Bintan 2005

The book

Bintan 2005, the second title in Make Books Australia’s timeSnaps series, presents a photo-essay snapshot of key locations and structures within the island’s northern resorts region, and the Club Méditerranée Bintan resort, at a point in time – late 2005. 

The book contains some 130 photos taken on Bintan Island between Saturday 5 November and Saturday 12 November 2005. These images were selected from a 2,500-photo archive created during that eight-day island stay, and captured with Pentax digital single-lens reflex cameras using a range of lenses. 

Readers can access image captions for each chapter through interactive pop-up panels.

The book also contains three maps, two historic and one contemporary.

The book’s near eight-and-a-half thousand words cover an introduction to the timeSnaps series, and nine chapter essays that provide context for the grouped images. Captions and essays within Bintan 2005 are written as if it is 2005.

The first of the nine chapters provides an overview of the island. The second presents a history of the island and its region. The remaining chapters address specific aspects of the island – including its climate, flora & fauna, and geography – as well as general tourism-associated topics, and aspects of Club Méditerranée. 

The final chapter outlines significant changes in the eighteen years since the photos in the book were taken. 


Bintan Island

Negeri Segantang Lada (Bintan Island) is the largest of some 3,200 islands forming Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago. A major island with this system, Bintan has a rich history.

One of the largest of some 3,200 islands forming Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago Negeri Segantang Lada (Bintan Island) has a rich history.

Early records, from 231 CE, mention settlements on the island. The following centuries saw Bintan Island become the site of a flourishing trading post, thanks to its strategic position on trade routes between India and China.

From the late 900s, a sequence of local rulers and sultanates controlled the island. 

Growing European demand for eastern spices was initially met by Venetian traders using a complicated largely overland route. 

By the the 1400s, other European powers harboured growing interest in the trade, particularly the Portuguese who were determined to wrest control of the spice trade from the Venetians by establishing a direct sea route. Portugal’s approach was to seize the centre of the trade, Malacca, from the Malay Sultanate of Johor by military force. Rather than give the Portuguese control of the spice trade, their control of Malacca fractured that trade route. A result was an increased role for Bintan Island as one of several new spice trade centres.

Using Bintan Island as a base, the expelled Sultanate of Johor harassed and attacked the Portuguese who retaliated in 1526, raising the Sultanate’s Bintan Island settlement to the ground. The Portuguese forced the Malay Sultanate of Johor to retreat to Kampar in northern Sumatra. Toward the end of the 1500s, the Sultanate improved relations with the Portuguese. 

However, in a joint military action with the Dutch, in January 1641, the Sultanate defeated the Portuguese. Malacca fell under Dutch control. Under their alliance with the Dutch, the Riau Islands, including Bintan Island, along with Sumatra, fell under the control of the Sultanate of Johor. 

The Sultanate flourished until the late 1700s when political turmoil resulted in the Bugis people from South Sulawesi taking control of the Sultanate, and moving its capital back to Bintan Island. 

Under Bugis’ rule, Bintan Island again became a powerful trading port. The island attracted regional, Western, Indian and Chinese traders and migrants, including those with Chinese heritage. 

Under the Sultanate of Johor, Bintan Island developed into a regional power, much in the way Malacca had three centuries earlier. The Bugis rulers of the Sultanate established a new cultural centre on Penyengat Island, just off Bintan Island, close to the island’s main settlement of Tanjungpinang. 

By the late 1700s, the Dutch had seized control of Bintan Island. The Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 consolidated the situation, with the British controlling all territories north of the Singapore Strait and the Dutch controlling territories from Riau to Java. 

Growing pressure from those seeking Indonesian independence eventually forced the Dutch to relinquish control of its colony in favour of the independent United States of Indonesia. Centuries of Dutch rule of Indonesia were brought to a formal end in December 1949. 

Over the centuries, Bintan Island has developed into two distinct zones within which residents experience very different lifestyles. 

The northern zone is heavily tourist-dependent and geared to serving that market, with particular emphasis on tourism from Singapore. Most visitors to the island arrive by ferry.

The southern zone offers a more traditional Indonesian lifestyle around agriculture, fishing and commerce.

The island’s ethnically diverse population includes citizens with Malay, Bugis, Chinese and Orang Laut heritage. 

Bintan 2005 presents timeSnaps of the island centred around its role as a tourist destination, and exploring areas of the northern tourism precinct before mass commercialisation of those areas.