than the early nationalists who dared to defy the white Men's rule.11 Six of the eight commemorated died opposing Brooke rule, though not in the name of nationalism ne died leading Brooke forces against the sk rang Iban. One, the assassin of the first colonial governor, rebelled with the object of restoring the Brooke regime The determination to produce an Indonesian National History prompted the most interesting range of arguments. The concept was put forward soon after the 1955 elections had, instead of promoting a new sense of unity, led to a series of regional challenges, and the notion that a national history needed to serve the cause of nation-building was inescapable. Yet it was just at this time, too, that the works of van Leur and Schrieke were becoming available, inviting-not a simple reversal of colonial history, but a more sophisticated way of viewing the past, and the new scholarly strategies that C. C. Berg was adopting were arousing controversy. The first Indonesian history seminar was held in Yogyakarta on 14-18 December 1957.13 Though it was Organised by Gadjah Mada University and the University of Indonesia, the initiative had come from the minister for education, Samo Mangoenpra not, and his successor stressed the role of:history in nation-building The main debate on the philosophy of history w ut by Muhammad Yamin another former minister, and by Soediat moko, a publicist and diplomat. Yamin evoked Ibn Khaldun in advocating synthetic, approach, in which the nationalist interpreta tion he advocated became the meansof Organising and presenting thefacts." Most of the participants followed this line rather than Soedjatmok out his view again in a collection he edited, An Introductio Indonesian Historiography."The myth of Majapahit had been exploded by research, he said alluding to Berg, yet nations seemed to need their myths, and for quite some time the Indonesian historian will be confronted with demands for corroborative evi dence for existing myths or for new myths."'At the same time, he would not enj oy the comparative isolation of his nationalist colleagues of earlier times in othe countries, and his history would have to stand up to other, non-Indo accounts of what has taken place, while in Western historiography the question f historical subjectivity and objectivity became e only at the end of a lon period of development, modern Indonesian historiography, in its infancy still, is already possibly too familiar with the subjectivity of man's thought and vi The Indonesian historian would have, too, to reconcile or transcend the different regional historical traditions, in a way that is acceptable not only to most modern Indonesians but also to those from the re oncerned:1 There was, Soedjat moko thought, yet another problem for the Indo rian: he is trying to establish the study of history as a scholarly discipline in what to a large extent, still an ahistorical culture.19 In Java, as Donald Brown later argued and e in Makasar,"life and the flo human e ere seen beyond human control and therefore beyond human responsibility,20 The id not, h owever, paralyse the histori edit moko insisted. Instead h a consideration of the philosophical implications o cip p