The Brilliance of Majapahit During Europe's Age of Darkness
Through the Treaty of Turin between Emperor Napoleon III and King Victor Emmanuel II of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont Savoy in 1860, the County of Nice belonging to Savoy (Italian Alps) was taken over and became French territory. This event is negatively characterised as an annexation of Nice by France, though it was in reality compensation for French assistance in the Italian unification movement.
From an Indonesian perspective, this was a product of 19th-century geopolitical diplomacy — not an annexation and not a step driven by a rapacious lust for power (Libido Dominandi).
Within the mental horizon of 14th-century France — beset by the Hundred Years’ War against England and the plague of the Black Death — Majapahit appeared from afar as a prosperous Eastern spice kingdom, one that was Gemah Ripah Loh Jinawi (abundant and fertile), stable, and possessed of an extraordinarily powerful maritime fleet. It stood in stark contrast to the life of a French nation in profound suffering.
Scholars worldwide have described them as Gens calamitatibus oppressa — a people oppressed by calamity. The Sun of Majapahit, in the contemporary European imagination, could be likened to the light of human civilisation on the Eastern horizon.
Gemah Ripah Loh Jinawi was not merely a product of natural conditions and resources, but rather the direct result of the powerful dual leadership of Maharaja Hayam Wuruk in matters of cosmic legitimacy and harmony, and Mahapatih Gajah Mada in political and economic organisation. Their combination created Majapahit as a brilliant nation-state of the 14th century in the Eastern world, spanning Southeast Asia for 234 years.
For more than two and a half centuries before the Americas were discovered by Christopher Columbus, Majapahit had brilliantly succeeded in building Southeast Asia as an integrated mandala. Meanwhile, France was geopolitically preoccupied with defending itself against England’s appetite for domination.
Had England won, France might now have vanished as a nation from world history. Half of the French population had already perished during the Black Death (1347–1352), with some 60 per cent of cities disappearing, villages left empty by their inhabitants, fields abandoned, the economy completely paralysed, mass graves appearing everywhere, and the authority of the Church shattered.
The people, finding no cure, discovered that prayers too had failed to halt the plague and that the clergy they trusted were also dying. God was then felt to be increasingly distant from the French mind. Many chroniclers recorded that the laity ceased to place hope in the clergy, and France experienced a religious crisis that utterly destroyed ecclesiastical authority.
Although the collapse of the Church’s authority during the Black Death was not the direct beginning of atheism in France, it was the first sufficiently phenomenal crisis of institutional religious trust. That crisis marked the start of a long process which, through the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment, eventually gave birth to secularism and the development of modern atheism among French society.
The city of Nice is situated close to Monaco, only 20 kilometres to the east, and many residents of Nice commute daily to the small independent principality where the world’s jet set gathers. Monaco never declared “independence” as other colonial nations did.
Its status was formed gradually beginning in 1297 when the Grimaldi Dynasty seized the fortress of Monaco, and by 1419 Monaco had become the lawful possession of the Grimaldi family. In 1641, under the Treaty of Péronne, Monaco broke free from Spanish influence but became a French protectorate.
In 1861, through the Franco-Monégasque Treaty, France promptly recognised Monaco’s sovereignty. This date is generally regarded as Monaco’s “de facto independence,” with France serving as Monaco’s protector in military and diplomatic affairs. Monaco is considered a very small state that could not possibly stand alone without protection from a powerful nation.
The flag of the Principality of Monaco is red and white, deriving from the colours of the Grimaldi family in the Middle Ages. Their heraldic colours are red (gules) and white/silver (argent), in use since 1881.
With Monaco having been recognised as lawful under international law since 1861, its population considers itself independent, though France ultimately benefits in socio-economic terms, taxation, and prestige. Under international law, the sovereignty of a micro-state remains valid if it is recognised and its situation is stable.
Monaco’s flag colours are identical to those of Indonesia, and Monaco adopted them before the Indonesian nation-state was born. However, from a historical perspective, the Majapahit Empire in Indonesia had already used the red-and-white colours far earlier, in nine horizontal red and white stripes.
Such a flag is still used today in the banners of the Majapahit Palace in Jakarta and as the jack of the Indonesian Navy (TNI AL). The red-and-white significance of Majapahit within Nusantara-Austronesian cosmology holds that red represents blood, courage, earth, and the physical body, whilst white represents bone, purity, sky, and the soul.
It thus carries a philosophical meaning of the unity of body and soul, sacred courage, and the wholeness of human life. In ancient Javanese philosophy, red symbolises the mother (womb) and white the father (seed), representing the birth and life of the Indonesian and Nusantara nations.
Symbolically within Javanese-Indonesian-Nusantara tradition, the beginning is white (the origin of the spirit) and the end is red (the return to earth). The Majapahit banner begins and ends with red.
Its meaning is worldly sovereignty (cakravartin) — sovereign over the lands of the Nusantara, a maritime kingdom of blood and soil, and the dominance of the physical over asceticism. The cultural and economic reality, together with the beauty of the physical architecture of the Majapahit palace and kingdom, once inspired admiration from observers across the world.