 Indonesia - national flag
The flag was officially hoisted for the first time in 1945. The red and white
flag is said to date back to the 1200's, and in 1922 it was hoisted by an
Indonesian freedom movement in the Netherlands. The flag was taken over by the
Indonesian Nationalist Party of Java in 1928 and remained unchanged when the
country was declared independent in 1945.
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Indonesia (Prehistory)
For at least 500,000, perhaps up to 1.8 million. years ago, the island
of Java was inhabited by the early humans, Homo erectus, whose remains have
been found at Trinil and Sangiran on Java. Not much is known about their way of
life; thus none of their tools have been found, but from the knowledge of other
places it must be assumed that they have been hunters and gatherers. Their room
for maneuver must have changed with the changes in sea level during the ice age,
as Java, Sumatra and Borneo were alternately exposed as a large peninsula and
then flooded again, creating an archipelago. As many of the early settlements
have disappeared as a result, it is not possible to determine whether the
earliest population became extinct or became ancestors of Homo sapiens,
whose earliest relics date from approximately 40,000 years ago. Finds from cave
settlements and kitchen manure show that for a long period, approximately 30,000-3000
BC, a technology based on simple stone tools was used. Around 7000 BC. began
in New Guineato grow taro, sugar cane and bananas as well as develop densely
populated communities. From the same period, there are signs of grain
cultivation from other areas; here, however, settlements were sparse, and large
parts of the archipelago were presumably uninhabited until about 4000 BC, when
Austronesian peoples from Taiwan and the Philippines sailed here in outrigger
canoes. They brought with them knowledge of pottery, bow and arrow and
presumably the domesticated pig. In some places they displaced the indigenous
people, in other places they mingled with it. The Austrones lived in small
communities based on agriculture or fishing. Technical innovations spread
quickly, and large bronze drums, which appeared in SEA Asia approximately 500 BC,
spread rapidly to western Indonesia. There was no common political organization,
and many groups were led by a datu, whose leadership was based on war
luck and magic rather than lineage.
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Indonesia (History)
Shipping and trade have been crucial to the historical development of the
Indonesian upper world due to the influences from other cultures that they
brought with them. Trade with India from approximately 100 brought a lot of wealth to
the area and meant that the dates took over the Indian leadership style, and
that there were approximately 400 small kingdoms were created. At the same time, Hindu
and Buddhist beliefs and customs were recorded and mixed with the original Malay
pantheism.
Around 500, several small competing kingdoms existed. The first of major
importance, Srivijaya with the capital Palembang, was established in southern
Sumatra approximately 680 and lasted for 400 years. In central Java, the rulers of the
Sailendra dynasty traveled in the 800's. two impressive monuments, the
Buddhist Borobudur and the Hindu Prambanan.
In 1293, the mighty Hindu kingdom Majapahit was founded in East Java. The
empire included most of Java and Bali as well as a number of smaller islands, as
it was at its height under Hayam Wuruk, who ruled from 1350-89.
Gradually, Islam came into the picture as a new cultural and religious
element, as a result of the increased trade in the Indian Ocean. Aceh in
northern Sumatra became the first area to become Muslim in the late 1200's, while
Java was not Islamized until hundreds of years later; especially in the interior
of the country, Java is still dominated by a version of Islam that is strongly
influenced by other religious beliefs.
Another foreign culture, the European, came to the Indonesian territory a few
centuries later. The Portuguese, who occupied Malacca in 1511, were the first to
gain a foothold. Later, the Dutch, who became the dominant in the area through
the privately owned United East India Company (VOC), founded in 1602. In 1619,
the VOC established its first trading post in Batavia, present-day
Jakarta. Malacca was conquered in 1641, and the company gradually gained a
monopoly on the lucrative spice trade. The VOC became more and more involved in
the internal power struggles especially in the Javanese kingdom of Mataram,
which during the 1700's. became increasingly weakened. In step with this
development, the VOC established itself as a central power on top of the
existing power structure, which did not change significantly.
Towards the end of the 1700's. The financial power of the VOC began to decline
due to excessive administrative costs, smuggling, etc. Therefore, in 1799, the
Dutch state took over the possessions. The Netherlands had been conquered by
France in 1795 and only regained its real independence in 1815. Herman Willem
Daendels (1762-1818) became in 1807 governor general of the colonies in Asia. He
initiated a policy that would deprive the Javanese rulers of their independence
and subordinate them to the Dutch administration. As a result of the Napoleonic
Wars, Indonesia was subject to the British East India Company 1811-16, which
sought to impose its own administrative principles. After the return of the
Dutch, the grip was tightened on the basis of Daendels' work. In 1825, the Java
War began, which was a revolt against the Dutch land confiscations. The
uprising, Yogyakarta, was defeated in 1830, and thus the Dutch power was
consolidated. That same year, the cultural system was introduced; each
village was forced to set aside one-fifth of their fields for export crops such
as sugar, coffee, tea and indigo. The new production system meant that great
riches were transferred to the Dutch treasury.
Under the impression of new liberal economic principles, opposition to the
cultural system gradually grew. In 1870, private individuals were allowed to
acquire land in Indonesia, and now rapid growth began in privately owned
plantation operations and in the mining and forestry industries. The rapid
economic development was followed by a territorial expansion, and in the early
1900-t. the Dutch had secured almost all of present-day
Indonesia. Administrative reforms continued, and the number of Dutch
administrators grew rapidly; for the first time, an Indonesian colonial state
was created with uniform, centralized administration.
In the first decades of the 1900's, a popularly rooted opposition to colonial
rule grew. The nationalist organization Sarekat Islam was founded in 1912 and
quickly gained hundreds of thousands of members. The movement was later split,
due to disagreement between communists and religious. The Indonesian
Communist Party, PKI, was behind some rebellion attempts in 1926-27, which,
however, were poorly organized and easily defeated. In 1927, the Indonesian
Nationalist Party, PNI, was formed under the leadership of Achmed Sukarno. He
and other nationalist leaders, Muhammad Hatta, was imprisoned and banished
to remote islands; only after the Japanese invasion of Indonesia in 1942 could
they return.
Many Indonesians, including Sukarno and Hatta, were given positions in the
Japanese administration, but the Japanese brutality further intensified
nationalism. Immediately after the Japanese capitulation, Sukarno and Hatta
declared Indonesia's independence on August 17, 1945. However, the Dutch did not
accept the loss of the colony, and it took another four years of military strife
before a UN-led conference in The Hague in December 1949 succeeded in getting
the Dutch to recognize independence. However, the Indonesian claim to Irian
Jaya was first recognized by the Netherlands in 1963 against a promise to hold a
referendum in which the people of the area would decide the affiliation
themselves. It happened in 1969.
The independent Indonesia
Sukarno became Indonesia's first president. After the first election, held in
1955, three almost equal ideological main lines emerged: a Muslim line,
represented primarily by the parties Nahdatul Ulama and Masyumi, who long fought
to make Indonesia a Muslim state, a secular line, which supported the current
constitution and included Sukarno's Nationalist Party and the Communists,
and finally the army, whose position had become increasingly strong after
defeating various separatist uprisings, including on the southern islands of the
Moluccas archipelago. For a long time, Sukarno managed to maintain the balance
between the various groupings by playing them off against each other, but the
political situation was unclear. Sukarno spoke in the same year for the
introduction of a special form of government, "guided democracy", which
if. Sukarno, to a greater degree than Western democracy, suited Indonesian
conditions, and in 1959 he assumed more or less autocratic power. However, he
was still dependent on maintaining a balance between the army and the
Communists.
In the early 1960's, contradictions intensified drastically, mainly due to the
decision to implement land reforms. The reforms were sabotaged by the
conservative forces and the large landowners, which led to the PKI mobilizing
and through its peasant organizations carrying out land occupations. Sukarno
followed an increasingly anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist line. The
contradictions were further exacerbated by the weak economy and galloping
inflation and in 1965 triggered a coup attempt, which PKI was blamed for. The
coup failed, and the army launched a crackdown on communists and suspected
sympathizers, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives. When the PKI was
eliminated, the balance of power shifted, undermining Sukarno's central
political position; in 1967 he was deposed and replaced by General Suharto,
which held power until 1998.
Indonesia occupied the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975 and
annexed the area the following year. The annexation has never been
internationally recognized, and approximately 200,000 East Timorese are believed to
have died as a result of Indonesian aggression.
In addition to its own party, the Golkar, the Suharto regime has only allowed
two very strictly controlled opposition parties. One is a Muslim party and the
other is Indonesia's Democratic Party, PDI, which contains the remnants of
Sukarno's Nationalist Party in addition to a number of smaller, Christian
parties. In 1994, the PDI elected Sukarno's daughter Megawati Sukarnoputri as
leader, which was considered a threat by the Suharto regime. When she managed to
force her departure in June 1996, it sparked violent protests and riots.
The rapid economic progress in Indonesia has been due to political and social
oppression. Along with growing ethnic, regional and religious contradictions,
this has meant that the political situation is tense and there is no sign that
the regime will give up its hard political line.
Indonesia was hit hard by the economic crisis in South Asia in 1997. The
Suharto regime, which had won a controversial election the same year, failed to
stem the crisis, and a series of major demonstrations the following year led to
unrest in Jakarta. several killed. In May 1998, Suharto resigned and appointed
BJ Habibie (b. 1936) president. Habibie promised reforms and also initiated
corruption investigations against Suharto and his family.
In January 1999, Habibie promised a referendum in East Timor on the future
status of the area; The vote was organized by the United Nations and held in
August of that year. When the result was an overwhelming yes to independence, it
triggered violent unrest in East Timor, for which the Indonesian military was
held responsible. Elsewhere in Indonesia, too, there have been particularly
bloody ethnic, religious and separatist unrest, rooted in contradictions between
local traditions and immigration from Java mixed with elements of religious and
ethnic differences. In the Moluccas, more than 5,000 have lost their lives in a
real civil war. Separatist movements in Papuaand especially Aceh gained
increasing popular support, and bloody clashes took place between guerrillas and
government forces. The scale of the unrest led to speculation as to whether
Indonesia was actually facing a split.
In an election in October 1999, Abdurrahman Wahid was elected
president. However, he was soon accused of corruption, and in 2001 he was ousted
after trying to impose a state of emergency, and Vice President Megawati
Sukarnoputri became the new president.
Indonesia became in 2000-t. hit by several violent terrorist attacks. The
worst was an attack on Bali in 2002, in which 202 people were killed, including
a large number of tourists. Bali was again attacked in 2005, but Jakarta has
also been subjected to severe bombings. Militant Islamist organizations linked
to the al-Qaeda terrorist network are believed to be behind it. In the 2004
presidential election, Megawati Sukarnoputri was defeated by Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono. In December 2004, Indonesia was hit by a tsunami; more than 220,000
people perished or are missing in Indonesia alone. Aceh province in particular
was hit hard. The province had for nearly 30 years been marked by fighting
between separatist rebels and government forces. Following the tsunami disaster,
a peace agreement was reached and in 2006 Aceh gained autonomy. In 2006, Java
was hit by another tsunami; more than 500 perished.
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