The Lost Decades? Economic Disintegration in Indonesia's Early Independence Period

Extract

Economic development during the Sukarno period has been touched upon in various surveys of modern Indonesian economic history. Yet, in 1971 Glassburner predicted that

the period beginning in December 1949, with the transfer of Dutch sovereignty over the East Indian Islands to the government of the United States of Indonesia and ending in December 1957, with the so-called “take-over” of Dutch-owned business property seems clearly destined to become one of those times of struggle and crisis which historians of the nation will analyze and reanalyze over the generations, interpreting and reinterpreting the known facts as the perspective of time changes.