Thirteen to seventeen thousand islands share one motto of unity
Indonesia, the world's largest archipelagic state, scatters thousands of islands across Indian and Pacific waters—counts run between roughly thirteen and seventeen thousand. Major landmasses include Sumatra and Java plus Sulawesi, with Indonesian territory also covering portions of Borneo and New Guinea.
Homo erectus fossils, Homo sapiens remains, and megalithic sites show deep prehistoric habitation. By the first millennium BCE the archipelago joined regional maritime trade; Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms rose before later Islamic sultanates and colonial rule. Independence brought separatist conflicts, corruption crises, disasters, democratisation, and rapid growth in overlapping waves.
Today a presidential republic with an elected legislature organises 38 provinces, some with special autonomy. Hundreds of ethnic groups and more than 700 languages persist beside Indonesian, a standardised Malay used as the official bridge tongue. The national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika—unity in diversity—states the governing problem as an aspiration.
The name joins India with Greek nesos, island. George Windsor Earl floated Indunesians in 1850, Adolf Bastian gave the word currency with his five-volume work of 1884 to 1894, and nationalists adopted it after 1900; Ki Hajar Dewantara opened an Indonesian press bureau in The Hague in 1918. Stone tools show hominins on Flores by at least 1.02 million years ago, and Austronesian speakers arrived from Taiwan by way of the Philippines from the third millennium BCE.
In the late 7th century Srivijaya arose in Sumatra's southeast as a Buddhist trading power, and central Javanese rulers raised Borobudur and Prambanan between the 8th and 10th centuries. Marco Polo found Perlak Muslim in 1292. The Portuguese took Malacca in 1511, and rival Dutch companies merged into one in 1602. Japan's 1942 conquest ended Dutch rule, and two days after Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945, Sukarno proclaimed independence, co-signed by Hatta; a four-year struggle against the returning Dutch followed.
Source: Indonesia
