I CAN imagine that morning of 17 August 1945, in the yard of a house in Jalan Pegangsaan Jakarta just before 9am. Everyone there knew they were about to do something extraordinary.

That day there was a breakthrough and at the same time something collapsed. What collapsed was not a political power, for by then the Dutch East Indies was already non-existent and the authority of the Japanese that replaced it had just been defeated. What collapsed w