In the Malay peninsula and northern Sumatra, colonial rule embraced an extravagant array of sultans, rajas, datuks and ulèëbalangs, traditional rulers whose support was important to the smooth running of the administration. In Malaya, the traditional Malay elite served as a barrier to revolutionary change, and the ruling class survived the transition to independence, but in Sumatra the ruling class was destroyed in a wave of violence and killing in 1945-46. Anthony Reid’s The Blood of the People explores the circumstances of Sumatra’s sharp break with the past during this dramatic “social revolution”. Events in northern Sumatra were a prelude to Indonesia’s national revolution, normally viewed from the perspective of Java, and anticipated some of the broader issues of that conflict. For some residents of the archipelago, the revolution was a popular, peasant supported movement that liberated them from foreign rule. Others, though, felt victimised by a conflict created by outsiders. Java, with a relatively homogeneous population, passed through the revolution without fundamental social change. In Sumatra, though, a new identity overrode the ethnic categories, and the ethnic competition, of the past.
Anthony Reid is Emeritus Professor of Southeast Asian History at the Australian National University and a former Director of the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore.
