ARCHIPELAGO OF WONDERS

PART I

Indonesia can boast of a glorious civilization in the past upon which she can sink her roots with pride.

From ancient times the main islands of archipelago were abundan with riches, and were the goal of merhants and navigators coming from different parts of the world. Several archeological finds show that not only early setllements and public works existed in Java Sumatra, and Borneo, but also that contacts with the outer world were entertained.

Since the first centuries A.D. together with many unknown and isolated native kings and rajahs there flourished a civilization of kingdoms and empires in the Western part of the archipelago.

Explorers and merchants returning from Java and Sumatra spoke of enterprising communities who had advanced systems of cultivation, for navigation and for astronomy.

The influence of the Hindu and Buddhist religions was quite considerable during these centuries, and that age was called the period of the Hindu Kingdoms.

Among the inheritance left to history, it is note­worthy to mention the great Hindu and Buddhist monuments of Central Java, that bear witness in a very tangible manner, of the art and grandeur of that period.

Among these, the immense and impressive stupa, the Temple of Borobudur, built in the eighth century A.D., the biggest Buddhist monument of all times and one of the wonders of the world, and the other Buddhist temple of Mendut, Kalasan and Pawon.

Besides the many temples scattered in Central Java, one should not forget the immense compound of Hindu temples, the Prambanan, which took 150 years of labour to complete, from 856 to 900 A.D.

There were also kingdoms that developed trade and commerce like the powerful empire of Sriwijaya in South Sumatra in the seventh century A.D. which intensified maritime trade with India and China and other South-East Asian countries.

Among the different monarchies that succeeded each other in the course of the centuries, we see the Em­pire of Majapahit (1293-1520) which reached its peak by asserting its dominion on the islands that today are part of the Republic of Indonesia; the Empire had diplomatic relations with many countries of Asia and among these, Siam, Burma, Tongking, Annam, Cambodia, India and China and showed its splendour in literature and the arts.

Odorico da Pordenone who visited the Empire in 1321, described the marvels of its imperial palaces and its intense artistic and cultural life.

The archipelago was named Dwipantara and its influence in the region was euphemistically called "sumpah nusantara", the dream of conquering the islands beyond Java, which inevitably led to the ideals of nationalism for the heroes of Indonesian independence.

It was during this golden era that Islam spread in the archipelago by means of merchants coming from Persia and Gujarat, who brought the new religion, together with their trade.

PART II

Not long after this peaceful Islamization, political turmoils arose; in the sixteenth century A.D., the new Islamic Kingdom of Demak attacked and conquered the Empires of Central Java, provoking the fall of the Empire of Majapahit, and it was then that the descendants of the aristocracy of the Empire and the Hindu monks took refuge in the island of Bali, which until today is still a microcosm of the Hindu religion.

According to the prophecy of Jayabaya of Kediri, a Javanese king who lived in the 12th. century A.D., the Empires would have fallen and on their ashes there would be a domination at first of the white race, then of the yellow race, then independence would have come again. In the 16th. century A.D. the infiltration of the white race started with the Europeans, who gradually subdued this part of the world to exploit the spices and raw materials.

The first to arrive were the Portuguese in 1511, after having conquered the Moslem Kingdom of Malacca, in the Malayan peninsula, and having established them­selves in the Moluccas. Their intentions were to mono­polize the spices and weaken the presence of Islam in the Southern Seas. Their influence extended along the coast of Sumatra, in the Sulawesi and in the islands of the Lesser Sunda. Soon the Portuguese built fortresses and out­posts and started the spice trade with Europe, with their base in Malacca. The ruins of these fortresses are still visible at Ternate, Tidore and the Banda islands. The Portuguese brought along some missionaries who con­verted the natives to the Catholic faith, and among these was Saint Francis Xavier who travelled to the Moluccas and founded the first Catholic mission in 1546.

The Dutch arrived in the archipelago in 1596, spurred on by their ambition to secure the spice trade and hold the absolute monopoly.

In 1602 they founded the East India Company (V.O.­C.) and this was the first step of the Dutch adventure in the East Indies, which lasted 350 years.

Soon the Dutch replaced the Portuguese, occupy­ing Ambon (1605), the Banda Islands (1623) and es­tablished themselves at Jayakarta, fortifying the port of Sunda Kelapa, which became the central junction of their navigation in the Indies. They gave a new name to Tavakarta b^y callin^g it Batavia and they reconstructed the city using architectural styles prevailing in the port-cities of Holland.

Gradually Dutch dominion was extended to Java; in 1680 the ancient Kingdom of Mataram fell and was divid­ed into the two Sultanates of Yogyakarta and Surakarta.

The Celebes, Sumatra and Borneo gradually were also administered by Holland and during the centuries of domination she carried out with logic and rigour the policy of "divide et impera" (divide and conquer).

The conquering of the Indies by the Dutch was not an easy undertaking for the Indonesians, especially when in the 19th. century a painful military campaign was launched to occupy the interior of the islands, where the native kings ruled.

There were many painful and patriotic episodes which can be learned from the history books; emblematic examples of an unequal struggle between Europeans armed with harquebuses and the natives with lances and ceremonial kerises. The most bloody battles were fought against the Moslem Kingdom of Aceh in North Sumatra, during the war in 1873 which lasted 30 years, with count­less losses on both sides.

Equally bloody were the wars for conquering the region of the Minangkabau (1821-1828) in Western Suma­tra and of the Sulawesi and Flores (1805-1806).

Without any doubt the most frightening episodes took place in Bali and Lombok in different occasions (1894-1906-1908) when the kings of Bali dressed in their splendid ceremonial clothes thrust themselves headlong against the fire of the Dutch forces, en masse, with their sacrificial kerises, to avoid the humiliation of defeat.

During the Napoleonic period between 1811-1816, Dutch colonial history in the archipelago marks the first interval, the fall of the Netherlands in Europe, which facilitated the change of administration from the Dutch to the British, with Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, a diplomat and a naturalist; it was he who discovered Borobudur, buried under volcanic ashes and his book "The History of Java" was epoch-making.

However, the English ambitions to carry out re­forms and re-structure the mercantilistic system were far-off from being applied, also because after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire, Dutch dominion was restored to the East Indies; in 1798 the Dutch East India Company became insolvent and the Dutch Government took over the possessions and named them the Netherlands East Indies.

The Dutch continued to supply the mother-country with products and spices from their rich colony by apply­ing the "cultuurstelsel", a system of cultivation which compelled each village to specialize in the cultivation of a certain produce to be exported at a fixed price by the Dutch administrators, in consequence of which the farmers became poorer, being used as tillers with scarse profits. During the years of Dutch administration there were several insurrections and patriotic movements led by Indonesian aristocrats and intellectuals, which how­ever failed and were suppressed one after the other.

Many heroes of the Indonesian national revival sacrificed their lives for freedom: Pattimura, who led the revolt in the Moluccas (1816-1818); Prince Diponegoro, who led an uprising in Java without success (1825 -1830); Imam Bonjol who fought against the Dutch in West Sumatra and Teuku Umar in North Aceh (1873­1903); King Sisingamangaraja of the Bataks who revolted in 1907 and King Udayana in Bali (1908).

PART III

On July 4, 1927, Soekarno, a Javanese and a charis­matic leader, founded the Indonesian National Party, with the aim of achieving complete independence from the Dutch and setting up an Indonesian State; in this Soekarno differed from the other leaders who did not have faith in self-government of the Indonesian people and had limited their request to ask for partial liberty to be scaled in a time-table.

The National Party began its propaganda in Ban­dung in 1928 pledging the struggle for building up of "one country, one nation, one language", but it was not an easy task for the nation's leaders to bring forth their ideals for liberty and independence.

The Dutch Authorities, from the one side, increas­ed their military presence to subdue the uprisings, but also set up a road network with railways, ports and facilitated trade between the islands, with the aim of eas­ing the transport of products between the different islands.

The breaking out of the war in Europe and the occupation of the Netherlands by the Nazi Armies, help­ed the invasion of the archipelago by the Japanese after their attack on Pearl Harbour. It was a harsh and in­flexible occupation, veiled with a pseudo-ideology of "prosperity of Greater East Asia", which concealed the true Japanese intentions of extending its control over the whole of Asia; but the Japanese occupation also en­couraged an anti-European campaign with the slogan "Asia for the Asians", which favoured the strengthening of Indonesian national sentiments against Dutch colonialism.

The pressures of the Pacific War favoured the nationalists' claims and the Japanese agreed to the use of the white and red flag, of a national anthem and even to the using of the national language "Bahasa In­donesia", almost a prelude to the dreams and ideals of the national revival.

Centuries of Dutch administration had not indent­ed traditions, usages and customs of the people of the archipelago, and the Dutch language had been the privilege of only a few aristocrats and members of the Civil Service, while the people of the different islands had continued to speak their own language and dialects and to follow their own traditions.

A few days after the fall of the Empire of the Rising Sun, namely, on August 17, 1945, Soekarno and Hatta proclaimed the independence of the Republic of Indo­nesia, and the proclamation was heard by thousands of Indonesians thanks to the radio-links of the Japanese.

Soon though reality set in by taking the upper-hand, the Allied troops arrived in Indonesia to disarm the Japanese Army, at first British contingents and then Dutch troops who tried to re-establish the previous Dutch domination, but the interval of the Japanese occupation had strengthened the will of the Indonesian people to struggle for an independent nation.

This last stage of the war of independence lasted four years, with the Indonesian forces fighting on two fronts, the military and the diplomatic front, and with the Indonesian question being brought before the Security Council of the United Nations.

A first attempt were the negotiations between the Indonesian and Dutch delegations at Linggarjati in 1947 with The Netherlands recognizing Indonesian sovereign­ty over Java, Sumatra and Madura, an agreement that respresented a limitation of the proclamation, which foresaw the freedom for all the lands of the former Ne­therlands East Indies.

The struggle was taken up again which provoked the intensification of Dutch military reaction, which later ceased with the Renville Agreement.

A resolution presented to the United Nations by 19 Nations asked the Netherlands to hand over sovereign­ty to the Republic of Indonesia in January 1950: the time had come to put into effect the dream of "Sumpah Nusantara": in May 1949 an agreement was signed ceasing hostilities and restoring the Republican Govern­ment at Yogyakarta, which had been occupied by the Dutch forces.

Under the auspices of the United Nations, a Round Table Conference at The Hague was held from August to November 1949, when the Netherlands recognized the Republic of Indonesia.

In December 1949 the Netherlands East Indies ceas­ed to exist, and the Federal Republic of Indonesia was born, with a government and a parliamentary system; the federal formula was soon set aside and on 17 August 1950 the unitary Republic of Indonesia was proclaimed, with an independent executive from Par­liament, and in the same year Indonesia became a member of the United Nations.

The first years of the new State were not easy, and the elation for victory was then tempered by the hard task of keeping the country united under a single govern­ment.

The young Republic had to face many rebellions which broke out in different parts of the country, among which, the terrorist movement of "Darul Islam" which proposed to found an Islamic State in Java.

Several rebellions were led by former officers of the Dutch army or persons tied to the idea of Dutch domination: in the Moluccas the rebellion proposed to establish a Republic of South Moluccas: also in South Sulawesi, in Kalimantan, in Sumatra, several separatist movements caused many problems for the young re­publican army.

In 1963 the United Nations transferred the sover­eignty over West New Guinea to the Republic of In­donesia, and the last Dutch outpost in the region fell.