History of Java

The site of Trinil on Java is famous for the discovery in 1891 of fossilized remains of Homo erectus, or “Java man,” which indicates that the island was the site of human activity perhaps as early as 1.5 million years ago. The colonization of Java apparently took place from mainland Southeast Asia, and domestic agriculture is known to have been practiced there as early as 2500 BCE. Indian traders began arriving in Java from about the 1st century CE, and the resulting Hindu Indian influence developed and flowered in the kingdom of Mataram in the 8th century CE. The Mataram kingdom was centred in south-central Java and was ruled by the Shailendra dynasty. Although originally followers of Shaivite Hinduism, the Mataram dynasty's later kings accepted Mahayana Buddhism. From this era, in the late 9th and early 10th centuries, date the great Buddhist monuments constructed at Borobudur, Mendut, and many other sites in Java.

As the power of Mataram declined, a state in eastern Java briefly gained prominence until it came into conflict with the powerful Srivijaya empire of the island of Sumatra and was thus destroyed in 1006. The king Erlangga managed to reunite and reinvigorate this state during his reign (1019–49), however. During Erlangga's reign, literature and the arts flourished, and the Hindu epics were translated from Sanskrit into Javanese for the first time, thus opening the way for the diffusion of Hindu thought among the common people. Erlangga divided his kingdom between his two sons, of whom the ruler of Kediri (along the Brantas River) became the more powerful. This area remained the centre of Javanese culture until the 13th century (while western Java remained under Srivijaya rule). The Kediri kingdom became an entrepôt for the spice trade, and Muslim traders from India as well as Chinese merchants visited its ports.

The political centre of Java then moved to the kingdom of Singhasari, in the Malang Highlands of eastern Java. The greatest king of this dynasty was Kertanagara (reigned 1268–92), who unified Java and extended his power to southern Borneo, Bali, and other eastern islands. Upon Kertanagara's inopportune death, his kingdom collapsed and was succeeded by the Majapahit empire of eastern Java, which was founded in 1293. The Majapahit dynasty gained control of most of the Indonesian archipelago, including even the former Srivijayan territories in Sumatra. The architect of this mighty empire was the prime minister Gajah Mada (reigned 1331–64). The Majapahit dynasty began to decline in the late 14th century, however, and it most likely fell early in the 16th century, when the last vestige of Indo-Javanese rule was destroyed by the followers of Islam.

Muslim traders had visited the Indonesian archipelago for centuries, but it was only in the 15th century that the Majapahit kingdom was seriously affected by competition from them. As the Muslim international trade network in the region grew, the coastal Javanese faced the choice of fighting or joining the Muslims, and many eventually did the latter. A number of Javanese ports in eastern Java thus broke away completely from the moribund Majapahit empire in the early 16th century. Several Muslim kingdoms were also established in central and western Java, in part because the Sundanese in western Java, less influenced by Hindu colonization in earlier times, adapted Islam more rapidly. Padjang, Mataram, Preanger, Cheribon, and Bantam all became independent Muslim states in Java in the 16th century. One of these states, Mataram, the last great Javanese kingdom, achieved dominance over eastern and central Java in the 1580s.

Dutch ships first visited Java in 1596, and the Dutch East India Company soon established trading posts on the coast, along with a headquarters at the town of Batavia (Jakarta), which came under Dutch control in 1619. Beginning in the 1670s, the Dutch East India Company began to assert its control over Java's various Muslim kingdoms; the states of western Java recognized the company's sovereignty in the last quarter of the 17th century, and the north-central and northeastern districts followed suit in 1743. In 1755, what remained of the Mataram kingdom was broken up into two Dutch vassal states, Surakarta and Jogjakarta. Java's peasantry grew rice, indigo, sugar, pepper, and coffee under a system of forced deliveries that the Dutch levied on the native aristocracy.

The Dutch East India Company ceased to exist in 1799, and the Dutch government took over the administration of Java. After a brief period of British rule in 1811–16, the island returned to Dutch rule. A serious Javanese revolt in 1825–30 against the Dutch was suppressed at great expense. Throughout the 19th century, Java was the most intensively developed and closely governed of all the islands of the Dutch East Indies, and it quite naturally became the focus of Indonesian nationalism in the early 20th century. Beginning in 1903, the Javanese were admitted to a steadily increasing part in local government, and in 1925 Indonesians were given a majority in the volksraad (“people's council”). Java was occupied by the Japanese from 1942 to 1945 during World War II. Java became part of the newly independent Republic of Indonesia in 1950.