Kankan XIE 谢侃侃

Scholars have carefully studied the history of Indonesian communism from its inception in 1914 to its destruction after 1965 with a noticeable exception between 1927 and 1945. The justification is simple—the Dutch authorities crushed the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) completely after its unsuccessful revolts in 1927 and exercised tight political control in the remainder of the Dutch colonial period. Communism also played an insignificant role under the Japanese occupation due to the effective military suppression of clandestine activities. Historians commonly describe Indonesian communism during this period as generating lasting impact on Indonesian politics by providing a useful ideological weapon for carrying on anti-colonial struggles, but it lost its organizational significance as a cohesive force to mobilize the masses and gather them under the common political banner. Such claims are problematic for two main reasons: First, historical writings concerning Indonesia’s wide array of anti-colonial struggles, communism included, have been mostly following a nation-state-based paradigm; The second is that current scholarship tends to equate the history of Indonesian communism to the history of the communist party (PKI).

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Entitled “Estranged Comrades: Global Networks of Indonesian Communism, 1926-1932," my doctoral dissertation examines Indonesia’s ongoing communist movement beyond the colonial borders after the 1926/27 PKI revolts by focusing on its global connections. I argue despite the party’s collapse in the aftermath of the uprisings, Indonesian communism persisted internationally in three “worlds” of global networks, namely international fugitive networks, the international policing networks, and networks of the Comintern-dominated international communism. Specifically, the movement continued in the fragmented fugitive networks; yet, these groups took drastically different directions due to the split of the party leadership. Additionally, Indonesian communism existed as an existential threat throughout the remainder of the colonial period and loomed large in the world of international policing. Moreover, Indonesian communism remained marginal in the world of international communist revolution, but those stayed close with the course of the Comintern gained the authority in shaping the narratives concerning the PKI’s failure in the 1920s, which served as an essential source of legitimacy for reclaiming the party leadership in the 1940s.​​
 

My research project has taken me to various libraries and archives across Indonesia, Singapore, and the Netherlands from 2015 to 2017. In the course of my study, I am very fortunate to have received generous support from the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, Dutch Studies Program, Institute of International Studies, Center for Chinese Studies and Center for Race and Gender at UC-Berkeley. I also held the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship at the National Library of Singapore from 2016 to 2017; as well as the Brill Fellowship at the Leiden University Library and Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in 2017. The project is ongoing and I hope to eventually develop it into a book manuscript.