Product Description

Although Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world, its history is still relatively unfamiliar and understudied. Guided by the life and writings of the country’s most famous author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Adrian Vickers takes the reader on a journey across the social and political landscape of twentieth-century Indonesia in this innovative and timely account. He begins by explaining the country’s origins under the Dutch in the early part of that century, the subsequent anti-colonial struggle and revolution which led to independence in 1949. Thereafter the spotlight is on the 1950s, a crucial period in the formation of Indonesia as a new nation, which was followed by the Sukarno years, and the anti-communist massacres of the 1960s when General Suharto took over as president. The concluding chapters chart the fall of Suharto’s New Order after thirty two years in power, and the subsequent political and religious turmoil which culminated in the Bali bombings in 2002. Drawing on insights from literature, art and anthropology, Adrian Vickers portrays a complex and resilient people borne out of a troubled past.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #512254 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 306 pages

Review
'Vickers's Modern Indonesia is no one-thing-after-the-other textbook. Innovatively framed around the writings of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, and invoking the arresting insights of Indonesian novelists and playwrights, it provides a stimulating, fresh understanding of Indonesia's modern, often tragic, trajectory. This is not a book written over the shoulders of nationalist politicians and military officers, but one that evokes the senses, flavours, turmoils and smells of everyday life in that irresistably complicated country.' R. E. Elson, Professor of Southeast Asian history, The University of Queensland

About the Author
Adrian Vickers is Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Wollongong in Australia. He is author of the acclaimed Bali: A Paradise Created (1989) as well as many other scholarly and popular works on Indonesia.

Customer Reviews

A Good Overview
I have read a few other texts on the history of Indonesia but this was by far the most concise and readable so far.

By using an Indonesian writer as a framing device for his chronological study of modern Indonesia's development the reader is spared many of the presumptions you seem to encounter with other accounts. I have read other books around this topic and at times they can glamourise or over-simplify the role Amercia played or paint all the Dutch as obstinant, greedy villains. Another refreshing aspect ot Vicker's account is the way he makes note of the way other ethnic minorities, most notably the Chinese, have been made to suffer over the years. This is most clear in his accounts and choice of materials for the retelling of the post-war, mid-revolutionary period when all kinds of atrocities were meted out on various groups regardless of whether they were victims or threats to the national ideal. It is also nice to see more mention of Sutan Syahrir and other notables rather than the focus being purely on Sukarno.

Overall, this book will never give you great detail but it is an adroit summary of key moments in Indonesia's turbuulent and criminaly ignored history.