The Indonesian Revolution and the Fall of the Dutch Empire

The Indonesian revolution and the fall of the Dutch empire rank among the most important developments in the history of contemporary Southeast Asia. ¹ Following three years of Japanese occupation during World War II, the Indonesian nationalist movement swept away a colonial system whose foundations dated back to the end of the sixteenth century. The proclamation of independence on August 17, 1945, set in motion a struggle against colonial rule that involved both diplomacy and military conflict. The struggle for sovereignty, which ended only in late 1949 after two Dutch military offensives and a protracted Indonesian guerilla war, also caught the attention of the international community. For the newly founded United Nations, it was the first test of its conflict-resolution mechanisms. Following unsuccessful efforts at mediation by Great Britain during the first two years of the conflict, the United States assumed responsibility for the final resolution of the crisis by putting pressure on the Dutch to relinquish sovereignty over the island archipelago. Most importantly, the revolution of 1945 gathered sentiments of an Indonesian community and transformed them into a shared identity on which the Indonesian nation-state could be built. Decolonization was a multilayered process defined by actors, ideas, and institutions in Indonesia, in the Netherlands, and in the international arena. It is hardly surprising, then, that these complex developments have attracted a considerable degree of scholarly interest.