ABSTRACT
Nunukan, the northernmost district of the Indonesian province of Kalimantan, is literally on the outskirts of the Indonesian state. Its long and narrow territory stretches from the Sulawesi Strait in the east to the rugged mountainous interior of the highland plateaus of northern Borneo’s interior in the west. The district shares a very long international border with the Malaysian states of Sabah (to the north) and Sarawak (to the west). Nunukan has a long history of trading with close and more remote partners, a market that was rather hampered by the incorporation of the area first into the Dutch East Indies and then into the Republic of Indonesia, and Nunukan’s subjection to the laws of both regimes. For most of the twentieth century, Nunukan’s official status was hence no more than that of a remote, sparsely populated and underdeveloped territory incorporated into the far larger district of Bulungan. All this changed after the fall of Suharto as president of Indonesia and the ensuing reform of the nation’s administrative organisation.
