Nationalism is the antithesis of colonialism, and the origins of Indonesia as a nation cannot be separated from the history of colonialism and spice trade involving its people.

Populism characterized by narrow nationalism has been flourishing across the globe and Indonesia is no exception.

In Indonesia, this narrow nationalism has been translated into xenophobia and chauvinism. This narrow nationalism then excludes and marginalized ethnic, religious and sexual minorities.

The invention of Indonesia as a national identity cannot be separated from the history of the spice trade from South Asia to Europe, starting a few centuries before Christ by Arab and Chinese middlemen and reaching a peak in the 15th and 16th centuries when Europeans were finally able to discover the spice-producing lands themselves thanks to technological advancement.

European traders came to Indonesia to trade nutmeg, cloves and mace as their “trinity” of most expensive and luxurious spices in Europe as they were available only on the Banda Islands in Maluku. Around 50 years after the spices were discovered and cultivated in Europe, their worth declined steeply, forcing the Dutch to exploit other commodities such as sugar and tea.

The traders were given political authority by the Netherlands and soon found themselves involved in internal conflicts among local kingdoms and providing political support in a quid pro quo manner.

“Local rulers were involved in contestations in order to attain benefits from the lucrative spice trade. Therefore, they were willing to form alliances with the European colonists,” explained Islamic scholar Azyumardi Azra, who teaches in the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University and has written several books on trade history, to The Jakarta Post.

Separately, historian JJ Rizal, who also runs Komunitas Bambu, a publishing company focusing on history books, said Dutch colonists deliberately deprived Indonesians from access to knowledge in order to continue their exploitation of local resources.

“The Dutch colonists were among the last to teach their language to their colonized subjects in around the 19th century, almost two centuries after they started colonization,” he said.

Azyumardi said Indonesians could finally enjoy a European education as a result of political pressure put on the colonists by liberal Dutch politicians in what they termed politik etis (ethical politics).

Unfortunately, he said that since aristocrats were the only ones who could afford a Dutch education, it could be enjoyed by only about 1 percent of the total Indonesian population.

Scholar George McTurnan Kahin wrote in his 1952 book Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia that access to Western education planted the seeds for the rise of Indonesian nationalism, with the formation of nationalist groups such as Sarekat Islam (SI) and Boedi Oetomo (Pure Endeavor) starting to flourish around the 20th century.

“The key is language; once the Dutch opened access to knowledge, the movements started to flourish. [Raden Ajeng] Kartini, for instance, did not need to move from place to place [while confined as a Javanese princess], but through her letters she could set fire across Indonesia,” Rizal said, adding that the Boedi Oetomo movement established a “Kartini discussion group” to discuss her ideas of intellectual enlightenment and independence.

Indonesianist Benedict Anderson wrote in Imagined Communities (1983) that language and communication are indeed two elements that raise a group of people’s sense of national identity.

The local language press emerged in Indonesia as early as 1854, pioneered by Chinese-Malay journalists and media businesspeople. Starting in 1881, most Indonesian press was run by Chinese-Indonesians and native Indonesians, according to a report titled Beberapa segi perkembangan sejarah pers di Indonesia (Aspects of press history development in Indonesia; 2002).

The name “Indonesia” itself was adopted from a term coined by James Richardson Logan in an 1850 edition of The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, available from the collection of the Oxford Library.

This sense of identity incited a revolution that led to the liberation of Indonesia from colonists in the 1940s, marked by a speech by Sukarno on June 1, 1945 proposing Pancasila (the five national principles) before the Investigating Committee on the Preparation of Independence, demonstrating that Indonesia was ready to manage itself as a sovereign nation.

“The period [of national movement] required a fierce nationalism because we were battling an outside force. Fierce nationalism, however, had a short lifespan; it needed to shift accordingly to respond to the challenges of the times,” Rizal said.

Although Indonesia is now independent of colonists, apparently traces of such narrow nationalism are still intact among its people. Sukarno warned of this danger: “Do not let us say that the Indonesian nation is the noblest and most perfect, while belittling other peoples. We should aim at the unity and brotherhood of the whole world,” he was quoted as saying by Kahin.

Rizal blames this tendency partially on the dominant narrative told through our history education, which emphasizes the exploitation of the Dutch without taking into account the role of local Indonesians in helping establish the colonization and the “glory days” that certain Indonesian kingdoms once had and how we could actually learn from them.

“Narrow nationalism will only cause us to be trapped inside our katak dalam tempurung [little shell],” Rizal said.