ABSTRACT
The Indonesian national motto is ‘Unity in Diversity’. To most outsider observers—and not a few insiders as well—the diversity part of this motto is rather more evident than the unity. At the turn of the 21st century many observers were predicting that the state would actually disintegrate, because of its centripetal tendencies. 1 The chapters in Part Two, the provincial surveys, give a picture of the characteristics of the individual provinces. Here though, by way of introduction, we shall look briefly at the national picture, to establish the basic parameters of the state against which the provincial material may be set. We shall then look at how the diverse peoples and regions of the archipelago were brought together in the present-day Republic of Indonesia.
