I. Introduction

Indonesia, officially known as Republic of Indonesia, constitutes 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 before growing Indonesian nationalism led to an armed struggle and the declaration of the Republic of Indonesia in 1945. 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. 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.

II. Land and Resources

Indonesia is located south and east of mainland Asia and north and west of Australia, the largest archipelago in the world. 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 Irian Jaya (formerly West Irian). The smaller islands of Indonesia include Madura, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, and Bali. Indonesia administers the western part of Timor Island.

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 Irian Jaya, 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. (12,000 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 Irian Jaya. 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 Irian Jaya.

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 land area is 1,904,443 sq. km. (735,310 sq. mi.).

III. The People of Indonesia

Indonesia's estimated population in 2000 was 219,266,557, giving it an average population density of 115 persons per sq. km. (298 per sq. mi.). In 2000 the population was growing by 1.4 percent a year. This was a drop from the annual rate of 1.8 percent during the 1980s and relatively low by the standards of countries with similar income levels. The slow growth rate is partly attributable to economic growth that encourages smaller families and partly a product of the government's active and successful family planning program.

The archipelago has about 500 ethnic groups and about 500 languages and dialects as well.

With an estimated population of 114,733,500 in 1995, Java contains well over half of Indonesia's people. The next most populous islands are Sumatra, with an estimated 40,830,400 people; Sulawesi, with 13,732,500; and Kalimantan, with 10,470,800. The remaining islands have much smaller populations, including 2,895,600 on Bali.

Early in the 20th century the Dutch began a program to shift people from heavily populated Java to the more sparsely settled parts of Sumatra. The Indonesian government began its own transmigration program in 1969, moving families first from Java to Sumatra and later from Java to Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku, and Irian Jaya. At its peak, from 1979 to 1984, 535,474 families were moved. Since then, however, both the program's cost and the shortage of sites for resettlement have caused the number of migrants to drop considerably.

IV. Arts and Culture

Indonesian culture mixes the traditions of many civilizations and religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Southeast Asian, Polynesian, Chinese, Arabic, and Dutch. Since independence, the arts in Indonesia have been influenced by domestic politics. During the 1950s and 1960s the left-leaning Institute for People's Culture was very influential. With the backing of Sukarno, Indonesia's first president, Lekra strongly resisted American cultural influence and favored socialist realism in art.

V. Economy

Prior to independence, Indonesia's economy was oriented to providing raw materials to The Netherlands. Subsistence agriculture, primarily the production of rice, was the mainstay of most of the population, but the economy also relied on plantation agriculture, including the production of sugar and rubber. Industry was not promoted so as to avoid competing with The Netherlands. The first few decades after independence were marked by economic mismanagement. President Suharto's "New Order" government gave much more priority to the economy, instituting a series of five-year plans (Repelita) starting in 1969. The aims of Suharto's economic policy were to expand foreign investment and increase trade. When export revenues from oil declined in the early and mid-1980s, Indonesia was forced to expand other exports. To make these exports more competitive internationally, the government deregulated parts of the economy such as coastal transportation, finance, and banking.

Indonesia's economy grew impressively during the 1980s and much of the 1990s, largely on the strength of its natural resources, which include a large population, solid energy reserves, substantial mineral deposits, and fertile farmland. Indonesia's gross domestic product (GDP) was $94.2 billion in 1998. Its GDP per capita was $460. Between 1985 and 1995 the GDP grew by about 95 percent, while annual inflation remained below 10 percent. Between 1980 and 1998 there were significant shifts in the structure of the Indonesian economy. Agriculture shrank from 24 to 20 percent of the GDP. Industry as a whole remained stable, but manufacturing, the largest component of industry, grew from 13 to 25 percent of the GDP.

VI. Government

Indonesia is a constitutional republic with an elected president, an elected parliament, and an appointed judiciary. The president and his ministers have far more power than the parliament or judiciary. The government operates under the 1945 constitution, which was replaced by two constitutions between 1950 and 1959. In 1959 President Sukarno reinstated the 1945 constitution. It is based on the doctrine of Pancasila, defined in the constitution as "a belief in the one supreme god; just and civilized humanity; the unity of Indonesia; democracy guided by the inner wisdom of deliberations among representatives; social justice for all the Indonesian people." All citizens at least 17 years of age may vote. Married persons may vote regardless of their age.

VII. History

Fossil remains of homo erectus, an ancestor of modern man (homo sapiens), have been found in the Solo and Brantas river valleys in Central Java. These fossils, known as Java Man, are estimated to be about 1.8 million years old; however, few traces of human life from the more recent Paleolithic and Mesolithic times have been excavated. Some crude stone implements, such as a rectangular ax, and rock paintings in caves of the eastern islands have been found.

Throughout history the peoples of Southeast Asia migrated extensively, giving the Indonesian archipelago a mix of more than 100 ethnicities and languages. Within this mix there has been a wide cultural gap between the coastal peoples, who probably developed irrigated wet-rice cultivation (sawah) about 2,000 years ago, and the inland peoples, who depended on shifting, slash-and-burn agriculture (ladang) until recently. The coastal regions probably developed sawah because irrigation was easier to develop near the coast and because the larger coastal populations made ladang difficult. Later, coastal peoples developed differently from inland peoples because the former were more exposed to outside influences. In time, three distinct types of Indonesian societies evolved. On the coast were the trade-oriented, deeply Islamic coastal peoples. Hindu-influenced, wet-rice cultivators developed further inland. Still further inland, typically in remote mountainous regions, were ethnic groups who practiced shifting cultivation and indigenous religious beliefs.

Bronze was introduced to the archipelago in about 300 BC from northern Vietnam, Thailand, or China, and from that time on metalworking with bronze and iron was practiced. About the 1st century BC, many of the Indonesian people lived in political groups that were rarely larger than family-based tribal units. Cultural expressions like wayang theater, gamelan orchestra, and batik date from this time or earlier.