Republic of Indonesia

H

International Organizations

In the 1980s and 1990s Indonesia played a more active role in international affairs than it had in the past. Indonesia was a founding member of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM), a loose association begun in 1961 of countries that were not specifically allied with the power blocs led by either the United States or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Indonesia was also, in 1967, a founding member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which plays a central role in the country’s foreign policy. Indonesia is a member of the United Nations (UN) and several of its agencies, including the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Asian Development Bank. It is also one of the founding members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which was established in 1989.

VII

History

Homo erectus, an extinct human species, inhabited Indonesia as early as 1.8 million years ago. The oldest H. erectus specimens come from Mojokerto in central Java. Fossils excavated from Ngandong indicate that H. erectus may have lived on Java as recently as 53,000 to 27,000 years ago, possibly alongside early populations of modern humans (Homo sapiens). In 2004 the skeleton of an unusually small early human, estimated to be about 18,000 years old, was discovered on the island of Flores. Named Homo floresiensis, it stood only about 1 m (3.3 ft) tall and had a brain the size of a chimpanzee’s. Yet it was apparently intelligent enough to make simple stone tools. See Human Evolution.

Throughout history the peoples of Southeast Asia migrated extensively, giving the Indonesian archipelago a mix of more than 100 ethnicities and languages. Within this mix there has been a wide cultural gap between the coastal peoples, who probably developed irrigated wet-rice cultivation (sawah) about 2,000 years ago, and the inland peoples, who depended on shifting, slash-and-burn agriculture (ladang) until recently. The coastal regions probably developed sawah because irrigation was easier to develop near the coast and because the larger coastal populations made ladang difficult. Later, coastal peoples developed differently from inland peoples because the former were more exposed to outside influences. In time, three distinct types of Indonesian societies evolved. On the coast were the trade-oriented, deeply Islamic coastal peoples. Hindu-influenced, wet-rice cultivators developed further inland. Still further inland, typically in remote mountainous regions, were tribal groups who practiced shifting cultivation and indigenous religious beliefs.

Bronze was introduced to the archipelago in about 300 bc from northern Vietnam, Thailand, or China, and from that time on metalworking with bronze and iron was practiced. About the 1st century bc, many of the Indonesian people lived in political groups that were rarely larger than family-based tribal units. Cultural expressions like wayang theater, gamelan orchestra, and batik date from this time or earlier.

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Trade between Indonesia and India’s Bay of Bengal most likely began in the 1st and 2nd century ad. Although most historians no longer believe earlier theories that Indians conquered parts of Indonesia or settled it extensively, Indian culture exerted a powerful influence on the states that developed in the archipelago. Direct communication with China probably began between the 3rd and 5th century, as Indonesia exported cloves, tree resins, and camphor. In the early 5th century Faxian, a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, and the princely monk Gunavarman from Kashmīr each wrote of direct voyages between western Indonesia and China.

A

Early Kingdoms

Rock inscriptions on Java dating from the 5th or 6th century tell of Taruma, an extensive Javanese kingdom that was centered near present-day Jakarta. The people of Taruma observed Hindu religious rites of India and promoted irrigation works. By the beginning of the 7th century Java was home to several important kingdoms, and a harbor-kingdom was also apparently well established on the southeastern coast of Sumatra. The kingdoms of this time fell into two main types of political units: the seafaring trading states along the coasts of Sumatra, northern Java, Borneo, Sulawesi, and some of the other eastern islands; and the rice-based inland kingdoms, particularly of eastern and central Java. The greatest maritime empire was Sri Vijaya, a Mahayana Buddhist kingdom on Sumatra’s southeast coast. In the late 7th century Sri Vijaya was a center of trade with India and China and for the next five centuries controlled much of China’s trade with the western archipelago. Little archaeological evidence of the Kingdom of Sri Vijaya remains on Sumatra.

In contrast, the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of central and eastern Java left extensive temples, buildings, and inscriptions. These monuments and artifacts show Indian culture had vast influence on the religion and state organizations of the Javan kingdoms. The central and eastern kingdoms relied on wet-rice agriculture and had a complex hierarchy headed by a god-king. Inscriptions reveal that under the Sanjaya family the Hindu kingdom of Mataram flourished on the Dieng Plateau in the early 8th century. In the second half of the 8th century a new Buddhist kingdom under the Sailendra dynasty developed in the nearby Kedu Plain; Mataram declined as the Sailendra kingdom rose. The Sailendras built the massive temple monument of Borobudur in the mid-9th century.

Also by the mid-9th century, rulers claiming descent from King Sanjaya (ruled 732-778) of central Java founded a new kingdom of Mataram, whose rule extended from central to eastern Java. In the early 10th century, for unknown reasons, the kingdom’s center shifted to the east, where Hindu influence on the state weakened. First under Sindok (ruled 929-947) and later under Airlangga (ruled 1019-1042), who united the eastern kingdom with Bali, Mataram became increasingly interested in overseas trade. A period of division followed, after which the new kingdom of Singosari was founded on Java in 1222. Its founder and first ruler was Angrok (ruled 1222-1227), a commoner. Under the Buddhist king Kertanagara (ruled 1268-1292), Singosari controlled many of the Sumatran areas formerly ruled by Sri Vijaya. Kertanagara’s successor, Vijaya (ruled 1293-1309), repelled a Mongol invasion of Java and in 1293 founded Majapahit, the greatest Javanese empire. Majapahit, under Hayam Wuruk, claimed sovereignty over much of what is now Indonesia and Singapore and parts of Malaysia.

B

The Coming of Islam

Islam arrived via overseas merchants, initially from southern India and Gujarāt in western India. By the late 13th century the coastal states of northern Sumatra were beginning to accept the new religion; the first Muslim ruler in northern Sumatra was Sultan Malik al Saleh of Pasai. Islam spread slowly until the rise of the sultanate of Malacca (Melaka) on peninsular Malaysia’s western coast in the early 15th century. Malacca had become a major spot on the trade route between the Moluccas (Spice Islands) and Europe, which increasingly sought Moluccan spices. As a result, Malacca gained commercial and political power and also became the major center in Southeast Asia for the spread of Islam.

Malacca’s gain came at the expense of Majapahit. Merchants from Majapahit in northern Java traveled to Malacca to trade Javanese rice for Moluccan spices, and many merchants converted to Islam. They became important in Malacca’s population. Malaccan princes in turn became powerful from their trade connections and began exerting commercial and military pressure on Majapahit. By the early 16th century, Majapahit had virtually disappeared.

Meanwhile, Portuguese traders captured Malacca in 1511. The European intrusion changed the existing patterns of trade and led to the growth of several strong Muslim states, each competing with the others for trade routes in Indonesia. One of the most powerful of these states was Aceh in northern Sumatra. During the 16th century Aceh launched frequent attacks against Portuguese Malacca, either alone or with other local Muslim states. Under Sultan Iskandar Muda, Aceh controlled all of Sumatra’s pepper-trading ports except those in the extreme south, and its influence extended to parts of the Malay Peninsula. Another important trading state of the period was Makassar. Situated in southwestern Sulawesi, Makassar and its people converted to Islam in the early 17th century. Bantam, in western Java, was the Muslim successor to the Hindu kingdom of Sunda. Bantam controlled southern Sumatra and thus the vital Sunda Strait. In the late 16th century a new Muslim kingdom of Mataram arose in central Java and began to absorb many of Java’s maritime principalities.

C

The Development of Dutch Influence

The Dutch East India Company (see East India Company: Dutch East India Company), founded in 1602, competed with the Portuguese and the English for the archipelago’s trade. The Dutch governor-general Jan Pieterszoon Coen arrived on Java in the early 17th century and established Batavia (now Jakarta) as the Dutch headquarters. Through direct force and alliances with native leaders, Coen tried to stop the interisland network of traders from engaging in international trade. In 1629 the Dutch clashed briefly with Mataram, then settled into a period of coexistence. The Dutch captured Malacca in 1641, but Malacca no longer had complete control of the spice trade to Europe. To gain a trade monopoly, the company allowed cloves to be grown only on the island of Ambon and nutmeg and mace to be grown only in the Banda Islands. The company destroyed the spice trees in other places. In 1678 Mataram was forced to cede the Priangan region of western Java to the Dutch company.

During the 18th century the Dutch East India Company introduced coffee and other new crops to Java. It also started a system of forced deliveries of crops that relied heavily on cooperation from agreeable Javanese aristocrats and from leaders of the growing local Chinese population, whose immigration the Dutch promoted. Dutch interference in Mataram’s affairs led to the kingdom’s division, in 1755, into the principalities of Surakarta and Yogyakarta. In the Moluccas, the Dutch extended their trading rights into political control. Elsewhere in the eastern islands, most local rulers retained their internal autonomy but were drawn into special relationships with the Dutch. Financial mismanagement and a decline in trade brought the East India Company to bankruptcy, however, and in 1799 it was dissolved. The Dutch government then assumed control of the company’s Indonesian possessions.

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