Any book from noted historian Anthony Reid is to be welcomed as making a significant contribution to the literature on Indonesia. A collection of Reid's essays from over four decades is a particularly special event, capturing the best of his work, allowing reflections on the perspectives of the times and reminding us that the insights of a good historian can have a timeless quality.
Of the 12 chapters here, all are based on previously published papers that have been revised and updated, but for one, chapter 9, on the bloody events of 1965–66. The book's blurb says this chapter has been left unchanged to allow an insight into early understandings of those events. More appropriately, though, this chapter should remain unchanged because its insights have stood the test of time.
The first chapter argues that, while it was not a Communist revolution, Indonesia's independence process could find closer parallels with the French Revolution. Setting aside the political meaning of ‘revolution’, this chapter offers a rich and clear explanation for Indonesia's independence process; why it happened the way it did.
The chapter on slavery is also interesting, arguing for an alternative ‘mild’ (p. 46) understanding of the idea to that found in Europe. ‘It is,’ Reid notes, ‘difficult to use the term [slavery] without appearing to denigrate Southeast Asian cultural traditions which still have force and value’ (p. 45). While denigration is not a useful explanatory method, Reid's perspective here tends to allow for the kind of cultural relativism that has characterised much scholarship on the region. It is relevant that, in the early twenty-first century, a form of ‘mild’ slavery continued in Indonesia. If this was not through formal ownership of humans then it did reflect an economic contract in which non-stop labour was provided without payment beyond food and lodging, which owned slaves also enjoyed.
Chapter 3 discusses Indonesia's process of modernisation, employing the motif of replacing betel with tobacco as the medium of social leisure. Chapter 4 is more pointed in its acknowledgement of a relatively arbitrary state being imposed on a fragmented geography and disparate peoples. Chapter 5 explains the idealism behind this imposition, through a study of merdeka (freedom / liberation), with chapter 6 analysing the history that was to varying degrees invented to provide a supposed continuity for the peoples so included.
The claim that Japan's occupation of the archipelago did not ‘Japanise’ Indonesian culture but made possible the consolidation of the meaning of being Indonesian (p. 22) is, in a sense, an oxymoron. What is the meaning of being Indonesian if not an expression of the common culture which, as chapter 7 shows so well, Japan helped shape?
Chapters 8, 10 and 11 are clear in their unpacking of, respectively, regional perspectives on the revolution, seeking unity in plurality and the failure of federalism. Yet none of the chapters draw to a logical conclusion that, as with the treatment of slavery, Indonesia has been predicated upon the asymmetric application of power, hence they do not elaborate on what this implies for a stable and happy state.
Throughout, Reid explicitly identifies the many ways in which Indonesia was an imposed, romanticist creation, yet uncritically refers to the historic unity of its national identity. There are similar references to culture and tradition in political contexts, without acknowledging that what passes for ‘culture’ is but the required internalisation of a form of power over an extended period.
Parallel to this, Reid clearly identifies Indonesia not as an ethnonationalist state, which he notes it cannot be, but as a ‘civic’ state (e.g. p. 255). A civic state implies a number of consistent features, many of which have been lacking throughout Indonesia's six-decade history, including freedom from compulsion, equity before rule of law, and meaningful participation in civic and hence political processes. This, then, has undermined the ‘national’ project and has been at the root of many of Indonesia's continuing problems. This is more implied than stated.
Reid is an exemplary historian and is deeply familiar with much of Indonesia's various cultural streams. He also has a keen eye for economic history, which is among the book's considerable strengths; chapter 12's comparison of Southeast Asia's Chinese with the European Jews is a stand-out.
Overall, To nation by revolution is deeply engaging in its explanations of how Indonesia has worked, but it does not pursue the logic of its findings as a critique. But, then, perhaps this ensures that Reid's work remains within its historical field. Despite such a possible disciplinary quibble, To nation by revolution is a satisfying and enlightening read. It is strongly recommended to all with an interest in the complex place known as ‘Indonesia’.
