At the beginning of the 20th century, nationalist sentiments brewed in Surakarta. Boedi Oetomo, the first Indonesian nationalist organization, was founded here in 1908, and its leadership was almost exclusively Solonese after 1914. Indonesia’s first mass political party, Sarekat Islam, was re-formed in Solo in 1912 and unrest mounted throughout the 1920s as strikes, arson and bombings, were answered by jail sentences and exile for the leaders.

It thus came as a great shock that a lightning blitzkrieg by the Japanese in 1942 could so easily dislodge the Dutch. After three long years of suffering under the rationing, confiscations and forced labor of the occupation, the Solonese had to suffer through four more years of revolution (1945-1949). When it was clear that the Dutch forces could be resisted no longer, the city’s radio transmitter was dismantled and carried to the hills, where it was used to broadcast bulletins to the resistance.

The exquisite pendopo of the Kepatihan, the municipal administration in Solo (now SMKI, the High School of the Performing Arts), was burned to the ground rather than be allowed to fall into Dutch hands.

When peace was restored, the Solonese chose to leave behind their feudal past, merging with the province of Central Java of the new Republic of Indonesia. They have not, however, abandoned their cultural heritage, and Solo remains a proud and conservative stronghold of Javanese arts and traditions.

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