In Indonesia, the term Nusantara refers to “Indonesian archipelago” whereas it means “Malay World” if you ask Malaysians, but different meanings have been attached to the concept throughout Southeast Asian history. By archipelago, Nusantara itself covers more than 10,000,000 islands in both Indonesia and Malaysia and is famous for its herbs and spices that had been traded since the 3rd century.
Early prehistory, Nusantara was highly populated by Melanesian people until Austronesian race migrated to the archipelago and joined the mixture. During that time, the region was profoundly influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, and some local beliefs as their religions. Regarding modern usage, Nusantara can be referred to as the term to define the region that covers some countries namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, East Timor (Timor Leste).
The word Nusantara itself is derived from an Old Javanese literature that was born approximately during 12th – 16th Century to define the concept of statehood under the grandeur of Majapahit empire, far after the falls of Srivijaya. Kediri, and Singhasari.
Nevertheless, the glory of Majapahit did not remain powerful until Sunni Islam from Malacca defeated the empire in 1400 that made the Malacca appeared as the powerhouse in the region. During the Malacca domination, smaller empires emerged in which they also converted the religion into Sunni Islam, including the Bruneian Empire and Ternate Sultanate.
Nusantara had become globally famous for its commodity of herbs and spices when the governor of Portuguese India, Afonso de Albuquerque and his troops went to Malacca from Cochin to ambitiously take control of Malacca’s strategic trading port.
Afonso de Albuquerque also appointed Antonio Abreu and Francisco Serrao to lead the Portuguese fleets to Maluku and Ternate in quest of herbs. Since Malacca Sultanate was the close ally of Ming China, thus when Portugal defeated Malacca Sultanate in 1511, the Chinese took revenge on the Portuguese by imprisoning a Portuguese envoy, Tome Pires during his visit to Beijing in 1520. Not only that, but the Chinese also sentenced more than 20 Portuguese troops to death and assassinated Portuguese who lived in China, including Ningbo and Quanzhou.
Long story short, when the Portuguese attempted to conquer the entire Malacca Sultanate, the conquest backfired on themselves as the fall of Malacca stimulated the proliferation of local empires in Nusantara. At the same time, the emergence of these empires also indicated that Majapahit failed in maintaining and strengthening its influence throughout Nusantara.
The question then arises, why does Indonesia still perceive Nusantara as the term to refer to the archipelago? To answer this, we must trace the history back 73 years. In the text of proclamation of Indonesia Independence, the first President of the Republic of Indonesia, Soekarno, opened the declaration by stating:
“We, the people of Indonesia hereby declare the independence of Indonesia…”
The phrase of “the people of Indonesia” said by Soekarno referred to the country that spanned from Sabang (the northernmost point of Indonesia) to Merauke (a city located in the easternmost part of the nation). Furthermore, sourced from a book titled Untold Story: Bung Karno: Penyambung Lidah Indonesia, Soekarno explained the expanse of Indonesia that was developed by ancient empires far before the country’s independence:
“… Dari abad kesembilan ketika negara kami bernama Kerajaan Sriwijaya sampai abad keempat belas waktu negeri kami bernama Majapahit, kami punya negeri yang terkenal makmur telah mencapai tingkatan ilmu yang demikian tinggi sehingga menjadi pusat ilmu pengetahuan bagi dunia beradab…”
translated as:
“… From the ninth century, that was the time when our country was named after Srivijay, until in the fourteenth century when Indonesia was widely known as Majapahit, our country was famous for its prosperity and has obtained such a high level of competence that the world regarded us as the center of knowledge…”
It indicates that Soekarno believed that the vast territory of Indonesia had been the same area that was once the heritage of Srivijaya and Majapahit, Nusantara.
Ki Hajar Dewantara, an infamous Indonesian independence activist and journalist, kept using the term of Nusantara to refer the country, especially during the Dutch colonialism where they insisted to interpret Indonesia as “Hindia” or “India”—the words that could be ambiguous if seen from the perspective of other language pieces of literature. However, even after the name of “Indonesia” was appointed as the legal appellation of the country, the use of Nusantara phrase still has been widespread and persisted—especially in anthropogeographical terms, up until this second.