DUTCH EAST INDIES

forming a large and important colonial po e ion of the Netherlands Government, lie between 6° N. and 11°8., and 95° KE. and 141° 8. The colony includes Java and Madura, with the ‘Outposts,’ which comprise Sumatra, the south-east and west portions of Borneo, Banca, Bill it on, Celebes, the Timor and Riau-Lingga Archipelagos, the Le er Sunda Islands, and the north and west of New Guinea. The total area is about 733,296 sq. miles; the popwiation of about 60,731,025 is composed of natives of Malay raee, Arabs, Chinese, and other Orientals, and some 80,000 whites. The origin of the colony may be traced to the treaty made by the Dutch with the Sultan of Bantam in Sumatra (1595), which was followed by the formation of the Dutch Hast India Sonaeain (1602), the establishment of Batavia (1619) on the ruins of the native town of Jacatra, and the settlement in Sumatra (1677). The Dutch East India Company was di olved in 1798, since which date the colony has been administered from the Netherlands by a Governor General, who, a isted by a Council of five members nominated by the queen, has the power to pa laws, subject to the general regulations adopted in 1854. Some of the outlying islands are, however, administered by their native princes under the ‘advice’ of a Netherlands Resident. Batavia (population about 290,000), a town in the province of the same name on the north-west coast of Java, is the administrative capital and an important centre of trade. Java and Sumatra, containing about three fourths of the total population of the colony, are self-supporting as regards food, besides producing for Huropean consumption large quantities of tobacco, tea, coffee, sugar, cinchona, tin, rubber, and copra. The colonial army numbered (1931) 1,247 officers and 36,679 men; compulsory service for white men within certain age-limits was adopted in 1918. There is also a small naval force.— BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bemmelen and Hooyer, Guide to the Dutch East Indies; W. Cool, With the Dutch in the East; J. M. Brown, The Dutch East.