Timeline of The Indonesian National Revolution - 1948

1948

• January: A new agreement is reached between the Dutch and the Republic aboard the American ship USS Renville moored in Jakarta and used as a neutral location. The agreement recognises the so-called 'van Mook line', an artificial line that links the most advanced Dutch-controlled areas, even though many Republican areas remain within this new area.
• January: PNI and Masyumi members of Cabinet resign over terms of 'Renville Agreement'.
• 23 January: Amir Sjarifuddin resigns as prime minister. Sukarno appoints Hatta to head an emergency 'presidential cabinet' directly responsible to the President and not the KNIP. The new cabinet consists mainly of PNI, Masyumi and non-party members; Amir and Left Wing subsequently in opposition.
• February: Sjahrir’s followers create the Partai Sosialis Indonesia ('Indonesian Socialist Party') giving their support to Hatta’s government.
• February: The Dutch create a Madura state and a West Java state called 'Pasundan'.
• February: Left Wing coalition renames itself the People’s Democratic Front ('Front Demokrasi Rakyat') and denounces the 'Renville Agreement', which Amir’s government had itself negotiated.
• February: In accordance with the 'Renville Agreement', Colonel Nasution leads the 22,000 men of the Siliwangi Division out of Dutch-held West Java into Republican Central Java with important consequences for both regions.
• March: Van Mook announces creation of a provisional government for a federal Indonesia with himself as president.
• May: A People’s Democratic Front organised strike at a state textiles factory in Delanggu, Central Java begins. The strike is not, however, was less a matter of class divisions, but communal division, with the 'abangan' (nominal Muslim) supported by the Front, pitted against the 'santri' (strict Muslim) supported by Indonesian Hizbullah units. Strike is settled in July on terms favourable to the strikers, but, Republic politics was now increasingly entangled and run along the Javanese communal tensions manifest in the strike.
• May: Interpreting the Siliwangi Division’s departure from West Java as a Republican abandonment of the region, Kartosuwirjo a Javanese mystic Masyumi-connected leader of Hizbullah guerrillas, launches a rebellion against the Republic, whilst continuing to fight the Dutch in West Java. He proclaims himself imam ('head') of a new state called Negara Islam Indonesia ('Indonesia Islamic State'), or more commonly known as Darul Islam. The Republic can only ignore the rival group until Kartosuwirjo’s capture and execution in 1962.
• July: The Dutch establish an Assembly for Federal Consultation (Bijeenkomst voor Federale Overleg) consisting of leaders of the fifteen Dutch-created states. There is now, however, significant pro-Republican support amongst the states’ native elite and little support for federalism among the population.
• August: Civil war threatens to break out after episodes of kidnappings, murders and armed conflict between factions of the Republican army as a consequence of a military rationalisation process aimed at a smaller more professional force. Republican Central Java was awash with political manoeuvring, military politics and communal tensions, while Dutch forces had surrounded it to the west, north and east.
• 11 August 1948: Musso, the 1920s leader of the PKI, arrives in Yogyakarta from the Soviet Union. Amir and the leadership of the People’s Democratic Front accept his authority, with Amir admitting membership of the underground PKI since 1935. Adhering to Musso’s Stalinist thinking of a single party of the working class, the major leftist parties in the Front dissolve themselves into the PKI.
• August and September: PKI encourages demonstrations and industrial action by workers and peasants. Peasants were encouraged to take over landlords’ fields in the Surakarta and other areas.
• 1 September: A new PKI politburo is formed.
• September: Tan Malaka is released by the Republican Government in a vain of diverting leftist supporters from the PKI.
• 17 September: Following the outbreak of open warfare in Surakarta between pro-PKI and pro-Government forces, the Siliwangi Division drives PKI supporters out of the city. Pro-PKI supporters withdraw to Madiun.
• 18 September: PKI supporters take over strategic points in the Madiun area, killed pro-government officers, and announce over radio the formation of a new National Front government. Caught off guard by the premature coup attempt, Musso, Amir and other PKI leaders travel to Madiun to take charge.
• 19 September: About 200 pro-PKI and other leftist leaders remaining in Yogyakarta are arrested. Sukarno denounces the Madiun rebels over radio and calls upon Indonesians to rally to himself and Hatta rather than to Musso and his plans for a Soviet-style government. Musso replies on radio that he will fight to the finish. People’s Democratic Front in Banten and Sumatra announce they have nothing to do with the rebellion.
• late September: Pro-government forces, led by the Siliwangi Division, march on Madiun where there are an estimated 5,000-10,000 pro-PKI soldiers. As the rebels retreat they kill Masyumi and PNI leaders and officials, and in the villages killings take place along santri-abangan lines.
• 30 September: The rebels abandon Madiun town and are pursued by pro-government troops through the countryside. Aidit and Lukman flee Indonesia for China and Vietnam.
• October: The 'national Communists' who had followed Tan Malaka’s thinking and opposed the PKI rebellion form the Partai Murba ('Proletarian Party') becoming the main leftist group among the revolutionaries.
• 31 October: Musso is killed trying to escape from custody.
• 1 December: Amir and 300 rebel soldiers are captured by Siliwangi troops. Some 35,000 people are later arrested. It is thought perhaps 8,000 people were killed in the affair. Later in Surakarta, santri peasants turned on and killed abangan PKI supporters.
• 18 December: The Dutch launch a second major military offensive, the second 'police action'.
• 19 December: The Dutch occupy Yogyakarta city. Republican government is captured, reportedly intentionally, including Sukarno, Hatta', Agus Salim, and Sjahrir. Republican forces withdraw to the countryside beginning full-scale guerrilla war on either side of the van Mook line. The army kill Amir and fifty other leftist prisoners as it withdraws from Yogyakarta that evening, rather than risk their later release.
• 22 December: International outrage leads to suspension of United States aid funds to the Netherlands.
• 22 December: With Nasution in effective control of army due to Sudirman’s deteriorating health, he proclaims a military government for Java.
• 1 December: In Java, the Dutch accept a UN call for a ceasefire but guerrilla fighting continues.