General A. H. Nasution established the Armed Forces History Centre in 1964 for the purpose of countering a communist history of the 1945-49 revolution. After the coup attempt of 1965 and the ensuing military takeover of government the History Centre assumed a far more assertive and prominent role in history making. The fact that Nugroho Notosusanto, as Head of the Centre, took over the planning of Sukarno’s half-completed National Monument History Museum project in 1969 provides evidence of the extent to which national history making became military business in the early New Order period. The study considers how history was represented in the projects of the Centre from its inception in 1964 to its last museum project in 1993. It traces how the military used history from the early years of the New Order to legitimize the overthrow of the Sukmo regime, to justify the killing of perhaps 500,000 alleged communists, to strengthen military unity and to legitimize the military’s political role and the suppression of regime dissent. Where possible this study compares military representations of the Indonesian past with earlier representations of the past, especially Sukamoist interpretations of the past made in the leftist Guided Democracy period. In doing so the thesis examines how the national myth and related constructions of national identity were transformed by the military-dominated New Order regime.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245243 |
| Creators | McGregor, Katharine Elizabeth |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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