ABSTRACT
A huge archipelago stretching 3,000 miles from east to west, Indonesia occupies the territory that was formerly the Dutch East Indies. Japan seized the territory in 1942; and Holland, which had itself been invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany, was unable to restore its authority after Japan’s defeat in 1945. Fighting between Indonesians and Dutch was halted with the help of a United Nations observer mission, and sovereignty was transferred to an independent Indonesian government in 1949. The capital, Batavia, was renamed Jakarta.
