Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian and Pacific oceans. Comprising between 13,000 and 17,000 islands—including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea—it is the world's largest archipelagic state and the 14th-largest country by area. Indonesia has extensive tropical forests and marine ecosystems that support some of the world's highest levels of biodiversity.
The Indonesian archipelago has been inhabited since prehistoric times, with evidence of early human presence including fossils of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, and megalithic sites. By the first millennium BCE, it had become connected to regional and international maritime trade networks. Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms developed by the early centuries CE, followed by the spread of Islam and the growth of Islamic states from the late medieval period. European powers later competed to monopolise trade in the Spice Islands of Maluku during the Age of Discovery. Dutch commercial and colonial control expanded from the 17th century and extended over most of the archipelago by the early 20th century, before Indonesia proclaimed its independence in the aftermath of World War II.
Since independence, Indonesia has experienced separatist conflicts, corruption, political upheaval and natural disasters, alongside democratisation and rapid economic growth. The country today is a presidential republic with an elected legislature and consists of 38 provinces, some of which enjoy greater autonomy than others. Home to over 290 million people, Indonesia ranks fourth in the world by population and has the largest Muslim population of any country. More than half of Indonesians live on Java, the most heavily populated island in the world, while the capital Jakarta is the world's most populous city.
Indonesia has hundreds of ethnic groups and more than 700 languages, as well as diverse regional cultures. This diversity is reflected in the national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, meaning "unity in diversity". Indonesian, a standardised variety of Malay, is the official and national language and serves as the country's lingua franca. Indonesia has the largest economy in Southeast Asia, with services and industry accounting for most output and economic activity concentrated on Java. Sea and air transport are the primary means of connecting the country's many islands. Indonesia is a middle power active in regional and global affairs and is a member of the United Nations, G20, the Non-Aligned Movement, ASEAN, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
Etymology
The name Indonesia is usually explained as a combination of India and the Greek word nesos, together meaning 'Indian islands'. In 1850, George Windsor Earl, an English ethnologist, proposed the terms Indunesians and Malayunesians for the inhabitants of the "Indian Archipelago or Malay Archipelago", preferring the latter because he considered Indunesians too general. In the same journal, James Richardson Logan adopted Indonesia as a geographical term for the Indian Archipelago.
German ethnographer Adolf Bastian from the University of Berlin gave the term greater scholarly currency by using it in the title of his five-volume work Indonesia, or the Islands of the Malay Archipelago (German: Indonesien oder die Inseln des Malayischen Archipel), published between 1884 and 1894. Dutch scholars nevertheless tended to use Malay Archipelago (Dutch: Maleische Archipel) or the Netherlands East Indies (Nederlandsch Oost Indië). Popular alternatives included Dutch East Indies, Indië, de Oost ("the East"), and, less often, Insulinde.
After 1900, Indonesia became increasingly common in academic and public usage, and Indonesian nationalist organisations adopted it as an expression of national unity and freedom from colonial rule. Among its early Indonesian promoters was Soewardi Soerjaningrat (Ki Hajar Dewantara), who established the Indonesisch Persbureau in The Hague in November 1918, a press bureau that used Indonesia in its name.
History
Prehistory, early states, and Islamisation
The island of Java has yielded numerous hominin fossils generally attributed to Homo erectus, including the type specimen discovered by Eugène Dubois at Trinil. Stone artefacts on Flores show that hominins had reached the island by at least 1.02 million years ago. Homo sapiens had dispersed into Southeast Asia by at least 50,000 years ago. In Sulawesi, narrative cave art has been dated to a minimum age of 51,200 years. Flores also yielded remains of the small-bodied hominin Homo floresiensis. Megalithic traditions later developed at different times across the archipelago, and stone monuments were used for burials and to honour or commemorate ancestors.
Beginning in the third millennium BCE, Austronesian-speaking communities moved south from Taiwan through the Philippines and into the Indonesian archipelago, where related languages spread across most of the islands. Settlement and subsistence practices varied across the islands, with communities combining fishing, hunting, gathering and cultivation. From around 500 BCE, regional trading networks increasingly connected the archipelago with South and East Asia. Goods, knowledge and technologies circulated through these networks, and, during the early centuries CE, some coastal communities in Borneo, Sumatra, and Java developed into trading ports. Indian merchants and religious specialists brought Sanskrit literacy, Hindu and Buddhist practices, and models of kingship that local rulers adopted.
Srivijaya, founded in southeastern Sumatra in the late 7th century, grew as a maritime trading polity and a centre of Buddhist learning and religious networks. In central Java, rulers supported the construction of major Hindu and Buddhist monuments between the 8th and 10th centuries, including Borobudur and Prambanan. Majapahit emerged in eastern Java in the late 13th century after Raden Wijaya used a Mongol expedition to defeat his rivals and then forced the Mongols to withdraw. Its rulers claimed suzerainty over a wide network of ports across the archipelago, although beyond Java this authority was often exercised indirectly through tributary, ritual, and commercial relationships rather than continuous territorial control.
By the late 13th century, Muslim rule had been established in northern Sumatra. Marco Polo reported that Perlak was a Muslim town during his visit in 1292, and a royal tomb at Pasai dated 1297 records a Muslim ruler there. Samudra Pasai became an important pepper port and a major centre for Islamic learning. Islam spread further through maritime trading networks, with Muslim communities becoming established at ports along Java's north coast and elsewhere in the archipelago. Majapahit declined during the 15th century, and Demak emerged as an independent north-coast sultanate and an important centre of Javanese Islam. Early conversions were associated with the Wali Sanga, the nine saints traditionally credited with the spread of Islam in Java. Islamic practice there also incorporated elements of older Javanese culture.
Before European arrival, spices from Maluku were already traded through Asian maritime networks in which Javanese and other regional merchants participated. In this region, the sultanates of Ternate and Tidore emerged as regional powers during the 15th century. The Portuguese captured Malacca in 1511 and reached Maluku the following year, where they sought control of the spice trade. Dutch expeditions followed in the 1590s, and in 1602 competing Dutch companies were merged into the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC). Its charter authorised it to wage war, build fortresses, and conclude treaties in Asia.
In the 17th century, local states continued to expand, including the Mataram Sultanate across much of Java and the Gowa Sultanate on the southern peninsula of Sulawesi, where the port of Makassar became a major trading centre. In 1619, the VOC captured Jayakarta (present-day Jakarta) and renamed it Batavia. It developed as an administrative and commercial centre and attracted Chinese migrants and others from the archipelago. Over the next two centuries, the VOC imposed monopolies to control the spice trade and expanded its influence in Java through military campaigns and intervention in local disputes. The VOC was dissolved in 1800 after going bankrupt, and its possessions passed to the Dutch government. During the Napoleonic Wars, British forces captured Java in 1811, but was returned to the Dutch in 1816.
In the 19th century, Dutch power expanded across the archipelago and met sustained resistance in Java, Sumatra, and Aceh. The Dutch established an outpost in western New Guinea in 1828 but abandoned it in 1836 and began permanent occupation only after 1898. In Bali, a series of Dutch campaigns since 1846 against the independent kingdoms there culminated in 1908. By the early 20th century, military campaigns and boundary agreements had established Dutch control over a territory that largely corresponded to present-day Indonesia, known then as the Netherlands Indies. The colonial administration ruled several territories directly and governed others through local states whose rulers retained limited authority under Dutch supremacy.
In Java, the Dutch had introduced the Cultivation System in 1830, requiring villagers to devote part of their land and labour to government-designated crops as payment for land tax. Criticism of the system helped establish colonial policy as a subject of public debate in the Netherlands. In 1901, the Dutch government adopted the Ethical Policy, which aimed to improve welfare in the Indies. The policy expanded vernacular schooling, irrigation, and other public services. Western-style schooling also expanded, but it reached only a small minority of the population. In 1905, the colonial government also began resettling people from Java to less densely populated islands.
Emergence of Indonesia and independence
Colonial education, despite its limited reach, helped produce an educated elite who became active in the emerging nationalist movements. Several political organisations were founded during this period, including Budi Utomo and Sarekat Islam, followed by the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) and the Indonesian National Party. During the 1920s, a shared national identity began to develop through youth associations and a growing body of literature in Malay, which had long been a lingua franca that did not favour any single ethnic group. Intellectuals increasingly called the language Bahasa Indonesia and made it a common medium for the emerging nation. The Youth Pledge in 1928 recognised it as the "language of unity", alongside the ideals of one homeland and one nation, Indonesia.
The Great Depression reached the colony in the early 1930s, bringing severe economic hardship and increasing fears among colonial authorities that discontent could strengthen radical nationalist movements. Restrictions on nationalist activity became stricter, and by the mid-1930s, Sukarno, Mohammad Hatta, Sutan Sjahrir, and other non-cooperative nationalist leaders had either been imprisoned or exiled. In 1942, Dutch colonial rule collapsed following the Japanese conquest of the colony during the Pacific War.
Japanese occupation imposed martial law, banned political parties and mobilised Indonesians through Japanese-sponsored civil and quasi-military organisations. Wartime shortages and forced labour caused widespread hardship, but the ban on the Dutch language strengthened the public use of the Indonesian language. Japanese-sponsored forces such as PETA and the Sumatran Giyugun trained tens of thousands of Indonesians. One day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japanese authorities permitted Indonesian leaders to begin preparing institutions and a constitution for an independent state planned for September 1945.
However, Japan surrendered to the Allies on 15 August 1945. Two days later, Sukarno proclaimed Indonesian independence, with Hatta co-signing the declaration. They were named president and vice-president on 18 August. Dutch attempts to restore colonial rule led to a four-year military and diplomatic struggle. International opposition to the Netherlands intensified after its offensive of December 1948, and the United States subsequently pressed the Dutch into negotiations recommended by the United Nations. On 27 December 1949, the Netherlands transferred sovereignty to the federal United States of Indonesia, except over western New Guinea. The federal states soon dissolved, and a unitary republic was proclaimed on 17 August 1950.
Sukarno era and Suharto's New Order
Indonesia adopted a parliamentary system of government under the 1950 provisional constitution. The early republic faced armed opposition from the Darul Islam rebellion, whose supporters aimed to establish an Islamic state. In February 1958, dissidents in West Sumatra proclaimed its own government before being joined by rebels in Sulawesi. They were seeking reforms to the republic rather than separation but were defeated by the central government. After the Constituent Assembly failed to secure the required majority for a permanent constitution, Sukarno dissolved it by decree in 1959 and restored the 1945 Constitution.
This established Guided Democracy, a system characterised by dominant presidential authority, less regional autonomy and a reduced role for political parties. Under this system, Sukarno expanded the military's political role while supporting the growing PKI as a counterweight. He also promoted state enterprises and import substitution, even as foreign investment declined, inflation soared and shortages of consumer goods worsened by the mid-1960s. The western New Guinea dispute culminated in the US-mediated New York Agreement in 1962, and Indonesia administered the territory in 1963. Not long after, Sukarno pursued Konfrontasi, opposing the formation of Malaysia through diplomatic pressure and armed incursions into its territory.