The Republic of Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous
nation, has 210 million people living on nearly one thousand permanently
settled islands. Some two-to-three hundred ethnic groups with their own
languages and dialects range in population from the Javanese (about 70
million) and Sundanese (about 30 million) on Java, to peoples numbering in
the thousands on remote islands. The nature of Indonesian national culture
is somewhat analogous to that of India—multicultural, rooted in
older societies and interethnic relations, and developed in twentieth
century nationalist struggles against a European imperialism that
nonetheless forged that nation and many of its institutions. The national
culture is most easily observed in cities but aspects of it now reach into
the countryside as well. Indonesia's borders are those of the
Netherlands East Indies, which was fully formed at the beginning of the
twentieth century, though Dutch imperialism began early in the seventeenth
century. Indonesian culture has historical roots, institutions, customs,
values, and beliefs that many of its people share, but it is also a work
in progress that is undergoing particular stresses at the beginning of the
twenty-first century.
The name Indonesia, meaning Indian Islands, was coined by an Englishman,
J. R. Logan, in Malaya in 1850. Derived from the Greek,
Indos
(India) and
nesos
(island), it has parallels in Melanesia, "black islands";
Micronesia, "small islands"; and Polynesia, "many
islands." A German geographer, Adolf Bastian, used it in the title
of his book,
Indonesien
, in 1884, and in 1928 nationalists adopted it as the name of their
hoped-for nation.
Most islands are multi ethnic, with large and small groups forming
geographical enclaves. Towns within such enclaves include the dominant
ethnic group and some members of immigrant groups. Large cities may
consist of many ethnic groups; some cities have a dominant majority.
Regions, such as West Sumatra or South Sulawesi, have developed over
centuries through the interaction of geography (such as rivers, ports,
plains, and mountains), historical interaction of peoples, and
political-administrative policies. Some, such as North Sumatra, South
Sulawesi, and East Java are ethnically mixed to varying degrees; others
such as West Sumatra, Bali, and Aceh are more homogeneous. Some regions,
such as South Sumatra, South Kalimantan (Borneo), and South Sulawesi, share a
long-term Malayo-Muslim coastal influence that gives them similar cultural
features, from arts and dress to political and class stratification to
religion. Upland or upriver peoples in these regions have different
social, cultural, and religious orientations, but may feel themselves or
be perforce a part of that region. Many such regions have become
government provinces, as are the latter three above. Others, such as Bali,
have not.
Location and Geography.
Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago nation, is located
astride the equator in the humid tropics and extends some 2,300 miles
(3,700 kilometers) east-west, about the same as the contiguous United
States. It is surrounded by oceans, seas, and straits except where it
shares an island border with East Malaysia and Brunei on Borneo
(Kalimantan); with Papua New Guinea on New Guinea; and with Timor Loro Sae
on Timor. West Malaysia lies across the Straits of Malaka, the Philippines
lies to the northeast, and Australia lies to the south.
The archipelago's location has played a profound role in economic,
political, cultural, and religious developments there. For more than two
thousand years, trading ships sailed between the great civilizations of
India and China via the waters and islands of the Indies.
Indonesia consists of all or part of some of the world's largest
islands—Sumatra, Java, most of Kalimantan (Borneo), Sulawesi
(Celebes), Halmahera, and the west half of New Guinea (Papua)—and
numerous smaller islands, of which Bali (just east of Java) is best known.
These islands plus some others have mountain peaks of 9,000 feet (2,700
meters) or more, and there are some four hundred volcanos, of which one
hundred are active. Between 1973 and 1990, for example, there were
twenty-nine recorded eruptions, some with tragic consequences. Volcanic
lava and ash contributed to the rich soils of upland Sumatra and all of
Java and Bali, which have nurtured rice cultivation for several thousand
years.
The inner islands of Java, Madura, and Bali make up the geographical and
population center of the archipelago. Java, one of the world's most
densely settled places (with 2,108 people per square mile [814 per square
kilometer] in 1990), occupies 78 percent of the nation's land area
but accounts for about 60 percent of Indonesia's population. (About
the size of New York state, Java's population is equivalent to 40
percent of that of the United States.) The outer islands, which form an
arc west, north, and east of the inner ones, have about 90 percent of the
land area of the country but only about 42 percent of the population. The
cultures of the inner islands are more homogeneous, with only four major
cultural groups: the Sundanese (in West
Java), the Javanese (in Central and East Java), the Madurese (on Madura
and in East Java), and the Balinese (on Bali). The outer islands have
hundreds of ethnolinguistic groups.
Forests of the inner islands, once plentiful, are now largely gone.
Kalimantan, West Papua, and Sumatra still have rich jungles, though these
are threatened by population expansion and exploitation by loggers for
domestic timber use and export. Land beneath the jungles is not fertile.
Some eastern islands, such as Sulawesi and the Lesser Sundas (the island
chain east of Bali), also have lost forests.
Two types of agriculture are predominant in Indonesia: permanent irrigated
rice farming (
sawah
) and rotating swidden or slash-and-burn (
ladang
) farming of rice, corn, and other crops. The former dominates Java, Bali,
and the highlands all along the western coast of Sumatra; the latter is
found in other parts of Sumatra and other outer islands, but not
exclusively so. Fixed rain-fed fields of rice are prominent in Sulawesi
and some other places. Many areas are rich in vegetables, tropical fruit,
sago, and other cultivated or forest crops, and commercial plantations of
coffee, tea, tobacco, coconuts, and sugar are found in both inner and
outer islands. Plantation-grown products such as rubber, palm oil, and
sisal are prominent in Sumatra, while coffee, sugar, and tea are prominent
in Java. Spices such as cloves, nutmeg, and pepper are grown mainly in the
outer islands, especially to the east. Maluku (formerly the Moluccas)
gained its appellation the "Spice Islands" from the
importance of trade in these items. Gold, tin, and nickel are mined in
Sumatra, Bangka, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Papua for domestic and
international markets, and oil and liquified natural gas (especially from
Sumatra) are important exports. Numerous rivers flowing from mountainous
or jungle interiors to coastal plains and ports have carried farm and
forest products for centuries and have been channels for cultural
communication.
Demography.
Indonesia's population increased from 119,208,000 in 1971 to
147,500,000 in 1980, to 179,300,000 in 1990, and to 203,456,000 in 2000.
In the meantime the fertility rate declined from 4.6 per thousand women to
3.3; the crude death rate fell at a rate of 2.3 percent per year; and
infant mortality declined from 90.3 per thousand live births to 58. The
fertility rate was projected to fall to 2.1 percent within another decade,
but the total population was predicted to reach 253,700,000 by 2020. As of
the middle of the twentieth century, Indonesia's population was
largely rural, but at the beginning of the twenty-first century, about 20
percent live in towns and cities and three of five people farm.
Cities in both inner and outer islands have grown rapidly, and there are
now twenty-six cities with populations over 200,000. As in many developing
countries, Indonesia's population is still a young one. The above
patterns are national, but there are ethnic and regional variations.
Population has grown at different rates in different areas owing to such
factors as economic conditions and standard of living, nutrition,
availability and effectiveness of public health and family planning
programs, and cultural values and practices.
Migration also plays a part in population fluctuations. Increased
permanent or seasonal migration to cities accompanied economic development
during the 1980s and 1990s, but there is also significant migration
between rural areas as people leave places such as South Sulawesi for more
productive work or farm opportunities in Central Sumatra or East
Kalimantan.
Linguistic Affiliation.
Nearly all of Indonesia's three hundred to four hundred languages
are subgroups of the Austronesian family that extends from Malaysia
through the Philippines, north to several hill peoples of Vietnam and
Taiwan, and to Polynesia, including Hawaiian and Maori (of New Zealand)
peoples. Indonesia's languages are not mutually intelligible,
though some subgroups are more similar than others (as Europe's
Romance languages are closer to each other than to Germanic ones, though
both are of the Indo-European family). Some language subgroups have
sub-subgroups, also not mutually intelligible, and many have local
dialects. Two languages—one in north Halmahera, one in West
Timor—are non-Austronesian and, like Basque in Europe, are not
related to other known languages. Also, the very numerous languages of
Papua are non-Austronesian. Most people's first language is a local one. In 1923, however, the
Malay language (now known as Bahasa Malaysia in Malaysia where it is the
official language) was adopted as the national language at a congress of
Indonesian nationalists, though only a small minority living in Sumatra
along the Straits of Malaka spoke it as their native language.
Nevertheless, it made sense for two reasons.First, Malay had long been a commercial and governmental lingua franca
that bound diverse peoples. Ethnically diverse traders and local peoples
used Malay in ports and hinterlands in its grammatically simplified form
known as "market Malay." Colonial
governments in British Malaya and the Netherlands Indies used high Malay
in official documents and negotiations and Christian missionaries first
translated the Bible into that language.
Second, nationalists from various parts of the archipelago saw the value
of a national language not associated with the largest group, the
Javanese. Bahasa Indonesia is now the language of government, schools,
courts, print and electronic media, literary arts and movies, and
interethnic communication. It is increasingly important for young people,
and has a youth slang. In homes, a native language of the family is often
spoken, with Indonesian used outside the home in multiethnic areas. (In
more monolingual areas of Java, Javanese also serves outside the home.)
Native languages are not used for instruction beyond the third grade in
some rural areas. Native language literatures are no longer found as they
were in colonial times. Many people lament the weakening of native
languages, which are rich links to indigenous cultures, and fear their
loss to modernization, but little is done to maintain them. The old and
small generation of well-educated Indonesians who spoke Dutch is passing
away. Dutch is not known by most young and middle-aged people, including
students and teachers of history who cannot read much of the documentary
history of the archipelago. English is the official second language taught
in schools and universities with varying degrees of success.
Symbolism.
The national motto,
Bhinneka Tunggal Ika
, is an old Javanese expression usually translated as "unity in
diversity." The nation's official ideology, first formulated
by President Sukarno in 1945, is the Pancasila, or Five Principles: belief
in one supreme God; just and civilized humanitarianism; Indonesian unity;
popular sovereignty governed by wise policies arrived at through
deliberation and representation; and social justice for all Indonesian
people. Indonesia was defined from the beginning as the inheritor of the
Netherlands East Indies. Though West Papua remained under the Dutch until
1962, Indonesia conducted a successful international campaign to secure
it. Indonesia's occupation of the former Portuguese East Timor in
1975, never recognized by the United Nations, conflicted with this
founding notion of the nation. After two decades of bitter struggle there,
Indonesia withdrew.
Since 1950 the national anthem and other songs have been sung by children
throughout the country to begin the school day; by civil servants at
flag-raising ceremonies; over the radio to begin and close broadcasting;
in cinemas and on television;
and at national day celebrations. Radio and television, government owned
and controlled for much of the second half of the twentieth century,
produced nationalizing programs as diverse as Indonesian language lessons,
regional and ethnic dances and songs, and plays on national themes.
Officially recognized "national heroes" from diverse regions
are honored in school texts, and biographies and with statues for their
struggles against the Dutch; some regions monumentalize local heros of
their own.
History and Ethnic Relations
Emergence of the Nation.
Though the Republic of Indonesia is only fifty years old, Indonesian
societies have a long history during which local and wider cultures were
formed.
About 200
C.E.
, small states that were deeply influenced by Indian civilization began to
develop in Southeast Asia, primarily at estuaries of major rivers. The
next five hundred to one thousand years saw great states arise with
magnificent architecture. Hinduism and Buddhism, writing systems, notions
of divine kingship, and legal systems from India were adapted to local
scenes. Sanskrit terms entered many of the languages of Indonesia.
Hinduism influenced cultures throughout Southeast Asia, but only one
people are Hindu, the Balinese.
Indianized states declined about 1400
C.E.
with the arrival of Muslim traders and teachers from India, Yemen, and
Persia, and then Europeans from Portugal, Spain, Holland, and Britain. All
came to join the great trade with India and China. Over the next two
centuries local princedoms traded, allied, and fought with Europeans, and
the Dutch East India Company became a small state engaging in local
battles and alliances to secure trade. The Dutch East India Company was
powerful until 1799 when the company went bankrupt. In the nineteenth
century the Dutch formed the Netherlands Indies government, which
developed alliances with rulers in the archipelago. Only at the beginning
of the twentieth century did the Netherlands Indies government extend its
authority by military means to all of present Indonesia.
Sporadic nineteenth century revolts against Dutch practices occurred
mainly in Java, but it was in the early twentieth century that Indonesian
intellectual and religious leaders began to seek national independence. In
1942 the Japanese occupied the Indies, defeating the colonial army and
imprisoning the Dutch under harsh conditions.
On 17 August 1945, following Japan's defeat in World War II,
Indonesian nationalists led by Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declared
Indonesian independence. The Dutch did not accept and for five years
fought the new republic, mainly in Java. Indonesian independence was
established in 1950.
National Identity.
Indonesia's size and ethnic diversity has made national identity
problematic and debated. Identity is defined at many levels: by Indonesian
citizenship; by recognition of the flag, national anthem, and certain
other songs; by recognition of national holidays; and by education about
Indonesia's history and the Five Principles on which the nation is
based. Much of this is instilled through the schools and the media, both
of which have been closely regulated by the government during most of the
years of independence. The nation's history has been focused upon
resistance to colonialism and communism by national heroes and leaders who
are enshrined in street names. Glories of past civilizations are
recognized, though archaeological remains are mainly of Javanese
principalities.
Ethnic Relations.
Ethnic relations in the archipelago have long been a concern. Indonesian
leaders recognized the possibility of ethnic and regional separatism from
the beginning of the republic. War was waged by the central government
against separatism in Aceh, other parts of Sumatra, and Sulawesi in the
1950s and early 1960s, and the nation was held together by military force.
The relationships between native Indonesians and overseas Chinese have
been greatly influenced by Dutch and Indonesian government policies. The
Chinese number about four to six million, or 3 percent of the population,
but are said to control as much as 60 percent of the nation's
wealth. The Chinese traded and resided in the islands for centuries, but
in the nineteenth century the Dutch brought in many more of them to work
on plantations or in mines. The Dutch also established a social, economic,
and legal stratification system that separated Europeans, foreign Asiatics
and Indo-Europeans, and Native Indonesians, partly to protect native
Indonesians so that their land could not be lost to outsiders. The Chinese
had little incentive to assimilate to local societies, which in turn had
no interest in accepting them.
Even naturalized Chinese citizens faced restrictive regulations, despite
cozy business relationships between Chinese leaders and Indonesian
officers and bureaucrats. Periodic violence directed toward Chinese
persons and property also occurred. In the colonial social system, mixed
marriages between
Chinese men and indigenous women produced half-castes (
peranakan
), who had their own organizations, dress, and art forms, and even
newspapers. The same was true for people of mixed Indonesian-European
descent (called Indos, for short).
Ethnolinguistic groups reside mainly in defined areas where most people
share much of the same culture and language, especially in rural areas.
Exceptions are found along borders between groups, in places where other
groups have moved in voluntarily or as part of transmigration programs,
and in cities. Such areas are few in Java, for example, but more common in
parts of Sumatra.
Religious and ethnic differences may be related. Indonesia has the largest
Muslim population of any country in the world, and many ethnic groups are
exclusively Muslim. Dutch policy allowed proselytization by Protestants
and Catholics among separate groups who followed traditional religions;
thus today many ethnic groups are exclusively Protestant or Roman
Catholic. They are heavily represented among upriver or upland peoples in
North Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku, and the eastern Lesser
Sundas, though many Christians are also found in Java and among the
Chinese. Tensions arise when groups of one religion migrate to a place
with a different established religion. Political and economic power
becomes linked to both ethnicity and religion as groups favor their own
kinsmen and ethnic mates for jobs and other benefits.
