The Riau Islands is a province of Indonesia - not to be confused with neighbouring Riau Province from which the islands were separated in 2002. The capital of the province is Tanjung Pinang and the largest city is Batam. It shares a maritime border with Riau and Jambi to the east, Bangka Belitung Islands to the south, Singapore to the northeast, Malaysia and West Kalimantan to the west, and Vietnam and Cambodia to the north. It comprises a total of 1,796 islands scattered between Sumatra, Malay Peninsula, and Borneo including the Riau Archipelago. Situated on one of the world's busiest shipping lanes along the Malacca Strait and the Natuna Sea, the province shares water borders with neighboring countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei. The Riau Islands also have relatively large potential mineral resources and energy, as well as marine resources.
Pulau Penyengat (Lit: Wasp island), lithography of an original watercolour by J.C. Rappard. ca. 1883–1889.
The Tomb of Puteri Hamidah, Queen of Sultan Mahmud Shah III.
Ali Kelana, Crown Prince of Riau-Lingga, one of the founding fathers of the Roesidijah Club Riouw, the first modern organisation in the Netherlands East Indies. (taken in 1899)
Abdul Rahman II of Riau Lingga, the last sultan of Riau-Lingga sultanate. He was subsequently deposed by the Dutch and went into exile
Indonesian is the official and national language of Indonesia. It is a standardized variety of Malay, an Austronesian language that has been used as a lingua franca in the multilingual Indonesian archipelago for centuries. Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world, with over 279 million inhabitants of which the majority speak Indonesian, which makes it one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Indonesian vocabulary has been influenced by various regional languages and foreign languages. Many borrowed words have been adapted to fit the phonetic and grammatical rules of Indonesian.
Rencong alphabet, native writing systems found in central and South Sumatra. The text reads (Voorhoeve's spelling): "haku manangis ma / njaru ka'u ka'u di / saru tijada da / tang [hitu hadik sa]", which is translated by Voorhoeve as: "I am weeping, calling you; though called, you do not come" (in modern Malay "Aku menangis, menyerukan engkau, kaudiseru, tiada datang [itu adik satu]").
Kedukan Bukit Inscription, written in Pallava script, is the oldest surviving specimen of the Old Malay language.
Volksraad session held in July 1938 in Jakarta, where Indonesian was formally used for the first time by Jahja Datoek Kajo
The Youth Pledge was the result of the Second Youth Congress held in Batavia in October 1928. On the last pledge, there was an affirmation of Indonesian language as a unifying language throughout the archipelago.