Borneo is the third-largest island in the world, with an area of 748,168 km2 (288,869 sq mi). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda Islands, located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and east of Sumatra.
The Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation or Borneo confrontation was an armed conflict from 1963 to 1966 that stemmed from Indonesia's opposition to the creation of the state of Malaysia from the Federation of Malaya. After Indonesian president Sukarno was deposed in 1966, the dispute ended peacefully.
West Kalimantan is a province of Indonesia. It is one of five Indonesian provinces comprising Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. Its capital and largest city is Pontianak. It is bordered by East Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan to the east, the Malaysian state of Sarawak to the north, and the Bangka Belitung Islands to the west and the Java Sea to the south. The province has an area of 147,037 km2, and had a population of 4,395,983 at the 2010 Census and 5,414,390 at the 2020 Census; the official estimate as at mid 2023 was 5,623,328, and was projected to rise to 5,695,500 at mid 2024. Ethnic groups include the Dayak, Malay, Chinese, Javanese, Bugis, and Madurese. The borders of West Kalimantan roughly trace the mountain ranges surrounding the vast watershed of the Kapuas River, which drains most of the province. The province shares land borders with Central Kalimantan to the southeast, East Kalimantan to the east, and the Malaysian territory of Sarawak to the north.
The North Kalimantan Communist Party was a Maoist communist party based in the Malaysian state of Sarawak in northern Borneo. It was formally founded on 19 September 1971. Before that, the group had been operating under the name Sarawak People's Guerrillas. The chairman of the NKCP was Wen Ming Chyuan and the party enjoyed close links with the People's Republic of China. The NKCP's membership was predominantly ethnically Chinese. The two military formations of the NKCP were the Sarawak People's Guerilla Force (SPGF) or Pasukan Gerilya Rakyat Sarawak (PGRS), and the North Kalimantan People's Army (NKPA) or the Pasukan Rakyat Kalimantan Utara (PARAKU). The NKCP participated in the Sarawak Communist Insurgency (1962–1990). On 17 October 1990, the North Kalimantan Communist Party signed a peace agreement with the Sarawak state government, formally ending the Sarawak Communist Insurgency.
Being an indigenous tribe in Borneo, the Kayan people are similar to their neighbours, the Kenyah tribe, with which they are grouped together with the Bahau people under the Apo Kayan people group. The Kayan people are categorised as a part of the Dayak people. They are distinct from, and not to be confused with, the Kayan people of Myanmar.
Punan Bah or Punan is an ethnic group found in Sarawak, Malaysia and Kalimantan, Indonesia. The Punan Bah people are distinct and unrelated to the semi-nomadic Penan people. Their name stems from two rivers along the banks of which they have been living since time immemorial. They have other names including Mikuang Bungulan or Mikuang and Aveang Buan but those are used only ritually nowadays.
The Banjar or Banjarese are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the Banjar regions in the southeastern Kalimantan regions of Indonesia. Nowadays, Banjarese diaspora can be found in neighbouring Banjar regions as well; including Kotabaru Regency, the southeastern regions of Central Kalimantan, southernmost regions of East Kalimantan, and some provinces of Indonesia in general. The Banjarese diaspora community also can be found in neighbouring countries of Indonesia, such as Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore.
The Japanese Empire occupied the Dutch East Indies during World War II from March 1942 until after the end of the war in September 1945.
The Kenyah people are an indigenous, Austronesian-speaking people of Borneo, living in interior North and East Kalimantan, Indonesia and Sarawak, Malaysia.
Malay Indonesians are ethnic Malays living throughout Indonesia. They are one of the indigenous peoples of the country. Indonesian, the national language of Indonesia, is a standardized form of Riau Malay. There were numerous kingdoms associated with the Indonesian Malays along with other ethnicities in what is now Indonesia, mainly on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. These included Srivijaya, the Melayu Kingdom, Dharmasraya, the Sultanate of Deli, the Sultanate of Siak Sri Indrapura, the Riau-Lingga Sultanate, the Sultanate of Bulungan, Pontianak Sultanate, and the Sultanate of Sambas. The 2010 census states that there are 8 million Malays in Indonesia; this number comes from the classification of Malays in East Sumatra and the coast of Kalimantan which is recognized by the Indonesian government. This classification is different from the Malaysia and Singapore census which includes all ethnic Muslims from the Indonesian archipelago as Malays.
Kutai is a historical region in what is now the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. The region shares its name with the native ethnic group of the region, with a total population around 300,000, who have their own language known as the Kutainese language which accompanies their own rich history. Today, the name is preserved in the names of three regencies in East Kalimantan province which are the Kutai Kartanegara Regency, the West Kutai Regency and East Kutai Regency with the major river flowing in the heart of the region known as the Mahakam River. The Kutai Martadipura Kingdom (399–1635) was the earliest Hindu kingdom in the East Indies. It was later succeeded by the Muslim sultanate of Kutai Kartanegara (1300–1844).
The Barito languages are around twenty Austronesian languages of Indonesia (Borneo), plus Malagasy, the national language of Madagascar, and the Sama–Bajaw languages around the Sulu Archipelago. They are named after the Barito River located in South Kalimantan, Indonesia.
The Pontianak Kadriyah Sultanate was a Malay state that existed on the western coast of the island of Borneo from the late 18th century until its disestablishment in 1950. It was founded in 1771 by Sultan Syarif Abdurrahman Ibni Alhabib Husein bin Ahmad Alkadrie, allegedly a descendant of Sayidina Husain, in the area of the mouth of the triple junction of the small Kapuas River and the porcupine river which included a small area area ceded by the Sultan of Banten to the Dutch VOC. He had two political marriages in Kalimantan, the first to the princess of the Mempawah Kingdom, Utin Chandramidi, and the second in 1768 to Ratu Syahranum of the Banjar Sultanate, earning him the title Pangeran Nur Alam.
Maanyan or Maʼanyan is an Austronesian language belonging to the East Barito languages. It is spoken by about 150,000 Ma'anyan people living in the province of Central Kalimantan and South Kalimantan, Indonesia. It is most closely related to the Malagasy language spoken in Madagascar, although these languages are not mutually intelligible due to the geographical separation.
The State of East Sumatra was established by the Netherlands after the reoccupation of North Sumatra in July, 1947, during the first of the Dutch 'police actions' against the fledgling Republic of Indonesia. In 1949, as part of a peace deal that concluded the Indonesian National Revolution, it joined the United States of Indonesia, of which the Republic was also a component state. In August, 1950, it was absorbed into the Republic as part of the province of North Sumatra. The area covered by the former state included the present-day regencies of Langkat, Deli Serdang, Serdang Bedagai, Karo, Simalungan, Batubara and Asahan, together with the cities geographically within those regencies.
Sri Mulavarman Nala Deva, was the king of the Kutai Martadipura Kingdom located in eastern Borneo around the year 400 CE. What little is known of him comes from the seven Yupa inscriptions found at a sanctuary in Kutai, East Kalimantan. He is known to have been generous to brahmins through the giving of gifts including thousands of cattle and large amounts of gold.
Banjar Region was an autonomous area formed in the southeastern part of Indonesian island of Borneo by the Netherlands in 1948 as part of an attempt to re-establish the colony of the Dutch East Indies during the Indonesian National Revolution. Banjar became a constituent part of the United States of Indonesia in 1949. The chairman of the Banjar Council was Mohammed Hanafiah. The region was dissolved on 4 April 1950 and combined with Great Dayak and the Southeast Borneo Federation to form Kalimantan Province. Today, the territory of the former region comprises around two thirds of South Kalimantan Province.
The communist insurgency in Sarawak was an insurgency in Malaysia from 1962 to 1990, and involved the North Kalimantan Communist Party (NKCP) and the Malaysian Government. It was one of the two communist insurgencies to challenge the former British colony of Malaysia during the Cold War. As with the earlier Malayan Emergency (1948–1960), the communist insurgents in Sarawak were predominantly ethnic Chinese, who opposed British rule over Sarawak and later opposed the merger of the state into the newly created Federation of Malaysia. The insurgency was triggered by the 1962 Brunei revolt, which had been instigated by the left-wing Brunei People's Party in opposition to the proposed formation of Malaysia.
Ot Danum people are an ethnicity of the Dayak peoples dwelling at the upper reaches of south Kapuas River, and along the Schwaner range, bordering West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. They are the most important group of the upper Melawi River and culturally and linguistically the most distinct from the Malay people. Besides, the Malay people, the Ot Danum people are also linguistically distinct from the Ngaju people who live along the middle reaches of Central Kalimantan's great rivers and who are numerically and linguistically the dominant Dayak people group in the area. Just like most Dayak people group, majority of the Ot Danum people also practice Kaharingan religion.
Kotawaringin, or Kota Waringin was a sultanate on the south coast of Borneo. It covered an area in what is now the western part of the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan. It then had a brief existence as an autonomous "native state" in the United States of Indonesia between 1949 and 1950, before being formally created as a separate Kotawaringin Regency within what was then the Province of South Kalimantan. However, on 26 June 1959 Kotawaringin Regency was divided into a West Kotawaringin Regency and an East Kotawaringin Regency.
