Indian Archipelago
World map highlighting Malay Archipelago. New Guinea—not part of the Malay Archipelago by some definitions—is also included.
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| Geography | |
|---|---|
| Location | Southeast Asia, Oceania |
| Total islands | 25,000 |
| Major islands | Borneo, Java, Luzon, Mindanao, New Guinea, Sulawesi, Sumatra |
| Area | 2,000,000 km2 (770,000 sq mi) |
| Administration | |
| Largest settlement | Bandar Seri Begawan |
| Largest settlement | Flying Fish Cove |
| Largest settlement | Dili |
| Largest settlement | Jakarta |
| Largest settlement | Kuching or Kota Kinabalu |
| Largest settlement | Port Moresby |
| Largest settlement | Quezon City |
| Largest settlement | Singapore City |
| Demographics | |
| Population | 380,000,000 |
| Ethnic groups | Predominantly Austronesians, Negritos, Papuans and Melanesians, Overseas Chinese, Overseas Indians |
The Malay Archipelago (Malaysian & Indonesian: Kepulauan Melayu/Nusantara, Filipino: Kapuluang Malay, Visayan: Kapupud-ang Malay) is the archipelago between mainland Indochina and Australia. It has also been called the Malay World, Indo-Australian Archipelago, East Indies, Nusantara, Spices Archipelago, and other names over time. The name was taken from the 19th-century European concept of a Malay race, later based on the distribution of Austronesian languages.
Situated between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the group of over 25,000 islands is the largest archipelago by area, and fourth by number of islands in the world. It includes Brunei, Singapore, East Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and East Timor. The island of New Guinea is usually excluded from definitions of the Malay Archipelago, although the Indonesian western portion of the island may be included. The term is largely synonymous with maritime Southeast Asia.
The term was derived from the European concept of a Malay race, which referred to the people who inhabited what is now Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia (excluding Western New Guinea), the Philippines and East Timor. The racial concept was proposed by European explorers based on their observations of the influence of the ethnic Malay empire, Srivijaya, which was based on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia.
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