History in Uniform

Under the New Order regime (1967-98), the Indonesian military sought to monopolise the production of official history and control its contents. The goal was to validate the political role of the armed forces, condemn communism and promote military values. In this detailed examination of the Indonesian military's image-making efforts, Katharine E. McGregor explores the formulation of nationalist history under Suharto, and shows how this effort affected the Indonesian people. The study highlights the role of the Armed Forces History Centre and its chief historian, Nugroho Notosusanto, in promoting controversial images of the military as a self-sacrificing people's force guarding the spirit of independence and protecting the official national philosophy, the Pancasila. The extraordinary attention paid to image-making calls into question views of the military as an all-powerful institution. Based on interviews, museum records, guidebooks, military manuals, films, textbooks, historical re-enactments and commemorative volumes, History in Uniform offers fresh insights into the significance of history to Indonesia's politicised military and to this relatively new nation.