
Mirror The Richness and Diversity of Race and Culture of Indonesia.
Java is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely-populated places on the globe. Java is the home of 60 percent of the Indonesian population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is located on western Java. Much of Indonesian history took place on Java. It was the center of powerful Hindu-Buddhist empires, the Islamic sultanates, and the core of the colonial Dutch East Indies. Java was also the center of the Indonesian struggle for independence during the 1930s and 40s.
Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia (two larger islands, Borneo and New Guinea, are shared between Indonesia and other countries) and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538. Its biggest city is Medan with a population of 2,109,330.
Bali is a province in the country of Indonesia. The island is located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east. It is one of the country's 33 provinces with the provincial capital at Denpasar towards the south of the island. The province covers a few small neighbouring islands as well as the isle of Bali.
In English, the term Kalimantan refers to the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo, while in Indonesian, the term "Kalimantan" refers to the whole island of Borneo. The Indonesian territory makes up 73% of the island by area, and 69.5% (13,772,543 at the 2010 Census of Indonesia) by population. The non-Indonesian parts of Borneo are of Brunei (400,000) and East Malaysia (5,625,000), the latter comprising the states of Sabah and Sarawak. The region within Indonesia is also known as Indonesian Borneo.
Sulawesi (formerly known as Celebes is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and the world's eleventh-largest island. It is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands. In Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra have larger Indonesian populations.
Papua comprises most of the western half of the island of New Guinea and nearby islands. Its capital is Jayapura. It is the largest and easternmost province of Indonesia. The province originally covered the entire western half of New Guinea. In 2003, the Indonesian government declared the westernmost part of the island, around Bird's Head Peninsula, a separate province; its name was first West Irian Jaya and is now West Papua: the remaining part retained the name of Papua (province).
The Lesser Sunda Islands or Nusa Tenggara are a group of islands in the southern Maritime Southeast Asia, north of Australia. Together with the Greater Sunda Islands to the west they make up the Sunda Islands. The islands are part of a volcanic arc, the Sunda Arc, formed by subduction along the Java Trench in the Java Sea.