Indonesian History | Indonesian Kingdom

It is the vast temple of Borobudur, built early in the ninth century. This was for centuries hidden under a heavy layer of volcanic ash and so escaped Muslim depredation. It was excavated and restored early this century by the Dutch. The power of the central Javanese kingdoms, of which Boro. budur is the epitome, seems to have declined by the end of the tenth century and passed to east Java to the kingdom of Madjapahit. After the thirteenth century Srividjaya declined in power and Madjapahit became dominant in the whole region. Madjapahit prospered greatly and at its height controlled for the first time in history, almost the whole of present day Indonesia as well as the larger part of the Malay peninsula. Kamandalu resort is located in ubud. It's Nestled in the cool and lush green mountains of Ubud, Bali, However, its decline began in the latter part of the fourteenth century. It declined still further when the rise of Malacca, a centre of Islam, deprived it of maritime control of the main trade routes. The rivalry between the Hindu state of Madjapahit and Islam continued until the collapse of the Madjapahit kingdom at the end of the fifteenth t cntury, when Islam became dominant in Sumatra and Java
As Islam spread in Java, Hindu-Buddhist priests togolict with the aristocracy, scholars, savants, artists and their fol.' lowers, took refuge in Bali and western Lonabok, taking with them the material culture of Dfadjapahit, including books which have since revealed some of the splendours of that kingdom.
In 1511 the Portuguese captured Malacca and the consolidation of their trade route from Goa to Macao and the development of their trade with the spice islands helped Islam to progress eastwards during the sixteenth century.
The sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries saw the penetration of European influence into the area of southeast Asia. This was motivated primarily by the demand for spices on the European markets, centred in Venice. In those days spices were used not merely to flavour food, but to preserve it. This was particularly so in the case of meat which decomposes quickly in tropical climates and to a considerable extent even in European climates. The spice trade attracted the Portuguese in the first place, but they were quickly followed by the English, Dutch, Spanish and French. The Portuguese influence never grew beyond the maintenance of a string of trade bases along the main eastern sea route, but the British ultimately became involved in government and administration as well as in trade in India and Malaya, the Spanish in the Philippines, the French in Indo-China and the Dutch in Indonesia.
From a precarious beginning in 1596 the Dutch gradually extended their control of Indonesia, which they governed, if somewhat uneasily. for almost 350 years. Early in the seven. teenth century they set up their headquarters in Jakarta. which they renamed Batavia. By the end of the seventeenth century they were fully in control of a country which had become weakened after the decline of the Madjapahit influence. During the eighteenth century Dutch power itself declined due to a collapse of the spice trade, and early in the nineteenth century the Napoleonic wars nearly ended Dutch rule in Indonesia. The British took over control of Java from i81o until the end of the Napoleonic wars. During this period the Dutch export trade was lost to Britain, but on their return to Java in 1824 they began to produce large export crops sold through Amsterdam, which became a powerful centre of European trade in coffee, tea, tobacco, pepper, sugar and cotton. These were produced at the expense of rice, but the revenue derived from them helped to provide the country with roads and railways. Consequent impoverishment of the country, the harshness of Dutch rule and the denial of any share of government to the Indonesians, embittered them against 'colonial control' and led to the great movement towards independent nationalism which was latent but real when Japan entered the second world war in 1941. Events moved so fast that what had taken the colonial powers four hundred years to achieve was lost in four months. The Japanese conquest of Singapore and Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines was complete by April 1942. In Indonesia, the Japanese. although maintaining military control of the country, appointed a government tinder the leadership of Soekarno and Hatta nominally to administer the country. These two leaders of the independence movement used every opportunity to advance that cause, and when the war in the East was concluded with the surrender.