Papua summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Papua.

Papua, formerly Irian Jaya, Province (pop., 2010 prelim.: 2,833,381), Indonesia. It includes most of the western half of the island of New Guinea and the offshore islands of the Schouten island group. The Maoke Mountains rise to 16,503 ft (5,030 m) at Jaya Peak. The first Europeans to sight Papua were the Portuguese in 1511, and the region was claimed by the Dutch in 1828. The entire western half of New Guinea was transferred to Indonesia in 1963 and was made a province in 1969, with its capital at Jayapura. Rebels led a separatist movement there in the late 1990s, and the province achieved greater autonomy in 2001. In 2006 the Indonesian government designated the western portion of Papua as West Papua (Papua Barat) province.

New Guinea Summary

New Guinea, island of the eastern Malay Archipelago, in the western Pacific Ocean, north of Australia. It is bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the north, the Bismarck and Solomon seas to the east, the Coral Sea and Torres Strait to the south, and the Arafura Sea to the southwest. New Guinea is

Indonesia Summary

Indonesia, country located off the coast of mainland Southeast Asia in the Indian and Pacific oceans. The most populous country in Southeast Asia and the fourth most populous in the world, Indonesia is situated on an archipelago that lies across the Equator and spans a distance equivalent to