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Developing Identity: Exploring The History Of Indonesian Nationalism, Thomas Joseph Butcher

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines the history of Indonesian nationalism over the course of the twentieth century. In this thesis, I argue that the country’s two main political leaders of the twentieth century, Presidents Sukarno (1945-1967) and Suharto (1967-1998) manipulated nationalist ideology to enhance and extend their executive powers. The thesis begins by looking at the ways that the nationalist movement originated during the final years of the Dutch East Indies colonial period. The first section highlights how the nationalist movement was disunified in its attempts to gain political autonomy from Dutch colonial control. It moves on to talk about the impact …