ABSTRACT
Islamic society in pre-independence Indonesia, the territory known as the Dutch East Indies, was shaped by two interdependent forces. These forces were the oppressiveness of the colonial political economy, and the arrival of modern nationalism, the "national revival", to resist Dutch rule. It was the intransigence of the Dutch over Indonesian autonomy that eventually came to radicalize one side of the Islamic revival movement, who, after years of Dutch prevarications on Indonesian self-rule, finally formed a revolutionary political orientation, establishing the largest communist party outside of the communist bloc, but rejecting the Islamic consciousness it was derived from. The Ethical Policy called for a share of the colonial profits to be invested in education, health initiatives, and infrastructural projects, such as the construction of railways and irrigation. Indonesians were promised a new Ethical Policy from the Dutch, allowed to form organizations, and to finally engage the Dutch in the administration of their homelands.
