Historical Study and Historians in Indonesia Today

Abstract

It should be plainly stated that historical study and writing in Indonesia have so far played a very slight part in academic work, “but there is reason to expect that this situation will change in the years to come. Indonesia entered the postwar period with a heritage consisting mostly of Dutch colonial historiography. Deeply affected by the national revolution in the cultural scene, particularly in the field of history, a reconstruction and rewriting of Indonesian history was urgently felt. Many conceptions had tobe reviewed and many facts reinterpreted. A growing acceptance of this new approach has come to focus historical study on old regional or local sources on the one hand and the formulation of the idea of the history of indonesia as a national history on the other.