A HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF INDONESIA

Until the seventeenth century Indonesia consisted of many kingdoms. Mostly Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms were in power between the seventh and fourteenth centuries, while the Islamic kingdoms started in the fifteenth century. The year 1602 was the beginning of the Dutch colonial dominance, which lasted for about three and a half centuries. During the Japanese occupation, Indonesia declared its independence as a nation state on August 17, 1945, but the struggle against the Dutch continued until 1949. With a population of approximately 205,000,000, Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world. Jakarta is its capital, with over 8,000,000 inhabitants.

ECOLOGICAL FEATURES

Indonesia is a vast archipelago of about 5,100 km spread east to west across the equator between Asia and Australia and between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, covering an area of 1,919,700 km2. The country has 6,000 inhabited islands among more than 13,000 islands. About 60 percent of the population lives on the island of Java, which makes up about 7 percent of the country's total land area. Most of the big islands have volcanoes, many still active. The lands are generally fertile, even though in the last 10 years unwise use of the forest and land has significantly damaged the environment. It has two seasons, one dry from June to September and one rainy from December to March.