Indonesia is formally called the Republic of Indonesia, a country in Southeast Asia and also Oceania in between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It contains over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, as well as parts of Borneo as well as New Guinea. Indonesia is the world’s largest island country and the 14th-largest nation by location, at 1,904,569 square kilometres (735,358 square miles).

With concerning 270 million people, Indonesia is the world’s fourth-most populated nation and the most populous Muslim-majority country. Java, the globe’s most populous island, is home to more than half of the nation’s populace.

Indonesia is a presidential republic with an elected legislature. It has 34 provinces, of which five have special status. The country’s resources, Jakarta, is the globe’s second-most populated metropolitan area. Indonesia shares land boundaries with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and the eastern part of Malaysia, in addition to maritime boundaries with Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, Palau, and India (Andaman and Nicobar Islands). Regardless of its large populace and largely populated areas, Indonesia has large locations of wilderness that sustain one of the globe’s highest degree of biodiversity.

The Indonesian archipelago has been an important region for trade since at the very least the 7th century when Srivijaya and later Majapahit patronized entities from landmass China and the Indian subcontinent. Local leaders slowly taken in international impacts from the early centuries, as well as Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms thrived. Sunni investors and Sufi scholars brought Islam, while Christianity was brought mostly via European promoters.

Although often interrupted by the Portuguese and also the French and also British, the Dutch were the primary colonial power for much of their 350-year existence in the island chain. The idea of “Indonesia” as a nation-state emerged in the very early 20th century, culminating later in the announcement of Indonesian self-reliance in 1945. Nonetheless, it was not till 1949 that the Dutch acknowledged Indonesia’s sovereignty complying with an armed and also diplomatic problem in between both.

Indonesia consists of numerous unique native ethnic and etymological groups, with Javanese being the biggest. A common identity has established with the adage “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” (“Unity in Variety” actually, “numerous, yet one”), specified by a nationwide language, ethnic diversity, spiritual pluralism within a Muslim-majority populace, and also a background of manifest destiny and also rebellion against it.

The economic climate of Indonesia is the globe’s 16th-largest by nominal GDP as well as the 7th-largest by PPP. It is a regional power as well as is taken into consideration a center power in global affairs. The nation is a member of several multilateral organisations, consisting of the United Nations, World Trade Company, G20, and a founding member of the Non-Aligned Activity, Organization of Southeast Asian Nations, East Asia Top, and also the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.