The Malay Archipelago is the archipelago located between mainland Southeastern Asia and Australia. It is also sometimes referred to as Maritime Southeast Asia. Located between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the group of 25,000 islands is the world's largest archipelago by area. It includes the countries of Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia (only East), East Timor, and most of Papua New Guinea."." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2006. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. The island of New Guinea is not always included in the Malay Archipelago, while Peninsular Malaysia also is included within Maritime Southeast Asia."." Worldworx Travel. Accessed 26 May 2009.

Terminology

The concept of a “Malay race” which included the peoples of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines was put forward by European colonialists due to their observations regarding the influence of the Malay empire, Srivijaya. Nineteenth century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace used the term “Malay Archipelago” as the title of his influential book documenting his studies in the region.

As Wallace himself noted, there are arguments for excluding Papua New Guinea for cultural and geographical reasons: Papua New Guinea is culturally quite different from the other countries in the region, and the island of New Guinea itself is geologically not part of the continent of Asia, as the islands of the Sunda Shelf are (see Australia). The archipelago is sometimes also known as the “East Indies”, particularly in the European colonial era, but broader definitions of the “East Indies” include Indochina, the Indian subcontinent, and even areas as far west as Iranian Baluchistan.

Geography and geology

The land and sea area of the archipelago exceeds 2 million km². The 25,000 islands of the archipelago comprises many smaller archipelagoes. The largest groupings are:

• The Sunda Islands comprising the Greater Sunda Islands and Lesser Sunda Islands

• The Maluku Islands

• The Philippines

The six largest islands are New Guinea, Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, Java, Luzon.

Geologically the archipelago is one of the most active volcanic regions in the world. Tectonic uplifts have produced large mountains, including the highest in Mount Kinabalu in Sabah with a height of 4,095.2 m and Puncak Jaya in Papua at . The climate throughout the archipelago, owing to its position on the equator, is tropical.

Wallace's line between Australian and Southeast Asian fauna. The deep water of the Lombok Strait between the islands of Bali and Lombok formed a water barrier even when lower sea levels linked the now-separated islands and landmasses on either side.

Biogeography

The Malay Archipelago is traversed by the "Wallace Line" (or "Wallace's Line"), a boundary that separates the zoogeographical regions of Asia and Wallacea (which is a transitional zone between Asia and Australia). West of the line are found organisms related to Asiatic species; to the east, a mixture of species of Asian and Australian origin are present. The line is named after Alfred Russel Wallace, who noticed this clear dividing line during his travels through the East Indies in the 19th century. The line runs through the Malay Archipelago, between Borneo and Sulawesi (Celebes); and through the Lombok Strait between Bali (in the west) and Lombok (in the east). Antonio Pigafetta had also recorded the biological contrasts between the Philippines and the Maluku Islands (Spice Islands) (situated on opposite sides of the line) in 1521 during the continuation of the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan (after Magellan himself had been killed on Mactan).

Demography

The archipelago's population is over 300,000,000 and the most heavily populated island is Java. In contrast, of Indonesia 17,508 islands, for example, about 6,000 are inhabited. The people of the archipelago are predominantly from Austronesian subgroupings and correspondingly speak western Malayo-Polynesian languages. This region of Southeast Asia shares more social and cultural ties with other Austronesian peoples in the Pacific than with the peoples of Mainland Southeast Asia.
Peninsular Malaysia is included in Maritime Southeast Asia such that all the non-Oceanian Austronesian peoples are grouped in one cultural region.

The main religions in this region are Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and traditional Animism.

See also

• Malesia

• Nusantara