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Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
Current price:
$32.50
Publication Date: April 9th, 2024
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN:
9781324073697
Pages:
656
Usually Ships in 1 to 5 Days
Description
From the internationally best-selling writer, a masterful account of the epic revolution that sparked the decolonization of the modern world.
On a sunny Friday morning in August 1945, a handful of people raised a homemade cotton flag and, on behalf of 68 million compatriots, announced the birth of a new nation. With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first country to rid itself of colonial rule after World War II.
In this vivid history, renowned scholar and celebrated author of Congo David Van Reybrouck captures a period of extraordinary tumult and chaos to tell the story of Indonesia’s momentous revolution, known as the “Revolusi.” Encompassing several hundred years of history, he details the formation of the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese invasion that followed, and the young rebels who engaged in armed resistance once the occupation ended. British and Dutch troops were sent to restore order and keep peace, but instead ignited the first modern war of decolonization. America, too, became embroiled with the Indonesians’ fierce struggle for freedom. That struggle inspired independence movements in Asia, Africa, and the Arab world, especially in the wake of Indonesia’s monumental 1955 Bandung Conference, the first global conference without the West. The whole world had become involved in Revolusi, and the whole world was changed by it.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews and eyewitness testimonies, David Van Reybrouck turns this vast and complex story into an utterly gripping narrative, written with remarkable historical clarity and filled with tragedy and passion. A landmark history, Revolusi cements Indonesia’s struggle for independence as one of the defining dramas of the twentieth century and entirely reframes our understanding of post-colonialism.
Praise for Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
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.
— Adam Hochschild - Atlantic
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.
— Alec Russell - Financial Times
A superb history of the struggle for independence after three centuries of Dutch colonial rule.
— Guardian
An outstanding account of one nation's unsung fight for freedom…The firsthand narratives are enthralling…[A] magnificent book.
— Todd Kushner - Washington Independent Review of Books
Important…[D]eciphers a critical chapter in Asian and global history.
— Kirkus Reviews
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.
— Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger
An astounding feat of both research and storytelling.… History at its best.
— Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens
A magnificent fusion of oral history, sparkling analysis, and historical wisdom. Revolusi has it all: a masterpiece.
— Sebastian Mallaby, author of More Money Than God
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.
— J. M. Coetzee, author of The Pole
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.
— Laksmi Pamuntjak, author of The Question of Red
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.
— Jason Burke, author of The 9/11 Wars
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.
— Antjie Krog, author of Country of My Skull
