Indonesia had been a Dutch colony for over 300 years when a group of revolutionaries declared independence on 17 August 1945.

It took Indonesians four years of diplomacy and armed struggle before their independence was formally granted by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.

Did you know?

The Indonesian language, now spoken by almost all 238 million inhabitants, is a variant of Malayan invented by nationalists in the 1920s.

Despite the granting of independence in 1945, it wasn’t until 2005, that the Netherlands declared that they had decided to accept the date of 17 August 1945 as the date of Indonesia’s independence.

Indonesia is an archipelago of over 17,000 islands. It is the world’s fourth most populous country. More than half of Indonesia’s population live on Java, making it the world’s most populous island.