The
History of The
Independence
of
Indonesia
(A summary from Indonesia Insight Guides)
�For many countries,
their independences are priceless, valuable, and important. When they
fought for their independences, they rather fight sacrifisingly for
freedom than rearrange the territories with the colonies for peace.
It took three and a half centuries long and millions of heroes' life
for Indonesians to proclaim their freedom and
independence.
The history began in 1511
when the Portuguese managed to conquer Malacca. The invasion was an
important victory for the Portuguese because they became one of the
competing powers of regions. Among the Europeans, The Portuguese was
a small part. With bravery of several soldiers and weaponaries, they
managed to conquest the Malaccans who were better prepared. Since
then, they had stayed in Malacca and expanded their territories to
Indonesia which was called the Indies at that time and other places.
However, from time to time, the Portuguese became less agressive and
more settled. So, in 1641, when the Dutch and the English came to
compete for the Portuguese's regions, the regions were taken over
except Timor and Macau.
The Portuguese left trace
of cultural influences. For example, many people who were Portuguese-
oriented converted to Catholic.Furthermore, many vocabularies of Indonesian
language came from the the Portuguese language. For example the word
'sabun'(soap), 'meja'(table), 'Minggu'(Sunday) and many more words
are from the Portuguese.
The Dutch was the second
wave of Colonialism in Indonesia. It knew about the Indies
(Indonesia) for the first time after a Dutchman, Cornelis de Houtman,
came back from a failuring journey to the Indies in 1596. However,
The Dutch thought that De Houtman's journey was a success because De
Houtman and crew brought home a source of profits which was the
spice. Since then, the Dutch had sent a lot of ships to the Indies and
formed the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC).
The business of trading
spices from the Indies made the traders rich. However, the overall
performance of the business was not good because the price of spice were low
in Europe but high in the Indies. A young accountant whose name was
Jan Pieteszoon Coen had a good idea to increase the profit. As he
convinced the directors of VOC, he wanted the company's policy to be
more forceful.
Since then, the Dutch had
been forceful in trading spices with the Indies and JP Coen was
appointed as the new Commander in East Indies. His first mission was to
build a Fortress in Batavia which was declined by the prince of
Jayakarta, Prince Wijayakarma. His second attempt succeed to built
the Fortress after he had attacked the town of Jayakarta with a small
force of 1000 men and Japanese mercenaries. After the town had been razed,
JP Coen built a new Dutch town with canals, drawbridges, docks,
warehouses and many more. Then, his next mission was to take over control
of the five tiny Banda islands which produced nutmeg and mace .The mission
was done in 1621 with a sad end that the dutch killed most of the 15000
inhabitants. In the years followed, the Dutch firmed their monopoly on
spice trading forcefully. For examples, the monopoly of clove in
Ternate and Tidore made the people became poorer. In South Sulawesi,Makassar, the fight over
control on clove caused deaths and the Makassarese to surrender in 1669.
Some of the big battles
that the Dutch had faced during its time were the battles with the
Javanese. As early as 1628, the Dutch was under the Javanese sieges.
Sultan Agung, the most well known ruler of Mataram, conquested a battle that took five
years long over Surabaya. He also conquested the Central and
East Java. He tried to push out the Dutch from West Java twice, but
he did not succeed. Instead, there was a backlash which the Dutch
attacked and conquested the Kingdom of Mataram . Ironically,the victory
made the relationship between the Dutch with the Javanese which was
ruled by Amangkurat I improve. However, the reason made it obvious
where these two sides had a common enemy which was the Pesisir Kingdom
(a kingdom in North Java coast). If we go back to the Makassarese war
for a while, there were Makassarese and Buginese refugees. Many of
them fled to East Java and joined the Sundanese which was ruled by
Trunajaya. With the aid of crowned Prince of Mataram, Trunajaya
succesfully sieged the Dutch in Mataram through Central Java. At the
end of the war, Amangkurat I died, Trunajaya ended his kingdom
cooperation with the Prince of Mataram, and Trunajaya became the new ruler of Mataram .
In 19th
century, many kingdoms in Indonesia was by themselves and lacked of
unity among kigdoms. After the separation from Trunajaya, Prince of Mataram seeked
help to the Dutch for defeating Trunajaya, and in return , the prince would
cover for all military expenses. In 1680, the Dutch caught and
defeated Trunajaya. However, Mataram went to the Dutch again and not to
the prince because the prince had no treasury left to repay the
expenses.
to be continued......
A summary from Indonesia Insight Guides.APA Publication.Singapore.1989
�
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