Economists says that Indonesia will have a hard time returning to rapid growth given that the prices of many of its exports like palm oil and coal have fallen. The nation's historic inefficiencies are also to blame. Protectionist laws and corruption benefit the old ruling class but do nothing to foster real competition. As an example, Indonesia's own anti-graft agency estimates that unlicensed forest clearing has cost the government billions in fees, money which could otherwise be used for vital projects to improve the nation's creaking – and often collapsing – infrastructure, itself a major drag on economic growth.
Unnatural Disasters
As the site of the modern world's greatest explosion (Gunung Tambora in 1815) and other cataclysms such as the tsunami in 2004, Indonesia has more than its fair share of natural disasters. In fact, volcanic eruptions are so frequent that when east Java's Gunung Raung and then Lombok's Gunung Rinjani sent out ash clouds which disrupted hundreds of flights to and from Bali in 2015, it was treated as routine by the local media.
But if nothing can be done about Indonesia's unsettled land and sea, it certainly seems like something could be done about the nation's propensity for manmade disasters. Over a two-year period starting in 2014, more than 350 people died in plane crashes, including 162 who died when an Indonesia AirAsia Airbus plunged into the ocean off Java just after Christmas 2014. The nation's dismal record for transport safety, which has been blamed on lax oversight and institutional malaise on the part of the airlines, seems intractable.
And if Indonesia's safety record is clouded, so too are its skies. Each year fires from (technically) illegal forest clearances on Sumatra and Kalimantan cause an acidic haze that blots out the sky over much of western Indonesia, as well as Singapore and parts of Malaysia (both countries drew harsh rebukes from Indonesia when they complained about the choking smoke).
In a break with past practice however, Jokowi personally asked for help from other nations in fighting the fires in 2015, which were the worst in two decades. It offered at least a hope that something might be done to tame the fires even as questions remained about whether any action would ever be taken against the palm oil producers, loggers and farmers responsible for the blazes and environmental destruction.
Population
255 million
Area
1,904,600 sq km
GDP per capita
US$3475
Number of islands
More than 17,000
Population density Java
1130 per sq km
Population density Papua
11 per sq km
History
The story of how Indonesia became what it is today is a colourful dance of migrants and invaders, rebels and religions, kingdoms and empires, choreographed by Indonesia’s island nature and its location on millennia-old Asian trade routes. It’s a story full of heroes and villains, victors and victims, but the strangest part is how these 17,000-plus islands with over 300 spoken languages and diverse cultures ever came to be a nation at all.
The Trading Archipelago
Indonesians inhabit a diverse island world where a short sea voyage or journey inland can take a traveller into a whole new ecosystem providing a different set of useful commodities. Long ago, forest dwellers were collecting colourful bird feathers and tree resins and exchanging them for turtle shells or salt from people who lived by the sea. Some of these goods would find their way to nearby islands, from which they then reached more distant islands. By about 500 BC, routes sailed by Indonesian islanders began to overlap with those of sailors from mainland Asia. Thus, 2000 years ago, bird-of-paradise feathers from Papua could be depicted on beautiful bronze drums cast by the Dongson people of Vietnam, and some of the drums then ended up in Java, Sumatra and Bali.
Indonesia’s main western islands – Sumatra, Kalimantan and Java – lie in the middle of the sea routes linking Arabia, India, China and Japan. Indonesia was destined to become a crossroads of Asia, and trade has been its lifeblood for at least 2000 years. It has brought with it nearly all the biggest changes the archipelago has seen through the centuries – new people, new ideas, new crops, new technologies, new religions, new wars, new rulers.
Simple iron tools, such as axes and plough tips, arrived from China around 200 BC, spurring Indonesians to find their own metal deposits and make their own knives, arrowheads, urns and jewellery.
Indian Influence & Sriwijaya
Contact between Indonesia and India goes back a long way. Pepper plants, originally from India, were spicing up western Indonesian food as early as 600 BC. Indonesian clothing got a lot smarter when boats from Indonesia reached India by the 2nd century BC and brought back cotton plants. In the early centuries AD, Hindu traders from southern India started to settle along the coast of mainland Southeast Asia. From there they found their way to early coastal trading settlements in Java, Sumatra and Kalimantan. The Indians brought jewellery, fine cloth, pottery, as well as Hindu and Buddhist culture.
From the 4th century AD, Chinese travellers too arrived in Indonesian ports, and in the 7th century Chinese reports started mentioning the port state of Sriwijaya. Buddhist Sriwijaya, in the Palembang-Jambi area of southeast Sumatra, may have been a grouping of ports or a single kingdom whose capital sometimes changed location. It was a powerful state, and its sailors were able to collect pepper, ivory, resins, feathers, turtle shells, mother of pearl and much more from Sumatra and ports around the Java Sea, and carry them to China, from which they brought back silk, ceramics and iron. An entrepôt for Indian, Indonesian, Arab, Southeast Asian and, eventually, Chinese traders, Sriwijaya remained important until the 14th century.
Central Java's unmissable Borobudar and Prambanan complexes are the best ancient monuments in Indonesia, dating to the 8th century. The former is an iconic Buddhist monument built from 2 million stones while the latter has elaborate Hindu decoration.
Traders from Arabia
The first Muslim traders from Arabia appeared in Indonesian ports within a few decades of the death of the Prophet Muhammad in AD 632. Arabian ships bound for China, carrying spices and rare woods or Indian cloth, would call in at Sumatra or other Indonesian islands to add local products such as aromatic woods, resins and camphor to their cargoes. By the 13th century, Arabs had established settlements in major Indonesian ports. Sulaiman bin Abdullah bin al-Basir, ruler of the small north Sumatran port of Lamreh in the early 13th century, was the first Indonesian ruler known to have adopted Islam and taken the title Sultan.
Majapahit
The first Indonesian sultanates came into being while the greatest of Indonesia’s Hindu-Buddhist states, Majapahit, was flourishing in eastern Java. Like the earlier Sriwijaya, Majapahit’s success was trade-based. Its powerful fleets exacted tribute from ports spread from Sumatra to Papua (disobedient states were ‘wiped out completely’ by the Majapahit navies, according to court poet Prapanca), and enabled its traders to dominate the lucrative commerce between Sumatran ports and China. Prapanca reported that traders in Majapahit ports came from Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. He also claimed, less credibly, that Majapahit ruled a hundred foreign countries. Majapahit was eventually conquered by one of the newly Islamic north Java ports, Demak, in 1478.
The Majapahit kingdom reached its zenith during the reign of King Hayam Wuruk (r 1350–89) who was ably assisted by his prime minister and brilliant military commander Gajah Mada. Their names literally translate as Rotting Chicken and Rutting Elephant, respectively, but this had no ill-effect on the illustrious, expansive kingdom.
Spices & the Portuguese
As Islam continued to spread around the archipelago, another new breed of trader arrived – Europeans. With advanced ship design and navigation technology, European sailors could now cross oceans in search of wealth. Portuguese ships crossed the Indian Ocean from southern Africa to India and then pushed on eastward. In 1511 they conquered Melaka, key to the vital Strait of Melaka between Sumatra and Malaya, and set up bases strung across I
ndonesia. They also established settlements in mainland ports from India to China and Japan.
The prize that drew the Portuguese to Indonesia was three little plant products long prized in Europe, China, the Islamic world and Indonesia itself: cloves, nutmeg and mace. All three, in high demand because they made food taste more interesting, were native to Maluku, the Spice Islands of eastern Indonesia. Cloves (the sun-dried flower buds of a type of myrtle tree) were produced on a few small islands off the west coast of Halmahera. Nutmeg and mace, both from the nut of the nutmeg tree, came from the Banda Islands. The sultans of the small Maluku islands of Ternate and Tidore controlled most of the already valuable trade in these spices.
Portuguese traders joined western Indonesians in buying spices in Maluku. They brought exotic new things to the islands such as clocks, firearms, sweet potatoes and Christianity. Clove and nutmeg cultivation was stepped up to meet their demand. After they fell out with the Ternate sultan Babullah and were expelled in 1575, they set up on nearby Pulau Ambon instead.
The Portuguese also traded at Aceh (north Sumatra) and Banten (northwest Java) where the principal product was pepper, which had also been used for many centuries to liven up tastebuds in Europe, China and elsewhere.
In the 17th century the Portuguese were pushed out of the Indonesian condiment business by a more determined, better armed and better financed rival. The Dutch newcomers didn’t just want to buy spices, they wanted to drive other Europeans out of Asian trade altogether.
The British, keen to profit from the spice trade, kept control of the Maluku island of Run until 1667. Then they swapped it for a Dutch-controlled island, Manhattan.
THE CHINESE IN INDONESIA
As Indonesian trading states grew richer and more complex they came increasingly to rely on their growing numbers of Chinese settlers to oil the wheels of their economies. Indonesia’s first recorded Chinese settlement was located at Pasai, Sumatra in the 11th century. By the 17th century, Chinese were filling a whole spectrum of roles as middlemen, artisans, labourers, tax-collectors, businessmen, financiers, farmers and keepers of shops, brothels and opium dens. Today ethnic-Chinese Indonesians own many of the country’s biggest and most profitable businesses. For centuries they have also been the subject of jealousy and hatred, and the victims of repeated outbreaks of violence, including during the shocking 1998 Jakarta riots.
From Animism to Islam
The earliest Indonesians were animists – they believed animate and inanimate objects had their own life force or spirit, and that events could be influenced by offerings, rituals or forms of magic. Indonesia’s scattered prehistoric sites, and animist societies that have survived into modern times, provide evidence that there was often a belief in an afterlife and supernatural controlling powers, and that the spirits of the dead were believed to influence events. Megaliths, found from Pulau Nias to Sumba and Sulawesi’s Lore Lindu National Park, are one manifestation of ancestor cults. Some megaliths may be 5000 years old, but in Sumba animist religion is still alive and well, and concrete versions of megalithic tombs are still being erected.
Hinduism & Buddhism
It was contact with the comparatively wealthy cultures of India in the first few centuries AD that first led Indonesians to adopt new belief systems. Indian traders who settled in Indonesia continued to practise Hinduism, or its offshoot Buddhism. Some built their own temples and brought in priests, monks, teachers or scribes. Impressed local Indonesian rulers started to use the Indian titles Raja or Maharaja or add the royal suffix varman to their names. It was a short step for them to cement their ties with the Indian world by adopting the Indians’ religion or philosophy too. The earliest records of Indianised local rulers are 5th-century stone inscriptions in Sanskrit, found in west Java and near Kutai (now Tenggarong), Kalimantan. These record decrees and tales of the glorious deeds of the kings Purnavarman and Mulavarman, respectively.
The major Indonesian states from then until the 15th century were all Hindu or Buddhist. Sriwijaya, based in southern Sumatra, was predominantly Buddhist. In central Java in the 8th and 9th centuries, the Buddhist Sailendra kingdom and the predominantly Hindu Sanjaya (or Mataram) kingdom constructed the great temple complexes of Borobudur and Prambanan respectively. They sought to recreate Indian civilisation in a Javanese landscape, and Indian gods such as Shiva and Vishnu were believed to inhabit the Javanese heavens, though this did not obliterate traditional beliefs in magical forces or nature spirits. In the 10th century, wealth and power on Java shifted to the east of the island, where a series of Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms dominated till the late 15th century. The greatest of these was Majapahit (1294–1478), based at Trowulan. Javanese-Indian culture also spread to Bali (which remains Hindu to this day) and parts of Sumatra.
In 1292, Marco Polo, on one of his forays east, visited Aceh and noted that local inhabitants had already converted to Islam.
Islam
Majapahit was eventually undone by the next major religion to reach Indonesia – Islam. Muslim Arab traders had appeared in Indonesia as early as the 7th century. By the 13th century Arabs had established settlements in major Indonesian ports, and it was then that the first local rulers, at Lamreh and Pasai in north Sumatra, adopted Islam. Gradually over the next two centuries, then more rapidly, other Indonesian ports with Muslim communities switched to Islam. Their rulers would become persuaded by Islamic teachings and, keen to join a successful international network, would usually take the title Sultan to proclaim their conversion. Melaka on the Malay Peninsula, controlling the strategic Strait of Melaka, switched to Islam in 1436 and became a model for other Muslim states to emulate.
In Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi, some Muslim states spread Islam by military conquest. The conversion of several north Java ports in the late 15th century meant that Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit was hemmed in by hostile states. One of these, Demak, conquered Majapahit in 1478.
Indonesian Islam has always had a ‘folk religion’ aspect in that legends of Islamic saints, holy men and feats of magic, and pilgrimages to sites associated with them, have played an important part in Muslim life. Tradition has it that Islam was brought to Java by nine wali (saints) who converted local populations through war or feats of magic.
The greatest of the Indonesian Muslim kingdoms, Mataram, was founded in 1581 in the area of Java where the Sailendra and Sanjaya kingdoms had flourished centuries earlier. Its second ruler, Senopati, was a descendant of Hindu princes and helped to incorporate some of the Hindu past, and older animist beliefs, into the new Muslim world.
Christianity
The last major religion to reach Indonesia was Christianity. The Catholic Portuguese made some conversions among Islamic communities in Maluku and Sulawesi in the 16th century, but most reverted to Islam. The Protestant Dutch, who gradually took control of the whole archipelago between the 17th and 20th centuries, made little effort to spread Christianity. Missionaries active in the 19th and 20th centuries were steered to regions where Islam was weak or nonexistent, such as the Minahasa and Toraja areas of Sulawesi, the Batak area of Sumatra, and Dutch New Guinea (now Papua).
Rajas & Sultans
The Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim states of Indonesia were not charitable organisations dedicated to their subjects’ welfare. The great majority were absolute monarchies or sultanates, whose rulers claimed to be at least partly divine. Their subjects were there to produce food or goods which they could pay as tribute to the ruler, or to do business from which they could pay taxes, or to fight in armies or navies, or to fill roles in the royal entourage from astrologer to poet to tax collector to concubine. Land was generally considered to belong to the ruler, who permitted subjects to use it in exchange for taxes and tribute. Slaves were an integral part of the scene well into the 19th century.
Other states could pay tribute too and the largest kingdoms or sultanates, such as the Java-based Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit (1294–1478) and Muslim Mataram (1581–1755), built trading empires based on tribute from other pe
oples whom they kept in line through the threat of military force. Majapahit lived on in the memory of later Indonesian states for the fine manners, ceremony and arts of its court, and because some of its princes and princesses had married into the ruling families of Muslim sultanates. Many later rulers would assert their credentials by reference to family connections with the Majapahit kingdom.
Shared religion was no bar to belligerence. Sultan Agung of Mataram had no qualms about conquering neighbouring Muslim states in the 1620s when he wanted to tighten control over the export routes for Mataram’s rice, sugar and teak. Nor did past loyalty or even blood ties guarantee personal favour. In the first year of his reign, Agung’s successor Amangkurat I massacred at least 6000 subjects, including his father’s advisers and his own half-brothers and their families, to remove any possible challenges to his authority.
European Influence
The coming of Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries introduced new ways for Indonesian states and contenders to get one over on their rivals. They could use the Europeans as trading partners or mercenaries or allies, and if the Europeans became too powerful or demanding, they expected they could get rid of them. In Maluku the Muslim sultanate of Ternate, a small but wealthy clove-growing island, drove out its former trading partners, the Portuguese, in 1575. It later awarded the Dutch a monopoly on the sale of its spices and used the revenue to build up its war fleet and extract tribute from other statelets. Ternate eventually controlled 72 tax-paying tributaries around Maluku and Sulawesi.
Lonely Planet Indonesia Page 138