production. Bekasi is a rapidly growing city in the greater Jakarta
urban agglomeration. Semarang is the administrative capital and commercial core 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. It also is the site of a major university, Gadjah Mada, and of schools
of art, traditional dance, and music, and it is the centre of the batik cloth industry. In Sumatra, Medan and its
port of Belawan constitute the commercial nexus for the rich northern agricultural districts, and Palembang,
Sumatra’s second largest city, is a major port for the petroleum industry and for a variety of other industries
in the south.

The ethnic composition of Indonesia’s largest cities is highly diverse and reflects the heavy flow of migration
from rural areas. Jakarta shows the greatest diversity; 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. These ethnic ties
often are strengthened by trips to home villages during times of harvest or during the Muslim month of
Ramadan (a period of fasting and atonement).

Indonesia’s urban areas also display great social and economic diversity, which underlies a social hierarchy.
The upper class consists of government officials, military officers, and business leaders with a Western
orientation; the growing middle class includes civil servants, teachers, and other professionals, as well as
skilled workers who typically must struggle to maintain their economic position; and the lower class
comprises a larger number of minimally educated and 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.
There are people born of immigrant families—mainly of Chinese, Indian, or Arab origin—who are more fully
integrated, but each group maintains its own social network and patterns of life. Nonetheless, Indonesia is
gradually becoming a cosmopolitan society. This is most conspicuous in Jakarta and those parts of Bali that
have been fully absorbed into an international socioeconomic matrix. Association with international culture
generally implies a degree of wealth and consequently is largely confined to the families of officials,
professionals, and prominent businessmen.

James F. McDivitt Thomas R. Leinbach Goenawan Susatyo Mohamad

Demographic trends
The distribution and density of the population in Indonesia vary considerably
from region to region; the bulk of the population lives on the western islands of
Java, Bali, and Madura. Overall, the population nearly doubled between the
mid-20th and the early 21st century, with a moderately high rate of growth.
There have been, however, significant regional contrasts in this rate. In Java, for
Indonesia: population density example, population growth has been significantly less than in the outer islands.
A sharp decline in fertility rates also has been evident throughout Indonesia,

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attributable largely to an increase in the age when people marry and the widespread availability of birth
control products. Lower fertility has been especially conspicuous in central Java. Mortality rates have
declined substantially since the mid-20th century, 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
also have dropped.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Indonesia’s age structure was becoming
more evenly distributed. More than one-third of Indonesia’s population was
under age 15 in 1990, but the proportion has been decreasing steadily since
that time. Conversely, the older component of the population has been
increasing, but the average life expectancy and the proportion of those age 65
Indonesia: Age breakdown or older have remained lower than in wealthier countries in Southeast Asia.

Two major migration patterns have become prominent in Indonesia. The first involves the growing flow of
rural 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 also has become common. The second pattern is that of people leaving Java for
the outer islands. The central government facilitated much of this movement (called transmigration),
especially in the last quarter of the 20th century, by sponsoring a program of resettling landless Javanese in
sparsely populated areas, such as Kalimantan. The program was terminated in 2000 because of political and
administrative constraints.

Economy
Indonesia has played a modest role in the world economy since the mid-20th
century, 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, coffee, cocoa, and palm oil; it also produces a wide
batak market range of other commodities, such as sugar, tea, tobacco, copra, and spices (e.g.,
cloves). 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 Indonesia has remained a major importer of manufactured goods, high technology, and technical
skills since the early 1970s, the country’s economic base has shifted from the primary sector to secondary
and tertiary industries—manufacturing, trade, and services. Manufacturing surpassed agriculture in terms of
contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) in the early 1990s and has continued to be the largest single
component of the country’s economy. A significant portion of the national budget has continued to be
allocated to agriculture, however; consequently, the country has remained self-sufficient in rice production
since the mid-1980s.

During the early years of Indonesia’s independence, economic mismanagement and the subordination of
development to political ideals under the “Guided Economy” policy of the country’s first president, Sukarno
(1949–66), 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.

From 1969 to 1998 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, has been a major force in propelling development in areas where
private enterprise has not been immediately forthcoming; the state-owned oil company Pertamina was a
product of these government initiatives. In the late 20th century, the emphasis in the public sector tended
increasingly toward independent, self-financing state enterprises.

Substantial expansion of the private sector has been evident since the mid-1990s. Prior to that time, growth

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generally had been confined to a rather small group of conglomerates, most benefiting from the government’s
favour. Small business was slower to develop. The deregulation of the capital market in the early 1980s
triggered spectacular growth in the stock exchange, but despite the increase in domestic investment, direct
participation in the stock market remained limited to a very small group of investors.

Foreign direct investment spiked in the 1990s but rapidly receded in the aftermath of the Asian economic
crisis sparked by the collapse of the Thai baht in 1997. The government subsequently inaugurated a four-year
national development plan that helped return the economy to its precrisis strength. By 2003 the country was
stable enough to allow the expiration of an economic reform program that had been sponsored by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). A new development strategy involving liberalization in some areas and
limitation of foreign ownership in others has aimed to establish Indonesia as a fully self-sufficient
(swasembada) country in the 21st century.

Agriculture, forestry, 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. Less than one-fifth of the total land surface,
however, is devoted to crop cultivation. Most agricultural land is dedicated to rice or to various cash crops.
Intensive cultivation is restricted to Java, Bali, Lombok, and certain areas of Sumatra and Celebes. In Java
much of the land of the northern coastal and central plains is planted with rice. 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 also are 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 a major portion of the total area under estate production, and most plantations
are located in the island’s northeastern coastal region. 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.

Since the late 20th century there has been a shift from rice toward less-demanding subsistence crops, such
as cassava. Rice has remained the cornerstone of small-scale agriculture, however, and increased production
of it has been an important aim of every economic development plan. The government intervenes in the
marketing of rice to maintain production at an economically viable level. Various “mass guidance” (bimbingan
massal) schemes to broaden the availability of credit and to promote the use of fertilizers and high-yielding
varieties have increased rice output. Although the country is self-sufficient in rice production, there has been
a persistent tendency since the late 1990s to import additional rice.

Private enterprises have joined the government in developing Indonesia’s palm oil and sugar industries, as
well as its fisheries. Large-scale agribusiness is becoming a more important component of the country’s
economy, with increasing government investment. Export of cultivated shrimp from sizable farms in western
Java and southern Sumatra has been a boon to middle-sized businesses. Milkfish also are bred through
aquaculture. Scad, tuna, and mackerel are the primary products of open-sea fishing.

Indonesia has some of the world’s largest tracts of exploitable tropical forest, especially in Kalimantan and
Papua. There are several small areas of deciduous forest and plantations (mostly teak), but most of the trees
are evergreen tropical hardwoods. The production of plywood and veneers has become important for both
domestic consumption and export. Major timber operations are located primarily in Kalimantan, but logging
also occurs on the other large islands; legitimate companies as well as illegal loggers target certain species,
such as meranti (a subspecies of the genus Shorea), which yields an easily workable, relatively lightweight
reddish wood. Teak is extracted mainly from Java.

Since the 1960s the timber industry has grown rapidly, but it has caused considerable damage through
deforestation. Also a threat to the environment are frequent large-scale forest fires, most of which stem from
“slash-and-burn” (swidden) subsistence agriculture or government clearing for plantations; these fires not
only destroy vast areas of vegetation but also generate haze that frequently reaches as far as Singapore and

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peninsular Malaysia. Deforestation and air quality issues prompted environmentalists to urge the Indonesian
government to curtail clear-cutting of trees, to control burning, and to implement reforestation programs.

Resources and power

Indonesia has a large, and in many cases unprospected, variety of mineral deposits. Mining, including the
extraction of oil and natural gas, accounts for roughly one-tenth of the country’s GDP, and through exports
and taxation it contributes substantially to foreign-exchange earnings and development. The mining industry
employs only a tiny fraction of the workforce, however.

Fossil fuels, including petroleum, natural gas, and coal, constitute a major source of revenue. They are
produced primarily in Sumatra and Kalimantan and from offshore sites in the Java and South China seas.
Although refinery production since 1968 has been in the hands of the government-owned petroleum company
Pertamina, foreign oil companies operate under a production-sharing formula. Under this arrangement, the
ownership of oil resources remains with the government of Indonesia, and the foreign companies act as
contractors, supplying the necessary capital. Since the last decades of the 20th century, Indonesia has greatly
expanded its production of coal, to become one of the world’s leading exporters. The sale of liquefied natural
gas is also increasingly important.

In addition to its hydrocarbon reserves, Indonesia’s mineral resources contribute significantly to the
economy. The country is one of the world’s largest producers of tin, deposits of which are found on the
islands of Bangka, Singkep, and Belitung and off the southwestern shore of Kalimantan. Bauxite is mined
mostly 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. Celebes, Halmahera and other islands of the
Moluccas, and Papua are sources of nickel. Manganese is present in central Java and on Sumatra,
Kalimantan, Celebes, and Timor. Major copper deposits are mined in the Jayawijaya Mountains of Papua;
smaller deposits have been found in Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, and Celebes. Most of Indonesia’s gold comes
from Papua.

The bulk of Indonesia’s electrical power is generated from fossil fuels. Until the late 20th century, the
majority of the country’s power was provided by oil or gas. As the government stepped up its production of
coal, however, it also strove to increase the domestic use of that resource. By the early 21st century, less than
half the country’s power stations were fueled by oil or gas. Many plants were coal-driven, some were
hydroelectric, and a small portion of plants were powered by geothermal sources.

Manufacturing
In the early 1970s import substitution (replacement of foreign-produced goods and services with those
produced domestically) and support for the agricultural sector were the two major aims of industrial policy.
Import substitution was geared to commodities such as food, textiles, fertilizers, and cement, and this
required consistent government protection and controls. This policy proved to be both inefficient and
expensive, however, and following the sharp decline in oil revenues in the 1980s, reforms were introduced to
increase the competitive position of Indonesian manufactures in international markets. The government
launched a series of deregulations and encouraged domestic and international private investment. Although
many companies remained in government hands, the state also participated in joint ventures with the private
sector.

As a result, the manufacturing sector has become the single largest contributor to the economy, constituting
well over one-fourth of GDP and employing just over one-tenth of the labour force. A significant proportion of
production is handled by medium- and small-scale privately owned enterprises, which supply consumer
goods. Small-scale workshops manufacture such consumer goods and general products as furniture,
household equipment, textiles, and printed matter. Since the mid-1980s there has been a major shift toward
developing large-scale and high-technology industries, such as telecommunications and electronics;
automobile manufacturing has expanded especially rapidly in the 21st century. The centre of private industry
is in western Java, although considerable development has taken place in Jakarta.

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

Finance
Bank Indonesia, the central bank, is responsible for issuing the rupiah, the national currency. Other major
government-owned institutions include the state savings bank, banks specializing in rural and industrial
development, and a large commercial bank with overseas branches. Each bank is diversified and operates
independently. Private domestic banks and foreign banks also operate in Indonesia. Nonbanking financial
institutions are restricted. Indonesia has stock exchanges in Jakarta and Surabaya.

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. Before the 1980s, Indonesia’s capital market had
been limited to the state-dominated banking system. Subsidized credit and interest rates were used in
accordance with general government priorities, and a credit ceiling was imposed to ensure monetary
stability. The credit ceiling, however, resulted in excess reserves held by state banks and ultimately triggered
a restructuring and deregulation of the banking system.

In 1983 a reform package decontrolled the interest rate and abolished the credit ceiling system. Further
reforms in 1988 liberalized licensing for new banks and lowered reserve requirements. The result was a
dramatic expansion in the number of private banks, their branches, and the banks’ share of total deposits.
The Jakarta Stock Exchange also experienced explosive growth.

The surge, however, was accompanied by a rise in interest rates (both for deposits and for lending), which
effectively stifled domestic investment. In an effort to curb inflation, Bank Indonesia tightened the money
supply, a move that further destabilized the country’s financial sector. When the Asian monetary crisis struck
in 1997, Indonesia’s banking industry was among the first casualties.

In 1998 the government established the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) to extricate the
financial sector from its monumental debt. IBRA accomplished this task largely through the closure and
consolidation of financially precarious banks. The remaining banks then prioritized households and small
businesses in their lending, which stimulated growth in the domestic private sphere. By 2004 the banking
sector had stabilized, the country had returned to a general pattern of economic growth, and IBRA was
dissolved—on schedule.

Trade
A complex and reasonably well-developed commercial sector has existed in
Indonesia for many decades, if not centuries, based on the marketing and
exporting of agricultural produce and on supplying consumer goods and
services to the domestic market. Historically, trade has been dominated by
Indonesian Chinese, although other segments of the population, especially
Indonesia: Major import people from western Sumatra and southern Celebes, also have made notable
sources
contributions.

No longer simply an exporter of agricultural produce, Indonesia has become an

established international supplier of petroleum and petroleum products; rubber
products; garments, shoes, and textiles; wood and wood products (including
paper); machinery of various sorts (including automobiles); and other
commodities, such as electronic products. Primary imports include petroleum
Indonesia: Major export and natural gas, machinery, chemicals, metals, and transport equipment.
destinations
Indonesia’s most important trading partners include Japan, the United States,
Singapore, China, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Australia.

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Services
Services constitute a major segment of the Indonesian economy, generating more than one-third of GDP.
Tourism in particular has emerged as a major source of income, although the industry’s growth suffered
setbacks with the Asian economic crisis in 1997–98 and with multiple terrorist attacks and the outbreak of
avian influenza (bird flu) in the early 21st century.

Labour
Indonesia’s industrialization has not produced strong organized labour. This is attributable in part to a
surplus of labour in the job market; most lower-class Indonesians work in traditional, informal, and marginal
jobs. Political repression under the Suharto presidency (1967–98) also discouraged politically motivated
associations of workers. Rather, the government sought to incorporate functional groups such as those of
farmers and fishermen into a quasi-governmental political party.

Thomas R. Leinbach Goenawan Susatyo Mohamad

Transportation and telecommunications

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. Although 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. The rapid expansion of telecommunications networks, however, has helped mitigate the
insularity of some regions.

Roads and railways

Road transport is the dominant mode of transportation on Indonesia’s islands, especially the smaller ones,
such as Java, Bali, and Madura. Some three-fifths of the country’s roads are paved, and most of these are on
Sumatra, Java, and Bali, where the network of highways meets traffic needs in most areas. Much of the
remaining paved mileage is on Madura, Lombok, and Celebes. Western and central Kalimantan have some
good roads, but in Papua road transport has not developed evenly, owing to the size of the territory and to the
government’s budgetary constraints.

Road traffic has been on the rise as roads have improved and as ownership of automobiles and motorcycles
has increased. Trucks and intercity buses, operated by private enterprises, are central to the transportation
system; using ferries to cross between islands, some cover distances as far as that between Medan in
northern Sumatra and Surabaya in eastern Java. For traveling shorter distances, especially in the urban and
semiurban areas, smaller buses and minivans are popular. In the larger cities, taxis are readily available, but
most people opt to drive their own car, take a motorcycle, or, as a less expensive alternative, ride one of
several types of minivan redesigned to accommodate additional passengers. The least expensive urban
transportation services are provided by individual entrepreneurs who drive a single passenger on the back of
a small motorcycle. In most towns, the becak (pedicab, or pedaled trishaw) remains a prominent feature of
the streets, although this mode of transport is technically prohibited in Jakarta.

The railway, run by a public enterprise, operates mainly on Java and Madura, with less-extensive service on
Sumatra. The demand for train services has remained strong, although geographic features limit the
expansion of the railroads. Comfortable, reliable rail transport between major towns in Java has become a
popular alternative to intercity buses and airlines.

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.

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There are numerous ports, some of which have facilities and water depths that allow large vessels to load and
unload at quayside. The major dry-cargo ports are Tanjung Priok, 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 the south
coast of Kalimantan.

Although Indonesia has scores of airports, few of them offer international service. Most international flights
operate out of Jakarta and Yogyakarta in Java, Medan in Sumatra, Denpasar in Bali, and Balikpapan in
Kalimantan. Major cities in Sumatra and Celebes also have limited service to Singapore and Malaysia.
Scheduled services are provided by several companies, the most important of which are Garuda Indonesia
(the national airline) and the privately owned Lion Air, both of which offer domestic and international flights.
Merpati, also state owned, offers domestic service only.

Telecommunications
Since the late 1970s, immediate links between distant places in Indonesia have been established through
telecommunications technology. The use of satellites, purchased by Indonesian public and private
telecommunications companies, revolutionized the system. A unique solution to the general lack of
telecommunications facilities was the establishment of neighbourhood wartel (“telephone shops”), where
customers can make domestic or international calls and send or receive faxes for a time-based fee. However,
with the rapidly expanding use of cell phones—which has far outstripped that of standard telephones—the
wartel are playing a less critical role in the Indonesian telecommunications system. An increase in Internet
usage has been attributable largely to the introduction of warnet (“Internet shops”) in major cities. Like
wartel, these shops typically charge by the length of time used.

Government and society

The Republic of Indonesia was declared in 1945, with a proclaimed jurisdiction over the present area from
Sabang in Sumatra to Merauke in Papua, or the entire area of the former Dutch (or Netherlands) East Indies.
Although the Netherlands retained possession of a large part of this region (including Papua), a provisional
capital was established in Yogyakarta, 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 “unitary”—or more centralized—form of government, as well as to the name Republic
of Indonesia. After some difficulties, the constitution of 1945 was reinstated by presidential decree. This
constitution has remained the basis of Indonesia’s government, although some significant amendments were
made during a period of reformasi (reformation) around the turn of the 21st century.

Constitutional framework
The 1945 constitution invests most of the power in the executive branch of the government, particularly in
the president, who is assisted by a vice president and a cabinet. The constitution also provides for a body of
presidential advisers, called the Supreme Advisory Council (Dewan Pertimbangan Agung)—the advice of
which is not legally binding, however—as well as a presidentially appointed Supreme Audit Board (Badan
Pemeriksa Keuangan), which controls state finance. Until 2002 the president and vice president 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 both leaders were to be directly elected. In addition,
legislation passed in 1999 limited the president to two five-year terms.

Cabinet ministers are appointed by the president. Ministries manage broad areas, such as economic affairs,
foreign affairs, defense, education, agriculture, information, and religious affairs. The number of ministers
and the nature of their areas of assignment depend on the president. In addition to appointing the cabinet,
the president is the supreme commander of the army, the navy, and the air force. The president also has the
authority to introduce bills, issue regulations, implement acts, and make agreements with foreign countries.

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The MPR constitutes the legislative branch of Indonesia’s government; it is primarily responsible for
interpreting the constitution and the broad lines of state policy. Formerly unicameral, the MPR has been a
bicameral body since the elections of 2004, with the Council of the People’s Representatives (Dewan
Perwakilan Rakyat; DPR) as the lower house and the Council of Regional Representatives (Dewan Perwakilan
Daerah; DPD) as the upper house. About four-fifths of the MPR’s seats belong to the lower house. Members of
the DPD are elected directly from a nationwide pool of nonpartisan candidates, and members of the DPR are
directly elected through a province-based proportional system that allows voters to cast ballots for
individuals as well as particular parties. All legislators serve five-year terms.

Local government
Indonesia is divided into some 30 propinsi, or provinsi (provinces), plus the two daerah istimewa (special
districts) of Yogyakarta in central Java and Aceh in northern Sumatra and the daerah khusus ibukota (special
capital district) of metropolitan Jakarta, known as Jakarta Raya. On the smaller islands, most administrative
regions were created to coincide with traditional regions, the boundaries of which were defined largely by
natural geographic features; on the larger islands, by contrast, administrative boundaries were constructed
to simplify complex traditional and cultural divisions. The province of Central Java (Jawa Tengah), for
instance, spans not only the core of the island of Java but also the core of Javanese culture. Within the
province’s borders lie the semiautonomous special district of Yogyakarta and the city of Surakarta (Solo),
both of which are historical court centres that maintain traditional rulers (albeit without real political power).
Similarly, the provinces of West Java (Jawa Barat) and Banten, on the western part of the island, coincide with
the geographic, cultural, and linguistic terrain of the Sundanese people.

The number of first-order political subdivisions has changed since the end of the 20th century. East Timor
(declared a province in 1976) gained its independence in 1999. In addition, largely as a result of the push to
decentralize in the early 21st century, several new provinces were created out of the existing structure. The
province of Banten (2000) was formed from the western tip of West Java. West Papua (Papua Barat; 2006)
was created from the western end of Papua. North Kalimantan (Kalimantan Utara; 2012) was split off from
East Kalimantan. New provinces in Celebes included Gorontalo (2000; government installed in 2001) on the
northern peninsula and West Sulawesi (Sulawesi Barat; 2004) in the island’s west-central coastal region. The
Riau Islands (Kepulauan Riau; 2002; government installed in 2004) and Bangka Belitung (2000; government
installed in 2001) were created from islands off Sumatra’s eastern shore.

Each of the more than 300 second-order subdivisions, kabupaten (regencies), is headed by a bupati
(governor) and has a local legislature. More than 5,000 third-order divisions, kecamatan (districts), and
several dozen kota (cities) have obtained autonomous status. Since 1999 district and city leaders have been
chosen through direct local elections. Members of the Local Councils of Representatives (Dewan Perwakilan
Rakyat Daerah), which deal more directly with the national legislature, also are selected through general
election.

Villages (kampung) and groups of villages (desa), which exist in both rural and urban areas, provide the link
between the people and the central government on the district level. Kampung and desa heads are usually
elected in rural areas and appointed in urban ones; they are all local government employees. Normally, a
village has two levels of neighbourhood organization, a rukun warga (RW; community association) and rukun
tetangga (RT; neighbourhood associations). These bodies elect their chairpersons.

Justice
In Indonesia’s judicial system the Supreme Court (Mahkamah Agung) in Jakarta is the final court of appeal;
high courts, which are located in principal cities, deal with appeals from district courts. Supreme Court
judges are chosen by the president, who selects from nominees presented by the Judicial Commission, a
special body whose members are appointed by the upper house. The chief justice and his or her deputies are
chosen from among the Supreme Court justices by the justices themselves. According to the original 1945
constitution, the Supreme Court does not have the power of judicial review. In 2003, however, the
Constitutional Court (Mahkamah Konstitusi) was established to review and to rule on cases involving charges

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against the president. Judges are members of the civil service and are managed by the Supreme Court, but
they also are supervised by the Judicial Commission. The National Ombudsman Commission, established in
2000, deals with offenses committed by the state.

Under the colonial administration, the law was a mixture of Dutch law and local customary law—adat. Since
independence, criminal law has been codified for all of Indonesia. Civil law, however, has continued to be
based largely on adat, which varies from one region and ethnic group to another. 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
courts handle both civil and criminal cases. Muslims may choose to use Islamic law in some civil cases; since
the mid-1970s religious law has applied to all civil matters dealing with marriage.

Political process
Indonesia’s political process is shaped by the country’s turbulent political history. 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 beset by unforeseen political problems. Sukarno—Indonesia’s first national figure and first
president—dissolved the elected assembly, introduced a concept known as Guided Democracy, and reinstated
the 1945 constitution in 1959. The period of Guided Democracy was marked by the creation of a plethora of
ministries, by the rise of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia; PKI) to a position of
political dominance, and by the emergence of the army as a major anticommunist political force. The
structure collapsed with an attempted coup d’état in 1965, which led to the downfall of Sukarno. Under
Suharto, Sukarno’s successor, Indonesia entered a new political era, officially called the New Order.

After a period of stabilization and restructuring, in which the army 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 groups—including nonparty associations of farmers, fishermen, civil servants,
cooperatives, religious groups, students, the armed forces, and veterans—that was allowed to participate in
the electoral process on the same level as political parties. Backed by the power of the military, the
bureaucracy, and a large budget, Golkar came out of the poll as a single majority. (Golkar went on to win
every subsequent election until 1999, when for the first time in Indonesian history an independently
monitored election took place.)

In the early years of the Suharto presidency the political process was directed primarily by the government;
as the New Order matured, however, power came to rest almost exclusively in the person of the president.
After the 1971 election, the existing political parties were consolidated to form two officially recognized
parties, the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan; PPP) and the Indonesian Democratic
Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia; PDI). Technically, these parties were to base their political platforms on
the national ideology of Pancasila (Five Principles)—belief in one god, nationalism, democracy,
humanitarianism, and social justice—also upheld by Golkar. Unlike Golkar, however, the political parties were
prohibited from establishing chapters at the grassroots level.

The end of the New Order and of the Suharto presidency in 1998 triggered a major transformation in
Indonesia’s political process. New election laws allowed for independent monitoring of elections; restrictions
on the creation of political parties were lifted at all levels; members of the bureaucracy were permitted to
choose a party other than Golkar; and the military was forbidden from siding with any one political group.
The 1999 election was both euphoric and peaceful, with the PDI (now adding “Perjuangan” [“Struggle”] to its
name to become the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle; PDIP), Golkar, and the National Awakening
Party (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa; PKB) emerging as the top parties, with no single majority. These three
parties have remained strong, although since the end of the 20th century several others have gained
popularity alongside them. Among these are the Democratic Party (Partai Demokrat; PD), which became the
presidential party in 2004, the National Mandate Party (Partai Amanat Nasional; PAN), and the Justice and
Prosperity Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera; PKS).

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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 age 21 may stand for elections. Elections are direct and
voting is by secret ballot.

Security
The Indonesian armed forces were founded shortly after the country’s declaration of independence in August
1945. The original forces were made up of soldiers who had been trained by the Dutch and Japanese armies
as well as the armed militia groups that had fought a guerrilla war to wrest Indonesia permanently from
Dutch control. Under the Sukarno and Suharto presidencies, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia
(Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia; ABRI) comprised the army, the navy, the air force, and the police.

Following the Suharto presidency, the armed forces returned to one of their pre-Sukarno names, the National
Army of Indonesia (Tentara Nasional Indonesia; TNI), and the police were split into a separate unit. The army,
constituting more than three-fourths of the forces, has remained the largest segment of the TNI. Men must
be at least 18 years old to join the armed forces; selective compulsory service requires a commitment of two
years.

The political role of the armed forces increased significantly in the second half of the 20th century, with the
ABRI, and later the TNI, justifying their political involvement by citing the so-called dwi-fungsi (dual function)
doctrine. This doctrine declared it both the right and the duty of the military to take part in most political
decision-making processes in Indonesia.

As the political power of the military grew, however, the allocation of state funds for defense development
declined. The government’s rationale in cutting its military spending was to promote peaceful relations with
neighbouring countries; it meant to establish territorial control through political intervention, with the aid of
a powerful intelligence network, rather than through the use of force.

Its small budget ultimately forced the TNI to find other sources of income. Widespread corruption ensued as
the military abused its associations with foundations and government firms. Finally, the TNI was removed
from the political process with the reformation of the MPR in 2004: all seats in the legislature that were once
reserved for the military were eliminated.

Health and welfare

Indonesia has a national health care network that offers treatment either free of charge or for a nominal cost
through several types of medical facilities. District medical centres, the most comprehensive of which
combine general medical clinics with maternal and child-health centres, provide services in family planning,
school health, nutrition, communicable-disease control, health statistics, environmental health, health
education, dental health, and public-health nursing. The district centres also supervise the community and
village health centres (puskesmas), which are the primary health providers in rural areas. A third type of
public medical facility is the posyandu, an integrated health-service post that is designed to serve those
whose health is most at risk. 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.

In general, the cost of specialized health care, as provided by private hospitals and doctors, is beyond the
reach of Indonesians in both the low- and middle-income groups. A government-sponsored health insurance
system for specialized care was introduced in the late 20th century, but has been slow to cover people
working in small private companies or in the informal sector. Many companies provide medical assistance to
employees, but there is no legal requirement to do so.

Most of the major communicable diseases in Indonesia are well under control. Malaria and tuberculosis are
no longer persistent health problems, but outbreaks of dengue and cholera still occur. Heart problems and
strokes have become more common, owing at least in part to changes in diet that have accompanied
economic growth since the 1970s. Cancer also has become more widespread. Drug addiction has increased
notably, particularly among young people in the urban centres, and there has been a sharp rise in HIV
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infection and cases of AIDS, especially since the end of the 20th century.

One of the most serious public health problems is the shortage of medical and paramedical personnel, mainly
nurses and midwives. Although all new graduates of the government’s medical schools are required to work
for one year in rural areas, few doctors choose to stay in such regions after fulfilling their service obligation.
Outside the major urban centres, many people use traditional healers, called dukun. An indigenous midwife
(paraji or dukun beranak), often with limited training, assists many of the births in Indonesia; extensive
training programs have been implemented to bring the paraji toward the standards of qualified midwives.
Such programs contributed to a significant drop in the infant mortality rate—from well above to well below
the world average—from the mid-20th to the early 21st century.

Another important public health issue, family planning (keluarga berancana; commonly called “KB”),
conceptually 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, typically through clinics that are run by the Department 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, concrete, or
raised wood, while wooden framing supports walls of woven bamboo matting;
the roofs are of dried palm fibre, tiles, or wood. 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.
wooden houses in Long Segar
Although most of the population is nonurban, the major housing problems are in
the cities. In their desire to escape the restraints of the traditional rural life and seek the opportunities of the
cities, most rural-to-urban migrants tolerate living conditions that are less attractive than those of the
country.

The larger cities, such as Jakarta, Surabaya, and Bandung, are the ones with the greatest housing problems.
While there has been tremendous suburban housing development, pitched primarily to new members of the
middle class, the urban areas themselves lack satisfactory housing, as well as a dependable supply of water
and adequate school and health facilities. Pockets of substandard temporary housing in densely populated
lower-income urban areas have become permanent settlements, blending with established neighbourhoods.
Such lower-income settlements, called kampung in the manner of their rural counterparts, typically consist of
a cluster of small brick houses that procure their own water and often tap electricity illegally from the power
supply of the national electric company. Subsidized housing is provided by some employers, including
government ministries, for a limited number of employees.

Education
Before the country’s independence, educational opportunities for Indonesians
were limited even on the primary and secondary levels. The Dutch colonial
government did not provide university-level education to most Indonesians. Only
a select few received their degrees in the Netherlands. Although a
postsecondary technical school—now the Bandung Institute of Technology—was
Bandung Institute of established in 1920, student enrollment was extremely limited. Since
Technology
independence, however, the government has placed great emphasis on primary,
secondary, and higher education for all people. By the early 21st century the
great majority of Indonesians were literate.

Responsibility for education is centred in the Department of National Education, but other government
bodies, especially the Department of Religious Affairs, also administer extensive educational programs. The
national educational system involves six years of primary education, beginning at age seven, followed by six
years of secondary education, which are divided into two three-year blocks. Since the early 1990s the first

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nine years have been compulsory. Although the economic crisis of the late 1990s prevented many children
from furthering their formal studies, Indonesians are generally inclined to allocate a high percentage of their
family budget for education, since schooling has become a reliable path to improved socioeconomic standing.

Higher education includes dozens of public institutions and thousands of private postsecondary schools, with
the private institutions expanding most rapidly since the 1970s. Enrollment is about evenly distributed
between men and women. Major universities include the Bogor Agricultural University, the Bandung Institute
of Technology, the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Hasanuddin
University in Makassar (Ujungpandang), and Airlangga University in Surabaya. While a number of
universities offer postgraduate education, many students go abroad—especially to North America, Europe,
and Australia—to pursue doctoral degrees.

Cultural life
Cultural milieu
Indonesia exhibits a rich diversity of cultural practices and products. The remote interior regions of Sumatra,
Kalimantan, and western New Guinea feature ritualized speech and local epic narrative traditions, while in
Java and Bali the visual and performing arts are heavily influenced by the Hindu epics Mahabharata and
Ramayana. In the cities, the mellifluous calls to prayer radiating from mosques, many of which display a
markedly Muslim architectural style, coexist with the flashing lights and vibrant sounds of urban popular
culture. These are just a few examples of Indonesia’s truly complex heritage.

The aura of long-gone Hindu-Buddhist empires lingers in many parts of

Indonesia, particularly in Java, Sumatra, and Bali. From the 8th through the
10th century CE, extensive temple complexes (candi) were built in central Java.
Most of these were buried or in ruins, but the government has actively engaged
in their restoration. The remains of the first of the great central Javanese
Borobudur monuments, the Shaivite temple of the Diyeng (Dieng) Plateau, date to the early
8th century. The Shailendra dynasty, which ruled Java and Sumatra (8th–9th
centuries), built the great Mahayana Buddhist monuments, including that of Borobudur. Late in the 9th
century the kings of Mataram built the Hindu monuments around Prambanan. Commonly called Prambanan
Temple, the complex consists of six main temples; the three large ones along the west, dedicated to Shiva,
Vishnu, and Brahma, contain fine statues. Of the three smaller temples along the east, the middle one
contains a statue of Nandi, the bull of Shiva. 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 Ramayana.

Borobudur, designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1991, is one of the

finest Buddhist monuments in the world. It stands on a hill about 20 miles (32
km) northwest of Yogyakarta and rises to a height of approximately 115 feet (35
metres) from its square base, which measures 403 feet (123 metres) on each
side. The monument consists of a lower structure of six square terraces
Borobudur, Indonesia (including its base) 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. Bas-reliefs covering the inner walls and the balustrades
depict stories from Buddhist teachings; many of the images symbolize phases of human life, moving from the
sensual stage at the lower level to the spiritual stage at the top. The circular terraces are not decorated but
contain 72 bell-shaped stupas, each housing a statue of Buddha. In the centre of the upper terrace is the
main stupa, which stands 23 feet (7 metres) high. It contains no statues, other visual images, or relics of any
kind.

Between the 10th and 16th centuries, the centre of power in the archipelago shifted to eastern Java, and
Buddhism merged with Hinduism, which later gave way to Islam. Literature in old Javanese (kawi) flourished
during this period, and a number of large temple complexes were constructed, none of which, however,

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approached the grandeur of Borobudur or Prambanan. The most imposing complex is Panataran Temple near
Blitar, which was constructed at the peak of the Majapahit empire in the 14th century. With the ascendancy
of Islam through the 15th and 16th centuries, the temples fell into ruins, and Hindu culture shifted to Bali,
where it remains today.

The arts
Literature
Indonesia possesses a wealth of verbal art. Much of this material, such as the didong poetry of Aceh or the
tekena’ epic tales of the Kenyah of Kalimantan, is transmitted through oral-traditional performance, as
opposed to printed text. A largely nonwritten tradition of reciting expressive, often witty quatrains called
pantun is common in most Malay areas throughout the archipelago. Some pantun performances are
narrative; the kentrung traditions of central and eastern Java, for instance, use pantun structure to recount
religious or local historical tales to the accompaniment of a drum. In central Java macapat, a metric and
melodic form, is used to present tales from ancient Hindu-Javanese literature as well as stories, images, and
ideas from local sources; the songs may be performed solo or with instrumental accompaniment. Indeed,
much of Indonesia’s traditional literature forms the foundation of complex mixed-genre performances, such
as the randai of the Minangkabau of western Sumatra, which blends instrumental music, dance, drama, and
martial arts in ceremonial settings.

Contemporary Indonesian literature was initiated in the early 1930s by a small group of young writers, who
created the journal Poedjangga Baroe (“The New Writer”). Published in the Indonesian language, as opposed
to Dutch, this literary periodical was devoted to disseminating new ideas and expressions that ran counter to
the type of writing sanctioned by the colonial government. Under the intellectual leadership of S. Takdir
Alisjahbana, a poet, novelist, and philosopher, the contributors to Poedjangga Baroe were committed to the
nationalist cause—to the establishment of a new, modern Indonesia, free from the constraints of local
patterns of cultural expression.

The true modernist temper, however, emerged in the works of Indonesian poets of the early 1940s, with
Chairil Anwar as the leading figure. Although he died young, Chairil transformed the Indonesian literary
scene through the intense imagery of his poetry and through his rebellious stance toward religion and social
convention.

The growth of Indonesian literature suffered some setbacks in the second half of the 20th century under the
Sukarno and Suharto regimes, both of which imposed restrictions on literary activity. Some writers, such as
the internationally recognized novelist and journalist Mochtar Lubis, were jailed for their nonconformity to
governmental ideals and policies. A cinematic work based on a novel by Alisjahbana was prohibited;
Alisjahbana later left the country to live in Malaysia. Especially during the first half of the Suharto
administration, politically liberal writers were imprisoned; the renowned novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer
was detained for more than a decade.

Despite some tumultuous moments in its history, Indonesian literature has remained vibrant. Literary groups
in the larger cities often publish local poetic works. Jakarta produces two of the most prestigious journals of
letters and ideas: Horison (“Horizon”), published since 1966, and Kalam (“The Word”), published since 1994.

Theatre and dance

Most of Indonesia’s oldest theatre forms are linked directly to local literary traditions (oral and written). The
prominent puppet theatres—wayang golek (wooden rod-puppet play) of the Sundanese and wayang kulit
(leather shadow-puppet play) of the Javanese and Balinese—draw much of their repertoire from indigenized
versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. These tales also provide source material for the wayang wong
(human theatre) of Java and Bali, which uses actors. Some wayang golek performances, however, also present
Muslim stories, called menak.

In puppet performances the narrator (dalang) is also the puppeteer and the principal artist of the show. To
animate the characters, the dalang uses an array of vocal qualities and speech styles, from the most refined

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and lyrical to the most coarse and colloquial. An evening of wayang golek or wayang kulit is inevitably a
mixture of poetic elegance and base humour. Javanese and Sundanese performances normally last all night,
starting about 8:00 PM and ending near dawn. Balinese performances are usually shorter.

Playwrights trained in the Western tradition have worked to broaden Indonesians’ experience with theatre. In
the 1960s the company of Willibrordus Rendra was instrumental in inaugurating a stream of innovative,
modernist, and controversial theatre performances that were based to a large extent on Western models.
Much of Rendra’s work involved the adaptation for Indonesian audiences of works by Western playwrights
such as Sophocles, William Shakespeare, Federico García Lorca, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett.

Some theatrical traditions incorporate dance to such an extent that they are typically termed “dance-
dramas.” Of these traditions, the wayang wong and wayang topeng (masked theatre) of Java and Bali, as well
as the Balinese plays recounting the tale of the witch Calonarang, are among the most widely known. Since
independence, Indonesian choreographers trained at the country’s performing arts academies have been well
versed in Western classical ballet and modern dance, in addition to local styles. Consequently, some have
adapted local dance-dramatic works for contemporary audiences. The sendratari, for example, is essentially
an updated form of traditional dance-drama that combines elements of local theatrical genres (including
puppet theatre) with movements, staging, and costumes derived from contemporary styles; in Java, the form
is associated with the Prambanan Temple.

Apart from its crucial role in dance-dramas, Indonesian dance serves many
diverse functions, from the ritual to the purely recreational. Performances may
be subtle and stylized like the female court genres of pakarena in southern
Celebes and srimpi in central Java, graceful yet masculine like the seudati of
Aceh and the kancet laki of the Kenyah of eastern Kalimantan, or
kancet laki demonstrative, dynamic, and interactive like the Balinese jangger, which is
performed by a mixed group of men and women. The vigorous silat (martial
arts) traditions, for which the Minangkabau of western Sumatra and the Sundanese of western Java are
renowned, also embody an element of dance, in that they are performed to a particular type of music and use
conventional movements and choreographies.

Music
Puppet theatre, dance-drama, and some nondance theatrical performances are typically accompanied in Java
and Bali by a gamelan, a metallic percussion ensemble consisting mainly of gongs, metallophones,
xylophones, and drums. Some ensembles also include one or more flutes, zithers, bowed lutes, and vocalists.
When present, one or two kendang (drums) lead the ensemble, giving cues and tempi to the musicians, while
also articulating the movements of the puppets or dancers. Female singers, in Java called pesinden, sit among
the musicians and create the mood for different parts of the narrative. Male singers typically form a chorus
called gerong. In all-night performances, the pesinden usually banter with the puppeteer during the comic
interlude around midnight; the audience also may request particular musical pieces at that time.

Although performances of the metallic gamelan ensembles of Java and Bali are
the most nationally and internationally prominent of Indonesia’s musical
traditions, a great variety of other traditions are found throughout the
archipelago. While some of these traditions are, like the gamelan, gong-based,
others are centred on stringed instruments, wooden or bamboo wind
Kenyah boys playing jatung instruments, or drums, xylophones, or other nonmetallic percussion
utang
instruments. For instance, a matrix of related plucked lute traditions—most
known by a term similar to sampé’ or kacapi—stretches from Sumatra through
Kalimantan to Celebes. The Toba Batak people of Sumatra are known for their tuned drum ensembles,
gondang. In eastern Kalimantan, xylophone-based dance music is a favorite among Kenyah communities.

Many well-established musical traditions of Indonesia incorporate instrumental and vocal elements from
international sources. The gamelan ensemble accompanying a wayang kulit performance may use horns to

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signal the battle scene. The Batak in northern Sumatra and the Ambonese in the Moluccas, both widely
recognized for their vocal virtuosity, use the guitar to accompany most of their singing. Kroncong music,
which flourished during the colonial era and retained its popularity following independence, was a product of
the confluence of western European (particularly Portuguese) and Indonesian cultures; while the guitar and
other Western string instruments constituted the core of kroncong, the manner in which these instruments
were played was reminiscent of gamelan music.

Contemporary Indonesian popular music, consumed mostly (but not entirely) by the young, has made
kroncong a thing of the past. Dangdut, a synthesis of Indian film music, a type of Sumatran Malay music
called orkes Melayu (Malay orchestra), kroncong, and Euro-American popular music, was pioneered in the
1970s primarily by the former rock-and-roll musician Rhoma Irama. The style has continued to develop and
has retained a broad following not only in Indonesia but also in Malaysia. As a type of recreational dance
music, dangdut animates city pubs and various rural festivities across the country.

Visual arts
Encompassing sculpture and carving, painting, textile design, beadwork,
basketry, and other forms, the visual arts of Indonesia are as abundant as they
are diverse. Some of these forms have been shaped by ancient cultures of Asia,
including those of late Zhou dynasty China (12th–3rd centuries BCE) and of
Dong Son Indochina (3rd century BCE). Others have drawn influences from
Nawang Baru, North more-recent cultural contacts. Such interaction, combined with local artistic
Kalimantan, Indonesia
and aesthetic sensibilities, has produced a spectrum of styles that are unique to
the various peoples and regions of the country.

Carving and painting are among the best known of Indonesia’s visual art
traditions. Bali long has been of special interest culturally because it has
maintained Hindu traditions for centuries within a predominantly Muslim
environment. Carvings are visible at nearly every turn; images depicting natural
and supernatural entities from Hindu and indigenous traditions adorn temple
Javanese leather shadow entrances, animate masked-dance and puppet performances, overlook the
puppets
grounds of offices and homes, and populate the shelves and walls of galleries in
the towns and cities. In Java the leather puppets for wayang kulit performances
are fastidiously carved and painted so as to cast a lightly tinted, lacelike shadow when held against an
illuminated screen. In the Dayak villages of Kalimantan some of the important structures are elaborately and
colourfully decorated with dense patterns of intertwined curls. Since the late 20th century, the carved
wooden shields, statues, paddles, and drums of the Asmat people in the interior of western New Guinea have
gained international recognition.

Indonesia also has an especially rich and varied tradition of textile design. 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 designs. It is a time-consuming
Javanese batik pattern
process, and batik fabrics that are patterned entirely by hand take several weeks to
complete. To speed up the process and lower the cost, a copper stamp (cap) may be used in lieu of the
canting to apply the wax. Large-scale production of such stamped batik has become an economically viable
business.

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 permit 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.

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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 (foundation threads running
lengthwise), which is most common and is found in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and
Ikat cloth
Sumba. Weft (threads running widthwise) 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.

Cultural institutions
Although the arts of Indonesia are not—and likely cannot be—documented and preserved exhaustively, a
number of museums house notable collections. The Indonesian National Museum in Jakarta not only
possesses collections of prehistoric and contemporary arts and artifacts from Indonesia, including textiles,
stamps, sculptures, bronzework, and maps, but also contains a major collection of ancient Chinese ceramics.
The Wayang Museum, also in Jakarta, contains important collections that chronicle the history and
development of the country’s traditions of puppet theatre. Other museums documenting regional culture
have been established in major cities (often the provincial capitals) throughout the country.

The Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park (Taman Mini Indonesia Indah; “Taman Mini”), in Jakarta, is a
“living museum” that highlights the current diversity of Indonesia’s peoples and lifestyles. The park contains
furnished and decorated replicas of houses of various ethnic groups in Indonesia; each of these structures is
staffed with appropriately costumed “inhabitants.” Completed in 1975, Taman Mini was one of the first such
institutions in the region; in subsequent decades similar museums were established in other parts of
Indonesia, as well as in other countries of Asia.

An important arts venue in Jakarta, established by the municipal government in 1968, is Ismail Marzuki Park
(Taman Ismail Marzuki; TIM), named after a prominent Jakarta-born composer. The centre has generated a
fresh approach to both tradition and modernism. While offering regular performances of local and regional
arts, TIM also produces modernist theatrical works that typically fuse Indonesian and international idioms. In
1987 the Indonesian government completed the renovation of colonial Schouwburg Weltevreden (1821)
theatre to become the Jakarta Arts Building (Gedung Kesenian Jakarta); this institution also hosts major
musical and theatrical productions from across the globe. Both institutions sponsor an array of international
festivals featuring music, dance, film, spoken word, and other arts.

Sports and recreation

Football (soccer) is among the most popular team sports in Indonesia. Open fields with two goals are common
sights across the country, and even in big cities children and other football enthusiasts find space to play.
Indonesia has won medals at several Southeast Asian Games.

Many of the traditional sports of the archipelago are forms of martial arts.
Pencak silat, which is especially popular on Java and West Sumatra, features
weapons, such as knives and sticks. In the Tana Toraja region of South Sulawesi,
sisemba is a handless form of combat, in which battlers attempt to kick their
opponent into submission. Most spectator sports centre around gambling, and
bull racing cockfighting is common on Bali and Kalimantan. Madura is known for its bull
racing.

Indonesia formed an Olympic committee in 1946 and debuted at the 1952

Games in Helsinki. At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, the country won its first
medal, a silver in archery. Badminton, the national passion of Indonesia, was
introduced as an Olympic sport at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, and the
country dominated the events, capturing five medals, including two golds. The
Susi Susanti gold medals were won by Alan Budi Kusuma and Susi Susanti.

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Media and publishing

Dozens of daily newspapers circulate in Indonesia, primarily in Java and Sumatra. Most are published in
Indonesian, but there are also a few in the English language. Among the dailies with the widest readership
are Pos Kota (“The City Post”), out of Jakarta, Suara Merdeka (“Voice of Freedom”), out of Semarang, and
Sinar Indonesia Baru (“Ray of a New Indonesia”), out of Medan. Since the relaxation of government
regulations at the end of the 20th century, most major Indonesian newspapers have been accessible through
the Internet. The government publishing house, Balai Pustaka, is in Jakarta; numerous private publishers also
operate in Jakarta, as well as in other large cities, mainly on Java.

Broadcasting is regulated by the Directorate-General of Radio, Television, and Film in Jakarta. Radio
Republik Indonesia (RRI) and Televisi Republik Indonesia (TVRI), the country’s largest radio and television
networks, were government-owned until 2000, when they were passed into public hands. Private television
stations have been permitted to operate since the late 20th century, and their number has grown rapidly.

James F. McDivitt Thomas R. Leinbach Goenawan Susatyo Mohamad

History
The archipelago: its prehistory and early historical records
Remains of Homo erectus (originally called Pithecanthropus, or Java man)
indicate that the ancestors of humans already inhabited the island of Java
roughly 1.7 million years ago, when much of the western archipelago was still
linked by land bridges. Some 6,000 years ago a rapid postglacial rise in sea
level submerged these bridges. What remained was the largest island complex
early Indonesian history sites in the world: the Indonesian archipelago.

Not surprisingly, the sea has greatly influenced Indonesian history, and the boat has long been a pervasive
metaphor in the arts and the literary and oral traditions of the islands. Monsoon winds, blowing north and
south of the Equator, have facilitated communication within the archipelago and with the rest of maritime
Asia. In early times timber and spices of Java and the eastern islands were known afar, as were the resins
from the exceptionally wet equatorial jungle in the western islands of Sumatra and Borneo. By the first
centuries CE, goods were already being shipped overseas, and navigable rivers had brought the Indonesian
hinterland into contact with distant markets.

Although records of foreign trade begin only in the early centuries CE, it is possible that people from the
Indonesian archipelago were sailing to other parts of Asia much earlier. The Roman historian Pliny the
Elder’s Natural History suggests that, in the 1st century CE, 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 be a rendition of “Malayu,” a term once broadly applied to
various interior regions and kingdoms of Sumatra. (In contemporary usage and spelling, the term Melayu
refers to Malay peoples.)

Regular voyages between Indonesia and China did not begin before the 5th century CE. Chinese literature in
the 5th and 6th centuries mentions western Indonesian tree produce, including camphor from northern
Sumatra. It also refers to two Indonesian resins as “Persian resins from the south ocean,” which suggests
that the Indonesian products had been added to the existing seaborne trade in resins from western Asia. It is
likely that Indonesian shippers of the time were exploiting southern China’s economic difficulties, incurred as
a result of the region’s having been cut off from the ancient trade route of Central Asia. Small estuary
kingdoms were beginning to prosper as international entrepôts. Although the locations of these kingdoms are
unknown, the commercial prominence of Palembang in the 7th century suggests that the Malays of
southeastern Sumatra had been active in the “Persian” trade with southern China.

Easy overseas communication did not, however, result in the formation of territorially large kingdoms. The

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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 for the people of these estuaries, contact with their neighbours
was more important than any connections they could make with overseas lands. Local groups, endowed with
more or less comparable resources, were most concerned with protecting their separate identities. Such
provincial interests similarly 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 began, many of the coastal and riverine groups of the Indonesian archipelago were
evolving an elementary form of hierarchy, accompanied by artistic symbols of rank. No single group, however,
was large or powerful enough to overrun and occupy neighbouring territories; rather, the various peoples’
energies were absorbed by ever more intensive exploitation of their own natural resources. While those living
on or close to the sea knew that geographic isolation was out of the question, they regarded their maritime
environment as a means of enhancing their well-being through imports or new skills. Their outward
orientation, then, ultimately encouraged the pursuit of local interests rather than inculcating any sense of
belonging to a larger community. Indeed, the structure of Indonesian written and oral sources suggests 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.

Many Indonesian place-names have remained unchanged since the beginning of documented history. In such
places, which were often in close proximity to each other, 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 comprises many regional
histories that only gradually intersect with each other.

The historical fragmentation of the archipelago, which was sustained by its rich climate and accentuated
(rather than diminished) by easy access to the outside world, is evident in Indonesia’s linguistic diversity. The
speakers of Austronesian languages almost certainly drifted into the region in small groups from the Asian
mainland or the Pacific Islands over long periods of time. When they reached the coasts and rivers of the
archipelago, they did not suddenly assume a common identity. On the contrary, they remained scattered
groups, sometimes coexisting with descendants of earlier populations of the Pleistocene Epoch (roughly
1,800,000 to 10,000 years ago), who in their turn had also learned to make economic use of their
environment over an immense span of cultural time. The hundreds of languages within the western branch of
the Austronesian family (which includes most languages of Indonesia) are an index of the manner in which
the peoples of the Indonesian archipelago submitted to the social, economic, and natural realities of their
environment.

Stone or metal inscriptions, together with surviving copies of early religious texts, are the most important
sources of documentary information. However, because these documents are always concerned with specific
places, construction of a comprehensive narrative history of any extensive area is virtually impossible. The
reality behind many interregional relationships, then, necessarily remains a riddle. Nevertheless, the ideas of
noblemen, as articulated in architecture and literature, reflect varying degrees of exposure to influences from
beyond the archipelago. Moreover, they reveal points of intersection in the beliefs and practices of
communities throughout the region; all groups maintained basic assumptions concerning the dependence of
humans on the goodwill of supernatural entities.

Indonesian “Hinduism”
The arrival of Hindu religious conceptions
The ultimate effects of these cross-cultural (and commercial) exchanges with western and especially southern
Asia are usually described collectively as “Hinduization.” It is now held that Hinduism was taken to Indonesia
not by traders, as was formerly thought, but by Brahmans from India who taught Shaivism and the message
of personal immortality. Sanskrit inscriptions, attributed to the 5th and 6th centuries, have been found in

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eastern Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), 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, called raka, were prominent heads of groups of villages in areas where irrigation and
other needs had stimulated intervillage relationships and the development of supravillage authority; the
inscriptions, and also Chinese sources, indicate that some of these rulers were involved in warfare, perhaps
in an effort to extend their influence. The Shaivite Brahmans supervised the worship of the phallic symbol of
Shiva, the linga (lingam), 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 Indian Hinduism of the
time, and they probably 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 Kalimantan. The rulers,
therefore, were encouraged to attribute their worldly successes to Shiva’s grace; the grace was obtained
through devotional exercises offered to Shiva and was likely regarded as the guarantee of a superior status in
the life after death. These Shaivite cults were marks of a privileged spiritual life and a source of prestige and
royal authority.

Indonesian religious conceptions

Indonesians, who had been accustomed to constructing terraced temples—symbolizing holy mountains—for
honouring and burying the dead, would not have been perplexed by the Brahmans’ doctrine that Shiva also
dwelt on a holy mountain. Megaliths that had already been placed on mountain terraces for ritual purposes
would easily have been identified with Shiva’s natural stone linga, the most prestigious of all lingas.
Indonesians, who were already concerned with funerary 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 Shiva’s
abode. The meditative ascetic of Hinduism may have been preceded in Indonesia by the entranced shaman
(priest-healer). In addition, the notion that water was a purifying agent because it had been cleansed by
Shiva’s creative energy on his mountaintop would have been intelligible to mountain-venerating Indonesians,
especially if they already endowed the water flowing from their own gods’ mountain peaks with divinely
fertilizing qualities.

The entrance of the Brahmans into the Indonesian religious framework was likely paved by earlier Buddhist
missionaries to the archipelago, who shared the Hindu concern for religious salvation. The perspectives of
those who first listened to the Brahmans, however, were certainly informed by indigenous religious concepts.
Revered especially as teachers (gurus), the Brahmans gained the confidence of Indonesians by demonstrating
ways to achieve religious goals that were already important in the indigenous system of beliefs.

Nevertheless, 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 as oral tradition, would have been drawn from especially
when courtly literati were seeking to describe those rulers who had achieved an intense personal relationship
with Shiva. The Indonesians, like other early Southeast Asian peoples, had no difficulty in identifying
themselves with the universal values of Hindu civilization as represented by the sacred literature. While
Indian literary and legal works provided useful guidelines for Indonesian creative writing, 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.

India, then, 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 Malay kingdom of Srivijaya-Palembang

The kingdom of Srivijaya is first mentioned in the writings of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim I-ching, who

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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 Nalanda in northeastern India. The ruler of Srivijaya assisted I-ching on his
journey.

Archaeological surveys undertaken since the late 20th century immediately to the west of Palembang city
have revealed such a quantity of materials as to make it practically certain that this was Srivijaya’s heartland
in the 7th and subsequent three centuries. Surface remains of more than a thousand shards of Chinese
ceramics, many 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 area may represent shifts of political
and commercial activity in the Palembang region. 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 CE, has been discovered in Palembang near the river; the same ware has been found in Java
near Jakarta. Moreover, the sheer bulk of Buddhist, Hindu, and other statuary that has been recovered from
the Musi River region has suggested that the basin contained the site of a polity near the sea that enjoyed
considerable international contacts. Finally, stupa remains have been unearthed at the foot of Seguntang Hill.
These discoveries reinforce the textual evidence that Palembang was indeed the centre of the Srivijaya
empire.

Buddhism in Palembang
Srivijaya-Palembang’s importance both as a trade nexus and as a Southeast Asian centre for the practice of
Buddhism has been established by Arab and Chinese historical sources spanning a long period of time. Its
own records, in the form of inscriptions in Old Malay (Malay language written in an Indian-based script), are
limited almost entirely to the second half of the 7th century. 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 intrigue 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 at which to begin
studying Buddhist texts. The 7th-century inscriptions, however, are concerned with less-scholarly features of
Buddhism. Showing influences of Vajrayana, or Tantric Buddhism, they deal largely with yantras, symbols to
aid magical power that were distributed by the ruler as favours to faithful servants. (Some of the ruler’s
adversaries also dispensed yantras, however.) 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, is especially indicative of the presence
of Buddhism within the context of royal power. 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. This 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 Mahayana 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 important, the Malays’ quick perception of Tantrism 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 prestige that was accorded the sacred Seguntang Hill, a
site visited by those in search of spiritual power, probably also reflects the vitality of Malay religion; it is
unlikely that the site would have become such a spiritual centre merely as a result of traffic in Tantric
conceptions during the 7th century. The agitation and adversity revealed in the inscriptions, then, 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

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In the centuries before they undertook long voyages overseas, the Chinese relied on foreign shipping for their
imports, and foreign merchants from afar 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. As illustrated by the militancy of the ruler in the Old Malay
inscriptions, however, the rulers of Palembang, hoping for a revival of trade under the new T’ang dynasty,
were eager to monopolize the China trade and eliminate their rivals. They indeed succeeded in their aim;
before I-ching left Southeast Asia in 695, Srivijaya had gained control of the Strait of Malacca.

The subsequent power of the higher-ranking rulers—the maharajas—of Srivijaya 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
with the interests of the maharajas; the islanders therefore refrained from molesting merchant ships, and
they cooperated in controlling Srivijaya’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 largesse 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 then, 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 Bangka Strait and the offshore
islands at the southern entrance of the Strait of Malacca would have been essential to their maritime power.
According to 7th-century inscriptions, the rulers also had influence in southern Sumatra on the Sunda Strait.
Elsewhere in the hinterland, including the Batanghari River basin, which came to be known as Malayu (along
with other regions of Sumatra’s interior), their authority would have been exercised by alliances with local
chiefs or by force, with decreasing effect the farther 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,
Srivijaya-Palembang ceased to be the chief estuary kingdom in Sumatra. Hegemony had passed, for unknown
reasons, to the neighbouring estuary town of Jambi, on the Batanghari River, which was probably controlled
by the Minangkabau people of the island’s west-central 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 Srivijaya-Palembang had done, and in the 13th century a Javanese
prince took advantage of the power vacuum.

Central Java from c. 700 to c. 1000

Eastern Javanese inscriptions throw little light on happenings before the 10th century, but the evidence from
south-central Java, especially from the Kedu Plain in the 8th and 9th centuries, is more abundant. This period
in central Java is associated with the Shailendra dynasty and its rivals. An Old Malay inscription from north-
central Java, attributed to the 7th century, establishes that the Shailendras were of Indonesian origin and not,
as was once suspected, from mainland Southeast Asia. In the middle of the 9th century, the ruler of Srivijaya-
Palembang was a Shailendra who boasted of his Javanese ancestors; the name Shailendra 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 Srivijaya.

In spite of ambiguous references to Shailendra 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

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of the Kedu Plain are the most famous in Indonesia. The Borobudur temple complex, in honour of Mahayana
Buddhism, contains 2,000,000 cubic feet (56,600 cubic metres) of stone and includes 27,000 square feet
(2,500 square metres) of stone bas-relief. Its construction extended from the late 8th century to the fourth or
fifth decade of the 9th. Shiva’s great temple at Prambanan, though not associated with the Shailendra family,
is less than 50 miles (80 km) 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.

Borobudur is a terraced temple surmounted by stupas, or stone towers; the terraces resemble Indonesian
burial foundations, indicating that Borobudur was regarded as the symbol of the final resting place of its
founder, a Shailendra, 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 Shiva, just as the founder of the Borobudur monument had joined the Buddha.
Divine attributes, however, had been ascribed to kings during their lifetimes. A Mahayana 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 Srivijaya in the 7th century; a 9th-century Shaivite inscription from the Kedu Plain describes a ruler
as being “a portion of Shiva.”

The divine qualities of these kings, whether of Mahayana or of Shaivite

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
standing deity 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 Borobudur monument, illustrating Mahayana texts and especially the Gandavyuha—the
tale of the tireless pilgrim in search of enlightenment—is a gigantic exposition of the Mahayana path to
salvation taken by the king; it may be thought of as a type of yantra to promote meditation and ultimate union
with the Buddha. But Borobudur can also be identified as a circle, or mandala, of supreme mystical power
associated with the Vairocana Buddha (one of the self-born Dhyani-Buddhas), according to the teachings of
Vajrayana Buddhism. The mandala was intended to protect the Shailendra 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 Shiva, the Great Teacher—the customary Indonesian representation of the supreme deity.
Prambanan affirms the Shaivite 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 Shiva. Thus, in Java,
Shaivism as well as Mahayana Buddhism had become hospitable to Tantric influences. An almost
contemporary inscription from the Ratu Baka plateau, which is not far from the Prambanan complex,
provides further evidence of Tantrism; it alludes to special rites for awakening Shiva’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 Shiva or a subordinate member of
Shiva’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 Shaivism and Mahayana Buddhism meant that over the centuries
the divine character of the king was 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 Shiva-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

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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 raka (local rulers) 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 would earn 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 c. 1000 to c. 1300

Documentation in the form of inscriptions and monuments ceased in central Java after the beginning of the
10th century. For a period of more than 500 years, little is known of events in central Java, and simultaneous
developments in western Java and in the eastern hook of the island have also remained a mystery. Evidence of
the events of these years comes almost exclusively from the Brantas River valley and the adjacent valleys of
eastern Java. This abrupt shift in the locus of documentation has never been satisfactorily explained.

Government and politics

Eastern Java did not form a natural political unit. No single town was so exceptionally endowed in local
resources as to emerge as a permanent capital; instead, the residencies of defeated kings were simply
abandoned. There remains no trace of the location of some of these royal compounds. The problems of
government in these conditions are illustrated by the events of the 11th century.

In 1016 the city of the eastern Javanese overlord was destroyed, likely by a rebellious vassal, in what an
inscription of 1041 (called the “Calcutta” inscription) described as “the destruction of the world.” The
kingdom consequently fell apart, but it was restored by the dead king’s son-in-law Erlangga (Airlangga), a
half-Balinese prince. Erlangga lived with hermits, probably practicing asceticism, from 1017 to 1019, the year
in which he was hailed as ruler of the small principality of Pasuruan, near the Brantas delta. He could not
take the military offensive until 1028, however, and his final success was not before 1035; he dispatched his
last opponent by provoking an uprising in the manner taught by Kautilya, the master of Indian statecraft who
recommended the use of subversion against an enemy. Erlangga’s victories gradually vindicated his claims to
divine power, and in the “Calcutta” inscription he expressed the hope that all in the land would now be able
to lead religious lives.

Erlangga 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, Kadiri, or Daha, and the
other over the northern part, Janggala. Erlangga’s sons refused to honour their father’s intentions. Fighting
broke out, and the Kadiri rulers were unable to establish their uneasy domination over the kingdom until the
early 12th century. The consequences of Erlangga’s decision to split the kingdom are mourned in the
Nagarakertagama, a poem written in 1365 that survives in a manuscript found in Lombok at the end of the
19th 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

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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 local 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 council of high-ranking officials, whose services were rewarded with appanages from
royal lands. Of the council members, the king’s heir seems to have been the most important. Council officials
conveyed royal decisions to subordinates, typically by visiting village elders while making a circuit of the
country.

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 into 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 Kadiri princes of the 12th century ruled over a land that was never free from rebellion. In 1222 the king
Kertajaya was defeated by an adventurer, Ken Angrok. A new capital was established, with Ken Angrok as
king, at Kutaraja—later renamed Singhasari—near the harbours of east Java.

The empire of Kertanagara

Changed economic circumstances in the archipelago had an important impact on Java beginning in the 13th
century. 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 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 from the 12th to the 14th century attest to the existence of an important trading centre at Kota
Cina, near present-day Medan on the northeast coast of Sumatra. As a result of these shifts in the trade
pattern, the Minangkabau princes in the hinterland of central Sumatra, heirs to the pretensions of the great
overlords of Srivijaya-Palembang, were unable to develop their port of Jambi as a rich and powerful
mercantile centre. A power vacuum thus opened 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, and Old Javanese (Kawi)
became the language of the inscriptions of the island of Bali in the 11th century. The grafting of Tantric ritual
onto a megalithic shrine at Bongkisam in Sarawak (part of Malaysian Borneo), sometime after the 9th
century, is indicative of Javanese cultural diffusion to 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 the archipelago 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

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to an image of the king in the guise of the wrathful Aksobhya Buddha (a self-born Dhyani-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 Shiva-Buddha. They believed that he had tapped within himself demonic
forces that enabled him to destroy the demons that sought to divide Java. The 14th-century poet Prapancha,
author of the Nagarakertagama and a worshipper of Kertanagara, on one occasion referred to the king as the
“Vairocana Buddha” and associated him with a ritual consort who was, however, the consort of Aksobhya
Buddha. Prapancha also admired 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 Shiva, the teacher of asceticism.
Early in the 13th century King Angrok, according to a later chronicle, regarded himself as the Bhatara Guru,
the divine teacher who was equated with Shiva. Shaivite and Mahayana priests had been under royal
supervision from at least as early as the 10th century. Consequently, the Tantric concept of a Shiva-Buddha,
taught by Kertanagara, was not regarded as extraordinary. Javanese religious speculation had come to
interpret Shaivism and the Mahayana 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, were in 13th-century Java by no
means eccentric or contradictory features. Indeed, such religious and political authority enabled Kertanagara
to take advantage of circumstances stemming from Chinese trade in the archipelago to extend his divine
power beyond Java itself. By the 14th century the homage of overseas rulers to the Javanese king was taken
for granted.

The Majapahit era

In 1289 the Javanese king Kertanagara maltreated Kublai Khan’s envoy, who
had been sent to demand the king’s submission. The Mongol emperor organized
a punitive expedition in 1292, but Kertanagara was killed by a Kadiri 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
terra-cotta head of Gajah the Mongols to his own advantage and then forced them to withdraw in
Mada
confusion. The capital city of the kingdom was moved to 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 Tribhuvana (c. 1328–50), 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 Rajasanagara.

Hayam Wuruk’s reign (1350–89) is remembered in the archipelago as the most glorious period in Javanese
history. Prapancha’s poem the Nagarakertagama provides a rare glimpse of the kingdom from a 14th-century
point of view. The poem, originally called the Desa warnana (“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 the divinity that was 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

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surveillance through their incorporation into the court administration. Although a network of royal religious
foundations was centred in the capital, it remains unclear whether a 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. Prapancha, at least, did not ascribe to Hayam Wuruk an unrealistic degree of
authority, even though his poem is an undisguised representation of the attributes of royal divinity and the
effects of divine rule in Java. In their travels around the kingdom, subordinate officials asserted their 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
Prapancha, “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, visit holy men in the
countryside for his own spiritual enlightenment, and worship at Mahayana, Shaivite, and ancient Javanese
holy sites. His indefatigable traveling, at least in the earlier years of his reign, meant that many of his
subjects had the opportunity to come into the presence of one whom they regarded as the receptacle of
divinity.

One of the most interesting sections of the Nagarakertagama 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, enabled 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 went to Majapahit to pay homage and to 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. Prapancha, believing that the king’s glory extended in all directions, delineated in
detail what he perceived to be the limits of relevant space. No fewer than 25 places in Sumatra are noted,
and the Moluccas, whose spices and other products were 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 an opportunity to
repudiate 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 Srivijaya-Palembang had provided
centuries earlier. He may even have announced himself as a bodhisattva and heir of the maharajas of
Srivijaya. The Javanese expelled him from Palembang, and he fled to Singapore and then to Malacca on the
Malay Peninsula.

Islamic influence in Indonesia

Muslim kingdoms of northern Sumatra
Foreign Muslims had traded in Indonesia and China for many centuries; a Muslim tombstone in eastern Java
bears a date corresponding to 1082. However, substantial evidence of Islam in Indonesia exists only from the
end of the 13th century, in northern Sumatra. Two small Muslim trading kingdoms existed by that time at
Samudra-Pasai and Perlak. A royal tomb at Samudra-Pasai, dating to 1297, is inscribed entirely in Arabic. By

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the 15th century the beachheads of Islam 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 that had emerged at the southern end of the Strait of Malacca as Srivijaya lost its
influence. 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, but it gave 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 the
harbour’s importance.

Samudra-Pasai’s economic and political fame depended almost entirely on foreigners. Muslim traders and
teachers were likely associated with the kingdom’s administration from the beginning, and religious
institutions were introduced to make the foreign Muslims feel at home. The first Muslim beachheads in
Indonesia, 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, several of which—including Cirebon, Demak, Japara, and Gresik—were
mentioned by 16th-century Portuguese writer Tomé Pires in his Suma Oriental. These Javanese kingdoms
existed to serve the commerce with the extensive Muslim world and especially with Malacca, an importer of
Javanese rice. Similarly, the rulers of Malacca, though of prestigious Palembang origin, had accepted Islam
precisely in order to attract Muslim and Javanese traders to their port. This profitable network of
communication with the Muslim world of Asia, combined with Islam’s assertion of the equality of all
believers, helped propel such areas from the fringe of Shaivite-Mahayana culture toward positions of
influence within the Indonesian archipelago.

However, events of the 15th and 16th centuries were not merely a consequence of the influence of new ideas;
the political ambitions of many regional princes also catalyzed rapid, agitated, and erratic change. Aceh,
which succeeded Samudra-Pasai in the 16th century as the leading harbour kingdom in northern Sumatra,
became a self-consciously Muslim state, although “Hindu” notions of divine kingship might have persisted
locally as late as the 17th century. Aceh had contacts with Muslim India and its own heterodox school of
Muslim mysticism; its sultans also sought an alliance with the Ottoman Empire against the Portuguese, who
had conquered Malacca in 1511. The Malay princes of Malacca had 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 on the Malay Peninsula to Johor (Johore) and gradually became involved in a conflict
not only with the Portuguese but also with the Acehnese 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 most notable gain for Islam
in Sumatra was in the Minangkabau country, where Shaivite-Mahayana Tantric cults had flourished in the
14th century; by the beginning of the 17th century, Islam had advanced far into Minangkabau territory by
way of the Acehnese coast.

Muslims in Java
The Sumatran centres of Islam had commercial ties with other parts of the region, but they were not closely
involved in events outside their immediate neighbourhoods. On Java, on the other hand, the negligible
distance between the Muslim powers of the coastal fringe and the established kingdoms of the interior
allowed tension to develop. The Muslims did not overthrow the kingdom of Majapahit; rather, the kingdom,
weakened by feuds within its royal family and exclusion from overseas commerce, merely withered away and
disappeared in the early 16th century. The passing of Majapahit hegemony, however, left a power void in Java
that triggered outright conflict not only between Muslim and non-Muslim communities but also between
Islamic power hierarchies and those of the traditional aristocracy.

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The 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries constituted an extremely agitated period in Javanese history. The militant
character of coastal Islam was evident in the enforced imposition of the new faith on western Java and also on
Palembang in southern Sumatra. With the spread of Islam came an expansion of its power structure. The
impact of this expansion, especially from a political perspective, was evident in the fury with which Mataram,
the great Muslim kingdom of 17th-century Java, lashed out against the princes and Muslim notables of the
northern coast.

The conflict apparently began with the determination of the coastal rulers of the Islamic sultanate of Demak
in the first half of the 16th century to rule over a great Javanese kingdom. Especially as their harbours grew
richer and their dynasties older and more confident, the coastal princes came to see themselves not only as
Muslim leaders but as Javanese royalty. 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 Islam, its armies were halted in the mid-16th century by the kingdom of Pajang. Some years later the
central Javanese kingdom of Mataram came to the fore. The climax of the conflict occurred 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.

The Islam that came to Indonesia from India, perhaps from southern India, brought the heterodox mystic
sects of Sufism, the character of which was probably not foreign to the Javanese ascetics. Both a Sufi “saint”
(wali) and a Javanese guru likely understood and respected each other’s yearning for personal union with
God. The Javanese tradition, by which small groups of disciples were initiated by a teacher into higher
wisdom, was paralleled in the Sufi teaching methods. For Muslim theologian and Javanese scholar alike, the
concern was always less with the nature of the divine than with skills for communicating with God. Arabic
texts, moreover, tended eventually to be recited as meditative aids, just as the Tantric mantras had been.

The earliest Javanese disciples of Islam 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 Islam a simple message of hope, offering them not only a
congenial personal faith but also opportunities for 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 Islam. 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 Islam, needed guardians of their
conscience, courtly advisers, and, above all, military commanders. For the new elite, the progress of coastal
Islam brought both spiritual and material gain.

All of this was greatly disturbing to those in the interior who had been nurtured in older traditions and saw
no reason for abandoning their Shaivite-Mahayana 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 had to be asserted at all cost against the forces of confusion released by the coastal
population. Contacts between wandering Sufi dervishes and 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, 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 ultimately 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.

Under Mataram’s hegemony in the 17th century, Islam in Java was permitted to survive only on Javanese
royal terms. Its innovating effects were postponed until the end of the 19th century. As one of several
religious activities, Islam therefore became 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 genres of Javanese literature, including texts that taught the nature of government according to
the values of the “Hindu-Javanese” world. In the countryside, Islam remained influential in times of social
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distress, as it preached to aggrieved peasants of the coming of the messiah. As a literary influence Islam
survived in the form of mystical texts and poems, romantic tales, and, later, borrowings by inland court
historians of material from the Serat Kanda (“Universal Histories”) of the coastal culture. The borrowings are
a testament not only to the impact of Islam in Java but also to the nature of its incorporation into traditional
power hierarchies.

Oliver W. Wolters

Expansion of European influence

Although the presence of Portuguese traders in the archipelago was relatively unimportant in 16th-century
Java, the fall of Malacca on the Malay Peninsula to the Portuguese in 1511 was a turning point in Indonesian
history. By the end of the century, the level of Muslim Indonesian trade with the Middle East, and thence with
Europe, was the greatest it had ever been. As commerce expanded, the Portuguese strove to secure control
of trade with the Moluccas—the Spice Islands.

At the end of the 16th century, however, an increase in Dutch and British interests in the region gave rise to a
series of voyages, including those of James Lancaster (1591 and 1601), Cornelis de Houtman and Frederik de
Houtman (1595 and 1598), and Jacob van Neck (1598). 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. The VOC then inaugurated an effort to exclude European
competitors from the archipelago—called the East Indies by Europeans. It also sought to control the trade
carried on by indigenous Asian traders and to establish its own commercial monopoly.

Monopoly itself was not an innovation in the archipelago; 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 have tended to see either 1511 or the
turn of the 17th century as the beginning of a period of European domination that lasted until the 20th
century.

Since the 1930s, however, some historians have criticized the view that Europeans were the major factor in
shaping the history of the East 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 (now Jakarta) became the
headquarters from which it established factories (trading posts) in the Spice Islands and elsewhere, the
company gradually became a territorial power, but it was, at first, only one power among others and not yet
ruler of the region. Only during the 19th century did new economic forces, the product of industrial
capitalism, burst upon the islands and submerge them under a new wave of European imperialism.

Growth and impact of the Dutch East India Company

Regardless of whether Europeans constituted the primary historical force in 17th-century Indonesia, their
presence undoubtedly initiated changes that in the long run were to be of enormous importance. The VOC
itself represented a new type of power in the region: 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 East 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.

During the 17th century the VOC went far toward establishing commercial control in the Indonesian islands.
It captured Malacca from the Portuguese (1641), confined the British—after a period of fierce rivalry—to a

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factory at Bencoolen (now Bengkulu), 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 and in conflicts
between rival rulers, it inevitably emerged as the main political entity in the archipelago.

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 (near present-day
Banten) in western Java. This brought him into conflict with the Dutch, and he laid siege to the Dutch fortress
at Batavia. Although Agung’s forces were eventually compelled to withdraw, the result of the confrontation
was inconclusive and left both the Dutch and the Javanese warily respectful of each other’s strength. Dutch
intervention in Javanese affairs increased in the later 17th and early 18th centuries, however, owing to
internal dissensions within Mataram and a series of wars of succession between pretenders to the throne. In
return for its services in 1674 to Amangkurat I, Sultan Agung’s successor, and then to 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 came under Dutch control, and by 1755 only a remnant of the kingdom of
Mataram remained. This was divided into two principalities, Yogyakarta (Jogjakarta) and Surakarta (Solo),
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. The main Dutch expansion in Sumatra
did not take place until the 19th century, however.

In acquiring territorial responsibilities, the company did not at first establish a close administrative system of
its own in the areas that were 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 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 forced deliveries and contingencies.
Contingencies constituted a form of tax payable in kind in areas under the direct control of the company;
forced deliveries consisted of produce that local 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
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 East Indies for disposal in 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. Further complicating
matters, the Netherlands (at the time, the Dutch Republic) succumbed to France during the French
revolutionary wars and was restructured and renamed the Batavian Republic in 1795. In 1799 the (Dutch)
government of the republic terminated the affairs of the Dutch East India Company.

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The French and the British in Java, 1806–15

The fall of the Netherlands to France and the dissolution of the company led in due course to significant
changes in the administration of the East Indies. Under Napoleon I the Batavian Republic became the
Commonwealth of Batavia and then the Kingdom of Holland, with one of Napoleon’s marshals, Herman
Willem Daendels, serving 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 Baron Minto,
governor-general of India, who, after the surrender, appointed Thomas
Stamford Raffles lieutenant governor. Raffles approached his task with the
conviction that British administrative principles, modeled in part on those
developed in Bengal, could liberate the Javanese from the tyranny of Dutch
Thomas Stamford Raffles methods; he believed that liberal economic principles and the cessation of
compulsory cultivation could simultaneously expand Javanese agricultural
production, improve revenue, and make the island a market for British goods. Along with his liberalism,
Raffles 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 (Jakarta) he encouraged the study of the
society he found about him. Raffles rediscovered the ruins of the great Buddhist temple Borobudur 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. Raffles oversimplified the complexities of traditional land tenure, however. He misread the position
of the regents, whom he at first mistakenly 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.) But despite a series
of adjustments in his original plan, Raffles was unable 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 consumed 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 the Dutch headquartered in Batavia (Jakarta). 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 in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars, their main concern was to make
the colony self-supporting. During the interregnum, both exports and revenue had declined sharply, despite
Raffles’s 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
British 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 local regent as the “younger brother” of the Dutch
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, primarily in Java and
western Sumatra but also on a smaller scale in Celebes, Borneo, and the Moluccas; a second was the new

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economic policy, adopted in 1830, which increased the economic responsibilities of local officials.

The Java War of 1825–30 precipitated 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 Yogyakarta. It was also attributable, however, to growing resentment among the aristocratic
landholders of Yogyakarta, whose contracts for the lease of their lands to Europeans had been canceled by
the governor-general. There was support too from Islamic leaders, as well as other hidden factors—such as
the expectation of the coming of a messianic Just Ruler, who would restore the harmony of the kingdom—that
undoubtedly added to the climate of discontent. From this agitated atmosphere erupted a revolt that, through
the skillful use of guerrilla tactics, continued to challenge Dutch authority for five years, until the Dutch
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 from Mecca). Basically, the war
was a religious struggle in Minangkabau country between revivalist Islamic leaders (called Padris) and the
local adat (“customary law”) leaders, who were supported by the Dutch. Under Tuanku Imam Bonjol, the
Padri forces resisted Dutch pressure from the early 1820s until 1837. For the Dutch the effect of this
involvement was inevitably a strengthening of administrative commitment in western Sumatra.

The Culture System

The formation in 1824 of the Netherlands Trading Society (Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij; NHM)—a
company embracing all merchants engaged in the East Indies trade and supported by the government of The
Netherlands 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 archipelago. This was the so-called Culture System, or
Cultivation System (Cultuurstelsel).

The Culture 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 as land rent. Land rent, then, was the measure of
the amount to be produced by each village. 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 Culture System was an overwhelming success. Exports soared,
rising from 13 million guldens (the Dutch currency) 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 Culture System would ultimately benefit the people of Java
as well as the home government, it later came to be considered both by Dutch critics and by outside
observers a particularly harsh and burdensome policy. Van den Bosch’s expectations were not entirely false,
however. 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
broadened, and 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 amplify social and economic inequities within rural society. Dominant
peasants, members of a rural elite, were able to manipulate the system to their advantage. And while the
Culture System brought the islands of the archipelago into contact with a wider overseas market, the East
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
Chinese immigrants, who fit into colonial rule as a separate caste, engaged in tax collection, moneylending,

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and small trading.

There were other consequences. The Culture 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. Secure in the
knowledge that they were backed by Dutch power, regents in some cases 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 East
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 demarcated. 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 Culture 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 East Indies; their pressure was effective. Although the Culture 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 investment. 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 landholders: the
provision that Europeans lease rather than purchase land was intended to prevent the alienation of
Indonesian land, and the government was charged also with preventing Europeans from leasing land that was
needed for the subsistence of village populations.

Within this framework Dutch capital began to flow to the East 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 Culture 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. Although the Dutch had established
their control effectively over Java by the mid-18th century and 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 East Indies.

In northern Sumatra, warfare with the people of Aceh that lasted with varying degrees of intensity from 1873
to 1908 brought the northern tip of Sumatra under Dutch control. In Celebes and the Moluccas, where the
Dutch had 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,

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and over Ternate, Ceram, and Buru in the Moluccas. Footholds were established also over parts of western
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 East 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, in the South Pacific, and 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 veritable watershed in Indonesian history, it is to
be discerned about 1870 (as opposed to 1511, which marked the establishment of a European base in the
archipelago).

The social impact of these developments upon Indonesian society was tremendous. The economic and
political expansion brought a new Dutch population to the East 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 new Dutch communities came to form European enclaves within the major cities, and
their presence underscored the social divisions in what was increasingly a caste society divided along racial
lines. The Dutch, however, were not merely a community of expatriates who were eager to retire as soon as
possible to The Netherlands. Many of them regarded the East 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 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 disoriented population, divorced increasingly from the shelter of traditional village
society but not absorbed into the new urban culture.

The Ethical Policy

Dutch 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, 30 years of the Liberal Policy in Indonesia did not
appear to have achieved that miracle. Growing criticism of the Dutch record in the East Indies was given
particularly influential expression by Conrad Theodor van Deventer, a Liberal Democratic member of the
parliament of The Netherlands, who argued that the Dutch had been draining wealth from the East Indies
and had incurred thereby a “Debt of Honour” that should be repaid. His suggestion was that The Netherlands
turn from its strictly laissez-faire policy in the East Indies to 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

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a new East Indian society based on a 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 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 were 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 East
Indies were exposed to tremendous forces of social change. These forces, however, resulted not from the
conscious plans of the Ethical Policy but from the undirected impact 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 that 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 Islamic circles, where modernist ideas sought to reconcile the demands of Islam
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 that remained the subjects of Western colonialism. 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 (“Noble Endeavour”) is often taken as the beginning of organized
nationalism. Founded by Wahidin Sudirohusodo, a retired Javanese doctor, Budi Utomo was an elitist
organization, the aims of which—though cultural rather than political—included a concern to secure a mutual
accommodation between traditional culture and contemporary society. Numerically more important was
Sarekat Islam (“Islamic 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 Islam 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, calling itself Insulinde, a poetic name for the

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East Indies. 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 had thus emerged a variety of organizations, broadly nationalist in aim, but
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 Indies Social Democratic Association members
in Sarekat Islam 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
Soviet-founded Communist International (also known Comintern or the Third International) 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 East 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 Islam between its more conservative leaders and the communists came to
a head in a discipline resolution that insisted that members of Sarekat Islam 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 East 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 Islam 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 Islam and
communism, nationalist thinking was directed simply to the idea 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 The Netherlands. Their organization, restructured in 1924 under the self-consciously Indonesian (as
opposed to Dutch) name Perhimpunan Indonesia (Indonesian Union), became a centre of radical nationalist
thought, and in the mid-1920s students returning from The Netherlands 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 government
of the East Indies and was thus distinguished from those groups, such as Sarekat Islam, 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 in the party a broadly based, if rather precarious, association of nationalist organizations.

The nationalist sentiment resonated beyond political parties, however. On Oct. 28, 1928, a number of

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representatives of youth organizations issued the historic Youth Pledge (Sumpah Pemuda), whereby they
vowed to recognize only one Indonesian motherland, one Indonesian people, and one Indonesian language. It
was a landmark event in the country’s history and also is considered the founding moment of the Indonesian
language.

At the end of 1929, Sukarno was arrested with some of his colleagues and was tried, convicted, and
sentenced to four years in prison. He was released at the end of 1931, but by then the united movement he
helped to create had begun to disintegrate. The PNI dissolved itself and reformed as Partindo. A number of
other groups came together to form 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 continuing
leadership of the movement should its leaders be arrested.

In 1933 Sukarno was arrested again and exiled to Flores; he later was transferred to 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 National Socialism (Nazism) more
important than the question of independence.

World War II changed the situation. The fall of the East Indies to Japan 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 Islamic 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 overlords. Their
policies fluctuated according to the exigencies of the war, but in general their primary object was to make the
East 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 emergent country, and while it enabled him to develop more-effective lines of communication with the
people, it also placed upon him the responsibility of sustaining Indonesian support for Japan through, among
other devices, 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 group integrity 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; “Volunteer Army of Defenders of the Homeland”) would become the core military force of the
Indonesian revolution.

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

On their return to Batavia (now Jakarta), Sukarno and Hatta were under pressure to declare independence

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unilaterally. This pressure reached its climax in the kidnapping of the two men, for a day, by some of Jakarta’s
youth leaders. On the morning of Aug. 17, 1945, after the news of the Japanese surrender had been
confirmed, Sukarno and Hatta proclaimed Indonesia an independent republic.

The revolution
The proclamation touched off a series of uprisings 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 the leaders of the new Republic of Indonesia was
presidential in form, but the 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
the struggle for Bandung in late 1945 and early 1946 and the Battle of Surabaya in November 1945; in
Surabaya Indonesian fighters resisted superior British forces for three weeks. Fighting also broke out in
Sumatra and Celebes. Although the Dutch had expected to reassert their control over their colony without
question, and although they were able to play upon the fears of the outer islands (generally, islands other
than Java and Madura) of a Java-based republic, they eventually were compelled to negotiate with republican
representatives led by Sjahrir, who by then was prime minister. The Linggadjati Agreement (drafted Nov. 15,
1946, and signed March 25, 1947), 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 East 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 United Nations (UN) intervention in the
form of a commission known as the 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 the
independent United States of Indonesia in December 1949; a decision about the ultimate fate of western New
Guinea 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, Nahdlatul 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 Islam Indonesia (PSII); and the
Socialist Party (PSI). Until the first elections were held, in 1955, the parliament was filled by appointment
under an informal 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.

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With the exception of the PKI, the parties did not represent clearly opposing interests or programs, although
some broad patterns of occupational, regional, and cultural 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. In terms of
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 from western Sumatra and
southwestern Celebes. Masyumi’s support within Java was to be found mainly in the province of West Java
(Jawa Barat), the home of the Sundanese, as opposed to the ethnic Javanese population. (When resistance
reached the point of open revolt in 1958, the regional character of Indonesian political rivalry was especially
important.) Party affiliations also to some extent corresponded to a broad cultural 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. Major social streams (aliran) in Indonesian society that spanned
various interests, classes, and regions were similarly reflected in political parties and their suborganizations;
the division within Java between the santri (devout Muslim) and abangan (syncretic Muslim) orientations was
integral to the rivalry between 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 under a series of prime ministers:
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 once again (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 a background of geographically scattered yet salient dissent, Sukarno, resentful of his circumscribed
position as figurehead president, began to interfere more frequently in the constitutional processes. In 1956
Vice President Hatta, who had been considered Sukarno’s partner in leadership, announced his resignation,
and in February 1957 Sukarno announced his own concept for Indonesia’s government. 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 country. He proposed a government
based on the four main parties plus a national council representing not merely political parties but functional
groups—urban workers, rural farmers, intelligentsia, national entrepreneurs, religious organizations, armed
services, youth organizations, women’s organizations, etc.—through 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 Kartawidjaja. 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 western New Guinea, which the Dutch had
retained even after formally granting Indonesia independence; the Indonesian government in due course took
over the operation of the confiscated Dutch 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 the
province of North Sulawesi (Sulawesi Utara; North Celebes). The central government acted swiftly and
successfully to suppress the rebellion, however. With the regions defeated, the parties discredited, and the

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army’s prestige enhanced by its recent success against the rebels, Sukarno once more took up the idea of
Guided Democracy. Backed by the army chief of staff, Gen. 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 prime minister, at its head. Pending elections
under a new electoral law, he appointed (in accordance with the functional
representation principle) members of the legislative bodies required by the
Sukarno constitution: the People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan
Rakyat; MPR) and the Supreme Advisory Council (Dewan Pertimbangan Agung;
DPA). In 1960, when the MPR rejected the government’s budget, he replaced it with a provisional nominated
parliament.

Sukarno’s central purpose was the preservation of the country’s 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, evocative slogans, and prestigious acts
such as the hosting of the Fourth Asian Games (1962)—was not accompanied by an attempt to come to grips
with the country’s economic problems. The damage done to the economy by the seizure of Dutch enterprises
in 1957 and by the 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 evidently
oblivious to the economic consequences of his policies, showing no recognition of foreign indebtedness,
declining exports, or accelerating inflation in the early 1960s.

During the years of Guided Democracy, Sukarno’s power depended in great measure on the preservation of a
balance between the army and the PKI. The period was one of growth in the communists’ prestige, and
Sukarno consistently protected the PKI from moves made against it by the army. He opposed military
attempts to prohibit the PKI’s congresses and to suppress its newspapers. He banned movements opposing
the party and advanced PKI leaders to positions of 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 Bandung Conference (Asian-African
Conference) in 1955, the country staked a claim to leadership of the developing world. By the early 1960s,
however, Indonesia had a new interpretation of the global order; in ideological terms Sukarno had sketched
the world, as he saw it, as a conflict between Nefos and Oldefos (New Emerging Forces and Old Established
Forces). In this analysis was embodied his ongoing hostility to the West.

In 1962 Indonesia’s campaign to recover western New Guinea achieved final success. An agreement was
reached with The Netherlands for the transfer of the territory to Indonesia after a period of UN
administration—but with the provision that the inhabitants of the territory make an Act of Free Choice before
the end of 1969 regarding their inclusion in the republic. This choice was eventually made by representative
councils, which confirmed the continuance of western New Guinea (Papua)—renamed Irian Barat (West
Irian)—as part of Indonesia.

The resolution of this issue was followed 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 UN
Security Council.

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John David Legge

Indonesia from the coup to the end of the New Order

The coup
In the early hours of Oct. 1, 1965, a group of army conspirators calling itself the
September 30th Movement kidnapped and murdered six army generals. A
seventh, Nasution, escaped. The following morning the 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
Suharto 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, on the
contrary, insisted that it was part of a PKI plot to seize power and subsequently embarked on a mission to
purge the country of the perceived communist threat. In the following month the military slaughtered
communists and alleged communists across Java and in Bali, with estimates of the number of people killed
ranging from 80,000 to more than 1,000,000. In the following years communists, alleged communists, and
their families were frequently denied basic rights (e.g., right to a fair trial, right to equal opportunity in
employment, and freedom from discrimination). Between 1969 and 1980, approximately 10,000 persons,
primarily known or purported communists, were detained without trial on Buru Island in the Moluccas.

With the destruction of the PKI, one of the elements of balance that had supported the Sukarno regime was
eliminated, and the president himself came under increasing pressure. In March 1966, against a background
of student action, the army forced Sukarno to delegate extensive powers to Suharto, now chief of staff of the
army. With his new authority, Suharto banned the PKI and moved gradually to consolidate his position as the
effective head of government. In March 1967 the MPR installed Suharto as 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 immediately began to reverse many of Sukarno’s policies. The confrontation with Malaysia was
quickly ended, and Indonesia rejoined the UN. 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 the new regime, which Suharto designated as the New Order, had to do with economic
rehabilitation. Successful negotiations secured a rescheduling of Indonesia’s foreign debts and attracted aid
through a 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 Suharto’s reformulated economic policies were soon apparent. The rate of inflation decreased,
and the national currency, the rupiah, stabilized; manufacturing expanded rapidly; and petroleum production
increased, owing partly to exploration by a number of foreign companies operating through Pertamina, the
monolithic state oil corporation. (Pertamina’s position as the centrepiece of Indonesia’s economic expansion
ended in 1975, however, when the government rescued the company from its indebtedness.) Military
entrepreneurs played a significant part in these developments. In the mid-1980s the decline in oil prices led
to a shift in economic emphasis toward private-sector investment and the production and export of
manufactured goods to reduce reliance on oil and other traditional export commodities.

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 merchant class that boosted its
affluence and influence through dealings with foreign companies, and that new wealth had exaggerated

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existing inequalities rather than removing them. Others, however, 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.

In any case, the economic achievements of New Order policies were spectacular. They transformed the
developmental patterns of the archipelago during the 1970s and ’80s, especially outside Java. Historically the
political centre and economic hub of the East 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 ’80s. The expansion of manufacturing during that period was also concentrated in
Java. This apparent dominance, however, was undermined by the density of the island’s population. In terms
of its per capita share of foreign investment, Java was outstripped by some of the outer provinces. North
Sumatra (Sumatera Utara), the home of the great plantation expansion of the late 19th century, added mining
and oil and natural gas exploration to its estate agriculture. Mining and oil had an even greater impact on the
development of Aceh, Riau, and East Kalimantan (Kalimantan Timur), as well as Indonesian New Guinea,
called Irian Jaya during this period. Again in per capita terms, East Kalimantan, with timber in addition to oil,
natural gas, and coal, attracted high levels of both foreign and domestic investment, and it became one of the
most rapidly developing provinces of the republic. By contrast, the provinces of the Lesser Sunda Islands—
West Nusa Tenggara (Nusa Tenggara Barat), East Nusa Tenggara (Nusa Tenggara Timur), and East Timor
(Timor Timur; now an independent country)—were economically the least developed in both absolute and per
capita terms. Successive five-year plans implemented by the Indonesian government emphasized the
importance of redressing regional disparities and spreading economic growth more evenly.

Free enterprise grew rapidly during the 1990s, the last decade of the New Order, but the principal business
owners were the sons and daughters of the president. Suharto claimed that his children, as citizens of the
Republic of Indonesia, had the right to run their businesses; the problem was that they received immense
privileges in their business dealings. Members of the Suharto family ultimately controlled the full range of
strategic economic sectors—not only the petroleum industry but also toll roads, banking, television
broadcasting, and billboard advertising. Moreover, their economic activities extended into all realms
—international, national, and provincial. The bureaucracy typically had no choice but to accept the business
proposals of the Suharto family, usually without going through the proper bidding procedures. Discontent
grew among the public.

Political developments
Politically, the New Order continued to be a stable regime, partly because of economic development across
the archipelago but mainly because of its military underpinnings. It would be incorrect, however, to describe
the New Order as a military regime, and Suharto, in the early years of his presidency, was concerned with
observing constitutional forms. His initial government had strong civilian components in the persons of
Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX of Yogyakarta and the statesman 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 were amalgamated to form the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan;
PPP), and the five non-Muslim parties 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 owed
much to pressure exerted on voters by government agencies. In 1971 it secured more than three-fifths of the
seats in the lower house of the legislature, the Council of the People’s Representatives (Dewan Perwakilan
Rakyat; 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), originally formulated by
Sukarno, as the national ideology.

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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, although there remained perceptions that the regime was
dominated by Java. Irian Jaya presented a special challenge to the New Order. Even after the 1969 Act of
Free Choice had evidently confirmed the desire of western New Guinea to remain a part of Indonesia, the
Suharto government still had to contend with frequent outbreaks of violence instigated by the Free Papua
Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka; OPM). Encouragement of immigration to Irian Jaya from Java and
elsewhere and the extension of educational opportunities to residents of the region were intended to
integrate the province more fully into the country. These initiatives, however, were locally interpreted 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 on the island of Timor (settled by the Portuguese beginning in the 16th century) 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 drew domestic as well as foreign criticism. This invasion of the former Portuguese colony
effectively engaged the government in an ongoing (and particularly harsh) struggle to quell the resistance of
the Fretilin (Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente), the movement 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 was some Islamic opposition to the regime. Muslim
thought tended increasingly to blur the old stereotyped distinction between modernist and traditionalist, or
fundamentalist, thinking. Although these shifts dealt essentially with theological issues, their effect was felt
as a movement of Islamic renewal both within and outside the Muslim PPP. Focused initially on dislike of the
essentially secular ideology of Pancasila, the PPP came to represent a more general ambivalence toward the
government. Especially within some circles of Muslim intellectuals and students, there were criticisms of the
corruption that was seen not only as built into the structure of the economy but also as extending to the
highest levels of the regime. 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.

In the late 1990s interethnic conflicts, which up to that point had been suppressed successfully, began to
resurface. These conflicts, too, manifested to some degree along political lines. Large-scale deadly uprisings
broke out in Sanggau Ledo, in West Kalimantan, and the unrest spread to other parts of the province just
prior to the May 1997 general election. The violence erupted between the local Dayak groups, who generally
supported the non-Muslim PDI, and the Madurese, who mostly belonged to the Muslim PPP. This agitation in
West Kalimantan soon triggered uprisings in other regions, most notably in West Java. Such ethnopolitical
antagonisms were ultimately a boon for the ruling party, Golkar.

Changes in Indonesian society

The economic successes of the Suharto regime were accompanied by some shifts in the balance of Indonesian
society. Social change accelerated under the New Order in a way that tended to confirm, rather than modify,
the structure of power in Suharto’s Indonesia. Traditional aristocracies declined in influence. In their place,
however, arose a new bureaucracy, an Indonesian business class, and Chinese business interests, some of
which operated in association with civilian or military Indonesian entrepreneurs. The army, moreover, grew
more prominent in politics, administration, and commercial activity. These developments indicated that a
new—albeit extremely diverse—middle class was emerging, defined variously by economic function, access to
political power, and a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption. Whether it encompassed one class or several, and
whether it simultaneously embraced wealthy capitalists and small rural traders, senior bureaucrats and low-
level clerks, and military officers and civil professionals, the boundary of the middle class was in constant

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motion.

The picture was further complicated by the special position of the Chinese in rural and urban trade.
Increased Chinese immigration during the 20th century confirmed the distinction between peranakan and
totok communities (i.e., between ethnic Chinese who had been in Indonesia for generations and had adopted
Indonesian customs and language and those who had arrived more recently, retained their language, and
maintained a predominantly Chinese cultural identity). Unevenly spread across the archipelago and an ethnic
minority playing a major economic role, the Chinese tended to attract Indonesian hostility, which was
expressed in part by intermittent outbreaks of anti-Chinese sentiment. Such adversity notwithstanding, the
Chinese continued under the New Order to expand their participation both in retail trade and in large-scale
commerce and finance.

International relations
Indonesia’s relative domestic stability under Suharto was accompanied by moderation in external policies.
The country’s standing as a leader of the industrializing world was enhanced in 1985 when it hosted a second
Asian-African Conference to commemorate the one held in 1955. Together with Papua New Guinea, Indonesia
sought to contain incidents on the border between the two countries. In 1989 it reached agreement with
Australia on the exploitation of seabed resources. More generally, Indonesia participated increasingly in the
affairs of the Asian and Pacific region. Through ASEAN it took a firm stand against Vietnam’s 1978 invasion
and occupation of Cambodia, and in 1989–90 it played a major role in exploring the possibility of resolving
the Indochina crisis through negotiation.

In addition to its involvement in ASEAN, Indonesia figured prominently in the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC), an organization committed to promoting free trade throughout the region. In 1992
Jakarta hosted the 10th conference of the Non-Aligned Movement, an assembly of politically neutral countries
dedicated to the needs of the developing world; Suharto also served a term as the organization’s chair
(1992–95). In 1994 Indonesia hosted the APEC summit that produced the Bogor Declaration, a timetable for
the liberalization of trade and investment in the region within the first two decades of the 21st century. These
activities, along with international accolades for various successes in agriculture, family planning, and other
areas, helped generate a popular view that Suharto’s accomplishments at the international level had
paralleled, if not surpassed, those of his predecessor, Sukarno.

John David Legge Asvi Warman Adam

Economic crisis, public unrest, and the fall of Suharto

In July 1997 Thailand was struck by a monetary crisis that rapidly spread to other countries in East and
Southeast Asia. Indonesia’s economy was particularly vulnerable because the rupiah was closely tied to the
U.S. dollar and most of the loans in the private sector were short-term. The Indonesian public, moreover,
harboured a growing distrust of the country’s banking system. The Asian economic crisis effectively crippled
the Indonesian economy. To secure much-needed loans, Suharto signed an agreement with the International
Monetary Fund (IMF). Before funds would be disbursed, however, Indonesia was required to fulfill certain
obligations—something Suharto evidently had no real intention of doing. Instead, he sought other ways to
extricate the country from its financial crisis.

Especially after the death of his wife, Siti Hartinah Suharto, in 1996, much of the Indonesian public began to
wonder when Suharto would step down. The president’s health began to deteriorate, and as it did, the
economy also weakened. Indeed, the rupiah’s exchange rate and the composite index at the stock exchange
were both determined to a large degree by Suharto’s physical condition. Yet despite this atmosphere of
uncertainty, Suharto was once again elected to the presidency in March 1998.

As the economic situation continued to deteriorate, Suharto left the country on May 9, 1998, to attend a
conference in Cairo. In his absence Jakarta was racked by violence, in which some 1,000 people lost their
lives. The tragedy had been sparked by the shooting of four students of Trisakti University in Jakarta,
allegedly by members of the armed forces. After the burial of the victims, angry masses filled the streets,

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looting and burning certain sectors of the capital city. The riots started almost simultaneously in different
parts of the city, which suggested that the uprisings were engineered. No provocateurs were identified,
however.

On May 20, 1998, a mass gathering was to take place at the National Monument (Monas; Monumen Nasional)
in the centre of Jakarta. Before dawn on the day of the event, however, Amien Rais, the promoter of the rally,
suddenly canceled it. Students who had prepared to join the rally then went to the legislative compound
instead and managed to occupy the buildings. Also on that day 14 ministers declined to take office in the new
cabinet to be inaugurated by Suharto. The country was in a state of political turmoil.

On May 21, 1998, Suharto announced his resignation from the presidency, and Vice Pres. B.J. (Bacharuddin
Jusuf) Habibie was sworn in as the new president. Habibie inherited a country whose political and economic
currents had grown considerably stronger—but ever more turbulent—under some three decades of the New
Order.

Indonesia after Suharto

Between the elections of 1998 and 2004, Indonesia had four presidents, none of whom served a full five-year
term. Suharto remained in office for just two months following his reelection in 1998. Habibie, his successor,
served for only one year. Abdurrahman Wahid (1999–2001), who followed Habibie, was replaced after two
years in office by Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001–04), the daughter of the late Sukarno. Dubbed an age of
reformation (reformasi), these unsettled years immediately following the end of the New Order were
characterized by increased freedom of the press, public demands for the development of a strong democracy
and effective law enforcement, and calls by some regions for a greater degree of independence. Meanwhile,
various areas in eastern Indonesia were destabilized by ethnic and religious conflicts.

When Suharto resigned, the obligation of delivering the presidential accountability report, a speech that he
had made about every five years while in office, fell to Habibie, who presented the address in 1999. The
report was rejected by the parliament, however, largely because of the controversy surrounding East Timor,
which had seceded from the republic during Habibie’s presidency. Following this rejection, Habibie declared
that he would not stand for reelection to the presidency.

The next president, Wahid, was an intellectual, newspaper columnist, and leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, an
organization of Muslim religious scholars. Popularly known as Gus Dur (“Gus” being a reference to both his
nobility and his devotion to Islam), Wahid was the first candidate to win the presidency through a vote by the
People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat; MPR), as opposed to the earlier
consensus-seeking process (musyawarah). With liberal views on religion and politics, he was able to garner
votes from both Muslims and non-Muslims in the MPR to defeat Megawati, the presidential candidate of the
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia-Perjuangan; PDI-P), which had the
most seats in the parliament. Once in office, however, Wahid was unable to promote cooperation between
parliamentary factions, the military, and other political forces beyond his own party. He also was implicated in
a number of scandals. In 2001, just 19 months after he won the presidency, Wahid was impeached by the
parliament and dismissed from office.

Asvi Warman Adam

Wahid was succeeded in office by his vice president, Megawati, who maintained some of his presidential
priorities. Among those were the preservation of the integrity of Indonesian territory and the recovery of the
economy. On the domestic level, Megawati strove to resolve conflict in restless regions such as East Timor,
Aceh, and Irian Jaya. East Timor achieved full sovereignty in 2002. Aceh and Irian Jaya were given special
autonomy and an increased budget; Irian Jaya became Papua in 2002 and was divided to become two
provinces, Papua and West Papua, in 2003. In an effort to solicit foreign investment and explore additional
export opportunities, Megawati traveled extensively during her first year in office, visiting the nine members
of ASEAN, the United States, Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea, India, and other countries.

Despite Megawati’s accomplishments, however, confidence in her government was eroded by continuing

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economic problems, violence associated with separatists, and political corruption. The PDI-P lost badly in the
April 2004 elections for the country’s new bicameral legislature, with Golkar—the former ruling party under
Suharto—winding up with the largest number of seats in the lower chamber. Three months later Megawati
survived the initial round of voting in the country’s first-ever direct presidential election, but she was easily
defeated in a runoff vote by her opponent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (her former security minister) of the
Democrat Party (Partai Demokrat; PD).

Yudhoyono’s administration soon faced a major crisis: in late December 2004 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. In spite of that disaster, Yudhoyono
succeeded in significantly improving the country’s economic and political
Aceh, Indonesia: tsunami stability. In the April 2009 parliamentary elections, Yudhoyono’s PD garnered
aftermath
the largest proportion of seats in the lower chamber and formed a majority
coalition there. Presidential elections were held again in July 2009, and
Yudhoyono won a second term in office.

In late September and early October, however, Yudhoyono was again confronted with disaster: another major
earthquake and its aftershocks occurred off the coast of Sumatra, killing more than a thousand people and
injuring thousands more in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra. More natural calamities followed in 2010.
On October 25 another tsunami struck the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra, killing some 500
people. Almost simultaneously, Mount Merapi in central Java began erupting, and it continued to do so for
several weeks, causing the deaths of at least 350 and forcing some 130,000 to evacuate the area.

Indonesia nonetheless was generally prosperous and peaceful for most of Yudhoyono’s second term. In
October 2012 Indonesia’s 34th province was created when North Kalimantan was carved out of the northern
third of East Kalimantan. The country’s gross domestic product grew by more than 6 percent annually in
2010–12, and inflation fell to less than 5 percent. Economic growth began to slow in 2013, however, and
inflation rose. His administration was dogged by corruption scandals, which also affected some high-ranking
officials of the PD. Those factors led to growing public disillusionment with Yudhoyono’s government, and in
the April 2014 parliamentary elections Megawati’s PDI-P won the largest number of seats in the legislature,
in part because of the appeal of Joko Widodo (popularly known as Jokowi), the party’s nominee that year for
president. Jokowi, who had risen from relative regional obscurity in central Java to win the 2012 election for
governor of Jakarta, defeated former general Prabowo Subianto of the Great Indonesia Movement Party
(Partai Gerkan Indonesia Raya; Gerindra) in the July 2014 presidential election. Jokowi faced a legislative
challenge, however, because Gerindra, led by Prabowo, was able to form a large-majority coalition in the
parliament that included the PD, Golkar, and the Muslim PPP. In 2015 Indonesia’s economic performance was
solid but slightly lower than expected, and Widodo responded by shuffling his cabinet.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Citation Information
Article Title: Indonesia
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 29 March 2023
URL: https://www.britannica.comhttps://www.britannica.com/place/Indonesia
Access Date: March 29, 2023

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