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This chapter examines overt and organized forest-based conflict during three recent periods: the Japanese occupation (1942–1945), the Indonesian revolution (1945–1949), and the Soekarno regime (1949–1966). An open struggle between the forces of state control of forests and local use of them began with the Japanese occupation of Java and continued into the four-year period during which the Javanese fought for Indonesian independence against returning Dutch and British forces. As it turned out, the Japanese occupation of Java constituted only the first part of two decades of battles fought within and over Java's forests. The effects of the violence were felt not only by the increasingly organized contenders for control over the forest (and the state), but also by the forest itself. The two and a half decades from 1942 to 1967 constituted the most explosive period in Java's modern history; upheaval did not end with the achievement of Indonesian independence in 1949. The physical revolution (against the Dutch) lasted for only four years; social revolution, impelling reconfiguration of national and regional consciousness, raged for decades longer. Both left marks on the forests.

This chapter highlights the proclamation of Indonesian independence in August 1945. It details the emergence of a process of revolutionary mobilization, with armed groups surfacing in villages, towns, and cities across Java, Sumatra, and elsewhere to proclaim independence, to assert new forms of authority and, in some areas, to carry out local social revolutions of their own. The chapter then examines the impacts of the surge of revolutionary mobilization unfolding across Java and Sumatra with such strong support from Communist and Islamic networks, and such demonstrations of solidarity from beyond the archipelago. In the face of the external constraints and internal challenges, this chapter outlines how Republik Indonesia moved quickly to establish recognizable institutions of republican, representative government through which to absorb and appropriate for itself the popular energies and aspirations embodied in the slogan kedaulatan rakyat (popular sovereignty). Ultimately, the chapter illustrates the Indonesian Revolusi's immediate outcome and the successful subordination of communism and Islam to the republicanism of Soekarno and Mohammad Hatta's Republik Indonesia.

This chapter examines South Sumatra's official musical symbol, “Gending Sriwijaya,” a single song-dance created in 1945 and was first performed with its accompanying dance “Tari Gending Sriwijaya” as an ironic joke at the expense of the Japanese invaders, but was actually intended to serve the cause of the Indonesian independence movement. The chapter begins with a discussion of the wartime politics behind the first performance of “Tari Gending Sriwijaya” on August 4, 1945. It then considers how “Gending Sriwijaya” evolved from a provincial symbol to an Indonesian regional song after the war of independence (1945–1949). It also describes the development of the “Gending Sriwijaya” dance into a new, more elaborate and theatrical version called “Tari Penguton,” as well as Ibu Erna Nun Tjik Aladin's life experience and ideas about South Sumatran dance in terms of their significance to her versions of “Tari Gending Sriwijaya” and “Tari Penguton.”