Historic Overview Of Jakarta

The city of Jakarta was founded sometime in the early 16th century, when it was just a small seaside town called Sunda Kelapa. Sunda Kelapa was occupied by Prince Fatahillah of neighbouring Cirebon and renamed Jayakarta (`Glorious Victory') by him in 1527. Jayakarta had become sufficiently important by 1619, a century later, when the Dutch, eager to expand their colonial possessions in the area, seized the town, razed it and established their own settlement, which they called Batavia. The settlement grew, gaining in wealth and importance, over the next three centuries, till it was taken over by invading Japanese forces during World War II. It was the Japanese who named the city Jakarta, in an effort to please the Indonesians and gain their sympathy. When Japan surrendered in 1945, Indonesia declared its independence but it was to be another four years before the Dutch agreed to formally hand over government to the Indonesians and Jakarta remained `Jakarta'- today a city in many ways representative of the country its a part of- modern in a lot of ways, but also very traditional and very exotic.