Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

by Jared Diamond

By around 1910, increasing numbers of inhabitants of the Dutch East Indies were developing the beginnings of a “national consciousness.” That is, they began to feel that they were not just inhabitants of their particular Dutch-governed sultanate in some part of Java or Sumatra, but that they belonged to a larger entity called “Indonesia.” Indonesians with those beginnings of a wider identity formed many distinct but often overlapping groups: a Javanese group that felt culturally superior, an Islamic movement seeking an Islamic identity for Indonesia, labor unions, a communist party, Indonesian students sent to the Netherlands for education, and others. That is, the Indonesian independence movement was fragmented along ideological and geographic and religious lines, presaging problems that continued to plague Indonesia after independence.