Indonesia is the sleeping giant of Southeast Asia. With 17,000 islands, 6,000 of them inhabited, it is the largest archipelago in the world. With well over 200 million people, Indonesia is by far the largest country by population in Southeast Asia. Indonesia also has the largest Muslim population in the world, though they are mostly tolerant and very open minded.

The Indonesian people, like any people, can be either friendly or rude to foreigners. 99% of the time, though, they are incredibly friendly to foreigners. They seem to go out of their way to make foreigners feel welcome.

The early history of Indonesia is the story of dozens of kingdoms and civilizations floureshing and fading in different parts of the archipelago. Some notable kingdoms include Srivijaya (7th-14th century) on Sumatra and Majapahit (1293-c.1500), based in eastern Java but the first to unite the main islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali and Borneo as well as parts of the Malay Peninsula.

The first Europeans to arrive were the Portuguese, who were given the permission to erect a godown near present-day Jakarta in 1522. By the end of the century, however, the Dutch had pretty much taken over and the razing of a competing English fort in 1619 secured their hold on Java, leading to 350 years of colonialization.

Spurred on the Japanese conquest of the islands in World War II, Indonesia's founding father Sukarno declared independence from the Netherlands on 17 August 1945, although it took four years of fighting until the Dutch accepted this on December 27, 1949. Irian Jaya, which had declared independence on 1961 with Dutch support, was arm-twisted into "voluntarily" joining Indonesia in 1969 and East Timor was annexed outright in 1975.

Meanwhile, Sukarno had led the country with an authoritarian style of "Guided Democracy", founding the Non-Aligned Movement in Bandung in 1955. However, Sukarno was seen to align more and more with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) , and in a mysterious incident on September 30, 1965 six senior army generals were murdered. Major General Suharto used this as a pretext to seize power, sidelining Sukarno, proclaiming a New Order (Orde Baru) and initiating a series of bloody anti-Communist purges that led to the death of 500,000-2,000,000 people (estimates vary widely).

The next 32 years saw Indonesia enjoy stability and economic growth, but much of the wealth was concentrated in the hands of a small corrupt elite and dissent was brutally crushed. During the Asian economic crisis of 1997 the value of the Indonesian rupiah plummeted, halving the purchasing power of ordinary Indonesians, and in the ensuing violent upheaval Suharto was brought down and a more democratic regime installed.

After decades of civil war, on 30 August 1999 a provincial referendum for independence was overwhelmingly approved by the people of East Timor (Indonesian Timor Timur). Concurrence followed by Indonesia's national legislature, and the name East Timor was provisionally adopted. On 20 May 2002, East Timor was internationally recognized as an independent state.

Current issues include alleviating widespread poverty, reducing corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN), reforming the judiciary and increasing the efficiency of the bureaucracy. The Indonesian economy has been improving, encouraged by new mildly reformist president Susilo Bambang Yudoyono.