Inhoudsopgave:
|
This is an account of the military, political and personal life of Abdul Harus Nasution who was a seminal figure in modern Indonesian history in the years prior to his effective sidelining in the 1960s. He was an important commander during Indonesiaâs struggle for independence, who rose to become a key leader of the Indonesian armed forces under the first president, Sukarno. Perhaps more significantly, he developed ideas about guerrilla warfare that developed into a sophisticated and socially conservative doctrine for the mobilising of civilian communities. This, in turn, became the underpinning of the repressive, military-backed New Order regime of Indonesiaâs second president, Suharto, who ruled from 1966 until 1998, and which Nasution initially supported. Understanding Nasutionâs thinking about âtotal peopleâs resistanceâ is therefore very important for understanding the broader trajectory of Indonesian political history. That includes both the New Order and the emerging democratic regime that developed after its collapse. The new political system that called itself âthe Refom Eraâ was, in many ways, a direct reaction to the New Order military's penetration and close control of Indonesian society but it has never dismantled the âshadowâ stateâ structure of the armed forces that Nasution designed and Suharto perfected. In other words, as this book shows, Nasutionâs legacy still looms large today in Jokowiâs Indonesia. This is not the first assessment of Nasutionâs life but it differs from earlier works by its investigation of Nasutionâs personal life and, in particular, his relationship with the well-off and well-connected Gondokusumo family, of which he became a member by his marriage to Johana Sunarti Gondokusumo. The authorâs thorough investigation of Nasutionâs relationship with Sunarti and her father offers important new insights into how Nasutionâs ideas evolved, as does the translations of important extracts from Nasutionâs own voluminous writing included in the text. |
nl
en