Even in China, mapping was confined to the interior of the country for purposes of taxation and military conquest. It was only in the 16th century that maps of Java began to appear in European books on exploration and in atlases and collections of sea charts, since there was no tradition of map or chart making in the orient outside China. Javanese ports such as Banten and Sunda Kelapa (modern-day Jakarta), which commanded strategic trades routes between east and west through the Sunda Straits, were used by Hindu merchants as provisioning centres en route to China. Java was well known to both Chinese and Indian chroniclers from the beginning of the millennium. Documentary and archaeological evidence of trade between these countries and the medieval Majapahit Hindu empires of Java and Sumatra, and with the later Muslim Sultanates of the fifteenth and sixteenth century abounds. Prior to the arrival of the European merchant adventurers and explorers in the region, Javanese merchants on the strategically located island of Java had traded spices and other tropical products with merchants from China, Japan, India, Persia and the countries of the Middle East for centuries. To reach these small and remote islands, explorers and merchant adventurers would invariably call first at Java to replenish food and water supplies after the long haul across the Indian Ocean from the Cape of Good Hope, and to pick up local pilots to guide them through the maze of islands between Java and the Moluccas. The archipelago is also home to the fabled Spice Islands of the Moluccas, the quest for which provided the major stimulus for the great voyages of discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries. The islands of Java and Bali located 8 degrees south of the Equator in the Indian Ocean are two of the 17,000 islands that make up the Republic of Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago and the fourth most populous nation on Earth.

Java and sumatra on world map