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Indonesian National RevolutionThe Indonesian National Revolution or Indonesian War of Independence is the name of the four-year struggle by Indonesia to win its independence from the Netherlands. The independence struggle of Indonesia was long and protracted for when Japan surrendered, in August 1945 the Netherlands - just liberated itself - was in no shape to reclaim authority over Indonesia and the nationalists claimed independence. They had collaborated with the Japanese, who had instituted an army. They managed to establish de facto control over parts of the huge archipelago, particularly in Java and Sumatra. In many parts, however, chaos reigned. Initially the United Kingdom sent in troops to take over from the Japanese and they soon found themselves in conflict with the fledgling Republic. British forces brought in a small Dutch military contingent, which is misleadingly called the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration (NICA). When a NICA personnel hoisted a Dutch flag on a hotel in Surabaya, there was an emotional outburst by the Indonesian nationalists who overran the Japanese proxies guarding the hotel and tore the blue stripe off the flag forming the Indonesian red-white flag. The British became worried on the increasing bravado of the nationalists in attacking and forcibly getting arms from demoralized Japanese garrisons across the archipelago with crude weapons like bamboo spears. A British Brigadier General A.W.S Mallaby was killed as he pushed for an ultimatum that the Indonesians surrender their weapons or face a major assault. On November 10, 1945, the second largest city, Surabaya was attacked by British forces in a bloody street-street fighting. The city was secured later that month far surpassing British military planners' expectation of a three day token resistance. The battle for Surabaya was the bloodiest single engagement in the war and has successfully sent the message of the determinance of the rag-tag nationalist forces to the international world. It also made the British reluctant to be sucked into a war it does not need, considering the outstretched resources it has over southeast Asia during the period after the Japanese surrender and its miscalulation of the Indonesian nationalist strength. Then the Netherlands were asked to take back control, and the number of NICA forces increased dramatically. Initially the Netherlands negotiated with the Republic and came to an agreement at Linggarjati. A major point of concern for the Netherlands was that all Dutch in Indonesia had been put in rather awful concentration camps by the Japanese. The Indonesians were not very cooperative in liberating these people. Soon the agreement was violated on an ever greater scale in a way reminiscent of what would happen to the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians several years later. The hawkish forces won out on both sides and eventually the Netherlands mounted the biggest military effort in its history to conquer back what it believed was its territory. The two wars that followed were therefore considered mere 'police actions' to downplay the extent of the operations. There were atrocities and violations of human rights in many forms. Although the Netherlands managed to defeat the republican army in major engagments and put Sukarno (its President) back in jail, Indonesian forces waged a major guerrilla movement led by General Sudirman who escaped the Second Dutch onslaught. Sudirman's token force was considered to be the symbol of the survival of the anti-colonial, especially after the republican forces had internal disturbance after its communist elements staged a failed coup at the time of the second police action to hijack the secular nationalist leadership of the movement, this was known as the Madiun Affair. The existence of Republican resistance after the second 'Police action' paired with active diplomacy marked the end for Dutch colonialism, proved to be a good combination. The rest of the world, notably the United States of America had enough. The Netherlands were forced to negotiate and at the Round Table conference in The Hague in 1949, the country finally threw in the towel, thereby ending the most shameful episode of its history. There were interesting reasons behind Dutch (and Indonesian) tenacity: Both sides believed that the Indies were Holland's "life-blood". Consequently, if the colonial ties were severed, the Netherlands would remain as desperately impoverished as it had emerged from the nazi occupation. Conversely, the Indonesian side was convinced that independence would lead to more or less immediate prosperity in addition to the determinance to expel their former colonisers, as the Japanese occupation gave a glimpse of that hope. The bitter irony is that the opposite actually happened: by 1960 the Netherlands were prosperous and Indonesia in very dire shape. Economically, the life-blood theory was faulty on two counts: it did not recognize that open borders in Europe were far more important to the Dutch economy than the colonial empire. On the Indonesian side it was not recognized that the Dutch were not just takers but also bringers. When the last Dutch were expelled from Indonesia in 1958, and their businesses taken, the Indonesian economy took a nose dive, because it caused an exodus of much needed expertise which could have been used to help the country.
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