ABSTRACT
This part of the book will consider and compare other later revolts and insurgencies. Later, revolts and insurgencies were considered and compared in the previous two books, Maurits of Nassau and the Survival and the Dutch Revolt – Comparative Insurgencies and Frederik Hendrik and the Triumph of the Dutch Revolt – Comparative Insurgencies. However, in these previous two books, the analysis centred upon the reasons for success or otherwise of the insurgencies and applied four principal criteria, namely, a national identity, adequate armed forces, financing the insurgency, and the exploitation of or trends of favourable international events. However, unlike these previous books, in this book this part will involve only one of those four criteria, that of national identity. In this, it will consider and analyse later revolts and insurgencies with two fundamental questions:
At what stage, or which event(s) did violent unrest and disturbances turn into a national insurgency with the objective of independence?
Were there at any stage opportunities by the government of the possessing power or country for a rapprochement or compromise, and so avoid the violent unrest becoming a national insurgency for independence?
The first three insurgencies considered are those of and within Indonesia. Indonesia is a large archipelago consisting of thousands of islands, of which over 5,000 are inhabited. The islands are spread over a wide area. If the silhouette of the country of Indonesia was to be transposed upon the silhouette of the United States, then the westward islands of Indonesia would be situated well into the Pacific Ocean and the eastward islands into the Atlantic. Such a vast extended territory gave serious challenges to the possessing governing power attempting to maintain control, to the Dutch in the mid-twentieth century and to the independent Indonesia in the early twenty-first century.
