3-066-152 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Strait of Sunda, Malay Archipelago, 1881. 'The large island of Java is separated from the much larger island of Sumatra, to the north, by the Sunda Strait...It is the main Dutch commercial route of entrance to the Malay Archipelago, as the Malacca Strait, with the great trading port of Singapore, is the chief route for British commerce to all the shores and islands of Eastern Asia. Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies, situated on the coast of Java not far within this Strait of Sunda, is a city of several hundred thousand people, and of great mercantile importance. The exports of coffee, sugar, indigo, tobacco, rice, and pepper on account of the Dutch Government, yield a considerable part of the revenue of the kingdom of the Netherlands; but a large deduction has lately been made for the yearly expenses of the Dutch conquests in Sumatra, where the Sultan of Acheen still holds out against them. The Dutch and other Europeans in Java number about thirty thousand, while the native population is now reckoned at fourteen million, and there are a large number of Chinese at the seaport towns'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.