Indonesia: A Giant Astir

Abstract

In terms of population and area Indonesia is a very large country which occu? pies an extremely important strategic position in the world. When to these facts are added the widely accepted but misleading belief that Indonesia also possesses an exceptional abundance of natural resources, a seriously distorted view of the country's potential importance is obtained. Such a view appears to have underlain President Sukarno's thinking which in turn led inevitably to the collapse of the country's economy. Under the new regime of President Suharto a much more realistic appraisal has been made of Indonesia's problems and potentials. On this basis the new Five-Year Development Plan for 1969-74 seems likely to inaugurate a new and much more encouraging stage in Indo? nesian development. Indonesia is A giant in at least some respects. In population its total of over 120 million ranks fifth in the world, after China, India, the USSR and the USA, and slightly ahead of Japan. In area it is a little larger than the Common Market Six plus the four current applicants, the United Kingdom, Eire, Norway and Denmark; and, being subdivided into many islands, its national territory extends roughly along the equator for some 5000 km which is an even greater distance than the enlarged Common Market's north-south extent from northern Norway to the southern tip of Sicily. In considering its magnitude many people would also add some such statement as that of Herbert Luthy that (in 1939) 'Indonesia was the greatest producer of raw materials in the world', or the Indonesians' own official view in 1956 that their country was 'the third richest country in the world in natural resources, after the United States and the Soviet Union'. In fact, however, the total value of Indonesia's production of raw materials has never in the past hundred years come near to equalling that of the British output of coal, though it is true that in pre-war days the then Netherlands Indies habitually ranked among the leading exporters of raw materials in the strictest sense of that term. Finally, in this list it is necessary also to include the potentially great importance which Indonesia, as much the largest state in Southeast Asia, derives from its commanding geographical position vis-a-vis the maritime crossroads between the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. Given all these various assets, therefore, Indonesia might seem destined to be one of the major powers of the world. Yet, apart from the late President Sukarno, and perhaps also Dr. A. E. Sokol, few people in modern times have ever seriously thought of it in that light. Sokol's analysis, in his paper 'Communication and production in Indonesian history' (1948), stressed what may be called the bipolarity of the Indones? ian lands throughout historical times. Thus, in brief, the relatively small island of Java, possessing by far the greater part of the lands well suited to grain production, had from the earliest recorded times supported the densest population within the archipelago, and on this basis had sustained a series of powerful states, the last and greatest of which was the Hindu-Javanese Kingdom of Madjapahit, which reached its zenith in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In contrast to this, the other major historical focus of the archipelago was the area bordering the Malacca and Sunda Straits, which supported a succession of maritime trading states. Of these the most no table was the medieval sea state of Sri Vijaya which, from a primary base near the modern Palembang in south-eastern Sumatra, controlled territories on both sides of the main seaways and between the seventh and thirteenth centuries dominated the inter-oceanic trade routes.