ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the establishment of the State of East Indonesia (Negara Indonesia Timur, nit) in December 1946 during the Denpasar Conference and the simultaneous deployment of Dutch military violence. It focuses in particular on the quashing of the leadership of the Republican forces in Bali (the People’s Security Army or Tentara Keamanan Rakyat, tkr), the military campaign in South Sulawesi, and the full-out attack on the Sumatran city of Palembang. I argue that these military actions were strongly related to the establishment of the State of East Indonesia, which was part of a federal construction to counter the Republic of Indonesia. In response to the Indonesian Proclamation of Independence on 17 August 1945, acting Lieutenant Governor-General Huib van Mook focused on the ‘Great East’ – as the islands east of Java were called in colonial times – because the occupation of Java was not feasible on a short-term basis.1 In order to set up the new state of East Indonesia, the Dutch sought to establish ‘law and order’ in that region. This counterinsurgency strategy strongly opposed the political motivations of large groups of Indonesians. But failure was not an option for Van Mook: the success of the Dutch federal policy depended on the successful establishment of the nit.
