Maritime Networks and the Indonesian Revolution: Ports, Blockade Evasion, and the Making of an Archipelagic State
Keywords:
Maritime network, Ports, Dutch blockade, Breaking the blockade/smuggling, Revolutionary economyAbstract
This article examines the 1945–1949 Indonesian Revolution from a maritime perspective, positioning the sea as an active historical space, not merely a geographical setting. Using historical methods and a maritime history approach, this research conducts a literature review, external–internal source critique, and relational interpretation to map how ports, shipping lanes, and inter-island networks functioned as nodes for mobilization, resource distribution, and information circulation amidst the Dutch blockade. The results of the study indicate that maritime domination and blockade policies were aimed at severing republican connectivity, but instead triggered adaptive strategies based on local knowledge: the use of secondary routes, small vessels, hidden transit points, and the crucial role of sailors, dockworkers, traders, couriers, and coastal communities. The practice of breaking the blockade cannot be reduced to mere illegal trade, but rather a political-economic technology that converted coastal commodities into foreign exchange, logistics, and war supplies, while simultaneously shaping informal governance and “layered sovereignty” in the port space. Conceptually, the experience of fragile inter-island connectivity during the revolution became a learning material that led to the territorial imagination of Indonesia as an archipelagic state, which was then articulated in post-revolutionary maritime diplomacy, especially the 1957 Djuanda Declaration. This study emphasizes the transnational network of ports, which supports diplomacy and the flow of goods and news and can encourage the exploration of port archives and maritime patrol reports.
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