Young Soeharto

The Making of a Soldier, 1921-1945

David Jenkins

• Publisher: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9789814881005
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

When a reluctant President Sukarno gave Lt Gen Soeharto full executive authority in March 1966, Indonesia was a deeply divided nation, fractured along ideological, class, religious and ethnic lines. Soeharto took a country in chaos, the largest in Southeast Asia, and transformed it into one of the "Asian miracle" economies—only to leave it back on the brink of ruin when he was forced from office thirty-two years later. Drawing on his astonishing range of interviews with leading Indonesian generals, former Imperial Japanese Army officers and men who served in the Dutch colonial army, as well as years of patient research in Dutch, Japanese, British, Indonesian and US archives, David Jenkins brings vividly to life the story of how a socially reticent but exceptionally determined young man from rural Java began his rise to power—an ascent which would be capped by thirty years (1968–98) as President of Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation on earth. Soeharto was one of Asia's most brutal, most durable, most avaricious and most successful dictators. In the course of examining those aspects of his character, this book provides an accessible, highly readable introduction to the complex, but dramatic and utterly absorbing, social, political, religious, economic and military factors that have shaped, and which continue to shape, Indonesia.

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• 1. “The Sultan came to me and asked about that family tree”
• 2. “The cork on which the Netherlands floats”
• 3. “They regard Holland as a very weak power”
• 4. “An invisible motivating force”
• 5. “What kind of Islam is this?”
• 6. “Soeharto is a closed book”
• 7. “I was suited to the disciplined life of the military"
• 8. A reassuringly familiar world
• 9. A policeman for the Japanese
• 10. An armed force conjured out of nothing
• 11. “The whole island was ablaze with enthusiasm”
• 12. “Don’t make them too strong!”
• 13. “Soeharto was a cautious man”
• 14. “Why did they choose Soeharto?”
• Glossary and Abbreviations
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author
• Dutch photo section
• Japanese photo section