Malay Archipelago World map highlighting Malay Archipelago. New Guinea—not part of the Malay Archipelago by some definitions—is also included. Geography Location Southeast Asia, Oceania Total islands 25,000 Major islands Borneo, Java, Luzon, Mindanao, New Guinea, Sulawesi, Sumatra Area >2 million km²[1] Country Brunei East Timor Indonesia Malaysia Papua New Guinea Philippines Singapore Demographics Population 350 million.[2] Ethnic groups Austronesian peoples, Malay, Overseas Chinese

The Malay Archipelago is the archipelago located between mainland Southeastern Asia and Australia.^[3] Situated between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the group of 25,000 islands is the world's largest archipelago by area. It includes Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, East Malaysia, East Timor, and most of Papua New Guinea.^[4] The island of New Guinea is not always included in definitions of the Malay Archipelago.^[4][5]

Etymology and terminology

The common name was derived from the concept of a Malay race,^[6] which included the peoples of modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The racial concept was proposed by European colonialists based on their observations of the influence of the ethnic Malay empire, Srivijaya.^[7]

The 19th century naturalist Alfred Wallace used the term "Malay Archipelago" as the title of his influential book documenting his studies in the region. Wallace also referred to the area as the "Indian Archipelago" and the "Indo-Australian" Archipelago.^[8] He included within the region the Solomon Islands and the Malay Peninsula due to physiographic similarities.^[8] As Wallace noted,^[9] there are arguments for excluding Papua New Guinea for cultural and geographical reasons: Papua New Guinea is culturally quite different from the other countries in the region, and the island of New Guinea itself is geologically not part of the continent of Asia, as the islands of the Sunda Shelf are (see Australia).

The archipelago was called the "East Indies"^[10] in the European colonial era and is still sometimes referred to as such,^[4] but broader usages of the "East Indies" term had included Indochina and the Indian subcontinent. Indonesians use the term "Nusantara" for the "Malay archipelago".^[11] The area is also referred to as the Indonesian archipelago.^[12][13]

Geography and geology

The land and sea area of the archipelago exceeds 2 million km².^[1] The 25,000 islands of the archipelago comprises many smaller archipelagoes.^[14] The largest groupings are:

• The Sunda Islands comprising the Greater Sunda Islands and Lesser Sunda Islands
• The Maluku Islands
• The Philippines

The six largest islands are New Guinea, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, Java, Luzon.

Geologically the archipelago is one of the most active volcanic regions in the world. Tectonic uplifts have produced large mountains, including the highest in Mount Kinabalu in Sabah with a height of 4,095.2 m and Puncak Jaya in Papua at 4,884 m (16,024 ft). The climate throughout the archipelago, owing to its position on the equator, is tropical.

Wallace's line between Australian and Southeast Asian fauna. The deep water of the Lombok Strait between the islands of Bali and Lombok formed a water barrier even when lower sea levels linked the now-separated islands and landmasses on either side.

Biogeography

Wallace used the term “Malay Archipelago” as the title of his influential book documenting his studies in the region. He proposed the "Wallace Line", a boundary that separated the flora and fauna of Asia and Australia. The ice age boundary was formed by the deep water straits between Borneo and Sulawesi; and through the Lombok Strait between Bali and Lombok. This is now considered the western border of the Wallacea transition zone between the zoogeographical regions of Asia and Australia. The zone has a mixture of species of Asian and Australian origin, and its own endemic species.

Demography

The archipelago's population is over 300 million and the most heavily populated island is Java. In contrast, of Indonesia's estimated 17,500 islands, for example, about 6,000 are inhabited.^[15] The people of the archipelago are predominantly from Austronesian subgroupings and correspondingly speak western Malayo-Polynesian languages. This region of Southeast Asia shares more social and cultural ties with other Austronesian peoples in the Pacific than with the peoples of Mainland Southeast Asia.

Peninsular Malaysia is included in Maritime Southeast Asia^[5] such that all the non-Oceanian Austronesian peoples are grouped in one cultural region.

The main religions in this region are Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and traditional Animism.

See also

• Malay peninsula
• Malesia
• Maritime Southeast Asia

Notes

External link

• Wallace, Alfred Russel. The Malay Archipelago, Volume I, Volume II.