The Indonesian revolution, its origins, the course of its
development, and its relation to current conditions in Indonesian
society has always been a subject of major concern to the Cornell
Modern Indonesia Project. Among the principal gaps in the coverage
of its history (where both Indonesian and other Asian and Western
scholars have given relatively little attention) are the background
provided by the final year of Japanese occupation and an account of
the first few months of independence, a critical time in which the
revolutionary forces acquired their first institutional form. It is
a matter of great regret that most of those Indonesians best
qualified to write about this period have had little opportunity
for doing so because of their preoccupation with governmental
administration and other heavy duties. In the past decade, during
which research on Indonesia has taken root at Cornell University,
there has been only one substantial study relating to this period,
Professor Harry J. Benda's doctoral dissertation, later published
under the title of The Crescent and the Rising Sun. (The only other
significant studies in English, Dr. M. A. Aziz's Japan's
Colonialism and Indonesia and Professor W. H. Elsbree's Japan's
Role in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements, 1940-1945 were
written without access to the substantial body of documents
available to Dr. Benda and Mr. Anderson in Cornell University
Library's collection on the Japanese occupation of Indonesia.)
Subsequently, a study of outstanding importance has appeared in
Japan, Indoneshia ni okeru Nippon gunsei no kenkyu (A Study of the
Effects of the Japanese Military Occupation on Indonesia) by
Shigetada Nishijima, Koichi Kishi, et al.; but, unfortunately, this
exists only in the Japanese language and has not as yet been
translated into English or Indonesian. Mr. Benedict Anderson, a
member of the Cornell Southeast Asia Program's Modern Indonesia
Project and for two years chief teaching assistant in the
University's Department of Government, is currently on his way to
Indonesia to undertake research concerning the revolutionary period
(1945-1949). It is my hope and expectation that as a consequence he
will be able to explore the history of the period in a balanced and
scholarly way. I believe that the quality of his work in this
present Interim Report, one based only on resources available at
Cornell, is a substantial earnest of his capacity for doing so. Mr.
Anderson's present study deals with the earliest period of the
broader study which he envisages. He wishes it emphasized that the
account offered here is an interim report, not a completed
mono-graph. It represents his preliminary research, based on the
incomplete sources available to him at Cornell. Many of his data
are regarded by him as tentative and subject to confirmation or
revision - depending upon the information which he encounters
during his research in Indonesia. So that this study may be
improved, he and I hope that he may secure the cooperation and the
full, candid criticism of knowledgeable Indonesian scholars and
officials. - George McT. Kahin, September 29, 1961
General
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