On 17 August 1945, Sukarno, leader of the Indonesian Nationalist Party, proclaimed Indonesia’s independence from the Dutch colonial empire. This was the culmination of a nationalist movement which had been gaining strength throughout the 1930s. However, the question of when Indonesia actually became a country is more complicated than it might at first seem.
The first time the term ‘Indonesia’ was used was in a poem by the nationalist writer P.A. Rajawali in 1905. However, at this time the country …