INTRODUCTION

The winding path that led to the creation of Indonesia's modern province of Kepulauan Riau (Kepri) has deep historical roots, and the ramifications are still being played out. In 1997, more than twenty years ago, a collection of articles under the title of Riau in Transition was published in a special issue of the journal of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (Chou and Derks 1997). At that time Riau was the sixth largest of Indonesia's twenty-six provinces, extending from the foothills of Sumatra's Bukit Barisan to the Natuna islands in the South China Sea, with a land area covering 94,562 km2 and a larger sea surface of around 235,000 km2. It was further distinguished by its geographical separation. On the one hand was mainland Riau (Riau daratan) on the Sumatran side of the Melaka Straits, together with its offshore islands; on the other, insular Riau (Riau kepulauan), which included around 2,000 islands stretching from the Riau-Lingga archipelagos to the South China Sea. My contribution to this collection focused on the period from the sixteenth to the late twentieth century, giving particular attention to Riau-Johor, reconstituted after Melaka's conquest by the Portuguese in 1511, and its relationship with Malay areas along the east coast of Sumatra. Tracking the uneasiness that characterized the daratan-kepulauanassociation over nearly 500 years, I argued that despite the widespread perception of Riau as a Malay domain, the promotion of a sense of unity and commonality between mainland and island would be no easy task (Andaya 1997, p. 505). But when the final proofs went to press, there was no indication that the fall of the Soeharto regime and the subsequent demands for reformasi were around the corner. Nor could one then foresee the ripple effects of the regional autonomy law, which finally took effect in 2001, or that the rising tensions in the daratan-kepulauan marriage would reach such a point that divorce seemed the only solution. Under extreme pressure from island representatives, Jakarta eventually agreed to the creation of a new province of “island Riau”. In 2002, only five years after Riau in Transitionappeared, President Megawati Sukarnoputri signed the document that formally separated kepulauan Riau from the daratan.