History in Uniform: Military Ideology and the Construction of Indonesia’s Past

From the inception of the New Order regime (1967-1998) in Indonesia, the Indonesian military moved to monopolize the production of official history and control its content in order to condemn communism and at the same time, to validate its political role and the militarization of society. Through an analysis of the military’s history projects and military produced ideology, Katharine McGregor uncovers how and to what extent the content of nationalist history was transformed in the New Order period in the hands of the military and especially the role of its key historian, Nugroho Notosusanto.

History in uniform is the first detailed analysis of the Indonesian military’s image-making efforts, and one of a very small group of studies to examine in detail a key institution within the Indonesian military, the Armed Forces History Centre. Based on a unique set of sources that includes interviews with staff of the Armed Forces History Centre, museum records, guidebooks, collections of military doctrine, seminar proceedings, films, textbooks and commemorative histories of the military and the Armed Forces History Centre, the book offers a rare examination of the significance of history to a politicized military force and to a modernizing nation.