ABSTRACT
In January 1966, amidst the darkest days of the Indonesian Republic, the two men who above all others deserve credit for fashioning a nation out of a sprawling hodgepodge of islands and people, came together for an awkward meeting in the Merdeka Palace, the presidential office. By the time the crisply uniformed Soeharto strode into the Merdeka Palace, Sukarno was an embittered angry man. Like many countries emerging from colonial rule, the Indonesian nation owes its geographical contours to its former colonial power, the Netherlands, The Dutch first arrived more than three hundred years before independence in 1945, seeking spices and wealth for an expanding empire. For most of the colonial period, the Dutch had at best a tenuous hold on their territories. The Japanese maintained the basic Dutch administrative system, continuing to rule through the established elite.
