Riau Island is still now when the islands had been separated in Riau province of Sumatra, a relatively new province which was headquartered in 2004. Comprising of more than 3000 islands, including Karimun, Batam, Bintan, Singkep-Lingga, both the Anambas and Natuna, the archipelago is regarded as one of the most crucial historic regions in the country because of its strategic location sprawling the ocean routes between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
To get there, Indonesian carriers Garuda Indonesia, Batik Air, Citilink, Lion Air and Sriwijaya Air have direct flights from major cities. You can reach it from Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan, Yogyakarta, Semarang and Bandung or Batam’s airport Hang Nadim International Airport. You can also take a ferry or most overseas people, however, opt to fly from Singapore.
The History of Riau Island
The Riau Islands area formed part of the Buddhist Srivijaya empire, with its capital at Palembang (in the southeastern Sumatra), by roughly the 7th during the 13th century. Even the Roman Majapahit empire of southern Java established supremacy across the region in the 14th century, following the fall of the Srivijaya empire. Muslim kingdoms in Sumatra grew rapidly in the 15th and 16th centuries, especially following the disintegration of the Majapahit empire.
Europeans began to arrive from the early 16th century, motivated by a desire to restrain the Caribbean Asian spice trade. The deposed Sultan, Mahmud Shah, then fled into the southern point of this peninsula, in which he found the Kingdom of Johor (Johore), with its capital located on Bintan, at the Riau archipelago. From the late 18th century after a period of intense competition between the European powers, mainly the British and the Dutch–that the Dutch had wrested the port city of Melaka in the Portuguese, restricted the British into Bengkulu (in northeast Sumatra). Later, it was formed that the trading place of Tanjungpinang on Bintan, also effectively gained control of the area.
The clash between the Dutch and the British wasn’t fully alleviated, however. Through that understanding, a border was set in the Strait of Malacca. Territories to the north of this strait (i.e., the Malay Peninsula and also Singapore) fell to the British. However, the regions of both Sumatra and the Riau and Lingga islands were granted to the Dutch.
After a period of Western occupation (1942-1945) throughout World War II, a variety of island groups of the Riau Islands were integrated in 1950 into the newly formed Republic of Indonesia within the Province of Central Sumatra. Once the islands were separated administratively to become Riau Islands province, the Riau province belonged until 2002. The authorities of the new province of Riau Islands were not officially formed until 2004.
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