Get Indonesia to be a country that competes with the likes of Russia and U.S. by 1950-1980. PoD can be anywhere.
AHC: Superpowered Indonesia
- Thread starter Pantsbucket
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Well, "Indonesia" as we know it today didn't really exist before the Dutch East Indies was pieced together as a unified entity, but I'll interpret this question loosely. I don't think it's implausible for some (probably) Malay-dominated state encompassing much of the East Indies--most of OTL Indonesia, probably OTL Malaysia and Singapore as well--to achieve great power status.
The position between the Indian and Pacific seems an excellent location for a major maritime power. Yet it seems this region has never produced a major power with far-reaching influence itself, instead being heavily influenced by outside traders and colonists--Indians, Chinese, Arabs, and finally Europeans. I'd guess the main problem is that the very fragmented nature of the archipelago makes it very difficult to create a large unified state with the critical mass to effectively project power abroad. The other big question is how much potential there is for an early industrial revolution in the region.
This thread needs attention from an expert on the region.
The position between the Indian and Pacific seems an excellent location for a major maritime power. Yet it seems this region has never produced a major power with far-reaching influence itself, instead being heavily influenced by outside traders and colonists--Indians, Chinese, Arabs, and finally Europeans. I'd guess the main problem is that the very fragmented nature of the archipelago makes it very difficult to create a large unified state with the critical mass to effectively project power abroad. The other big question is how much potential there is for an early industrial revolution in the region.
This thread needs attention from an expert on the region.
SunDeep
Banned
WI the Dutch had pursued a more aggressive policy in colonising the region, with the Dutch East Indies ITTL expanded to encompass the entirety of New Guinea, and to include Northern and Western Australia? The resulting Dutch East Indies attracts higher levels of immigration, both internally and from abroad (esp. China and the Far East), with British Australia's reactionary 'White Australia' policy increasing in severity as a result and exacerbating this trend, to the extent where the Dutch East Indies' portion of Australia ITTL has a higher population than the entirety of OTL's Australia by 1900.
Disputes and tensions with the British over territory lead to regional conflicts, straining relations between the two colonial powers, and the Dutch join the Central Powers in WW1. With the Dutch boosted by their additional resources and extra population, possessing a powerful modern navy and the capability to mobilise a military force in Oceania large enough to overrun the entirety of British Australia, their addition to the equation does just enough to sway the scales in favour of the Central Powers, with the Americans eventually declaring for the Central Powers in the last year of the war, and the Entente throwing in the towel in late 1917. As part of the peace treaty, British Australia is ceded by the British to the Dutch, with the colony perceived to have been a liability to the British in the war, accepted by them as preferable to losing Singapore & the Malay Peninsula, or to returning the island of Ceylon to the Dutch.
Victorious, but still largely crippled by war debts and the scars of the conflict, the Dutch have no real choice but to allow the East Indies greater autonomy, culminating in the full independence in the late 1940s of an Indonesia which encompasses OTL's Indonesia along with Australia, Papua New Guinea and East Timor, with a population comparable to that of OTL's Russia and a GDP per capita similar to that of OTL's Australia at this stage. Is it enough to compete with the likes of Russia (/the USSR) or the USA by 1980? Economically, you never know...
Disputes and tensions with the British over territory lead to regional conflicts, straining relations between the two colonial powers, and the Dutch join the Central Powers in WW1. With the Dutch boosted by their additional resources and extra population, possessing a powerful modern navy and the capability to mobilise a military force in Oceania large enough to overrun the entirety of British Australia, their addition to the equation does just enough to sway the scales in favour of the Central Powers, with the Americans eventually declaring for the Central Powers in the last year of the war, and the Entente throwing in the towel in late 1917. As part of the peace treaty, British Australia is ceded by the British to the Dutch, with the colony perceived to have been a liability to the British in the war, accepted by them as preferable to losing Singapore & the Malay Peninsula, or to returning the island of Ceylon to the Dutch.
Victorious, but still largely crippled by war debts and the scars of the conflict, the Dutch have no real choice but to allow the East Indies greater autonomy, culminating in the full independence in the late 1940s of an Indonesia which encompasses OTL's Indonesia along with Australia, Papua New Guinea and East Timor, with a population comparable to that of OTL's Russia and a GDP per capita similar to that of OTL's Australia at this stage. Is it enough to compete with the likes of Russia (/the USSR) or the USA by 1980? Economically, you never know...
TBH I doubt that even the whole of Australia would be enough to make Indonesia a superpower, given that the country's mostly desert. And that's assuming that the Dutch would get involved in WW1 in the first place, which is quite unlikely. Even if the Dutch had a larger colonial empire, the British and French navies would (assuming the world had developed similarly overall to OTL) be significantly stronger than the Dutch-German-Austrian fleet, so the most likely outcome would be that the Netherlands has its access to its colonies blocked off.
SunDeep
Banned
I'm not trying to say it's likely, or even feasible; I was just trying to make a stab at proposing a TL in which it might just be remotely possible for Indonesia to emerge as a third superpower. And BTW, how much of a difference does climate really make for an industrialised nation? After all, if you take away its artificial irrigation and mechanised agriculture, based upon its rainfall and soil composition, isn't the USA mostly either desert or desert tundra? Look at the largest states in the USA- Alaska, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California. Aren't all of these mostly desert? And it hasn't stopped California and Texas becoming the two wealthiest and most populous states in the USA, has it?
What does Northern and Western Australia gain for the Dutch though considering the time period? And would it be equal to the resources required to gain and maintain their ownership of them? It just seems like a dilution of effort to me. If you want to improve the position of Indonesia whilst still having a period of Dutch control then you might want to look at the methods of government the Dutch East India Company and later Dutch colonial administration used, I seem to remember that they were less than optimal.
Alex Richards
Donor
Hell, large parts of Indonesia weren't even fully under Dutch control until around 1905 anyway, so that's a much better place to start than annexing large tracts of Australia.
SunDeep
Banned
Well, if you look at the Kimberley province in NW Australia (the closest part of Australia to Indonesia with just 20 miles of water separating the two), there'd be plenty of gains to be made. Obviously, the first thing they'd develop would be the pearling industry, the most established and most swiftly exploitable resource along the coast; but when the prospectors push further inland, there's plenty more to be had. California had the Gold Rush to swell its population and attract immigrants to the region. In the Kimberley, you don't have gold, but you have diamonds galore- in fact, one third of the world's diamonds are extracted from the mines in this region every year. If these deposits were discovered by the Dutch, the gains would be more than enough to justify the resources they'd require to colonise and maintain their ownership of the region. The real challenge would be having the Dutch ITTL doing a good enough job of it, in the early stages of colonisation, to prevent other colonial powers from marching in and seizing the region from them by force.
With the region colonised earlier ITTL, you'd have a Diamond Rush taking place at around the same time as the California Gold Rush, and you'd probably see a similar increase in the region's wealth and populations to that of California as a result. You've also got plentiful reserves of oil, natural gas, zinc, lead and nickel there for the taking; and of course, remember that these plentiful reserves are all situated in the region of Australia (/Nova Hollandia) which the Netherlands would colonise first of all, in the far northwest. The mineral wealth discovered in the Kimberley by the Dutch, and the resulting 'land of plenty' mindset, would almost certainly spur them on in pursuing further colonisation of the continent, pushing down along the coasts and further inland in an 'El Dorado' style quest for the abundant mineral wealth which could be lying around out there, still waiting to be discovered...
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SunDeep
Banned
And I kind of already mentioned that TTL's POD was the Dutch pursuing a more aggressive policy of bringing the Dutch East Indies under their control, doing so quickly enough to push on further and expand into uncolonised territories before the other colonial powers make their claims there...
Alex Richards
Donor
I don't really think you have any idea of the difficulties the Dutch had in taking control of the DEI. Aceh took almost 3 decades to conquer by itself, Sulawesi the entire period from 1815-1902 to fully pacify, New Guinea wasn't even under any form of Dutch administrative control until 1898 (and the Dutch only claimed the 141st parallel in response to British and German claims on the other half of New Guinea). Most of Flores and the lesser Sundas don't even appear to have entered the picture beyond some trade posts until the early 20th Century.
Not to mention that I highly doubt that any part of Dutch Australia would be joined with Indonesia anyway. OTL there were attempts to split off New Guinea and divide the archipelago on independence, considering that Australia would be a settler colony similar to the Cape initially and with the Malays and Indonesians only brought in as workers similar to, and competing with, the Chinese I really don't see any reason for the Dutch not to administer it entirely separately from an early date.
Really if you want a larger DEI-> larger Indonesia route then you're much better off trying to avoid the issues of the Napoleonic wars and Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 thus potentially bringing in the Malay peninsular and North Borneo than any adventures in Australia.
GdwnsnHo
Banned
Umm, isn't everyone sort of forgetting the Majapahit?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majapahit
If you have a stable succession after Hayam Wuruk dies with another talented Prime Minister to assist, and make them start assimilating their vassals (or outright stripping them of land), then you have the beginnings of a strong, outward looking indonesian state that is interested in control of East Asian Trade.
Chances are with their money and interest in trade, they'll expand outwards across the Indian Ocean and towards Australia, they may not conquer it, but trade settlements would spring up - and it is perfectly situated to explore if so inclined.
The only risk diplomatically is if they have a stranglehold on Chinese trade, both China and Indonesia would be fiercely interested in meddling with each others affairs.
It would also create an interested counterbalance to the emerging muslim merchant class. Since the state was hindu, if it sought to expand its control over trade, chances are it wouldn't turn muslim.
What the butterflies would be of a strong state in that region that early would be... I have only the ideas that it may encourage greater technological advancements, and perhaps cannon-wielding ships in the east before the portugese turn up, but otherwise - that consolidation would change history DRAMATICALLY.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majapahit
If you have a stable succession after Hayam Wuruk dies with another talented Prime Minister to assist, and make them start assimilating their vassals (or outright stripping them of land), then you have the beginnings of a strong, outward looking indonesian state that is interested in control of East Asian Trade.
Chances are with their money and interest in trade, they'll expand outwards across the Indian Ocean and towards Australia, they may not conquer it, but trade settlements would spring up - and it is perfectly situated to explore if so inclined.
The only risk diplomatically is if they have a stranglehold on Chinese trade, both China and Indonesia would be fiercely interested in meddling with each others affairs.
It would also create an interested counterbalance to the emerging muslim merchant class. Since the state was hindu, if it sought to expand its control over trade, chances are it wouldn't turn muslim.
What the butterflies would be of a strong state in that region that early would be... I have only the ideas that it may encourage greater technological advancements, and perhaps cannon-wielding ships in the east before the portugese turn up, but otherwise - that consolidation would change history DRAMATICALLY.
Okay so the Dutch East Indies Company grabs the North-East of Australia and finds diamonds in the Kimberley region, what happens then? Best guess they're dug out of the ground then shipped back to Europe for sale and the money made is paid out by the VOC to their shareholders as part of the annual profits. If their behaviour from our timeline with regards to Indonesian resources such as with the clove industry for example where they uprooted and burned any trees that they didn't control so as to try and gain a global monopoly is anything to go by then they're going to clamp down hard to control things. Unlike in California where people were able to go out, stake a claim and try to get rich here at best the VOC will allow miners in in return for their keeping say 10% of what they find at best whilst the company keeps 90%, or more likely simply brings in low paid indentured labour or outright slaves to do the work.
Now they could very well reinvest some of the money they make from the diamonds into developing their Indonesian holdings more. Going on their past history and how as a private commercial company they seem to have mostly viewed the region as a resource extraction area I'm not sure we'd see large enough amounts to make much of an appreciable difference. But that's just my opinion.
But at what point would they be able to economically recover them? And at what point is there going to be a large enough demand for natural resources like zinc or nickel?
SunDeep
Banned
Well, to avoid this being totally ASB, you can't really see the colonial efforts of the Dutch in NW Australia ITTL getting under way before 1800 (still allowing for a window of almost 80 years before the British would stake their claim to the region IOTL)- and by 1800, the VOC (Dutch East India Company) had already been disbanded, with their territories in the Dutch East Indies already administered directly by the Kingdom of the Netherlands. As such, without the VOC no longer in existence by this stage, there'd be no chance of establishing a corporate monopoly over the region's resources. People would still be free to go out there, stake their claims and get rich in the same way as they were in California. And if they stick around, which the majority of them probably will, while the Dutch'll certainly be using the proceeds to line their coffers, a whole lot of that diamond money's going to be reinvested into developing the region by those colonists who do make it rich. It's not enough in itself, but it could be the first stepping stone towards a wealthier, more populous, more developed and ultimately more powerful Indonesia.
Alex Richards
Donor
You're forgetting that the Batavian Republic had been established by that point and the British had captured most of the DEI. So earliest for a Dutch Australia is 1815, and they were too busy for the following 20-30 years regaining control over what they already had in the area to bother with an expensive colonisation mission in Australia (which the British had already made clear they viewed as theirs by then).
SunDeep
Banned
Perhaps if they chose not to pursue the conquests of the strongest regional powers in Aceh and Sulawesi after the nationalization of the Dutch East Indies, but instead decided to pursue earlier expansion further southwards and eastwards, into regions such as New Guinea, Nusa Tenggara, and eventually through into NW Australia, where the natives were weaker, more primitive, and easier to conquer? And if it's administered as a single region in the same way as OTL's Dutch East Indies, then you'd still have secessionist movements in the same way as those in several regions of OTL's Indonesia, but history IOTL seems to indicate that it'd still probably be granted independence as a single nation- albeit probably as a federation of states rather than a nation of provinces, with greater levels of regional autonomy.
Flocculencio
Donor
I don't think you get the point of the Dutch East indies. They were about resource extraction not about colouring in territory on a map. Yes they could have gone for new Guinea and Northern Australia but what's the point of seizing infertile inhospitable terrain? Java, Acer, the Moroccans and Sulawesi were where the money was.
Alex Richards
Donor
Not to mention that Dutch New Guinea wasn't joined with the rest of Indonesia for a couple of decades OTL (and the Indonesian National Conference for the declaration of independence seriously considered not staking a claim for it anyway), and that was merely an area which similar to the rest of Indonesia had very few Dutch settlers, but with a different ethnic background. Any colonisation of Australia will be at least a plurality of Dutch settlers compared to Malay migrant workers, and probably the Dutch will have a majority. There is no reason the Dutch would consider it a part of the DEI and very little reason for Indonesia to actually want it.
Australia's an absolute dead end for this challenge.
The idea I have is not exactly Indonesia, but what is essentially a surviving Majapahit that leads a continental system-like bloc consisted of Indonesian native states, possibly with some few minor ones outside of OTL Indonesian territory. Basically, Paregreg War is avoided. Not preventing the inevitable civil war coming for the then generation of elites, but perhaps delay it a bit and changing the nature thereof into one that will centralize the polity instead of internally polarizing it. It will still lose grip over her overseas vassal states, for the time being, and convert to Islam, if later then OTL Javanese, yet still presents for later incoming Europeans an unbudgeable regional strongman that controls the route to Spice Isles through Java Sea, and one that will might prevent any relevant European foothold whatsoever in the archipelago. Portuguese Malacca won't last Portuguese as long as it did IOTL, let alone European. From there, who knows. It'll might even grow to threaten British India and block most western trade expansion to East Asia. IMHO, this one might serve better as major player during the height of 19th century Colonial Era that will later descend into the level of OTL Japan and European countries post-WW2.