David Van Reybrouck talks to Julia Wheeler

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and eye-witness accounts, David Van Reybrouck (Congo) brings the gripping story of Indonesia’s struggle for independence alive with human detail at every turn in Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World. Four million civilians had died during the WW2 occupation by the Japanese. In the grim aftermath of the war, another 200,000 people would lose their lives as the Dutch used savage violence to reassert their former colonial regime against the guerrilla war of resistance: the ‘revolusi’. But the Netherlands would be forced to cede all sovereignty, ending 350 years of colonial rule and setting a precedent that would reshape the world.