Indonesian National Revolution
Sukarno read a proclamation of independence in the garden of his house in Jakarta on the morning of 17 August 1945, two days after Japan surrendered. He had been pushed into it. Younger nationalists had kidnapped him and Mohammad Hatta the previous night and held them at a garrison town, arguing that the declaration had to come from the people rather than from a committee the Japanese occupiers had convened, and that the vacuum between Japan's surrender and the Allies' arrival was the only opening they would get. The text is two sentences long and was typed on a borrowed machine. The Dutch, who had ruled the archipelago for three centuries and had been expelled by Japan in 1942, refused to accept it. British troops arriving to disarm the Japanese found a functioning republic instead, and fought a battle at Surabaya in November 1945 that cost thousands of Indonesian lives and is the country's heroes' day. The Dutch mounted two large offensives, which they called police actions, in 1947 and 1948, taking the cities and capturing Sukarno and Hatta. They could not hold the countryside, and the guerrilla war continued. What ended it was pressure from outside. The second offensive, launched during a UN-brokered truce, caused an international reaction, and the United States threatened to withhold Marshall Plan funds from a country using them to reconquer a colony. Sovereignty was transferred in December 1949. Around 100,000 Indonesians and 5,000 Dutch had died. The Netherlands acknowledged the 1945 date only in 2005 and apologised for the violence in 2022.
- Year: 1945 CE
- Category: Political
