Bintan Island

Bintan Island or Negeri Segantang Lada is an island of 1,866 square kilometer located about 48 km (30 miles) southeast of Singapore. It is part of the Riau Islands province of Indonesia. It is the largest of 3,200 islands in the Riau Archipelago. The capital of Bintan is the southwestern city of Tanjung Pinang.

History

Bintan first became politically important when Sultan Mahmud of the fallen Sultanate of Malacca fled to Bintan and created a resistance base there after Malacca was taken by the Portuguese forces in 1511. The Portuguese eventually destroyed the stronghold in 1526, and after a few years the Sultanate founded a new capital back on the Malay Peninsula and developed from there.

Bintan was also once the capital of the Sultanate of Johor that grew to considerable political and cultural power from the 17th to the 19th century. The island played a central role in Malay culture.

At the beginning of 18th century the Sultanate of Johor entered into political turmoil and the capital moved back to Bintan as the Bugis took control of the sultanate. In the hands of the Bugis, Bintan became a powerful trading port, attracting regional, Western, Indian and Chinese traders as well as migrants including Chinese much in the same way Malacca developed into a regional power three centuries earlier.

The success of the port caught the attention of the European powers. The British, who controlled Penang, were looking for a new settlement further to the south of the Straits of Malacca that would contain the Dutch expnsions and considered Bintan as a possible location.

The Dutch, however, no longer accepted the competition from Bintan and attacked and took control of the island at the end of the 18th century, bringing to an end its local trading supremacy and delaying the British arrival in the area for a few years until the internal power struggle within the sultanate of Riau-Johor offered them the opportunity to take control of the island of Singapore.

The island declined as a trading port but grew as a cultural center as a new palace on Penyengat Island developed into the stronghold of Malay and Islamic culture.

Current situation

Bintan's power and central role slowly disappeared with the regional political changes and the island's past fortune is now overshadowed by the new glory of neighbouring islands.

After being founded by the British in 1819, Singapore became the new regional trading center that it still is today. Due to its limited size, Singapore initiated the Sijori Growth Triangle and signed agreements with the Indonesian governments to invest heavily in Batam and Bintan.

The once wild and deserted Batam island became an industrial "hinterland" for Singapore and a special investment zone for world industrial companies, also attracting thousands of workers from the entire country.

Bintan was not transformed into the industrial park Batam now is. Instead, Singapore again signed agreement with Indonesia to lease its northern coast and develop it into a resort for Singaporeans ("Bintan Resort").

Singapore's current status as the regional trading center and its political influence in the region, and particularly in the heart of the Sijori Growth Triangle is actually pretty close to what Bintan was a few centuries ago.

Travel to Bintan

Bintan is currently a popular resort and tourist destination from Singapore. Bintan Resort Ferries runs several daily ferries between Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal is Singapore and Bandar Bentan Telani in Bintan. Others choose to go through the island of Batam to approach Bintan. Bintan holds several popular resort sites as well as local cities such as its capital, Tanjung Pinang, from which connecting local ferries to other islands in the archipelago can be found. Tourists should exercise caution in Tanjung Pinang due to poor street conditions and extremely aggressive taxi and ojek drivers.

External links

• Wikitravel: Bintan