Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/844

818 818 INDIAN AECHIPELAGO documents. A Hindu strain is evident in Java and others of the western islands ; Moors and Arabs (that is, as the names are used in the archipelago, Mahometans from various countries between Arabia and India) are found more or less amalgamated with many of the Malay peoples ; and the Chinese form, in an economical point of view, one of the most important sections of the community in many of the more civilized districts. Chinese have been estab lished in the archipelago from a very early date : the first Dutch invaders found them settled at Jacatra ; and many of them, as, for instance, the colony of Ternate, have taken so kindly to their new home that they have acquired Malay to the disuse of their native tongue. Chinese tombs are among the objects that strike the traveller s attention at Amboyna and other ancient settlements. For the ethnology of the archipelago, see Meinicke, &quot; Ueber die Vb lkerstiimme des Iiid. Archipelagos,&quot; in Annahn der Erdkunde, 1837 ; Spencer St John, The Population of the Ind. Arch. , &quot; in Jour nal of the I nd. Archipelago, 1849; G. W. Earl, The Native Races of the Ind. Arch.: Papuans, Loud., 1853; Logan, &quot; On the Ethnology of the Ind. Arch.,&quot; ui Jour, of Ind. Arch., 1847, 1850, 1851, 1853, 1854; and the rich collections in the Tijdschrift v. Ind. T. L. en V. Kunde. An excellent summary of the subject by A. H. Keane will be found as an appendix to Wallace s Australasia (Stan ford s Compendium of Geography and Travel), Lond., 1879. See also the same writer s papers in Nature, 1881. Lan- There is a vast field for philological explorations in the guages. archipelago. Of the very great number of distinct lan guages known to exist, few have been studied scientifically. The most widely distributed is the Malay, which has not only been diffused by the Malays themselves throughout the coast regions of the various islands, but, owing partly to the readiness with which it can be learned, has become the common medium between the Europeans and the natives. The most cultivated of the native tongues is the Javanese, and it is spoken by a greater number of people than any of the others. To it Sundanese stands in the relation that Low German holds to High German, and the Madurese in the relation of a strongly individualized dialect. Among the other languages which have been reduced to writing and grammatically analysed are the Balinese, closely connected with the Javanese, the Battak (with its dialect the Toba), the Dayak, and the Macassarese (see the writings of R. van Eck, H. N. van der Tuuk, A. Harde- land, and B. F. Matthes). Alfurese, a vague term mean ing in the mouths of the natives little else than pagan, is more particularly applied by the Dutch philologists to the native speech of certain tribes in Celebes. The com mercial activity of the Buginese causes their language to be pretty widely spoken, little, however, by Europeans, A general sketch of the languages of the archipelago will be found in De Gids, 1864, from the pen of Professor Veth. See also Robert Gust, Sketch of the Modern Languages of the East Indies, 1878. A bibliography of this department will be found in Boele van Neusbroek, De beoefening der oostcrsche talen in Nederland en zijne ovcrzeesche bezittingen 1800-74 (Leyden, 1875). Popula- The statistics of the population are, with the exception tion. of those for a few limited areas, such as Java, of the most unsatisfactory character The estimate of Behm and Wagner in 1880 has been already stated, 34,813,000. This gives the comparatively sparse proportion of 45 to the square mile. The distribution, too, is extremely unequal. In Java we have as much as 364 to the square mile, and in the Philippines about 65, so that for the remaining islands the average is only about 15, It would appear that when left in their natural savage or semi-savage con dition the natives increase very slowly in numbers, and in some cases hardly maintain their ground. Political Politically the Indian archipelago is subject to a sixfold divisions, division : the independent native states and tribal terri tories, the Spanish possessions, the Portuguese possessions, the Dutch possessions, the English possessions, and the state of Sarawak. The Dutch are by far the most influen tial power in the archipelago. The Spanish authority is confined to the Philippines and the Sulu archipelago, the latter rendered tributary to them by the native sultan ia August 1878 in return for an annual subsidy of 2400 dollars, The English, if the island of Singapore be con sidered as belonging rather to the Malacca Peninsula, possess only the island of Labuan (19,350 acres), acquired iu 1847,- though the establishment of the British Bornean Company in the north of the island may prove the begin ning of a new acquisition. To the Portuguese are subject part of Timor and the island of Kambing, in all 6192 square miles. The Dutch on the other hand claim, besides an area of 149,820 square miles in western New Guinea, a total territory in the archipelago of 566,383 square miles, or forty-four times as much as the governing country. Of the really independent native states the largest is that be longing to the sultan of Brunei (Borneo) ; it is estimated to have an area of about 88,000 square miles The Dutch divide their territory into two great divisions (1) The Java and Madura, and (2) the Outer Possessions. The former, Dut&amp;lt; which comprises also Bali and Lombok, is administratively divided terri into twenty-three residencies, which are subdivided into depart ments or assistant residencies. The Outer Possessions are organized in a similar manner, but several portions of them the West Coast of Sumatra, Celebes and its dependencies, and Achin or Atjh con stitute governments with residencies under them. Of the other residencies the principal are those of the East and South-East coasts of Sumatra, Eiouw and its dependencies, the island of Banka, Western Borneo, Southern and Eastern Borneo, Menado in the north of Celebes, Timor, Amboyna, and Ternate, the last being nominally the most extensive of all, from including an unusually large proportion of native territory. The accusation frequently made against the Dutch that they fur nished little information about their East Indian possessions has long ceased to have any foundation in fact. The Government pub lish at Bataviaa large annual Regcrings Almanak voor Nedcrlandsch Indie (that of 1880 contains upwards of 1200 pages) ; and every year there is presented to the Dutch parliament a voluminous Koloniaal Verslag, containing elaborate details on all departments of the administration. The Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indi 6 of Dr W. R. Baron van Hoevell, continued by a society of statesmen and scholars (Zaltbommel), the Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indie of the Royal Institute at the Hague, the Indische Gids (Amsterdam), and the Indische Mercuur (Haarlem), a monthly organ of trade, show the interest taken in Holland in the East Indian possessions. Of the numerous periodi cals published at Batavia it is enough to mention the Statistiek van den Handel, the Verslag van s lands plantentuin te Buitenzorg, the Tijdschrift van het Kon. Instituut voor Ingenieurs; the Verhand- lingen of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, and the same society s Tijdschrift voor Ind. Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde ; the Ind. Militair Tijdschrift, the Natuurkundig Tijdsch., the Genceskundig Tijdsch., and Tijdsch. voor Nijverheid en Landbouw. Another Tijdschrift of the Ind. Agricult. Soc. is published at Samarang. The population subject to the Dutch is partially indicated in the following table : 1877 Males in 1877. 1878 Java and Madura. European 28,672 15,586 29,998 Chinese 198,233 103,269 200,303 Arabs 9,379 5,115 8,839 Other Eastern foreigners ... Natives... . 3,961 18,567,075 2,077 8,987,999 4,115 18,824,574 Outer Possessions. 1 18,807,320 9,114,046 19,067,829 Europeans 7,688 3,988 8,028 Chinese 126,710 96,448 119,534 Arabs 4,634 2,299 4,708 Other Eastern foreigners. . . 7,405 5.681 9,150 How rapidly the Chinese element is increasing is shown by tha fact that in the five years 1874-78 permission to reside within Dutch territory was granted to 13,302 Chinese ; while similar per- 1 No accurate data are known for the native tribes of the Outer Possessions,