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‘Revolusi’: A look at Indonesia’s fight for freedom
The book brings to life Indonesia’s epic struggle for independence in 1945-1949 and convincingly argues a case for the catalytic impact of this movement on decolonization in Asia and Africa following World War II.
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Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World by David Van Reybrouck. (penguin.co.uk/-)
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em>Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World is a remarkable book that combines meticulous academic research, vivid journalistic reportage and the narrative style of a novel.
It brings to life Indonesia’s epic struggle for independence in 1945-1949 and convincingly argues a case for the catalytic impact of this movement on decolonization in Asia and Africa following World War II. It also claims plausibly that the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, the brainchild of then-president Sukarno, influenced leaders of the United States’ civil rights movement, such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Revolusi is a history book that is as exciting for readers already familiar with Indonesia’s history as well as those with minimal knowledge of the country.
Its Belgian author David Van Reybrouck is a Dutch-speaking historian who gained international acclaim for Congo: The Epic History of a People (2010), on that country’s colonial history. He is not an Indonesia specialist, and Revolusi shows a freshness and his enthusiasm for the subject that makes the book a page-turner.
The freshness comes through from the 158 interviews Van Reybrouck conducted with nonagenarians and centenarians who witnessed the birth of Indonesia and its troubled early years. He tracked his sources in the Netherlands, Indonesia, Nepal and Japan, and astonishingly, most of his interviewees had clear memories of the events they had experienced seven decades earlier.
One of the most impressive among them is journalist Djajeng Pratomo, who was 102 when Van Reybrouck interviewed him and died in 2018
Djajeng wrote and printed pamphlets for the independence movement as a student in the 1930s Netherlands, was arrested by Dutch authorities and ended up at the Dachau concentration camp after the Netherlands fell to Nazi Germany.
