Republic of Indonesia

I

Introduction

Republic of Indonesia, island republic of Southeast Asia, constituting most of the Malay Archipelago. Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country after China, India, and the United States. More than half the people live on Java, where Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital and largest city, is located. Although the islands are home to more than 100 ethnic groups, most Indonesians are of mixed Malay origins and practice Islam.

Several of Indonesia’s islands hosted powerful trading kingdoms between the 5th and 16th centuries ad. The Dutch took control of the islands in the early 1600s and for three centuries profited from Indonesia’s economy, largely at the expense of the local population. Dutch authority over the islands peaked in the early 20th century. But growing Indonesian nationalism led to a declaration of independence in 1945, and the Dutch finally transferred sovereignty in 1949. The country enjoyed tremendous economic growth in the 1980s and much of the 1990s, partly due to Indonesia’s abundant natural resources and increases in the manufacturing and services sectors. As a result, Indonesia’s middle class grew considerably, but poverty remained widespread. Indonesia plunged into an economic crisis in 1997 that led to significant political changes, including the resignation of President Suharto, who had been in office for more than 30 years. Democratic elections held in 1999 installed a new government. Economic recovery and the transition to democracy continued in the 2000s despite several natural disasters, including a devastating tsunami in 2004.

II

Land and Resources of Indonesia

Indonesia is located south and east of mainland Asia and north and west of Australia. About half of Indonesia’s nearly 13,700 islands are inhabited; all are located in the Indian and Pacific oceans. The islands stretch across 5,100 km (3,200 mi) in the region of the equator, a distance nearly one-eighth of the Earth’s circumference.

The main islands of Indonesia are Java (Jawa), Sumatra (Sumatera), and Sulawesi (Celebes). The republic shares the island of Borneo with Malaysia and Brunei; Indonesian Borneo makes up about 75 percent of the island and is called Kalimantan. Indonesia also shares the island of New Guinea with Papua New Guinea; Indonesia occupies the western half of the island, known as Papua (formerly Irian Jaya). The smaller islands of Indonesia include Madura, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, and Bali. Indonesia administers the western part of Timor Island. Indonesia controlled the eastern part, East Timor, from 1975 until 1999, when the East Timorese voted for independence. (Unless otherwise indicated, statistical information up to 1999 in this article includes East Timor.)

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Indonesia is surrounded by the South China Sea, the Celebes Sea, and the Pacific Ocean to the north, and by the Indian Ocean to the south and west. A stretch of mostly open water consisting of the Java, Flores, and Banda seas divides the major islands of Indonesia into two unequal strings: in the south, the long, narrow islands of Sumatra, Java, Timor, and others; and in the north, the islands of Sulawesi, the Moluccas (Spice Islands), and New Guinea. Each of the major northern islands has a central mountain mass, with plains around the coasts. Puncak Jaya (5,030 m/16,503 ft), in the Sudirman Mountains of Papua, is the highest point in the republic. On the southern islands, a chain of volcanic mountains rises to heights of more than 3,600 m (11,800 ft) and extends from Sumatra in the west to Timor in the east. The highest points are Kerinci (3,805 m/12,484 ft) on Sumatra and Semeru (3,676 m/12,060 ft) on Java.

The most extensive lowland areas are in Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, and Papua. Over centuries, volcanic flows from the many active volcanoes have deposited rich soils on the lowlands, particularly in Java. Java’s fertile volcanic soils support a large agricultural population. The rest of Indonesia is more sparsely settled but contains most of the country’s mineral wealth, including oil in Kalimantan and Sumatra, timber in Kalimantan, and copper in Papua.

Indonesia’s greatest distance from north to south is about 1,900 km (about 1,200 mi) and from east to west about 5,100 km (about 3,200 mi). The country’s total area is 1,904,570 sq km (735,359 sq mi).

A

Natural Regions

Indonesia’s major land regions correspond to its largest islands or groups of islands, which fall into three main geographic regions.

Several of the Greater Sunda Islands, including Java (134,045 sq km/51,755 sq mi), Madura (5,587 sq km/2,157 sq mi), Sumatra (473,605 sq km/182,860 sq mi), and Kalimantan (751,100 sq km/290,000 sq mi), form part of the Sunda Shelf, an extension of the coastal shelves of Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The area is characterized by shallow seas less than 250 m (820 ft) deep. A land bridge once joined the islands of the Sunda Shelf; consequently, they still have plants and animals in common and are part of the Indo-Malayan zoogeographic region.

New Guinea, which contains Indonesia’s province of Papua (421,981 sq km/162,928 sq mi), and the nearby Aru Islands are part of the Sahul Shelf that stretches north from the coast of Australia. Like the seas around islands of the Sunda Shelf, the seas of the Sahul Shelf are shallow. However, the islands of the Sahul were more closely linked to Australia than Asia; consequently, they have animals that are similar to Australian animals and are part of the Austro-Malayan zoogeographic region.

In between and separating the Sunda and Sahul shelves are the islands that make up Nusa Tenggara, along with Maluku and Sulawesi (189,040 sq km/72,989 sq mi). Seas in the area reach depths of 5,000 m (16,400 ft), so that even when sea levels were lower, there was little movement between the Sunda and Sahul shelves across this area. The British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace drew attention in the mid-19th century to the great contrasts between the Sunda and Sahul, illustrating his case with the differences between the ecologies of the islands of Bali and Lombok. As a result, the border between the Sunda and Sahul came to be known as Wallace’s Line. Although the line’s precise dimensions are now disputed, there is little dispute about the significant differences between the Sunda and Sahul.

Indonesia has about 400 volcanoes, of which about 130 are active and 70 have erupted in historical times. Most are distributed in a chain along the southern islands: from the tip of northern Sumatra and along its western coast; through Java, Bali, and the eastern islands of Lombok, Sumbawa, and Flores; and into the Banda Sea. Another group clusters around northern Sulawesi and Halmahera Island in the Molucca Sea. The most famous volcanic eruption occurred in 1883 when Krakatau exploded and killed thousands of people on Java and Sumatra. The eruption of Tambora in 1815 was Indonesia’s most destructive, killing approximately 10,000 people in the eruption and many thousands more in the resulting famine.

Indonesia is also prone to earthquakes, with epicenters distributed along the same regions as volcanoes. Although many causes contribute to the geological instability of the area, the main cause is the friction between the underlying tectonic plates (see Plate Tectonics). Most of Indonesia sits on the Eurasian Plate. When the Eurasian Plate collides with the Indo-Australian Plate to the south and east or the Philippine and Caroline plates to the northeast, the second plate slides underneath the Eurasian Plate. The pressure causes geological activity on the Earth’s surface that often takes the form of earthquakes or volcanoes. An undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean in 2004 and the tsunami that followed killed more than 250,000 people, about two-thirds of them Indonesian, and left hundreds of thousands more homeless.

B

Rivers and Lakes

Because of its tropical climate and geography, much of Indonesia’s population lives near water, either on the coast or by rivers and lakes. Indonesia has no major rivers that are similar in size or scope to the Mekong or Yangtze in mainland Asia, but it does have many important rivers. Kalimantan has the largest rivers, including the Mahakam in East Kalimantan and the Martapura and Barito in South Kalimantan. Most of these rivers originate in the island’s central massif (mountain mass) and meander through extensive swamps as they approach the coast. Settlements such as Samarinda and Banjarmasin cluster along the rivers, which serve as communication routes into the interior.

The largest rivers on Sumatra drain from west to east into the Strait of Malacca. In the north, the Asahan River once linked trade between the Batak people who live inland and the Malay people who live along the coast. The Asahan is now dammed, however, and produces hydroelectricity for the industries of North Sumatra. In the south, river ports such as Jambi on the Hari River and Palembang on the Musi River are located upstream, away from the extensive mangrove swamps and marshes of the coast. Passenger ferries and small riverboats provide services along the main rivers.

Papua has more than 30 major rivers draining to the north and south from the Maoke Mountains, which run through the center of the province. One of the most significant is the 400-km (250-mi) Baliem River, which rises in the Jayawijaya Mountains and drains into the Arafura Sea. Many tribal groups, including the Dani and the Asmat, live along the river and its tributaries.

The main rivers of Java include the Tarum and Manuk in the west, the Serang and Serayu in central Java, and the Solo and Brantas in the east. All meander across the broad lowlands of Java, and several are laden with silt due to the extensive farming in their basins.

Lake Toba, the largest of Indonesia’s lakes, is situated on Sumatra’s Batak Highlands in the Barisan Mountains, about 180 km (about 110 mi) south of Medan. Surrounded by steep mountain cliffs and sandy beaches, Lake Toba covers 1,145 sq km (442 sq mi) and features Samosir Island in its center. The lake is the source of the Asahan River, and as the center of Batak culture it is an important tourist destination.

Lake Tempe, in the center of South Sulawesi province, is another important lake, although it is shrinking in both size and significance. Tempe is thought to be a remnant of an inland sea that once divided the peninsula on which it sits. The lake is now fed by the Walanae River and is an important source of fish and shrimp (called lawa), which are used both locally and for export. In order to make Tempe more productive, the government at one time restocked it with fish that do not compete with each other for food. Because of siltation from nearby farms, Tempe is now less than 2 m (6 ft) deep, and large parts dry up in the dry season.

Other significant lakes include Maninjau, Kerinci, and Singkarak in Sumatra; Towuti, Sidenreng, Poso, Tondano, and Matan in Sulawesi; Paniai and Sentani in Papua; Jempang, Melintang, and Semayang on Kalimantan’s Markaham River; and Luar, Sentarum, and Siawan on the upper reaches of Kalimantan’s Kapuas River.

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