A History of Modern Indonesia
by Adrian Vickers
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Book Summary Information
Author: Adrian VickersEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2005-12-05
ISBN: 0521542626
Number of pages: 306
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Book Reviews of A History of Modern Indonesia
Book Review: 10 Things I learned from A History of Modern Indonesia
Summary: 5 Stars
1. History is best told when it isn't a litany of dates and places and names.
2. History is better told when it attempts to describe the zeitgeist of the era, when it makes a time and place alive for you.
3. Vickers accomplishes this in describing the history of modern Indonesia, from the late colonial period to the present day. He includes the important dates, but takes special care to note the discourses and debates that shaped the events, and the daily lives of the poor and the rich and those struggling to hold their place in between.
4. I read this book for my research, but found it so compelling that I began to read it for pleasure, a rare turn.
5. Vickers makes sense of the complex and often covert history of Indonesia, which has experienced several volatile changes in the 20th century.
5. The radical shifts in leadership, ideology and policy - from colonialism to Sukarno's near-communism to the still-unsolved coup that confirmed Suharto's dictatorial technocracy, to the protests that overthrew him and invited a string of presidents in the last nine years - are illustrated by how it affected peoples' lives.
6. This is a history that takes into account the effect of political climate on art, literature, film and other manifestations of culture. It notes these arenas as both evidence for the contemporary mindset and as catalysts for change.
7. Vickers uses the voices of Presidents, the voices of laborers, and the voices of everyone in between to bring to life more than one hundred years of history.
8. Whereas other histories treat the cultural sphere and lived lives as separate matters, as anecdotes, as separate chapters, or not at all, Vickers' work is infused with these voices and cultures.
9. In addition, it offers the known history and biographies of important people who helped shape it.
10. One of the best books on Indonesian history that I've read, A History of Modern Indonesia is recommended to the scholarly as well as the curious for a comprehensive and compelling look at the recent history of the fourth largest country in the world.
Summary of A History of Modern Indonesia
Although Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world, its history is still relatively unknown. Adrian Vickers takes the reader on a journey across the social and political landscape of modern Indonesia, starting with the country's origins under the Dutch in the early twentieth-century, and the subsequent anti-colonial revolution which led to independence in 1949. Thereafter the spotlight is on the 1950s, a crucial period in the formation of Indonesia as a new nation, followed by the Sukarno years, and the anti-Communist massacres of the 1960s when General Suharto took over as president. The concluding chapters chart the fall of Suharto's New Order after thirty two years in power, and the subsequent political and religious turmoil which culminated in the Bali bombings in 2002. Adrian Vickers is Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Wollongong. He has previously worked at the Universities of New South Wales and Sydney, and has been a visiting fellow at the University of Indonesia and Udayana University (Bali). Vickers has more than twenty-five years research experience in Indonesia and the Netherlands, and has travelled in Southeast Asia, the U.S. and Europe in the course of his research. He is author of the acclaimed Bali: a Paradise Created (Penguin, 1989) as well as many other scholarly and popular works on Indonesia. In 2003 Adrian Vickers curated the exhibition Crossing Boundaries, a major survey of modern Indonesian art, and has also been involved in documentary films, including Done Bali (Negara Film and Television Productions, 1993).General Books
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