A Short History of Indonesia
to retain full and appropriate sovereignty over national issues such as defence, currency, foreign relations and the like. His proposals attracted a good degree of support outside Java, especially in those regions where sympathy with the Dutch had traditionally been strong, including some (though by no means all) of the Christian areas. But the Republican government saw the proposal as simply another Dutch tactic to ‘divide and rule’ Indonesia. It believed that the federal states to be set up outside Java would be simply Dutch puppets, independent in name only and still heavily dependent on the Netherlands for political and economic decision making. To form a federation with such bodies would have implied a quite unacceptable diminution of the sovereignty of the state. It was a measure of the Republic’s determination to achieve recognition of its independence almost at any price that, despite very clear reservations, it was prepared to sign the Linggajati Agreement, though it was not formally ratified by the KNIP until March 1947. The agreement served one of its purposes: it provided the British with an exit from the Indies. But neither of the main protagonists, the Indonesians and the Dutch, was ever fully supportive of it, each seeing it as giving too many concessions to the other. The tempo of clashes between the two sides, temporarily reduced, picked up again. Eventually, in July 1947, the Dutch launched a military invasion of the Republic, alleging Republican violations of the agreement. In this so-called ‘police action’ the Dutch secured a series of military successes, seizing half the Republic’s territory on Java as well as its richest territories on Sumatera. Politically, however, they failed to destroy the Republic and may indeed have strengthened its resolve. The action also brought the United Nations directly into the dispute for the first time, and indirectly sparked off what was to be a crisis of enormous significance for the future of the Republic. In response to the Dutch action, India and Australia brought the situation to the attention of the UN Security Council in July; the Council then established a three-member Good Offices Committee (GOC) to help find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. The Com166