Indonesia–United Kingdom relations

British–Indonesian relations
Diplomatic mission
Embassy of Indonesia, London	Embassy of the United Kingdom, Jakarta

Last updated November 05, 2024

Indonesia and the United Kingdom established diplomatic relations in 1949 and have maintained strong relations since then.^[1] Indonesia has an embassy in London ^[2] while the United Kingdom has an embassy in Jakarta.^[3] The United Kingdom considers Indonesia an increasingly important partner globally and is committed to efforts to take bilateral relations to new heights.^[4] Both nations are members of G-20 major economies.

History

Before Indonesian Independence

English sailors first reached what is now Indonesia in the 16th century, when Sir Francis Drake reached Moluccas in 1579 on his circum-globe journey. The British East India Company opened a trading post in Bantam on the first voyage in 1601 and imports of pepper from Java were an important part of the Company's trade for twenty years. However, because of heavy competition with the Dutch East India Company, the British trade post in Bantam was closed in 1683. The British shifted their attention to the Indian subcontinent while the Dutch began to establish themselves more firmly in Java and later expanded to most of the Indonesian archipelago.

The British established their garrison at Bencoolen in 1685 and in 1714 built Fort Marlborough in the city. They also established a trading post in Riau, others in the region being the Strait Settlements in Penang and Singapore, while the Dutch wrestled the port of Malacca from the Portuguese in 1641. During the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, the Kingdom of Holland and their colonies in East Indies fell to the French Republic. The British launched a military campaign against Dutch and French hold in Java and establishing British rule in Java. From 1811 to 1815, Indonesia was administrated by the British. Stamford Raffles served as the Governor of the East Indies from 1811 to 1816. He was an enthusiast of Javanese culture and history that during his administration he led expeditions that discovered Borobudur, Trowulan and other archaeological sites in Java, subsequently writing The History of Java and publishing it in 1817.^[6] Hester Needham (1843–1897), was a British women missionary who was sent by the Rhenish Missionary Society to the North Sumatra, namely in Sibolga, Silindung [ id ], and Mandailing Natal. Hester Needham spent the last 7 years of her life as a missionary in the Batak lands from 8 January 1890 to 12 May 1897.^[7]

The British and the Dutch signed the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 which defined the boundary of British and Dutch realms in Southeast Asia and India. The boundaries were later inherited by modern Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. The name "Indonesia" was first coined in 1850, when George Windsor Earl, the British ethnologist, proposed the terms Indunesians — and, his preference, Malayunesians — for the inhabitants of the "Indian Archipelago or Malayan Archipelago".^[8] In the same publication, a student of Earl's, James Richardson Logan, used Indonesia as a synonym for the Indian Archipelago.^[9]^[10]

After Indonesian Independence

The British ruled the Malay Peninsula (British Malaya) and Northern Borneo, while the Dutch controlled Java, Sumatra, and most of the Indonesian archipelago until the Japanese invasion in 1942. During the aftermath of World War II, the Allied Forces led by the British were involved in warfare with Republican Indonesian soldiers and militia during the Battle of Surabaya in 1945. The Indian troops successfully conquered Surabaya on behalf of the Netherlands, but faced some fierce resistance from Indonesian troops and militias.

Again in 1962 the British army and the Indonesian Armed Forces were locked in undeclared warfare in Northern Borneo (Sabah and Sarawak) during the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation. The Indonesian Sukarno administration was against the British decolonisation initiative on the formation of Malaysia, the amalgamation of the Federation of Malaya (now West Malaysia), Singapore and the crown colony/British protectorates of Sabah and Sarawak (collectively known as British Borneo, now East Malaysia). The British assisted the Malaysian armed forces against Indonesian campaigns and operations on Northern Borneo. With the fall of Sukarno and plagued with internal problems, Indonesia lost their intention to continue the fight and the hostilities ceased. Indonesia finally agreed to the formation of the Malaysian Federation.

After the turbulent years of the 1960s, relations between Indonesia and the United Kingdom have been improving ever since. Because of the importance of English as an international language, the Indonesian government has been promoting the education of English as the most important foreign language taught in Indonesian schools since the 1970s. The British Council was established in 1948 in Jakarta to promote British culture in Indonesia through nurturing the core areas: English, arts, education and society.^[11]

In 1974, Queen Elizabeth II visited Indonesia, becoming the first British monarch to make an official visit to the country.^[12]^[13] In return for the Queen's historic visit to Indonesia five years later in November 1979, President Soeharto visited the UK and became the first Indonesian President to visit the country.^[14] Then in 1986 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Indonesia and marked the increasingly warm relations between the two countries.^[15] In 1989 the heir to the British throne, Prince and Princess of Wales came and visited Indonesia. ^[16] The royal couple visited the Sitanala Leprosy Hospital in Tangerang, Taman Mini Indonesia Indah in Jakarta, Kraton Yogyakarta, Borobudur and Bali. The Prince of Wales later revisited Yogyakarta and Borobudur in 2008. In October 2012, Indonesian President Yudhoyono received the prestigious Honorary Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath awarded by Queen Elizabeth II.^[17]

Cooperation

In 2006, the then British prime minister Tony Blair met with then Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, where they agreed upon "the establishment of a regular Indonesia-UK Partnership Forum to be chaired by the Foreign Ministers, to promote strategic dialogue on bilateral, multilateral and global issues".^[1] The first Indonesia-UK forum was held in 2007, and was chaired by British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett and Indonesian foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda.^[1]

In March 2010, members of the House of Lords praised Indonesia for their progress in democratising society, media freedom and environmental protection.^[18] In a meeting with Indonesian MP Hayono Isman, the Lords stated that they wanted to improve the relationship between the two countries.^[18]

In 2010, the Culture and Tourism Ministry of Indonesia launched a campaign to boost the number of tourists from the UK entering Indonesia.^[2] In 2009, 160,000 British tourists had visited Indonesia, and the aim of the campaign was to boost this number to 200,000.^[2]

Trade and investment

Exports of UK goods to Indonesia in 2010 were worth £438.9 million, an increase of 25% over the previous year, whilst imports of goods to the UK from Indonesia saw an increase of 13% to £1.3 billion.^[19] British companies operating in Indonesia include energy giant BP, lenders Standard Chartered Bank and HSBC and tobacco group British American Tobacco, while Indonesian company operating in the UK is Bank Negara Indonesia.^[20]

Related Research Articles

Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea. Indonesia is the world's largest archipelagic state and the 14th-largest country by area, at 1,904,569 square kilometres. With over 280 million people, Indonesia is the world's fourth-most-populous country and the most populous Muslim-majority country. Java, the world's most populous island, is home to more than half of the country's population.

The history of Indonesia has been shaped by its geographic position, natural resources, a series of human migrations and contacts, wars and conquests, as well as by trade, economics and politics. Indonesia is an archipelagic country of 17,000 to 18,000 islands stretching along the equator in Southeast Asia. The country's strategic sea-lane position fostered inter-island and international trade; trade has since fundamentally shaped Indonesian history. The area of Indonesia is populated by peoples of various migrations, creating a diversity of cultures, ethnicities, and languages. The archipelago's landforms and climate significantly influenced agriculture and trade, and the formation of states. The boundaries of the state of Indonesia match the 20th-century borders of the Dutch East Indies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Javanese people</span> Ethnic group of Indonesia

The Javanese are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the central and eastern part of the Indonesian island of Java. With more than 100 million people, Javanese people are the largest ethnic group in both Indonesia and in Southeast Asia as a whole. Their native language is Javanese, it is the largest of the Austronesian languages in number of native speakers and also the largest regional language in Southeast Asia. As the largest ethnic group in the region, the Javanese have historically dominated the social, political, and cultural landscape of both Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tourism in Indonesia</span>

Tourism in Indonesia is an important component of the Indonesian economy as well as a significant source of its foreign exchange revenues. Indonesia was ranked at 20th in the world tourist Industry in 2017, also ranked as the ninth-fastest growing tourist sector in the world, the third-fastest growing in Asia and fastest-growing in Southeast Asia. In 2018, Denpasar, Jakarta and Batam are among of 10 cities in the world with fastest growth in tourism, 32.7, 29.2 and 23.3 percent respectively. The tourism sector ranked as the 4th largest among goods and services export sectors.

Indonesians are citizens or people who are identified with the country of Indonesia, regardless of their ethnic or religious background. There are more than 1,300 ethnicities in Indonesia, making it a multicultural archipelagic country with a diversity of languages, culture and religious beliefs. The population of Indonesia according to the 2020 national census was 270.2 million. 56% live on the island of Java, the world's most populous island. Around 95% of Indonesians are Native Indonesians, primarily of Austronesian and Melanesian descent, with 40% Javanese and 15% Sundanese forming the majority, while the other 5% are Indonesians with ancestry from foreign origin, such as Arab Indonesians, Chinese Indonesians, Indian Indonesians, and Indos.

Several different religions are practised in Indonesia. Indonesia is officially a presidential republic and a unitary state without an established state religion. The first principle of Indonesia's philosophical foundation, Pancasila, requires its citizens to state the belief in "the one and almighty God". Although, as explained by the Constitutional Court, this first sila of Pancasila is an explicit recognition of divine substances and meant as a principle on how to live together in a religiously diverse society. Blasphemy is a punishable offence and the Indonesian government has a discriminatory attitude towards its numerous tribal religions, atheist and agnostic citizens. In addition, the Aceh province officially applies Sharia law and is notorious for its discriminatory practices towards religious and sexual minorities.

Greater Indonesia was an irredentist political concept that sought to bring the so-called Malay race together, by uniting the territories of the Dutch East Indies with British Malaya and British Borneo. It was espoused by students and graduates of Sultan Idris Training College for Malay Teachers in the late 1920s, and individuals from Sumatra and Java, including Mohammad Natsir and Sukarno, on 28 September 1950. Indonesia Raya was adopted as the name of what later became the Indonesian national anthem in 1924.

The architecture of Indonesia reflects the diversity of cultural, historical, and geographic influences that have shaped Indonesia as a whole. Invaders, colonizers, missionaries, merchants, and traders brought cultural changes that had a profound effect on building styles and techniques.

India and Indonesia established diplomatic relations on 16 April 1949. Both countries are neighbours, India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Indonesia along the Andaman Sea.

Malaysia–United Kingdom relations are bilateral foreign relations between Malaysia and the United Kingdom. Malaysia has a high commission in London, and the United Kingdom has a high commission in Kuala Lumpur. Both countries are full members of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Arab Indonesians, or colloquially known as Jama'ah, are Indonesian citizens of mixed Arab, mainly Hadhrami, and Indonesian descent. The ethnic group generally also includes those of Arab descent from other Middle Eastern Arabic speaking nations. Restricted under Dutch East Indies law until 1919, the community elites later gained economic power through real estate investment and trading. Currently found mainly in Java, especially West Java and East Java, they are almost all Muslims.

The capital of Indonesia, officially the capital of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia, is Jakarta, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Southeast Asia. However, since the enactment of the Special Region of Jakarta Act, Jakarta has lost its de jure status as capital of Indonesia, and is currently in a transitional period due to the relocation of the capital to Nusantara.

Denmark and Indonesia established diplomatic relations in 1974. Denmark has an embassy in Jakarta, and Indonesia has an embassy in Copenhagen. Bilateral relations are strong, as well as the humanitarian response to the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which claimed the lives of 45 Danes. In 2015, after focusing on China and South Korea, Denmark is gearing up to enhance its relations with Indonesia, hoping that it will help Denmark to build strong ties with the whole Southeast Asian region.

Indonesia and Malaysia established diplomatic relations in 1957. It is one of the most important bilateral relationships in Southeast Asia.

Cambodia and Indonesia established diplomatic relations in 1957. Cambodia has an embassy in Jakarta, while Indonesia has an embassy in Phnom Penh. Since diplomatic relations were established, Indonesia has been a strong supporter of peace and stability in Cambodia. In 1992, Indonesia provided troops for the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia, and supported Cambodian membership to ASEAN in 1999. Cambodia appreciated that Indonesia has consistently helped Cambodia, especially in capacity building. Both nations are members of Non-Aligned Movement and ASEAN.

Indonesia and Thailand have officially established diplomatic ties on 7 March 1950. The two countries have since enjoyed a cordial bilateral relationship. Both countries have established embassies in each capitals, Indonesia has their embassy in Bangkok and a consulate in Songkhla, while Thailand has their embassy in Jakarta and honorary consulates in Denpasar, Medan and Surabaya. High rank stately visits has been conducted for years. Both nations are the founders of ASEAN and members of numerous organizations such as the Non-Aligned Movement, APEC, Cairns Group, G20 developing nations and the Indian-Ocean Rim Association. Indonesia and Thailand are viewed as natural allies. Indonesia is also appointed as observer in Cambodian–Thai border dispute.

Indonesia and Sri Lanka established diplomatic relations on 6 August 1952. Both nations share some cultural similarities. Indonesia and Sri Lanka are members of numerous organizations such as the World Trade Organization and Indian-Ocean Rim Association. They are also founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement. Indonesia has an embassy in Colombo, while Sri Lanka has an embassy in Jakarta.

Indonesia and Spain established diplomatic relations in 1958. Spain identifies Indonesia as their natural ally and has named Indonesia as one of their priority nations in their foreign relations with the Asia-Pacific region. Indonesia has an embassy in Madrid, while Spain has an embassy in Jakarta and a consulate in Seminyak, Bali. Today, the cooperation has expanded to various fields, including trade, culture, education, and defense technology.

Germany and Indonesia established diplomatic relations in 1952. However, relations between the people of Germany and Indonesia has stretched back to 19th-century when a large number of German nationals migrated to Dutch East Indies.

The Semarang offensive is composite of the Battle of Ambarawa, Magelang offensive, Battle of Ungaran or Ungaran offensive, and Semarang offensive proper. This major battle took place between the recently created Indonesian Army and the British Army with the Dutch forces that occurred between 20 October 1945 and 2 March 1946 in Semarang city, Semarang Regency, and Magelang Regency in Central Java, Indonesia. Perhaps the most successful Indonesian offensive of the Indonesian Revolution, this offensive tightened British and Dutch control from the Magelang and Semarang metropolitan areas to only Semarang city. In modern times, 15 December is celebrated as the Indonesian National Infantry Day.

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