Bangka

Bangka (also Banka) is an Indonesian island lain east of Sumatra in the Karimata road.

Them are 11,942 km ² largely and by 400.000 humans are inhabited. The island is separate by between 11 and 27 km broad the Bangkastrasse from Sumatra. The island consists mainly of low, partial swampy flat country, from which several isolated granitische mountains up to 700 m height rise.

Important industries are the cultivation of pepper and the dismantling of tin. The tin and is everywhere on Bangka more or less deeply under the surface deposited. Since 1832 were operated the tin dismantling exclusively by Chinese mine workers. End 19. Century amounted to the number of the Chinese about 30% the inhabitant.

The island belongs to the Indonesian province Bangka Belitung. Principal place is Pangkalpinang (Palembang). From the Sultan Achmed Nadscha Muddin it to 1812 to the Englishmen one retired, it in the treatise from 13. August 1814 to the dutchmen left.

The fauna of Bangka is not particularly extensively, enclosure however a set of smaller mammals, which occur only here, like local squirrel and Pittas. Generally the animal world of Bangka shows more relations with the Malaii peninsula than to the Sumatras.

After the population led nomadenartiges life over centuries , them became in 19. Century in a forced manner, itself in firm villages, the Kampongs, to establish.