Murtaza Hussain
@mazmhussain
This narrative of Indonesia’s anticolonial war is one of the most astonishing history books I’ve read in some time. The sheer level of violence that attended the creation of Indonesia, and expulsion of the Dutch, British, and Japanese presence was staggering. It is no exaggeration to say that millions were killed, either by deliberate starvation by the Japanese, or Einsazgruppen-like massacres by the Dutch, as they attempted to hold onto their colonial possession of three centuries. Even more strangely these events are barely part of our popular consciousness. Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world and its history is a blind spot to most people around the world. This book is a great step towards rectifying that.
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Kent Babin
@kentb
Another book worth reading on Indonesia is The Jakarta Method. Provides a lot of context on how the US government used their "work" in Indonesia as a model for military coups around the world.
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bamboostrong
@0xbamboostrong
found the recommendation for The Jakarta Method from @polynya was completely eye-opening for me to learn how insidious parties leveraged anti-communist sentiment as a vehicle for their own power grabs, with no genuine intention of establishing democratic societies. and even more wild to still see the effects of it out in the world right now, such as in Brazil.
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Kent Babin
@kentb
Absolutely. The one thing you hear over and over from independence leaders in colonized countries is that they expected the US (because it went through its own independence struggle) to champion their cause. Instead, the US tries to divide Indonesia by funding rebel movements and dropping actual bombs, supports France in its efforts to regain control of French Indochina, and on and on and on. And this is before the coups even start.
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