Insular Southeast Asia - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 470

Muslim traders arrived as early as the seventh cen-
tury but the Islamicization of Indonesia began in the
thirteenth century with the conversion of the ruler of
Aceh in northwestern Sumatra. The nature of Islam in
Indonesia varies greatly , ranging from strict adherence
among the Acehnese to elsewhere where people have a
more relaxed attitude to the faith.
When the Europeans arrived in the middle of the
sixteenth century , they found a series of well-established
states across the archipelago. The major ones were at
Aceh, Solo (Surakarta), and Y ogyakarta in central Java,
Bali, the Moluccas (Maluku), and Makassar (Ujungpan-
dang). There was a constant flow of people and goods
across the region. T Traders used Malay as their means of
communication. The Indonesian and Malay languages
are similar in the same way that British and American
English are similar.

Javanese agriculture was transformed by the Dutch
cultivation (culture) system (Chapter 14). Islanders were
compelled to produce designated crops, and by the end
of the nineteenth century Java was the world' s largest
sugar producer. Village Java' s subsistence economies
faded to commercialization, and cities and towns
emerged to handle the export trade. By the beginning of
the twentieth century , most Javanese were tenant farm-
ers, sharecroppers, or wage laborers.
In Sumatra, vast areas of virgin forest were removed
to make room for tobacco and rubber plantations. When
oil was discovered in the 1920s, it became the nucleus of
what would become the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company .
Much of the labor was Chinese, and although they never
made up a large portion of the colony' s population, they
became dominant in local trade and urban commerce.
The economic transformation of Indonesia led to in-
creased urbanization, and by 1910 Java' s cities were un-
able to cope with the flow of rural-to-urban migration.
Urban places were crowded, without piped water or san-
itation systems, and people were suffering from malaria
and other waterborne diseases. Living conditions for
most Indonesians worsened into the 1970s.
The Dutch introduced Western education to pro-
vide a needed pool of skilled labor, but entry to these
schools was very difficult for ordinary Indonesians. The
best schools used Dutch as the medium of instruction.
Graduates entered the professions or even attended
universities in the Netherlands. Most who benefited
were children of the elite or government officials. By
the end of the Dutch colonial era, literacy rates were
lower than in any other European colony in Asia, with
the exception of the Portuguese colony of East Timor
(Timor-Leste).

THE NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES
The Netherlands United East India Company (VOC) be-
gan to trade with local kingdoms in the early seventeenth
century . In 1619, they attacked Jayakarta (Jakarta), then
a major fort in the Javan kingdom of Banten. Jayakarta
was renamed Batavia. It remained the capital of the
Netherlands East Indies until independence in 1945,
when it was renamed Jakarta.
T Total control of Java was not achieved until 1756
after the bloody Java War whereby the Dutch defeated
the Y ogyakarta sultanate. Several years later, in 1796,
the Dutch Crown took over from the corrupt Company
and ruled what by then was the largest state in the ar-
chipelago. The Dutch extended their control gradually
through the nineteenth century . Sumatra and eastern
Indonesia came under Dutch rule and, with the de-
struction of the Balinese kingdom in 1905 and Aceh in
1911, the colony of the Netherlands East Indies was
complete.
The Dutch maintained a centralized state. Power
was vested in Batavia, and the colonial government kept
a close eye on religious leaders. Any stirrings of resist-
ance were quickly quashed. The Dutch promoted a West-
ern, secular elite by educating the children of the
pre-colonial elites and making every effort to prevent the
formation of an Islamic elite.
Regional trading networks were gradually destroyed.
External trade became the preserve of European compa-
nies and internal trade became dominated by the Chi-
nese, who were encouraged to migrate from southern
China.

NATIONALISM AND SUKARNO
The term Indonesia was first used in the early 1920s. By
1928 there were enough educated youth with determina-
tion to create a modern Indonesia free from Dutch rule.
Although several political parties emerged, the most
prominent nationalist was Sukarno, who charmed the
masses with his brilliant oratory . (Many Indonesians go
by only one name.) Sukarno succeeded in spreading the
idea of freedom across all levels of society . His most im-
portant contribution was the popularization of national-
ist ideology . An important theme was that people should
set aside their ethnic and religious differences to unite in
opposition to colonial rule. It was generally agreed that
Indonesia should be a secular state. However, none of