Indonesia is the largest archipelago country in the world. Indonesia is an archipelago between the Asian continent and the Australian continent, with an area of 1904500 square kilometers. According to statistics, Indonesia has 17508 islands. Before being ruled by western colonists, it was difficult for Indonesian islands to produce a unified country because of scattered and broken distribution and relatively backward production, resulting in many Emirates and states. ?
Moreover, the traffic problems among island residents have hindered the economic and cultural exchanges and integration, resulting in the formation of so many people. Therefore, even if Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, its population of more than 253.6 million can only be scattered on about 6,000 islands.
In ancient times, the important conditions for developing foreign trade were coastline and ports. Archipelago countries have long coastlines and more ports, which have obvious advantages. But the disadvantages are also obvious, and the integrity of its geographical structure has been destroyed. The ocean has obvious isolation function, so the communication between islands is greatly affected and restricted. Economically, it is difficult to integrate, and each plate has its own system.
Indonesia is dotted with islands, and the straight-line distance between east and west territories is over 5,000 kilometers. The headquarters has five main islands, namely kalimantan island, Sumatra, Irian, Sulawesi and Java. The geographical structure of this country is banded. Except for the narrow sea area between Sumatra Island and Java Island, all the other islands are scattered on the sea, ranging from several hundred kilometers to 1000 kilometers. The traffic between the main islands is greatly limited by this long sea distance.
Except Java, the core main island, which has a wide basin, the other four islands have many rugged mountainous hills and dense forests, especially Sulawesi, which are mostly mountainous and have only narrow plains along the coast. The interior of Papua Island is full of alpine rainforests.
At present, the largest ethnic group in Indonesia is Javanese, accounting for 42% of the country's total population. Followed by the Sunda nationality, accounting for14%; Madura people, accounting for 7.5%, are mainly distributed in Java and nearby Madura Island. Other larger ethnic groups include Minangkabau, Badak, Aceh, Zhugang, Nias and Mendawi on Sumatra Island. Daya, Banchar and Burgess in kalimantan island; Makassar, Toracha and Minahasha in Sulawesi, Sasak in Bali, Lombok and Maluku in Maluku Islands).
Although the number of Malays is small, they are the most widely distributed. Malays live on the eastern coast of Sumatra, the coast of kalimantan island and the offshore islands between the two islands. Except for some ethnic groups in New Guinea, most ethnic groups in Indonesia today are descendants of immigrants.