From the late 1950s to the end of the 1970s, Yunus Djamil, Ali Hasjmy, and Hasan di Tiro, well-known intellectuals and politicians in Aceh, Indonesia developed a nationalist history of Aceh in opposition to greater Indonesia. Their interpretation of history was based on the strong sense of nationalism, which provoked criticism that their history was founded on myths rather than an objective history. By reinventing some traditions such as an early and nation-wide Islamization and a single lineage connecting all of the sultans in the various kingdoms in pre-modern Aceh, Djamil, Hasjmy, and di Tiro created the image of the Acehnese as a collective identity. They constructed a shared image of Aceh’s glorious past, which was represented in their writings by premodern Aceh’s enormous territory, leading role in spreading Islam in Southeast Asia, and fierce resistance against any invasion from outside. By looking at pre-modern Acehnese history from the perspective of a nation or a national history, these figures deliberately neglected the fact that the Acehnese people were actually the mixture of various ethnic and religious communities, which did not share a common memory or a sense of a collective identity. Accordingly, in the history written by Djamil, Hasjmy, and di Tiro, the lives and dynamics of these groups are suppressed, marginalized, or manipulated. This nationalist history and constructed ethnocentrism then became the ideological basis of the separatist movement led by GAM (The Free Aceh Movement). With the achievement of wide-ranging autonomy in 2006, some revisionist historians have suggested the need to rectify prior nationalist history. They particularly attempt to distinguish the myths constructed by Djamil, Hasjmy, and Hasan di Tiro from the actual history. However, at present, it seems certain that the revisionist direction will still be based on the ideas of Djamil, Hasjmy, and Hasan di Tiro’s nationalist history, which emphasizes the glorious past and the collective identity as the Acehnese.