Introduction
On 14 August 1947, five men representing the Republic of Indonesia took their seats in the United Nations Security Council meeting room in Lake Success, New York. At this time, the Republic did not belong to the United Nations organisation, let alone its Security Council, but it had obtained the right to represent itself in the Council against its long-time colonial ruler, the Netherlands. Two years prior, on 17 August 1945, Indonesian nationalists Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta had publicly proclaimed the independent Republic of Indonesia; successive Dutch governments had refused to recognise its authority. Now, in the summer of 1947, an ad hoc Indonesian delegation led by Sutan Sjahrir, who had recently stepped down from his position as prime minister of the Republic, was admitted to the Security Council to speak on behalf of the Republican cause. Less than a month before, the Netherlands had launched a major military offensive against the Republic. Purportedly intended to enforce the terms of a previous agreement between the two parties, the Dutch military action had prompted certain members of the Security Council to demand a thorough investigation of the ongoing conflict. Shortly after recognising the Indonesians’ right to represent themselves, the Council authorised the creation of a UN Commission for Indonesia. For the next two years, this UN Commission facilitated the military cease-fires and political arrangements that would ultimately result in the Netherlands’ transfer of sovereignty to the independent United States of Indonesia in December 1949, and, in September 1950, Indonesia's admission to the UN General Assembly. The history of Indonesian independence, then, squarely intersects with that of the young UN Security Council.
In 1947, Indonesian delegates and their supporters in the Security Council repeatedly emphasised that the organisation's handling—or mishandling—of the Indonesian conflict would serve as an important precedent for other colonial countries and peoples; the world was watching, in other words.Footnote 1 As these Indonesians pursued international recognition for their independence struggle against the Netherlands, they engaged in what one historian has termed a “diplomatic revolution,” similar to that later employed by Algerian nationalists during their years’ long war against the French.Footnote 2 Yet, some of the first and seemingly most comprehensive general histories of the young UN have prioritised concurrent developments and conflicts in India, Greece, and Palestine over those unfolding in Indonesia at roughly the same time.Footnote 3 To some extent, this is not surprising, given the wartime Allies’ vested interests in these areas: political actors on both sides of the developing Cold War divide feared that the situations in Greece and Palestine would upset the delicate and increasingly strained Anglo-American and Soviet relationship, while British authorities tried to anticipate how they might recast their global empire in light of its expected separation with India. Recent synthetic studies have indeed highlighted the Dutch–Indonesian conflict as one of the first decolonisation conflicts to play out in the UN, while others have prioritised the organisation's involvement in the later “waves” of decolonisation that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s.Footnote 4
By contrast, specialised studies have long recognised the signal importance played by the UN over the course of the Indonesian decolonisation process. Published sixty years ago, Alastair Taylor's Indonesian Independence and the United Nations provides a critical assessment of the organisation's varied efforts to resolve the Dutch–Indonesian conflict. His connections to the various negotiations, agreements, and fact-finding missions he examined were deeply personal: a Canadian who first worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), Taylor then served as the official spokesman for the Security Council's Commission for Indonesia during the years 1949 and 1950. Both Taylor's book-length study and a shorter analysis by Leon Gordenker position the UN as a natural forum for the nascent Republic of Indonesia, seemingly because the new member nations stemming from former colonies would have been amenable to the Indonesian cause.Footnote 5 Anthony Reid's 1974 study The Indonesian National Revolution of 1945 to 1949 points to “the remarkable superiority of Indonesian diplomacy” on the word stage: these diplomatic efforts, coupled with the persistent use of force at home, not only allowed the Indonesians to garner international support for their cause but to influence the decolonisation process elsewhere.Footnote 6 Similarly, and more recently, Samuel Crowl has argued that the Indonesians “were the first colonial subjects to successfully use diplomacy as a weapon against a colonial power in an independence struggle.”Footnote 7 This story is not entirely unknown, then, but neither has it been fully developed and contextualised.
Using these accounts as pivotal starting points, this article seeks to answer the following question: why and how did this group of Indonesians—members of a European-administered “non-self-governing territory,” not a sovereign state—secure a seat at the UN Security Council table in the summer of 1947, and in the process, obtain international recognition for the Republic of Indonesia two years before its formal independence from the Netherlands? Again, existing studies provide partial answers to this question but, at the same time, underestimate the more radical, even revolutionary, nature of the Republican involvement in the Council. Throughout his study, Taylor references the Council's decision to “invite” Sjahrir and the Republican representatives to participate but does not examine the Indonesians’ active efforts to obtain for themselves a seat at the table. Reid only briefly discusses the Indonesians’ direct involvement in Council work, noting that, after the Dutch launched their first major military action against the Republic in July 1947, “Sjahrir made his way to New York where he dramatically put the Indonesian case before the Security Council.” By “voting to hear Sjahrir,” the Council affirmed “the Republic's claim to the legitimate voice of Indonesia,” as did its subsequent decision not to seat those representatives from other areas of Indonesia still under Dutch control.Footnote 8 George McTurnan Kahin's seminal Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia focuses on the work of the Security Council's Good Offices Committee on Indonesia and its successor, the Commission for Indonesia. It details the extent of Indonesian participation in the Committee/Commission beginning in 1947 but neither explains nor contextualises their involvement, other than noting that Sjahrir “was finally allowed to appear before the Council on August 14.”Footnote 9 Such statements aside, the Council's recognition of the Indonesian representatives at this point was neither a natural or expected outcome of Council intervention but nonetheless exerted a formative influence on the larger decolonisation process.
Still other studies have positioned the Indonesians as “observers” or guest speakers permitted to address the Security Council.Footnote 10 This too mischaracterises the status of the Republican delegation as well as the process by which these Indonesian representatives came to serve as active participants in Council work. “Observer status” was an official UN designation for those states or entities wishing to engage in the organisation's work but for various reasons could not be formally recognised by the larger organisation. Neither the Republican delegation nor other Council members appear to have sought this official designation for Indonesia. In July 1947, when Sjahrir and his colleagues were admitted to the Council, Switzerland alone possessed such observer status.Footnote 11 Recognised by Council members as one party to an ongoing military and political conflict, the Republic of Indonesia could assume a far more direct, interventionist role than that implied by the official “observer” designation.
The admission of these Indonesian representatives constituted a foundational moment not only for the Republic of Indonesia but for the UN and, more specifically, the Security Council. Directed by the world's superpowers and open to select outsiders only on a rotating basis, the Council seemed intended to preserve and possibly expand existing networks, ideologies, and political structures.Footnote 12 And yet, if the organisation legitimised the idea and power of the traditional nation-state, as Sunil Amrith and Glenda Sluga have argued,Footnote 13 representatives of the Republic of Indonesia relied on it to do just that. At the same time, the Council's involvement in the earliest postwar decolonisation conflicts revealed a complex, even malleable organisation—still an elite club, to sure, but one with rules and procedures that had yet to crystallise, and where policies and practices could, and did, evolve. Beginning in early 1946, imperialist, internationalist, and nationalist tendencies intersected on the floor of Parisian assembly halls and New York City school gymnasiums repurposed as Council chambers. In this way, the UN served as a critical “borderland” between ideologies, alliances, and national governments, just as the League of the Nations before it constituted “the arena in which a variety of claims and schemes for ordering the world emerged and clashed.”Footnote 14 The Council's recognition of Republican representatives in the summer of 1947 revealed how colonised peoples might successfully confront colonial authorities in this new, and steadily evolving, global arena.Footnote 15
Between San Francisco and London: Indonesia and Indonesians in the New International Organization
According to the classification scheme established by the original United Nations Charter of 1945 and refined over the next few years, the Dutch East Indies, like most colonies claimed by European governments, constituted a “non-self-governing territory.” Non-self-governing territories were administered by a designated UN member—in this case, the Netherlands—which was to undertake “political, economic, social and educational advancement”; develop self-government; and transmit to the secretary-general “statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social and educational conditions” in the territory.Footnote 16 Exceptionally, India and the Philippines numbered amongst the UN's original members, although neither constituted an independent, fully sovereign nation-state at the time of the Charter's signing.Footnote 17 Granted no such special status, the Dutch East Indies found representation in the UN only under the auspices of the larger “Kingdom of the Netherlands.”
The Kingdom of the Netherlands’ sixteen-member delegation to the San Francisco planning conference convened in April 1945 included two Indonesians: Boerhanoedin, described in Dutch public statements as a “former Indonesian nationalist leader,” who served as a general adviser to the Dutch delegation, and Raden Mohammed Moesa Suria Nata Djoemena, then First Secretary of the Dutch embassy in Washington, who served as a “special adviser” to delegation chairman Eelco van Kleffens. Boerhanoedin subsequently served as the sole Indonesian alongside eleven Dutch advisers attached to the country's first General Assembly delegation.Footnote 18 When the first Security Council (with the Netherlands serving a one-year stint as a nonpermanent member) met on 17 January 1946, two Indonesian representatives, Soemitro Djojohadikoesoemo and Soetan Mohammed Zain, belonged to the Dutch Security Council delegation. Both men, however, remained with the delegation for only a few months before returning to the Indonesian archipelago. Here, they would report upon the UN proceedings as they had witnessed them, for the benefit of Republican officials and other Indonesian nationalists.Footnote 19
If Dutch representatives in the young international organisation believed themselves to speak for the people and territory of the East Indies, Indonesian nationalists at the helm of the Republican government remained equally convinced of their own authority. From 1942 through 1945, the archipelago had constituted part of Japan's “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere,” and most Dutch colonial authorities—along with other Europeans resident in the colony at the time of the Japanese invasion—spent these years in Japanese detention camps. On 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender, Sukarno, Mohammed Hatta, and their colleagues publicly proclaimed the independent Republic of Indonesia and charged themselves with the monumental task of nation-building. Within a few weeks’ time, the government of the Republic of Indonesia debuted in the newly declared capital of Jakarta (Batavia, under Dutch rule), complete with a constitution, ministries, and a council of representatives.Footnote 20 At least in theory, however, the archipelago remained under the formal purview of the Allies’ Southeast Asia Command, and British troops were tasked with disarming and repatriating Japanese forces and protecting those Europeans who had spent the last few years in Japanese camps. British forces encountered a far more precarious situation than they had expected. On the main island of Java, militarised youth groups and other ad hoc military forces engaged remaining Japanese troops as well as British forces, while political leaders of various persuasions and affiliations mobilised these masses in pursuit of their respective revolutionary causes. Beginning in late 1945, significant numbers of Dutch troops began to arrive in the colony to replace these British forces and provide support for colonial officials tasked with restoring colonial institutions, personnel, and laws.Footnote 21 For those Dutch civilian and military officials looking to reestablish Dutch authority throughout the archipelago, the Indonesian declaration of independence barely seemed to register.
In mid-October 1945, the Second Chamber of the Dutch parliament in The Hague opened debate on these Indonesian developments. Here, Minister of Overseas Territories H. A. Logemann reaffirmed the metropolitan government's commitment to democratic reform, noting that an empire-wide conference including representatives from all parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands would soon meet to discuss and restructure the political framework of the Dutch empire. Sukarno, however, would not be invited to participate. According to Logemann, negotiating with Sukarno himself would be both dishonourable, since Sukarno was tainted by his recent collaboration with the Japanese occupiers, and unproductive, since Sukarno would accept nothing less than complete independence. At the same time, Logemann and some of his colleagues proved willing to negotiate with other Indonesian representatives they deemed to be “qualified.”Footnote 22
Although he was a well-known opponent of Dutch colonialism who had spent seven-and-a-half years imprisoned on account of his nationalist activities, Sutan Sjahrir appeared to be an acceptable mediator. During the period of November 1945 to March 1946, Sjahrir simultaneously served as prime minister, minister of foreign affairs, and minister of the interior for the young Republic of Indonesia. In these capacities, he engaged in direct negotiations with Dutch officials such as lieutenant governor-general of the East Indies Hubert van Mook while also requesting foreign intervention, particularly in the form of UN involvement. On Christmas Day 1945, Sjahrir personally appealed to US President Harry Truman: the United States, a “neutral and impartial nation” always “in the forefront of the fight for liberty, justice, and self-determination” could ensure that the Indonesians be given the opportunity to present their case when the UN convened in London the following month. With an American “helping hand,” Sjahrir explained, the Republic “would be able to put in an appearance as one party to the dispute,”Footnote 23 thus implying that, if the Dutch were allowed to present their side before the international body, then naturally so should the Indonesians. American policy towards the Indonesian conflict would evolve over the course of the next four years, especially after 1947, when the Truman administration coupled an explicitly anti-communist containment policy with the massive influx of American financial assistance in the form of Marshall Plan aid. But in late 1945, American policymakers maintained—at least in theory—a relatively hands-off approach towards this and other European-held colonial territories. Consequently, in the Indonesian case, Truman's State Department supported direct negotiations between the two parties, not foreign intervention. Despite Sjahrir's targeted appeal, the United States would not raise the matter before the General Assembly or Security Council, although American officials expected that another party might do so.Footnote 24
Neither Sjahrir nor his Indonesian colleagues seem to have sought recognition by the UN General Assembly, which is not entirely surprising, given the Republic's existing status as a non-self-governing territory of the Netherlands, itself a member nation of the General Assembly. By contrast, India—exceptionally, as noted above—numbered among the United Nations’ original member nations, and so, later that year, when Indian representatives accused South Africa of discriminating against its Indian community, they issued their complaint in the General Assembly. Mark Mazower has noted that India's UN early strategy in the General Assembly “blazed a path” that others, such as South West Africa/Namibia, would later follow.Footnote 25 However, in early 1946 Sjahrir and his colleagues turned to the Security Council rather than pursue access to the General Assembly. After all, the Council was charged with maintaining international peace and security, and its Articles 34 and 35 allowed any member nation to bring to the attention of the Council any dispute that might endanger international peace and security. This provided a potential opening for delegations from non-self-governing territories: if they could find a sponsoring member nation (or nations) to present their case before the Council, they could openly challenge their “administering power”—or any other Council member for that matter. The Republic of Indonesia was the first non-self-governing territory to exploit this opening, and the Ukraine became the first UN member nation to sponsor Indonesian efforts to these ends.
The Ukrainian Complaint of Early 1946 and the Prospects of (Early) International Intervention
The Indonesian conflict first appeared on the Security Council's agenda courtesy of the developing East-West divide of the Cold War. During its second meeting on 25 January 1946, the Council considered an Iranian complaint accusing Soviet military forces in Iran of transgressing the terms of previous military agreements and exerting undue influence upon Iranian domestic affairs. The Iranians thus called upon the Security Council to investigate and recommend an appropriate settlement. In response to the Iranian complaint, Soviet representatives accused the British of overstepping their postwar military mandate in Greece and interfering with domestic Greek affairs.Footnote 26 At approximately the same time, the chairman of the Ukrainian delegation, Dmitro Manuilsky, accused British occupation forces in the Dutch East Indies of using imported colonial troops from India to suppress the “democratic movement in Indonesia.” Claiming that these British actions “threatened the maintenance of international peace and security,” he called upon the Council to dispatch an investigatory commission to investigate the situation and suggest an appropriate settlement to restore peace.Footnote 27
These were serious charges in their own right, but they also demonstrated that colonial territories could serve as powerful bargaining chips in the larger geopolitical conflict later known as the Cold War. The Council's initial treatment of the Indonesian situation constituted one of these first proxy battles, a political football thrown by the Ukraine against the backdrop of rising British-Soviet tensions. It positioned the developing Indonesian conflict at the top of the Security's Council early agenda at a time when the “Big Five” powers were especially concerned with developments in Europe, such as the ongoing border disputes between Greece and its northern neighbours Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, and the question of whether Franco's government in Spain constituted a threat to regional or international peace.Footnote 28
We do not know, and perhaps cannot know with certainty, what drove the Ukrainians to issue this complaint. They may have simply sought to do the Soviet Union's anti-British bidding, thereby placing their country in Moscow's good graces. Alternately, they may have truly believed that recent events in Indonesia threatened a fragile postwar peace.Footnote 29 Regardless of their specific motives, the Ukrainian complaint functioned as an early test case for some of the UN Charter's provisions, such as Articles 34 and 35 concerning the peaceful settlement of disputes. According to the Ukrainians, British actions in Indonesia constituted a clear and pressing threat to peace and security as specified in Article 34, which meant that the Council could choose to intervene.Footnote 30 At the time of this complaint, the Ukraine did not belong to the Security Council, although as per the Yalta agreement of the previous year, Ukraine had been granted full membership to the UN. Per Article 35, any UN member nation could bring to the Security Council or General Assembly a dispute or situation of the kind referenced in Article 34. By simultaneously invoking these two articles, the Ukrainian delegation helped establish an important precedent with ramifications that lay outside the immediate context of developing Cold War tensions: non-Council members could intervene in matters that did not directly affect them.Footnote 31
Whether intended as a gesture of solidarity with the embattled Indonesians or a power ploy on the Soviet's behalf, the Ukrainian complaint apparently took Republican officials by surprise. Sjahrir publicly denied advance knowledge of it, let alone Indonesian complicity.Footnote 32 Yet, he also welcomed the international attention, particularly since it came at a time of renewed Dutch–Indonesian negotiations: two days before the Ukrainians penned their initial complaint, the Dutch government had agreed to another round of direct talks with the Republic under the meditation of British diplomat Sir Archibald Kerr. Unfortunately for Sjahrir, however, the Ukrainian recommendation that the Council create and dispatch an investigatory commission to Indonesia received a mixed, even hostile response from the Council's permanent members, with only the Soviet Union supporting this initiative. Ernest Bevin, British foreign secretary and delegate to the Security Council, denied his nation's explicit involvement in Indonesian political affairs, and, specifically, the Ukrainians’ charge that British troops had purposefully attacked Indonesian nationalists. Moreover, he argued, the Indonesian conflict was a domestic matter, so Council intervention would clearly violate the Charter's Article 2, paragraph 7. Because the Council's deployment of an investigatory commission would constitute clear organisational overreach into the Netherlands’ internal affairs, Britain would refuse to participate. Yet, despite Bevin's public repudiation of the Ukrainians’ attempt to sully the good name of British troops, his government had already opted to involve itself in Indonesia: only a few weeks prior, London had agreed to the new round of talks under Kerr's leadership. Speaking in the Council, the American and French delegations voiced their support for this kind of mediated negotiation in lieu of formal international intervention.Footnote 33
In early 1946, the Council's nonpermanent members included the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, and Poland, and, with the exception of Poland, none of them seemed willing to support the Ukrainian initiative. Although Australia would become one of Indonesia's most consistent and steadfast allies in the Security Council, this was not true in February 1946, when the Australian delegation rejected the Ukrainian proposal on procedural grounds. According to Norman Makin, the Australian chief delegate and then president of the Security Council, the military actions of British troops in Indonesia did not threaten international peace and security, and so the Security Council could not intervene in Indonesia on the basis of Article 34. All the same, Makin emphasised that Australia remained willing and able to participate in any committee charged with investigating the situation in Indonesia.Footnote 34
Since the Netherlands belonged to the inaugural Security Council, the country's minister of foreign affairs and chief delegate Eelco van Kleffens was already on hand to present the Dutch position. A legal expert, seasoned diplomat, and skilled public speaker, van Kleffens echoed Bevin's arguments concerning organisational overreach and fervently defended his nation's sovereignty over the archipelago. He also denied that any such dispute existed and emphasised that only those negotiations currently underway between Dutch and Indonesian authorities could bring the conflict to a “satisfactory conclusion.” In any case, he maintained, the situation in Indonesia hardly constituted a threat to international peace and security, contrary to Ukrainian claims.Footnote 35 In other words, this was neither an emergency nor a matter requiring international intervention, but, rather, a domestic situation to be handled by the Netherlands alone.
After approximately a week of debate, the members of the Council voted on the Ukrainian proposal to establish a multinational commission consisting of representatives from the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and China. As put to the vote on 13 February, this commission would investigate the situation on the ground, “establish peace in Indonesia,” and report back to the Security Council. Gaining only Soviet and Polish support, the Ukrainian proposal failed. So too did a more expansive Egyptian proposal calling upon the British to withdraw their troops from Indonesia as soon as they had completed their original Allied mission. Hopeful that ongoing negotiations between the Dutch government and the Indonesian nationalists would result in a “happy solution inspired by the aims and principles of the Charter, and principally by the right of self-determination of peoples,” the Egyptian proposal also would have granted the Council the ability to intervene as it saw necessary. The Soviet amendment to this proposal—reiterating the Ukraine's request for a multinational commission to investigate the situation in Indonesia and hasten “the re-establishment of normal conditions” there—also failed, with affirmative votes from only the Soviet Union, Mexico, and Poland.Footnote 36 With these votes, the Council rejected direct intervention in Indonesia, at least at this particular moment.
However, in other respects, the Ukrainian-led initiative of early 1946 established important precedents. For one, the original complaint and the ensuing discussion tapped into larger procedural and logistical concerns about the UN's jurisdiction over European colonial empires. The Council's European members with overseas colonial holdings—in 1946, this included the Netherlands, Britain, and France—argued that their respective governments’ domestic jurisdiction over these territories superseded that of the Council or any other international organisation. During the course of the Indonesian discussion, delegates from these imperial nations drew a line in the sand on this question of domestic jurisdiction, and although they won this particular battle against the Ukrainian proposal authorising international intervention in Indonesia, theirs was neither an unqualified nor an enduring victory. In fact, the complaint put the Netherlands in a defensive position on the Council floor. As of early 1946, van Kleffens and his Dutch colleagues had to account for their government's continued military and political presence in the colony and also convince the Security Council that they sought a negotiated, peaceful solution. This was not a complete lie, since, for months, various Dutch agencies and officials had negotiated with Indonesian authorities, even as the metropolitan government in The Hague refused to formally acknowledge Sukarno's Republic. Still, the Council's consideration of the Ukrainian complaint revealed the extent to which Dutch authorities believed that they alone would be able to dictate the decolonisation process. During the course of the discussion, Ukrainian chief delegate Manuilsky also explicitly noted the regrettable absence of Indonesian representatives.Footnote 37 At the time, Council members ignored his remarks to this effect—something that would prove impossible the next time the Council turned to developments in Indonesia.
Colonial War, Domestic Jurisdiction, and Council Involvement
In February 1946, the Council put aside the Indonesian situation and turned to the expanding war in Greece and the increasingly volatile situation in British-held Palestine. Meanwhile, and with Dutch troops arriving in Indonesia, Dutch and Republican officials continued to negotiate. By the fall of 1946, the two parties had reached a compromise settlement, and, in March 1947, they formally signed the Linggadjati Agreement. As detailed in the first of eighteen articles, Linggadjati recognised Republican authority over the islands of Java, Sumatra, and Madura, but specified that other territories located in the eastern part of the archipelago (primarily, Eastern Indonesia and Borneo) would remain outside of Republican control, at least for the time being. All of these territories, taken together, would then form a federal structure, the United States of Indonesia, which, in turn, would constitute part of the Netherlands Indonesian Union, assembling metropole and colony under the authority of the Dutch queen (or king).Footnote 38
Although the Linggadjati Agreement would remain in effect and constitute the basis for further negotiations, each party soon accused the other of violating its terms as well as the accompanying cease-fire order. Among their numerous objections, Indonesian representatives alleged that the Dutch sought to weaken Republican authority by encouraging separatist movements within Republican-recognised territories and creating additional Indonesian states outside of the Republic. By adopting this strategy, the Indonesians alleged, the Netherlands could more easily implement its preferred federative arrangement, and the independent Republic of Indonesia would see its territory and legal authority severely limited. The Indonesians charged the Dutch with instituting restrictive trade policies that amounted to an embargo of Indonesian goods; the Dutch, in turn, demanded that the Republic protect Dutch-owned property and provide restitution for property and assets destroyed since 1945. Dutch officials especially objected to Republican attempts to seek official recognition from foreign governments and therefore try to steer its own foreign policy independently of both the Netherlands and the proposed United States of Indonesia federation. Indeed, Republican authorities, specifically, Prime Minister Sjahrir and Minister for Foreign Affairs Hadji Agus Salim, had actively pursued international recognition, and with some success. In late March 1947, days after the Linggadjati Agreement was finalised, Great Britain recognised the Republic's de facto authority over the islands of Java and Sumatra; the United States, Australia, China, India, and members of the Arab League soon followed suit. With such recognition in hand, Minister Salim attempted to install Indonesian consulates in these and other countries while inviting foreign consuls to establish offices in Republican territory. Against Dutch objections to this strategy, Sjahrir simply declared that “the establishment of foreign representation was purely a matter between the Indonesian Republic and the countries concerned.”Footnote 39
After months of negotiations had failed to settle these differences, in late May 1947, lieutenant governor-general of the East Indies Hubert van Mook presented the Republic with a final proposal for the implementation of Linggadjati. Sjahrir attempted to moderate the terms of what the Republic considered to be an ultimatum, but when he was unsuccessful in doing so, he resigned as prime minister on 27 June. He would continue to serve the Republican government as an adviser to President Sukarno, and, at least according to one nearly contemporary account, stood ready to argue the Republic's case before the world community, should this prove necessary.Footnote 40 He would not have to wait long for an opportunity to do so.
Dissatisfied with the new Republican prime minister's response to its ultimatum, the Dutch government in The Hague authorised a “police action” directed against the Republican government and its territory on the central island of Java, beginning on 20 July. This would be the first of two major military campaigns against the Republic, with the second “police action” launched a year and a half later. Two days into the first Dutch military campaign, Sjahrir departed the Republic for India, travelling on a private plane owned by a Bengali friend to meet with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in New Delhi. Only a few months prior, Sjahrir and Foreign Minister Salim had participated in the Asian Relations Conference convened by India in March 1947; now, with the Dutch military campaign underway, the Republic's new “ambassador-at-large” urged his Indian colleague to bring the Indonesian conflict before the Security Council. On 28 July, Nehru agreed to do so.Footnote 41 Like the Ukrainian complaint of the previous year, the Indian complaint—signed by Nehru and submitted by Samar Sen, India's permanent liaison officer to the UN—cited Article 34 of the Charter, which allowed the Council to investigate any dispute, or any situation leading to a dispute, “in order to determine whether the continuance of the dispute or situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security.”Footnote 42
Simultaneously but seemingly independently of the Indian initiative, the Australian government also requested that the Council revisit the Indonesian conflict. At the time of the Netherlands’ military action against the Republic, Australia numbered among the Council's nonpermanent members alongside Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Poland, and Syria. In his formal complaint, Australia's acting representative to the Security Council, Colonel William R. Hodgson, invoked Article 39 of the Charter authorising the Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” and recommend appropriate measures in order to maintain or restore international peace and security. This was the first invocation of Article 39, which, unlike the more popularly-cited Article 34, allowed the Council to take decisive action, including the use of armed forces, as necessary.Footnote 43 As Hodgson would explain before the Council on 31 July, Australia was entirely within its rights to invoke Article 39, given its proximity to the conflict zone and close economic relations with the Indonesian archipelago. Furthermore, as he emphasised at some length in the Council, multiple nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and even the Netherlands (the latter by signing the Linggadjati Agreement) had already acknowledged that the Republic of Indonesia did, in fact, “constitute a state.” Therefore, with two states clearly involved in military hostilities against one another, the Council was well within its rights to intervene.Footnote 44
On 30 July, India and Australia requested, in writing, that the Security Council resume its discussion of Indonesia, and their letters appeared on the Council's agenda the following day. Unlike Australia, neither India nor the Netherlands belonged to the Council in 1947. However, both could send delegations to participate in accordance with Charter Articles 31 and 32, which allowed nonmembers to participate in Council activities that directly concerned their interests or if they were a party to a dispute under consideration. Neither India nor the Netherlands would be allowed to vote, however. Beginning on 31 July, Eelco van Kleffens of the Netherlands argued his government's position; Samar Sen and then Padmanabha Pillai represented India. Sen clearly styled himself as an advocate for the Indonesian cause, but he was not an authorised representative for the Republic. When delegates Sen and van Kleffens took their seats at the table, Hodgson called attention to the obvious absence of Indonesian representatives, and he requested the Council to authorise, without further delay, “the sending of an invitation to the Government of Indonesia to participate in a similar manner.” Soviet representative Andrei Gromyko echoed Hodgson's request for Indonesian representation but noted that, with the military campaign underway, time was of the essence: whether or not the Indonesians were present in the room, Gromyko argued, the Council could hardly postpone its discussion of the conflict.Footnote 45
During the previous year's discussion of the Ukrainian complaint, van Kleffens had defended the Netherlands’ sovereignty over Indonesia and denied that the conflict posed a threat to international peace and security. Now, in the summer of 1947, he reaffirmed this position, describing the Dutch campaign “as a form of military action with which this Council has no concern.” Contrary to Australian and Indian claims, he argued, this domestic conflict did not threaten international peace and security. His government sought not to reestablish Dutch colonialism, but, on the contrary, welcomed reliable, honest Indonesian partners. In fact, he reiterated, the Netherlands was anxious to proceed to a settlement with the Republic of Indonesia and would do so as soon as order had been restored there; perhaps a friendly power, such as the United States, might be willing to assist in this regard. Van Kleffens also warned his colleagues against overextending the Charter's authority, lest the Council's interference in a domestic matter obstruct the Netherlands’ ongoing efforts to combat “lawless and uncooperative elements” in the Republic. Were this to happen, he cautioned, the Security Council, not the Dutch government, would bear responsibility for this failure.Footnote 46
In making such claims before the Council, van Kleffens drew upon his long-standing, well-publicised views concerning the present and future of Dutch colonialism. He considered the bonds between the Netherlands and the East Indies to be irrefutable and unbreakable, but in recent years, he had also voiced support for both limited democratic reforms in the colony and larger structural changes intended to adjust the constitutional relationship between the Netherlands and its overseas territories. He could support a more autonomous Dutch East Indies, in other words, but independence remained only a distant possibility. Above all else, colonial reform had to be gradual, incremental, and directed by metropolitan experts.Footnote 47 All the same, he objected to his Council colleagues’ seeming willingness to violate the UN Charter by allowing Republican representatives to participate in Council deliberations. For van Kleffens, the Republic of Indonesia was a mere artificial creation, a “political weapon” borne of the Indonesians’ wartime collaboration with their Japanese occupiers. It was not a legitimate political entity, but, rather, included a mere two islands, which, as per the Linggadjati Agreement signed by both parties earlier that year, were to join a number of other states to form the federated United States of Indonesia. The Republic may have fashioned itself as a de facto government, but van Kleffens deemed it no more a sovereign state than “say, New York or Utah or New South Wales.” No one would seriously consider asking one of these political entities to participate in Council discussions, so why should the Republic of Indonesia be treated any differently?Footnote 48
Just as during their previous discussion of the Ukrainian complaint, delegations representing the European imperial nations supported these Dutch claims. Fernand van Langenhove of Belgium urged his colleagues to avoid easy sentimentalism and instead seek a careful solution to those problems “evoked by the growth of national feeling” among Indonesians. Further, he argued, the Council should uncouple the two parts of the Australian resolution and focus solely on the cessation of hostilities, since it was not clear whether the Council was able to intervene in this conflict in the first place. Alexandre Parodi of France and Valentine Lawford of the United Kingdom similarly questioned the Security Council's authority to intervene in what appeared to be a Dutch domestic conflict: Lawford cautioned that Council intervention in the form of a resolution could establish a dangerous precedent for the future, while Parodi suggested that the Council might appeal to “humanitarian grounds, and not on legal or political grounds” if it sought an end to the ongoing military conflict in Indonesia.Footnote 49
Positioning themselves against this loose alliance of European imperial delegations, the non-European representatives demanded direct, immediate Council intervention. For Chinese representative T. F. Tsiang, the question of whether the Dutch–Indonesian conflict threatened international peace and therefore merited intervention missed the fundamental issue at stake: contrary to its goals of promoting political development and seeking partnership with the Indonesian people, the Netherlands had waged colonial war, pure and simple. The proposals put before the Security Council merely sought to end this colonial war. Samar Sen of India argued that, as per Article 2 of the UN Charter, a domestic matter could nonetheless constitute a threat to international peace and security, in which case the Council could elect to intervene under Article 39 as specified by the Australians in their original complaint letter. Still other delegates returned to the Netherlands’ refusal to recognise the Republic as a legitimate political entity. So, for instance, Alfonso López of Colombia singled out the Dutch government's unwillingness to consider the Republicans as worthy negotiating partners, while Gromyko of the Soviet Union argued that, by signing the Linggadjati Agreement, the government of the Netherlands had already recognised the Republic's de facto authority. Speaking to this point, Australian delegate Hodgson announced that, earlier that very day, the UN's Economic and Security Council had decided to invite the Republic of Indonesia to participate in its upcoming Havana Conference on Trade and Employment—another indication that the Republic was both a legitimate political entity and worthy of participating in the Council's discussion of the Dutch–Indonesian conflict.Footnote 50
When put to the vote late in the afternoon of 1 August, the modified Australian resolution noted with concern the ongoing military hostilities between the Netherlands and the Republic and called upon both parties to cease hostilities. Per the resolution, the parties were to settle their dispute by arbitration or other peaceful means, keeping the Security Council apprised of their progress to these ends. The informal imperial bloc of European nations abstained from voting on all parts of the resolution, with van Langenhove of Belgium and Parodi of France continuing to question the Council's ability to intervene. Valentine Lawford of the United Kingdom explained that, for various reasons, his government could not support the resolution as written but this should not be taken as a rejection or veto. He noted that all Council members, including the United Kingdom, wished for an end to the hostilities in Indonesia. The European representatives were outvoted this time, however, and the resolution passed with the support of all other delegations: Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Poland, Syria, and the Soviet Union.Footnote 51
With the terms of the resolution duly conveyed to both the Dutch and Republican governments, the Council turned to its implementation. Writing in a letter to the Council President dated 3 August, Eelco van Kleffens of the Netherlands affirmed that, although his government still refused to acknowledge the Council's jurisdiction, it would uphold the terms of the resolution. From the Council floor, Australian delegate Colonel Hodgson refuted this claim and accused the Dutch colonial government of obstructing Republican compliance by delaying the transmission of the resolution to Indonesia.Footnote 52 Nor were the Australians the only party frustrated with the spotty and contradictory pieces of information coming out of Indonesia, which included reports that fighting continued, despite the Council's explicit cease-fire order. Addressing the Council on 7 August, Sen of India called for an international committee of arbitration to be dispatched to Indonesia immediately. As part of his appeal for Council intervention, Sen also issued a scathing indictment of Dutch policy towards Indonesia and, more specifically, the Netherlands’ refusal to recognise the Republic's August 1945 declaration of independence. Further, he urged his colleagues to honour the Indonesians’ repeated pleas for international assistance, with the most recent of these occurring just that morning, when the Republican deputy prime minister had cabled the president of the Security Council to request the creation of a UN arbitration commission.Footnote 53 Yet, despite such impassioned appeals from the Dutch, Indian, and Australian delegations, the Council remained at an impasse, that is, until a group of Indonesians arrived in New York.
Enter the Indonesians: Seating the Ad Hoc Republican Delegation in the Council
Until this point, the Republic served as a mere object of Council discussions, but this would soon change. On the evening of 8 August, Republican Foreign Minister Haji Agus Salim and former prime minister–turned special adviser Sjahrir arrived in New York by way of New Delhi. Once in New York, the two men reunited with Soedjatmoko (Koko) Mangundiningrat, a trusted junior colleague and skilled propagandist who, earlier in the year and at Sjahrir's request, had established himself there. Together with George Tambu and Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, this group of five men served as the Republic of Indonesia's first delegation to the UN Security Council. Sjahrir would head the delegation, while Sumitro, steering the newly created “Office of Financial and Trade Representative Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Indonesia,” acted as its unofficial fundraiser.Footnote 54
On the afternoon of 12 August, this ad hoc Republican delegation seated itself in the publicly accessible area of the Council meeting room at Lake Success. Once the meeting began, Juliusz Katz-Suchy of Poland directed his colleagues’ attention to their presence and reminded them of earlier Council discussions concerning the prospects of Indonesian participation. Now that a group of representative Indonesians was on site, Katz-Suchy requested that Council President Faris el-Khouri of Syria invite them to the table, to which el-Khouri responded that the Council would need to consider a formal proposal to this effect and examine the Republican representatives’ credentials. As if on cue, from the visitor's gallery, Sjahrir passed a letter to the president, requesting that the Republican representatives be allowed to participate without voting rights and affirming that the Republic of Indonesia “accepts in advance, for the purposes of this dispute, the obligations of a Member of the United Nations.”Footnote 55
When President el-Khouri decided to open the floor for discussion of Indonesian participation, van Kleffens of the Netherlands firmly, and quickly, objected: neither the Security Council nor its member nations, he declared, recognised the Republic as a sovereign entity—and for good reason. The Republic had no accepted authority at home; no well-defined territory; no core constituency of people who considered themselves citizens. Should the Council recognise the Republic, van Kleffens argued, it would impose a new understanding of the Charter, which, to this point, applied only to sovereign states. This was a dangerous precedent, since it would open the door to “representatives of any usurper Government in any State, recognised or unrecognised,” the implication being that other colonised peoples could follow suit, were the Republic authorised to represent itself in the Security Council.Footnote 56 Not surprisingly, then, the European imperial nations once again aligned themselves behind van Kleffens’ position. Alexander Cadogan of the United Kingdom and Joseph Nisot of Belgium argued against Indonesian participation on the grounds that their respective governments did not recognise Republican statehood. Although nominally sympathetic to the claim that both sides needed to be heard, French delegate Alexandre Parodi accused the Security Council of overstepping its authority: if the Republic was not a sovereign state, the Council could not, and should not, intervene in the conflict, and Republican representatives did not need to be heard in the Council. Parodi wondered whether the Indonesian representatives, since they were already in New York, might simply convey their written observations to individual Council delegates or the Secretariat for consideration.Footnote 57
But, as with the Indonesian resolution approved only a few weeks prior, the other members of the Council proved willing and able to surmount such objections. Now, Samar Sen of India argued in support of Republican claims for recognition writ large, as did Katz-Suchy of Poland, who affirmed the Council's prior decision to consider the war in Indonesia as an international problem—in other words, a “dispute between two States.” For the Australian, Colombian, Chinese, and Soviet representatives, the question of Indonesian participation hinged not upon statehood or sovereignty, but upon the concept of fair play: put simply, as Hodgson of Australia declared, “we have heard one side; surely we are entitled to hear the other.” Importantly, American representative Herschel Johnson explained that, although his government reserved judgement on Indonesian statehood as defined by international law, he saw no reason to deny the Indonesians’ right to speak before the Council, especially since they were already in the room. Further, Johnson argued, if the Indonesians in the public galley verifiably represented the Republican government, they constituted one party to the ongoing dispute, regardless of their status (or non-status) as a sovereign state in accordance with international law, and therefore should be heard.Footnote 58
In response to these comments, Council President el-Khouri uncoupled the larger questions of state sovereignty from the more procedural aspects of Council participation. As such, Council members were not being asked to recognise Republican independence or sovereignty, or to admit the Republic of Indonesia to the UN. Rather, they were simply voting on the Polish proposal to invite the Republican representatives to participate in the Council's ongoing efforts “to restore peace to a troubled area.” The majority of Council members agreed that the Republic should, in fact, be able to participate. When put to the vote, the Polish proposal received support from eight Council members: Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Poland, Syria, the Soviet Union, and, critically, the United States. The three European imperial powers—Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom—voted against it.Footnote 59 None of these European delegations, however, went so far as to reject the proposal entirely, or in the case of France and the United Kingdom, exert their veto power over the question of Indonesian involvement. The potential participation of Indonesian representatives, although obviously undesirable, hardly merited such a dramatic response.
While the UN's assistant secretary-general of legal counsel confirmed Sjahrir's official credentials as issued by President Sukarno, van Kleffens continued to object to the proceedings. He “did not wish to gag the Republic of Indonesia or prevent it from giving its point of view” but, rather, sought only the correct application of the Charter in these and similar situations. He took particular umbrage to Sjahrir's expected designation as “Ambassador” of the Republic of Indonesia, since only states could claim ambassadors, and the Republic was not a state. Further, lest the Republicans dominate a discussion concerning the future United States of Indonesia, he requested that representatives from the Republic's “sister states” of East Indonesia and Borneo be admitted to the table alongside the Republican representatives. With representatives from these two states expected to arrive in New York by week's end, van Kleffens urged that Council discussions be postponed until they too could be granted access.Footnote 60 Purportedly—although van Kleffens did not provide such details in the Council—these men had been dispatched to New York on 6 August by lieutenant governor-general of the East Indies Hubert van Mook.Footnote 61
Van Mook's dispatch of these representatives from other Indonesian territories should be seen as less of a last-ditch effort to derail Indonesian participation in the Council and more the natural consequence of his long-standing support for the creation of an Indonesian federation that would position the Republic alongside other Indonesian political entities. As discussed above, this federation or loose commonwealth structure had been incorporated into the Linggadjati Agreement finalised earlier that year. Already in December 1946, the Dutch government formally recognised the state of East Indonesia and then, in the summer of 1947, the state of West Borneo. For van Kleffens, van Mook, and scores of other federation supporters in the Netherlands, the participation of non-Republican Indonesian representatives in the work of the Security Council would have seemed a reasonable option. For Sjahrir and his Republican colleagues, however, these moves would have been read as hostile gestures—merely the Netherlands’ latest attempts to diminish Republican authority by forcing it to share power with territories they believed to be Dutch “puppet states.”
The Dutch delegation, however, failed in its efforts to seat these additional representatives from East Indonesia and Borneo, once a Belgian proposal to these ends garnered positive votes from only the European imperial nations and the United States (all other national delegations abstained). Elsewhere, Dutch and Indonesian negotiators continued to discuss the prospects of a federated United States of Indonesia, but, in Lake Success and wherever the Security Council convened its members, only Sutan Sjahrir and his four colleagues from the Republic of Indonesia would sit at the table. Over van Kleffens’ objections, Sjahrir was also designated “Ambassador-at-Large of the Republic of Indonesia.”Footnote 62 Nor were these the only victories for the Republican cause in the Council. For weeks, Carlos Romulo of the Philippines had sought to participate in Indonesia-related discussions, albeit without success. When the Council reconsidered his request on 14 August, he was granted access. With Romulo duly authorised to participate in the Council's work (albeit without voting rights), the Republic gained yet another solidly outspoken ally.Footnote 63
Speaking in a lengthy first address from the Council floor on 14 August, Sjahrir called attention to the Netherlands’ continued military campaign against the Republic and demanded the complete withdrawal of Dutch troops from Republican territory. He called upon the Council to create and send to Indonesia a commission that would oversee the implementation of its 1 August resolution demanding the cessation of hostilities, and he assured Council members that the Republican government was prepared to comply with all Council directives. He also used the opportunity to denounce centuries’ worth of Dutch exploitation, beginning with the arrival of Dutch traders in the late sixteenth century and ending with the Netherlands’ most recent military campaign.Footnote 64 In response, van Kleffens continued to question the Council's ability to intervene in what constituted a domestic conflict, but also declared his government's willingness to accept international investigation or arbitration if offered by the United States or an entity other than the Council itself.Footnote 65
Again, though, the Netherlands found itself with few supporters for its position. On 25 August, members of the Council approved an Australian-Chinese resolution creating a commission whereby consular representatives in Jakarta would report on the present situation in the Republic, devoting particular attention to cease-fire violations. In the same meeting, the Council also voted to establish an arbitration committee charged with assisting in the “pacific settlement” of the Dutch–Indonesian conflict. The Soviet Union proposed that this arbitration committee include representatives from all Council member nations, but this proposal failed with two negative votes from Belgium and France, the latter rendering its first Council veto of a substantive (as opposed to procedural) resolution. However, a subsequent American resolution, which proposed a smaller “Committee of Good Offices” consisting of three Council members selected by both Dutch and Indonesian representatives, did pass, with eight favourable votes and three abstentions (the Polish, Syrian, and Soviet delegations had preferred a larger, more diversified committee).Footnote 66
Regardless of its final composition, this committee would remain affiliated with the Security Council, not the UN General Assembly or the Secretariat, with members of the Council both participating in the committee's work and ensuring the implementation of its recommendations and Council resolutions. Most immediately, the Good Offices Committee on Indonesia (GOC) was tasked with enforcing the Council's original resolution of 1 August, which demanded that both parties cease military hostilities and “seek the peaceful settlement of their dispute.” By the end of September, the two parties involved had selected their representatives: Belgium, for the Netherlands; Australia, for the Republic; and the United States, selected by both Indonesia and the Netherlands as a mutually agreeable option. These were hardly surprising choices, given the informal alliances and positions that had developed in the year and a half since the Council first considered the Dutch–Indonesian conflict in response to the Ukrainians’ complaint in early 1946. The Consular Commission submitted its findings to the GOC on 14 October 1947, and, less than a week later, the GOC convened its first meeting in Sydney, Australia.
For the next two years, while their respective militaries directly engaged one another and the GOC tried to broker an end to the conflict, Dutch and Indonesian representatives continued to sit alongside one another in the Security Council. In October 1947, Sjahrir stepped down as head of the Republican delegation, ceding his position as ambassador-at-large to a younger colleague, Nico Palar. Shortly before Christmas 1948, the Netherlands launched a second “police action” directed against Republican leaders in Jogyakarta, and, just as his predecessor had done, Palar stood before the Security Council to plead for international intervention. The terrain had shifted tremendously in the months since Sjahrir's first appearance in Lake Success the previous year, not least because Palar could now accuse the Dutch government of deliberately ignoring GOC directives.
This second targeted military campaign of December 1948 turned the tide of international public opinion against the Netherlands and, in the Security Council, squandered any good will or benefit of the doubt once accorded to van Kleffens and his delegation. Even the French (who, along with their Belgian counterparts, continued to doubt the Council's right to intervene), condemned this second military action and called upon the Netherlands to release its latest round of political prisoners, now including Republican government officials.Footnote 67 On 28 January 1949, the Council approved Resolution S/1234, which sought the “final achievement of a just and lasting settlement of the Indonesian dispute.” The GOC, now renamed the United Nations Commission for Indonesia, would oversee the negotiation process and ensure that both parties adhered to the terms specified in the resolution. The Netherlands and the Republic were to discontinue all military operations immediately; the Dutch government was to release all Republican political prisoners; and “by January 1, 1950 if possible” transfer sovereignty to a newly established, federated United States of Indonesia.Footnote 68
For the remainder of 1949, Dutch–Indonesian talks continued at the Round Table Conference in The Hague, while, in New York, the UN Commission for Indonesia kept both the Security Council and the General Assembly apprised of the negotiation process.Footnote 69 In mid-December, Dutch and Indonesian negotiators approved a final agreement, with the formal transfer of power ceremony occurring only a few weeks later, on 27 December 1949. In late September 1950—approximately three years after the Republican delegation first obtained direct access to the Security Council—Nico Palar presided over the flag-raising ceremony that marked Indonesia's entry to the UN General Assembly as its sixtieth member nation. The Republic of Indonesia was not the first European-held colony to gain independence in the postwar period, but it had been the first to use the United Nations Security Council as both a platform and a tool for its independence campaign.
Conclusion
Viewed in retrospect, the Indonesians’ admission to and participation in the Security Council revealed that long-standing assumptions and practices, such as the Europeans’ claims of domestic jurisdiction in colonial territories, could be subject to negotiation in the new organisation. When the Indonesians took their seat at the Council table, they took the first step towards undoing the territory's colonial relationship with the Netherlands, as van Kleffens and other European delegates seemed to have realised at the time. The Council's involvement in the Dutch–Indonesian conflict in the summer of 1947 did not result in immediate Indonesian independence—this would happen two years later, after much loss of life, international pressure, and countless failed negotiations—but it successfully internationalised the conflict. After August 1947, the Dutch–Indonesian conflict could no longer function as a strictly national or regional affair, a matter to be settled “in house” between Dutch colonisers and Indonesian colonised. For the next two and a half years, this Indonesian delegation used their position to demand that both the Netherlands and the international community writ large formally acknowledge the Republic of Indonesia as a fully sovereign, independent political entity, even if ongoing negotiations emphasised the creation of a federated United States of Indonesia. From their position in the Security Council, these Republican representatives used the treaties, texts, and ideas available to them, whether the UN Charter's references to the “self-determination of peoples” or the metropolitan Dutch government's long-standing promises of democratic colonial reform, in order to make their case for independence.Footnote 70
Writing in Foreign Affairs in 1973, Evelyn Colbert, a long-serving US State Department analyst with extensive experience in Southeast Asia, declared that the UN's involvement in the Indonesian decolonisation conflict “changed everything” for Indonesia.Footnote 71 At the same time, the Indonesian conflict also shaped policy and practice in the young international organisation, and, more specifically, its Big Five–dominated Security Council. At the time, participants and observers noted that the Council's involvement in the Indonesian question was both necessary and precedent-setting, not only for the United Nations but for the world. Speaking from the Council floor on 9 October 1947, Carlos Romulo of the Philippines noted that, for the first time, a “country emerging from a colonial status” was allowed “to present its case before an august international body like this, instead of the matter being dismissed, as it would have been in the nineteenth century, on the grounds that it was just more ‘colonial war.’” Juliusz Katz-Suchy of Poland echoed these claims a few weeks later, highlighting the Council's historic decision to invite the Republic's representative and recognise his “title of Ambassador-at-Large.”Footnote 72 Put simply, the Republic's involvement established the parameters for subsequent decolonisation conflicts even if other organisations and individuals, such as the Algerian Provisional Government created in 1958, ultimately opted to pursue international recognition outside of the Security Council.Footnote 73 The relationships and alliances first seen in Council discussions concerning Indonesia would also smooth the way for later efforts and campaigns, particularly those of the nonaligned movement. Years after their predecessors met in San Francisco, New York, and Paris, a new set of political actors would convene in locales such as Bandung and Belgrade, where they would forge new regional associations and solidarities across the Global South.
In her recent international history of the UN, Amy L. Sayward posits that, if the post–World War One period witnessed a “Wilsonian moment,” then the immediate post–World War Two period “should be named the ‘Nehruvian moment’ due to India's determination to fight nonviolently for full independence for itself and then for the rest of the world.”Footnote 74 If we accept this interpretation, we must also acknowledge the signal importance of the Indonesian episode in the Security Council. After all, as Nehru and his colleagues assumed their position as anti-colonial crusaders, the Indonesian test case pointed the way: with a seat at the table, the Indonesians had been recognised as active participants, not simply colonial subjects. Authorised to participate in three years’ worth of proceedings, the Republican representatives acted as if they possessed every right to be there, as if Indonesian independence was both inevitable and imminent. Sjahrir, Palar, and their Indonesian colleagues believed that the Security Council provided a semipublic and neutral setting for both parties to formalise the terms of their colonial divorce, and they believed that if the Netherlands refused to abide by these terms, the Council could, and would, enforce them. Their assessment proved to be correct.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Carolyn Biltoft, Jessica Lynne Pearson, Mary X. Mitchell, and Eveline Buchheim, all of whom have read and commented upon earlier versions of this piece. Conference organisers, fellow panellists, and participants at the following conferences and workshops provided vital feedback: the UN at 70 symposium, hosted by the University of Oklahoma's Department of International and Area Studies; the Challenging the Liberal World Order: The History of the Global South, Decolonization, and the United Nations, 1955–2000 conference at Leiden University; and the International Organizations and Decolonization in Historical Perspective conference convened by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Lastly, the author thanks the three anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and critical commentary on the manuscript.
