tom_f's review
5.0
This book is a really excellent overview and one of the most effective pieces of historical journalism I've read. Bevins engages two dovetailing projects: A) telling the story of Indonesia's emergence from colonial repression as a young Third World nation, through budding international non-alignment in a Cold War context and then its tragic fall into US-sanctioned anticommunist political repression in the mid 60s and the ongoing national repercussions of that program, and B) reexamining western narratives about the progress of the Cold War and mid to late 20th Century global politics in the light of reintegration of this buried chapter, thereby considering the implications of Indonesia's story for how we understand the world today.
I am not an expert in these topics (the Cold War module in my History A-Level here in the UK focused almost entirely on Western Europe in the aftermath of WWII, the Cuban Missile Crisis and direct US-Soviet relations) so I can't assess Bevins' work in the context of much related literature, but I can attest that it's a very efficient and intelligible overview. If you know anything at all about these events in Indonesia then most likely it's from Joshua Oppenheimer's important documentary diptych The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, which Bevins acknowledges in his book's introduction. If memories of Oppenheimer's harrowing recreations of the physical detail of violence are dissuading you from picking up this book then I would stress that raking over these graphic details again is precisely not Bevins' project; it's worth quoting him here:
This illustrates the point about the lack of strategic overlap with Oppenheimer (though Bevins does not cover detail up where it's relevant) but I also think it evinces the intelligent discretion with which Bevins handles the firsthand testimonies that he works into his narrative, a quality that can be found lacking from even the most earnest and sincere of reportage of this kind.
I would also reiterate that the range of this text extends well beyond its central tragedy. As well as being satisfied with Bevins' confidence in teasing out the intercontinental implications of Indonesia's story and the exportation of American political fanaticism and absolutism and US-sanctioned mass murder programs across such disparate nations as Brazil, Cambodia, Guatemala and the Congo (in all he traced the metaphorical deployment of the spectre of "Jakarta is coming", ie. the political threat of anticommunist purges and pogroms, across 11 countries), I was really engaged by his coverage of Indonesia and the non-aligned movement in the Third World prior to the events of 1965. As a British reader swaddled in prevailing notions of our washy responsibilities towards "developing" nations and having grown up with white saviour narratives shorn of their less self-flattering historical provenances, it was inspiring to read about the humanitarian ambition of figures like Sukarno and Allende and their supporters in building tolerant, pluralistic states and international relationships from the ashes of many colonial holocausts (as an American writer, the UK isn't Bevins' focus here, though the passages on the British establishment of a repressive ethnostate in postcolonial Malaysia are piercing).
Bevins returns to these notions succinctly in his concluding chapters, and though the overriding tone of The Jakarta Method is not a hopeful one, I often think back to his interviewee Francisca's description of the 1963 'Games of the New Emerging Forces', in Bevins' words "an Olympic Games for the Third World [that] originally came about because of a fight that broke out when Indonesia excluded the Republic of China (Taiwan) and Israel from the 1962 Asian Games," and the joy and optimism that the event inspired in her:
I am not an expert in these topics (the Cold War module in my History A-Level here in the UK focused almost entirely on Western Europe in the aftermath of WWII, the Cuban Missile Crisis and direct US-Soviet relations) so I can't assess Bevins' work in the context of much related literature, but I can attest that it's a very efficient and intelligible overview. If you know anything at all about these events in Indonesia then most likely it's from Joshua Oppenheimer's important documentary diptych The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, which Bevins acknowledges in his book's introduction. If memories of Oppenheimer's harrowing recreations of the physical detail of violence are dissuading you from picking up this book then I would stress that raking over these graphic details again is precisely not Bevins' project; it's worth quoting him here:
Often, when I interviewed survivors of the violence in 1965, they assumed I would want to ask them about the torture. What it was like to be beaten, to be starved, to be called a witch or a devil, to lose all contact with your family. To be gang-raped and thrown in into the corner of a cell afterward, as if you were nothing. This is not usually what I wanted to talk about. To the extent that journalists or academics have ever spent much time asking survivors to tell their stories, they have already asked them this. Too often exclusively this, with the underlying assumption that it was only the excesses of the repression that were the problem, that if they had just arrested two million people, then proved in a court of law that those people were really communists, and executed half of them, that would have been OK. Personally, I was happy to let the survivors just sketch the worst parts of their stories in quick terms, if it became clear that going through those moments again would retraumatise them.
This illustrates the point about the lack of strategic overlap with Oppenheimer (though Bevins does not cover detail up where it's relevant) but I also think it evinces the intelligent discretion with which Bevins handles the firsthand testimonies that he works into his narrative, a quality that can be found lacking from even the most earnest and sincere of reportage of this kind.
I would also reiterate that the range of this text extends well beyond its central tragedy. As well as being satisfied with Bevins' confidence in teasing out the intercontinental implications of Indonesia's story and the exportation of American political fanaticism and absolutism and US-sanctioned mass murder programs across such disparate nations as Brazil, Cambodia, Guatemala and the Congo (in all he traced the metaphorical deployment of the spectre of "Jakarta is coming", ie. the political threat of anticommunist purges and pogroms, across 11 countries), I was really engaged by his coverage of Indonesia and the non-aligned movement in the Third World prior to the events of 1965. As a British reader swaddled in prevailing notions of our washy responsibilities towards "developing" nations and having grown up with white saviour narratives shorn of their less self-flattering historical provenances, it was inspiring to read about the humanitarian ambition of figures like Sukarno and Allende and their supporters in building tolerant, pluralistic states and international relationships from the ashes of many colonial holocausts (as an American writer, the UK isn't Bevins' focus here, though the passages on the British establishment of a repressive ethnostate in postcolonial Malaysia are piercing).
Bevins returns to these notions succinctly in his concluding chapters, and though the overriding tone of The Jakarta Method is not a hopeful one, I often think back to his interviewee Francisca's description of the 1963 'Games of the New Emerging Forces', in Bevins' words "an Olympic Games for the Third World [that] originally came about because of a fight that broke out when Indonesia excluded the Republic of China (Taiwan) and Israel from the 1962 Asian Games," and the joy and optimism that the event inspired in her:
"For the first time in my life, I became aware that I didn't actually come from an uncultured or backwards people, and the other peoples of Africa and Asia weren't backwards either. I had always been told, and even thought, that we were very stupid Indonesians who didn't know what we were doing, trying to build a country without any education or resources. We played our own sports, put on our own dances. This was really an awakening for us. It felt like this was what the West had been trying so hard to keep down, for centuries, and it was finally revealed."
bradenkwebb's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
I swear my taste in books is more discerning than my average ratings make it seem—I’ve just gotten good at judging the bad ones from the cover:)
This book is heavy, and so important. It’s about a lot of things—anti-communism, many U.S.-backed “Ku De Ta”s, and the triumph of neocolonial crony capitalism over liberal democracy through systematic violence. It was frankly inspiring to learn of the Bandung Conference for the first time, and heartbreaking to think of what most of the southern hemisphere would be like today if institutions like fruit companies and the CIA didn’t exist.
Bevins mostly wrote chronologically, which means somewhat frequent jumping around between the lives of different people around the globe as geopolitical events evolve. The book is very accessible, well-written, and at no point did he ever push a narrative of white guilt or anti-American sentiment. Any such feelings are likely a natural consequence of expository journalism.
Q: “How did we win the cold war?”
A: “You killed us.”
This book is heavy, and so important. It’s about a lot of things—anti-communism, many U.S.-backed “Ku De Ta”s, and the triumph of neocolonial crony capitalism over liberal democracy through systematic violence. It was frankly inspiring to learn of the Bandung Conference for the first time, and heartbreaking to think of what most of the southern hemisphere would be like today if institutions like fruit companies and the CIA didn’t exist.
Bevins mostly wrote chronologically, which means somewhat frequent jumping around between the lives of different people around the globe as geopolitical events evolve. The book is very accessible, well-written, and at no point did he ever push a narrative of white guilt or anti-American sentiment. Any such feelings are likely a natural consequence of expository journalism.
Q: “How did we win the cold war?”
A: “You killed us.”
ehmannky's review against another edition
It's an important book and full of history but it felt like reading a wikipedia article for the most part
knenigans's review
fast-paced
4.5
I know why we didn't learn about this in school but, yikes, I can't believe we didn't learn about this in school.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Genocide, and Murder
Moderate: Sexual violence, Kidnapping, Police brutality, Death, Torture, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Slavery, and War
applekern's review
5.0
This is a very well researched book, a nuanced but objective depiction of what happened during the cold war in the global south. It highlighted that our world is not black or white, but actually a lot of dark and dreadful grey - much darker and much more dreadful than I thought.
History is told by the victors, but it should not be this way and I believe this book is making an effort to change this dynamic. I remember having a conversation with a Canadian friend, who was genuinely confused why Chinese would not simply look up the information that is withheld by their government (e.g. cue: Tiananmen). For the same reasons, why Americans are unaware of what their government did in Indonesia, Brazil, Chile, and Guatemala. You simply do not know what you do not know, and it's hard for a human mind to discover these gaps in the first place.
I appreciate the author's writing style and the accounts of real people having lived through these horrors, while keeping the focus on the political and historical dynamics that emerged instead of collecting horror stories. I would urge not only Americans to read it, but also Europeans who have been actively profiting in the end, as well as citizens of the global south who might have never heard this part of their history or have not been able to connect the dots.
In effect, I'd recommend this book to everyone. There are important lessons to be learned, that have never been as relevant as now.
History is told by the victors, but it should not be this way and I believe this book is making an effort to change this dynamic. I remember having a conversation with a Canadian friend, who was genuinely confused why Chinese would not simply look up the information that is withheld by their government (e.g. cue: Tiananmen). For the same reasons, why Americans are unaware of what their government did in Indonesia, Brazil, Chile, and Guatemala. You simply do not know what you do not know, and it's hard for a human mind to discover these gaps in the first place.
I appreciate the author's writing style and the accounts of real people having lived through these horrors, while keeping the focus on the political and historical dynamics that emerged instead of collecting horror stories. I would urge not only Americans to read it, but also Europeans who have been actively profiting in the end, as well as citizens of the global south who might have never heard this part of their history or have not been able to connect the dots.
In effect, I'd recommend this book to everyone. There are important lessons to be learned, that have never been as relevant as now.
dashadashahi's review against another edition
4.0
I was pleasantly surprised at how much Bevins emphasized the voices and experiences of people who lived through the events he covers instead of solely focusing on what Washington did (which a lot of books like this tend to do). It's a well done transnational and political history that is elevated through it's emphasis on lived experiences and oral history.