Anthony Reid: Historian of the Indonesian Revolution

Emeritus Professor Anthony Reid (1939–2025) was his generation’s leading historian of Southeast Asia. In his bold and creative works of historical synthesis, such as Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce (1988–1993) and A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads (2015), Reid articulated a vision of Southeast Asia as a diverse, integrated, cosmopolitan, and dynamic community. His research illuminated topics and issues that are often marginalised in the mainstream historiographies of the region, such as the agency of Southeast Asian women, the roles of the Chinese diaspora, and the long-term impacts of climate and natural disasters. 

Reid dedicated himself to the field of Asian Studies worldwide, as a founding and life member of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA), as well as founder of the Southeast Asia Center at UCLA and the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. He was a generous philanthropist, establishing the ASAA’s landmark Reid Prize awarded for exemplary contribution to understanding Asia, and funding the Tony and Yohanni Johns Lecture at the Australian National University. 

A theme that fascinated Reid throughout his career as a historian was the relationship between revolution and nation. With his specialisation in the history of Sumatra and Aceh, Reid sought to understand how the Indonesian nation came into being through revolution. This idea plays a central role in his early work Indonesian National Revolution 1945–50 (1974). This reference book was written as an accessible and rigorous introduction for general readers and students; its translated version (1996) became a favourite on Indonesian campuses. 

Reid wrote at a time when Suharto’s New Order government actively discouraged the term “revolution” due to its perceived leftist connotations, preferring instead to emphasise the Indonesian Army’s role in the “war of independence”. Nevertheless, Reid insisted that the transformation of Indonesia in the late 1940s was truly revolutionary. It was primarily a national revolution (similar to that of France in 1789) because it successfully created an independent nation-state enjoying broad public legitimacy, while leaving unresolved the economic problem of how to rescue ordinary Indonesians from poverty, and the political problem of how to peacefully realise their democratic aspirations as citizens of the new republic.

The nuances of Reid’s thinking about revolution and nation, as it developed from the late 1960s to the early 2000s, are laid out in a volume of his collected and revised articles: To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the 20^th Century (2011). In the chapter “The Revolution in Regional Perspective”, he synthesised many province-level studies of revolutionary activity to reveal the organic coherence of the Indonesian Revolution as a process of social transformation throughout the archipelago. 

Reid’s core argument about the far-reaching effects of the Indonesian Revolution was put forcefully in the opening essay “Indonesia: Revolution without Socialism”. He argued that the Revolution’s destruction of colonial institutions and norms had long-term consequences for the Indonesian economy: the domineering role of the state, the weakness of legal procedure, the centrality of political patronage, and the ideological cohesiveness of the urban elite. The Revolution thus remains relevant for today’s Indonesians in a much broader sense than the phrase ‘war of independence’ might suggest. 

Reid’s abiding interest in slavery provided another illuminating perspective on the Indonesian Revolution. In the chapter “The Late Death of Slavery”, he showed how despite formal bans by the colonial state, practices of bonded servitude in the Netherlands East Indies loosened only very slowly through the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Slavery thus formed the contrasting backdrop for expressions of freedom in the revolutionary period. 

In the chapter “Merdeka: The Indonesian Key to Freedom”, Reid traced the centuries-old genealogy of the term merdeka (now “free” or “independent”, originally “prosperous”). By drawing careful distinctions between Malay, Javanese, and Bugis interpretations of this keyword, he showed that the merdeka ideal was most clearly articulated in opposition to the unfree condition of slaves, especially in port-cities where slave trafficking had the deepest impact. Reid’s exploration of the historical links between personal, economic and political emancipation offers a profound understanding of the many meanings of merdeka before, during and after the Indonesian Revolution. Other essays in the volume provide specific lenses through which to view the Revolution: the position of the Chinese minorities, the federal alternative to the unitary state, and the complexities of the Japanese wartime occupation.

Reid never ceased to see the Indonesian experience within a broader comparative context. His theoretical ambition is reflected in Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia (2009), in which he investigated the transformative process (“alchemy”) by which the imperial formations of colonised Asia turned into today’s sovereign nation-states. Indonesian and Malaysian case studies focussing on the diaspora Chinese, Malay, Acehnese, Batak and Kadazan/Dusun peoples formed the empirical basis of this work. By making an analytical distinction between four categories, which he called “ethnie”, “state”, “anti-imperial” and “outrage at state humiliation” nationalisms, he showed how the Indonesian nation-state has prevailed over the claims of ethnie nationalism within its borders, in contrast to a more fragile Malaysian national identity. The human cost of Indonesia’s national unity has been decades of extreme violence perpetrated by the state against its own peoples and the wiping out of vulnerable local cultures in the name of Indonesian language and culture. The ambivalent tone with which Reid concluded his book reflects the moral dilemma at the heart of Indonesia’s imperial alchemy.

Many of Reid’s arguments about the Revolution have stood the test of time, while others have been disputed, updated with new data, or revised in the light of alternative perspectives. This is the mark of a healthy intellectual environment. Reid rejected the idea that there should only be a single authoritative version of the nation’s history. In the essay “The Quest for an Indonesian Past”, revised for the 2011 volume, he traced the efforts of activists, historians and politicians since the early 20^th century to construct an Indonesian historiography as a basis for national identity. The government’s plan to publish a new official national history in 2025 can be seen as the latest iteration of this century-old contest of ideas about the Indonesian past. The controversial aspects of the anticipated official history, such as its erasure of human rights abuses, the minimisation of women’s roles, the glorification of military violence and an over-emphasis on individual heroes, are systemic problems in Indonesian nationalist historiography.

The negative public reaction to the planned official history shows that Indonesian citizens are aware of these problems. Already in the Yudhoyono era, Reid pointed to a growing view among Indonesians that the authoritative version of national history should be discarded altogether: “As the colossus of New Order history is gradually chipped away, it is unthinkable that any single format will arise to replace it. Indonesia’s histories will be plural as its people are plural” (2011: 150). Today’s government seems invested in protecting that colossus, but Indonesia’s plural people want something better. To this end, Reid’s own diverse contributions to Indonesian history are a vital resource for us to critically engage with. He would no doubt hope that the revolutionary aspirations of Indonesians for genuine freedom and dignity within our nation may still be realised yet.

Dr. Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan is a Lecturer at the Australian National University, where he teaches Indonesian language and Southeast Asian history.  He is an historian of Southeast Asia, specialising in premodern Indonesia.