Once upon a time in Java: David van Reybrouck on the Indonesian Revolusi!

Forget the textbook version of history. The story of the modern world didn’t start in Europe. It began in Java, where a generation of young Indonesians dared to imagine freedom after centuries of Dutch rule. In Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World, David Van Reybrouck, the award-winning author of Congo: The Epic History of a People, listens to the last surviving witnesses of that revolution.

What happens when history stops being about “men, names, and battles” and becomes about lived experiences? Why have the Netherlands long preferred to forget about its colonial past? How did Indonesia ignite a wave of decolonisation across the Global South? What a truly decolonised democracy could look like? 

Join us for a conversation about the revolution that gave birth to the modern world!