Merdeka: The Struggle for Indonesian Independence and the Republic’s Precarious Rise, 1945-1950

Under the slogan ’Merdeka!’ the Republic of Indonesia rushed into a battle for independence, a struggle of which no one could predict the outcome. Harry Poeze and Henk Schulte Nordholt provide a new narrative about the revolution, one that focuses not only on the fight against the Dutch but also on the precarious rise of the Republic.

Harry Poeze is a former publisher, an honorary fellow at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (Koninklijk Instituut van Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, KITLV) in Leiden, and one of the leading researchers of the Indonesian Revolution. Henk Schulte Nordholt is emeritus professor of Indonesian history at the University of Leiden and an honorary fellow at the KITLV in Leiden.