The following book was contributed by: John Walsh: CLICK TO VIEW John Walsh's Reviews

Indonesia is a country of some 17,000 islands, most of which are uninhabited. Extending over a vast swathe of land, numerous states have emerged in the past, basing their wealth and power on the international trading networks that took the spices of the Moluccas and Sumatra to Japan and China in the east, India, Persia and the Mediterranean in the west. The largest and most influential island has always been Java and it has been Java, with the sacred Mount Meru at its centre, which has provided the basis of the powerful states of the past. When this confederation of islands suffered under the centuries of abuse represented by European colonialism, the extraction of all resources from the region for relocation to Europe led to the origin of poverty there – prior to colonization, Indonesian people were at least as wealthy and healthy as the Europeans whose superior military technology enabled them to become dominant. It was not until the end of the second world war that independence became a possibility and this was only achieved as a result of long years of warfare with the Dutch colonists. Indonesians for the most part did not consider themselves to be part of a single nation and never had been. Only some among the Javanese had ever believed in the practicality or desirability of achieving an unified state from this enormous diversity. There were Communists, nationalists, Islamists and what was probably a huge majority of people who just wanted to be left alone to live their own lives, independent of any external governors. From this mélange, Sukarno and then Suharto managed to fashion a nation state that has more or less successfully managed to suppress religious and ethnic fighting – more or less, because there have nevertheless been numerous outrages.

Caroline Covell’s book outlines the rise to power and administration of these two strong men, who dominated Indonesian governance for several decades. Insofar as the modern history of the largest Islamic state in the world is generally not well known in the west, then it is a welcome addition to the body of literature. However, it does suffer from a number of problems. These include what appears to be the complete reliance upon secondary rather than primary sources and the lack of proper editorial supervision of the text. The focus is often quite narrow and there are various issues with which I would quibble. Perhaps more importantly, the wish to provide a simple, unified narrative fails to take account of the fact that there are occasions on which it is necessary to deal with the complexity of some situations. A better and broader approach to Indonesian history is provided by Colin Brown’s recently published A Short History of Indonesia. However, Covell’s book certainly does have its place.