Indonesia History

In the 1890s, scientists discovered in Java fossils of ancient human-like remains (so-called Java Man), which were determined to have come from erected ape-men, who were believed to have lived several hundred thousand years ago and were possibly the ancestors of present-day Indonesians.   However, most scientists these days maintain that homo sapiens came out of Africa ; based on this theory, early Indonesians would have migrated into the region from the Malayan Peninsula .   Regardless, these days, Indonesia , Malaysia , the Philippines and Brunei all have very similar Indo-Malay culture and language.
 
Indonesia did not exist as a nation until 1949.   For more than a thousands years before then, many of its 17,000 plus islands, including Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi   were ruled at various times by Indianised kingdoms which practiced Hinduism, or Buddhism or both; some other islands were ruled by chiefs of local tribes.   People followed different regional customs and spoke different languages and dialects.  
 
For the Indianised kingdoms, the cultures were largely based on Indian religions, customs, and languages mixed with indigenous practices.   The Srivijaya kingdom in the 7 th and 8 th centuries ruled the Pelambang river region of eastern Sumatra and parts of the Malayan Peninsula , controlling the important trade route of the Strait of Malacca .   A Buddhist kingdom, Sailendra, existed in the 8 th century in central Java, and was the one which built the giant Borobudur temple complex and other monuments near Yogyakarta .   The Buddhist kingdom, Prambanan, ruled in the 9 th century east of Yogyakarta .   The Hindu-Javanese kingdom of   Kediri ruled eastern Jave and the Mulucca islands and south Kalimantan in the 10 th century, and from the 13 th to 16 th centuries, the Hindu-Buddhism kingdom, Majapahit, covered much of modern Indonesia and parts of Malayan Peninsula , but often ruled through collecting tributes from subordinate states rather than by direct rule.    Its end came when it was defeated by a Muslim state in the 16 th century.  
 
Islam came to Indonesia in the 13 th century, not by invasion, but probably through merchants coming in from Malayan Peninsula (especially Malacca) and India .   Gradually, most Indianised kingdoms converted into Islam, and some of them forced their neighbours to convert.   A few regions are hold-outs, including Bali , which still maintain Hindu and indigenous practices, as well as Ambon in the Maluku group of islands, which has large Christian communities.
 
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive.   They came mainly for spices, especially nutmeg, clove and mace from the Maluku islands.   However, the Portuguese were driven out by the Dutch in the early 1600s, although the former managed to keep the territory of East Timor until the 20 th century.  
 
The Dutch established the Dutch East Indies Company (DEI) with Ambon island as the headquarters; later they moved to Batavia (now Jakarta ).   In the 17 th century, they sought to monopolise the spice trade by rather unusual means.   They prohibited the export of spice seeds by the natives on pains of death.   They also killed or deported the entire population on the islands of Ceram and Ambon , and replaced them with compliant labourers or slaves so that the spices grown there would not be exported to the other European powers.   The Dutch also burned the city of Pelambang , which was a major centre for spice trade at the time.   These tactics failed, because a Frenchman eventually managed to smuggle out some seeds, resulting in spices being grown throughout the West Indies and other parts of the world.
 
Anyhow, the DEI gradually gained control of much of the Indonesian archipelago either by force or by supporting compliant kingdoms against their enemies.   However, it generally ruled the territories indirectly with the local sultans or chiefs being figureheads and Dutch administrators being the real rulers.
 
During the Napoleonic Wars, there was a musical chair when the Netherlands (and hence Indonesia) was occupied by the French, who in turn surrendered to the English, and who returned Indonesia back to the Netherlands when the latter was liberated in 1815.   By that time the DEI was heavily in debt because spices as food preservatives had declined in importance.   The Dutch government replaced the DEI as the ruler of Indonesia and continued the indirect rule model.
 
In time, the native population and the nobility resented the dominance of the colonial masters.   This sparked the Java War of 1825 to 1830, when Yogyakarta led the population to fight the Dutch.   Similarly, in the late 1800s, the Muslim Acehnese in north Sumatra and the Hindu Balinese rose against Dutch subjugation.   The Dutch eventually prevailed and became more repressive.   Meanwhile, coffee, cocoa, oil palm, rubber and other crops had grown in importance, making up for the decline of spices as a revenue earner.  
 
However, the Dutch could not turn the tide of nationalism and liberation, when similar movements elsewhere gave inspiration to local leaders such as Sukarno to press for independence even before the Dutch in Indonesia were subdued by the Japanese without much of a fight in WW II.  As the momentum for independence and decolonisation grew around the world after the war, Indonesia proclaimed independence in 1945, although it took a few years for the Dutch to accept the reality.

As the history of Indonesia was quite intertwined with those of the Malayan Peninsula and the Philippines (at least the Srivijaya and Pelambang kingdoms had ruled parts of Malaya , including Malacca) and had similar culture, Sukarno envisioned a Greater Indonesia that would go beyond its present territories.   Therefore, when the state of Malaysia was formed in 1963, Indonesia withheld recognition and instead sought armed confrontation with Malaysia .   It was only in 1966 that Indonesia recognised Malaysia .