Islam

• Muslims traders from India brought Islam to Indonesia in the eighth and ninth centuries, following earlier Buddhist and Hindu influences. Portuguese traders were followed by the Dutch in the early 17th century, who eventually gained control over all of the area that now encompasses Indonesia.
  
  

Colonialism

• Dutch colonial rule, which began under the Dutch East India Company, lasted until just after World War II, when it was interrupted by the Japanese occupation of the islands from 1942 to 1945. Indonesia gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1949.
  
  

Independence

• The nationalist leader Sukarno became the country's first president and promulgated the concept of Guided Democracy. Sukarno was ousted in a coup in 1966 by the army general Suharto, who earlier had brutally repressed an attempted Communist insurrection, and who ruled until 1998.
  
  

Democracy

• Free elections were held in 1999 and Indonesia is now the world's third-largest democracy. East Timor, a former Portuguese territory that had been incorporated into Indonesia in 1975, achieved independence in 2002.