Publishers Weekly
05/06/2024
The war that brought independence to the world’s fourth-largest country plays out on a resonantly human scale in this captivating chronicle of the 1945–1949 Indonesian revolution. Historian Van Reybrouck (Congo) paints a rich portrait of a stratified pre-WWII colonial society in the Dutch East Indies, then recaps the upheavals that demolished Dutch authority: the Japanese occupation during WWII that destroyed the colonial administration while giving Indonesians experience in military resistance, the dramatic 1945 declaration of an independent republic, and the chaotic conflict that pitted young republican firebrands against Dutch and pro-Dutch Indonesian forces and later devolved into civil war among Islamist, communist, and nationalist Republican factions. Van Reybrouck’s sweeping narrative situates the revolution as the prototype for the rest of the 20th century’s decolonization struggles, but he keeps the focus on individual experiences gleaned from interviews with participants, bringing to life their youthful enthusiasm (“I was fourteen. I left with friends. That way I was able to get away from my mean stepmother too!”)and trauma (“They shot six times. In his right foot, his left foot, his right knee, his left knee, the right side of his chest, the left side of his chest”). The result is a vivid recreation of a watershed event in world history. (Apr.)
Economist
"[David Van Reybrouck] is a historian who gets his boots dirty. From remote Asian islands to Dutch nursing homes, [he] has tracked down eyewitnesses to Indonesia’s colonial period, producing the definitive account of a neglected epoch."
Sebastian Mallaby
"A magnificent fusion of oral history, sparkling analysis, and historical wisdom. Revolusi has it all: a masterpiece."
Financial Times - Alec Russell
"A long overdue and utterly compelling narrative history of the birth of Indonesia…It is as intricate as the waterways of the archipelago and yet it hums along, like a steamer on the Java Sea, propelled by the stories of its astonishing cast."
The New Yorker
"This powerful account of the colonization of Indonesia takes the form of a people's history, using interviews with those who lived under—and sometimes defied—Dutch rule."
New York Times Book Review
"This meticulous history of Indonesia spans several centuries, focusing on Dutch colonization of the archipelago and a drawn-out internal revolution that embroiled British, American and Japanese forces."
J. M. Coetzee
"A comprehensive, authoritative, and highly readable history. Seamlessly interwoven with hundreds upon hundreds of personal testimonies, David Van Reybrouck’s narrative is a masterly display of the historian’s craft and a welcome corrective to the fiction that the Dutch in the East Indies were a benign force."
Guardian
"A superb history of the struggle for independence after three centuries of Dutch colonial rule."
Wall Street Journal - Tunku Varadarajan
"An electrifying narrative…The strength of Mr. Van Reybrouck's chronicle lies as much in the hundreds of interviews he conducted with very old participants in (and witnesses to) the war as in his impressive command of historical detail."
Laksmi Pamuntjak
"Among the book’s many gifts—the depth of its research, the breadth of its inquiries, the poetry of its prose—it is this that has affected me the most: the insistence and humility of finding and allowing these voices, these eyewitnesses to history, to come to the fore. With scientific meticulousness and a rare narrative brilliance, Revolusi gives us a history at once vast and intimate, a history in color."
Jason Burke
"Passionate, rigorous, perceptive, powerful, and highly readable. Van Reybrouck combines a historian’s clear analytic eye with a journalist’s joy at discovering and recounting the experiences of participants in great events. This is a magisterial but gripping account of events of urgent importance to us now."
Antjie Krog
"History as it should be! Carried by a democracy of ordinary voices, meticulous research, an eye for decisive detail, vivid language, and drama, David Van Reybrouck forges a fantastic visionary compass to where history was heading at the time…the imagining of a new world order by people of color."
Yuval Noah Harari
"An astounding feat of both research and storytelling.… History at its best."
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
"A majestic and beautifully written ode to revolution that aims to remind us of the immense significance of this period of history…Compellingly written and marvellously translated."
Pankaj Mishra
"A rare blend of formal daring, intellectual resourcefulness, and journalistic fluency, Revolusi briskly ushers Indonesia onto the center stage of modern history. It reveals, too, decolonization as the main event of the twentieth century—what has shaped our present and will decisively define the future."
Washington Independent Review of Books - Todd Kushner
"An outstanding account of one nation's unsung fight for freedom…The firsthand narratives are enthralling…[A] magnificent book."
Atlantic - Adam Hochschild
"David Van Reybrouck's immensely readable new history…fills an important gap….Van Reybrouck has visited just about every place that figures in Indonesia's history, and evokes them with a narrative zest all too rare among historians."
Kirkus Reviews
2023-12-06
A study of Indonesia’s complex, conflicted, and inspiring path to freedom.
Despite being the fourth most populous country in the world, Indonesia often seems to float on the periphery, unknown and ignored. Van Reybrouck, a historian with connections to the region and author of Congo: The Epic History of a People, sheds valuable light on Indonesia’s struggle for independence, which became a liberation model. Before the Dutch arrived with imperial dreams in the 19th century, Indonesia was a sprawling archipelago of disparate kingdoms and sultanates. It was unified under a colonial administration, but cultural divisions persisted. When the Japanese conquered the region during World War II, they were welcomed as liberators, although it soon became clear that they were worse than the Dutch. A national consciousness and a generation of anti-colonial leaders soon emerged, most notably the charismatic but volatile Sukarno. The one-named leader declared independence soon after the Japanese surrender, but making the new nation work was problematic. The Dutch tried to reclaim their former position but eventually realized that the country no longer had a place for them. Sukarno unified the communists, nationalists, and Islamists, although once the colonialists had been expelled, the coalition fell into disarray, leading to a cycle of violence and retribution. Sukarno’s government became increasingly chaotic and socialistic, and when he was displaced by an American-sponsored coup, another round of bloody strife followed. Van Reybrouck manages to keep this convoluted account flowing, punctuating the story with interviews to provide a human dimension. At nearly 600 pages, the book is not an easy read, and it has a huge cast of players. Nevertheless, anyone who wants to understand Asian political development and the process of decolonization will find it a useful, important text.
This comprehensive, detailed book reiterates and deciphers a critical chapter in Asian and global history.
