After shedding light on the colonial history of the Congo with Congo. Une histoire (2010), David van Reybrouck turns to Indonesia in his latest book Revolusi (2020, French translation Actes Sud, 2022). In an interview with William Irigoyen, a senior reporter for ARTE, he sheds light on this new work of historical research.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a new period in history began. For decades, Indonesians had been fighting against the Dutch colonial power. It was not until August 1945 that the future president Sukarno finally proclaimed the independence of his country. A long, bloody and cruel war followed. This "Revolusi" was in many ways an event of global significance: the Indonesian revolution was not only the inevitable consequence of a long conflict but also a harbinger of what was to become global. Indonesia was at the forefront of a new phenomenon, decolonization, which would soon spread to Africa and change the course of the world forever. The debates about the crimes committed in the name of colonial expansionism and the setbacks surrounding the restitution of looted works of art remain a burning issue.

Thus, this transcontinental country located in Southeast Asia turns out to be at the origin of our modern world. For years, the journalist and historian David van Reybrouck, like his book on the Congo, has traveled the world to understand the "Revolusi". He investigated with almost 200 witnesses. In Nepal, he questioned Gurkhos soldiers, in Australia one of the rare Indonesian communists who survived the 1965/66 massacres, in the Netherlands a prince's son: Dajeng Pratomo, born in Sumatra, a student in Leiden, a fierce anti-Hitler resistance fighter who barely escaped the Dachau camp. David van Reybrouck has achieved a master stroke by weaving a broad panorama of recent history, of our history.