Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World

Van Reybrouck has produced a richly textured history of Indonesia’s struggle for independence and its emergence as a sovereign state. At one level, it is an extraordinary social history of the country’s formation. Drawing on an extensive array of primary sources, including almost 200 interviews, this account unfolds in tremendous detail, not only through the actions and perspectives of major political leaders but also through the eyes and experiences of ordinary people. The result is a vibrant and immersive narrative that takes in multiple perspectives. At the same time, the book places the country’s modern history within the broader sweep of centuries of intellectual, economic, and military change. Indonesia’s trajectory to statehood was significantly influenced by the diffusion of political and religious ideas (notably communism and political Islam), global trade, and the great wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And Indonesia, in turn, shaped the world because it became one of the founders and eventual leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement.