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The Impact of the French Revolution on Indonesia
Overview: Why did the 1789 French revolution have such a huge impact on Indonesia?
The French Revolution of 1789 set off a chain of events which led to the rise of Napoleon and triggered wars in Europe which soon had a global impact. The picture above shows a unique event as the French revolutionary army captured the frozen Dutch fleet by cavalry charge at Den Helder in 1795. This victory and others left the French in de facto control of Holland. This act would draw Java and the rest of the Dutch East Indies into becoming land and sea battlegrounds in the global battle between France and the British Empire during both the Revolutionary wars of 1792-1799, and after Napoleon deposed the Directorate, the Napoleonic Wars from 1803-1815.
How did this change Java forever?
Just as the Dutch were on their way out of Indonesia by 1800, the French revolution triggered a chain of events which completely altered the relationship between the local courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta and the Europeans. Making matters worse for the Javanese, these political changes were matched by the Industrial revolution which greatly increased European military and economic muscle.
What were the immediate consequences?
Napoleon installed his brother Louis as King of Holland and he sent the formidable Daendels to Java with a mission to secure the island against possible British invasion from her empire in India. Daendels' regime lasted from 1808–11, and in that time he plundered the Yogyakarta treasury, ruled with an iron hand and built the Post Road at a cost of thousands of Javanese lives. The British invasion of Java in 1811 led to the rule of the energetic and controversial Thomas Stamford Raffles from 1811–1816. While Raffles would go onto become more famous for the founding of Singapore, under his administration of Java the local courts were effectively crushed. One example of this was the British attack on the Yogyakarta Kraton which saw the treasury looted. The combination of the Napoleonic Empire under Daendels and the British Empire under Raffles had fundamentally changed the relationship between the local courts and the colonial government in less than a decade.
What were the longer term consequences?
After Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the British returned Java to the Dutch in 1816. The Dutch were very short of money and their attempts to generate wealth led to rural poverty in Java and played a key role in causing the Java War from 1825-1830 where Javanese forces led by the charismatic Prince Diponegoro fought against the colonial regime. The Dutch were eventually victorious, but spent so much trying to subdue Diponegoro's forces that they had to fundamentally alter how they ran their colony on Java which led to Van Den Bosch's Cultivation system and the emergence of the modern colonial state.