There are thousands of islands in the oceans of the world, and almost all of them come
under the administration of just one country.
However, there are just a handful of islands in the sea that are split between two or more
countries.
This video will explore those split islands that are found in South East Asia and Oceania.
The Earth has about 17 sea islands that are split between two or more countries.
4 of these are found in South-East Asia and Oceania.
The island of New Guinea, the island of Timor, the island of Borneo, and the tiny Sebatik
Island, off the coast of Borneo.
What all 4 of these islands have in common is that Indonesia makes up one of the countries
that the island is governed by.
New Guinea is actually the second largest island in the world, after Greenland.
It's about the same size as Texas plus Louisiana
or of Germany plus Sweden.
It lies just north of Australia, in the part of Oceania known as Melanesia – a term with
racially-charged roots but that is more used today to imprecisely delineate a cultural
and linguistic region.
From the 1800s to early 1900s, the Western half of the island was a Dutch colony, and
the Eastern half was shared between Britain and the German Empire.
The British portion was given to Australia for administration, and with the outbreak
of World War I, Australian forces seized the German part of the island.
In 1962, the Netherlands ceded western New Guinea to the UN, and control over this portion
of the island was subsequently given to Indonesia.
The processes behind this integration are still being somewhat contested.
In 1975 the eastern half of the island was granted independence from Australia and became
the country of Papua New Guinea.
Today, the island is split virtually down the middle by a north-south line.
New Guinea is the name of the island, but it is also known as Papua.
Papua and West Papua are names of Indonesian provinces on the west of the island, and the
nation of Papua New Guinea is on the east of the island.
And let’s not forget the Papua region of Papua New Guinea on the island of New Guinea,
also known as Papua.
Central New Guinea is a wilderness, large areas of which have not been documented by
modern scientists, and even more amazingly, New Guinea still harbors many groups of uncontacted
people.
Timor is a small Island in the Timor Sea, which lies at the eastern end of the south-east
Asian archipelago.
It's about the same size as Belgium
or of the US state of Maryland.
Timor has a long and complex political history, including having Portuguese and Dutch colonies,
becoming part of Indonesia, being occupied by Japan during World War II, back to Indonesia,
and finally becoming shared between Indonesia and the new sovereign state of Timor-Leste
(or East Timor) through a referendum in 1999.
The East Timorese territory on the island includes an exclave called the Oecusse District,
which has a pretty fantastic flag.
The final duo of islands is the huge tropical wilderness of Borneo, and little Sebatik island
off Borneo’s east coast.
Borneo is the size of Texas plus West Virginia
or Germany plus Norway.
Borneo is the only sea island in the world to be governed by three separate and fully-recognised
countries.
These are Indonesia, which makes up about 73% of Borneo’s landmass, Malaysia, which
makes up about 26%, and the nation of Brunei, which makes up about 1%.
Borneo is a sprawling wilderness of rainforest, which is home to orangutans, Bornean rhinos,
elephants, and clouded leopards.
Borneo’s rainforests are some of the oldest in the world, and are a cradle of diversity
for plant and animal life.
Borneo has rich oil and gas reserves offshore, which has made the tiny nation of Brunei one
of the richest countries in the world per capita.
Only 1km off the east coast of Borneo is Sebatik island, which falls along the border between
Malaysia and Indonesia.
It's about the same size as Andorra
or of 3 Washington, D.C.'s,
and has a small population of about 100,000 people –
making it the smallest island in this list.
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split islands.
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Thanks for watching.