In this carefully researched, if narrowly focused, book, Steven Farram calls attention to Australia's role in the implementation of the very first cease-fire order issued by the United Nations Security Council. Yet that order, beyond achieving a temporary and less than fully effectual halt to the fighting between returning Dutch colonialist forces and Indonesian nationalist units, proves little more than a footnote in the broader history of Indonesia's struggle for independence. The intensive focus here on the actions and attitudes of a single Australian diplomat, Charles Eaton, about whom the author has written two previous monographs, further limits the scope and utility of the present work
On 1 August 1947, the Security Council called for an immediate cessation of hostilities between Dutch and Indonesian forces, clashes that had intensified with the recent Dutch military offensive. On 25 August, the Council passed two additional resolutions. The first established a UN Consular Commission, at Batavia (Jakarta), to observe and report on the implementation of the cease-fire order; the second created a three-nation Good Offices Committee to help resolve the political elements of the Dutch–Indonesian dispute. Farram correctly notes that scholars have paid much more attention to the latter than to the former. Given the centrality of the three-nation committee to the ultimate diplomatic settlement that led to a fully independent Indonesia that, of course, makes good sense. His goal is to give the Consular Commission its due.
To that end, he reconstructs, in great detail, the six separate tours and reports undertaken by the consul generals of Australia, the United States, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and China. The author also assesses their interim report to the Security Council of 22 September, the final report of 14 October, and the responses to both. Farram further considers the instrumental role played by each of those nations’ military observers, suggesting that their reports influenced the subsequent work of the Good Offices Committee and the continuing Security Council debates. ‘Looking at more long-term consequences,’ he contends, ‘it could be said that one of the greatest achievements of the Consular Commission was establishing the precedent of using military observers in UN operations’ (p. 176).
The Consular Commission functioned, essentially, for a mere six weeks: from its first formal meeting on 1 September 1947, to its final report to the UN on 14 October of that year. While Farram deserves commendation for the wide range of sources he tapped for this study and for his excavation of interesting facts, unusual encounters, and colourful personalities, his book remains a narrow and limited one. Despite touching on a highly fraught juncture in Indonesia's decolonisation struggle, he avoids engaging larger historical and historiographical issues. It is telling that the ongoing Cold War, which formed so critical a backdrop for this and all Southeast Asian independence movements, hardly warrants a mention here.
A wooden writing style, punctuated by excessive use of passive voice constructions and the subjunctive mood, along with a constant foreshadowing of matters to be discussed later combine to make this book a ponderous one for even the most interested reader. What has happened to copy-editing? Surely an adept editor would have urged against the following exposition of authorial strategy, at the opening of the penultimate chapter: ‘Meanwhile, several stories concerning Eaton were uncovered during the course of research that did not really belong in the preceding chapters, but were too interesting to be left out altogether. These matters are all discussed below’ (p. 158).
