Sovereignty and the Sea: How Indonesia Became an Archipelagic State , by John G. Butcher and R.E. Elson

Abstract

Chapter two ends with the onset of World War Two and Japanese occupation, when all deliberation over questions of maritime jurisdiction ceased, only to be picked up again after the revolution with renewed urgency by leaders of a newly independent Indonesia. In a draft document of 9 December 1957, Mochtar Kusumaatmadja—then a young civil servant with expertise in international law tasked by Chairul Saleh to design a more ‘revolutionary’ vision of Indonesia’s maritime space—put forth a concept of Indonesian waters that declared Indonesia to be an archipelago that formed one unit, and drew straight baselines between the outermost points of the outermost islands, thereby encompassing all the islands of Indonesia and transforming all the straits and seas that lay between them into an ‘internal sea’ (pp. 70–71). While this book will surely be of interest to scholars of international maritime law, the authors’ ability to weave this tale into the broader narrative of Indonesian political history make Sovereignty and the Sea of interest to a much wider audience.