Bangka Island

Template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / image missing

Bangka (also Banka ) is east of Sumatra located in the Karimata Street Indonesian island.

It is 11,942 km ² and is inhabited by about 600,000 people. It is separated by the width between 11 and 27km Bangkastraße of Sumatra. To the east lies the island of Belitung. Both islands form the Indonesian province of Bangka Belitung -. Capital is Pangkalpinang.

The island consists mostly of low, partly swampy lowlands, from which rise several isolated granitic mountains up to 700 m altitude.

Major industries are the cultivation of pepper and the reduction of tin, which leads to considerable environmental damage. The Zinnsand is everywhere on Bangka more or less deposited deep below the surface. Since 1832, the tin mining was operated exclusively by Chinese miners. End of the 19th century, the proportion of Chinese was about 30 % of the population.

From the Sultan Ahmed Nadscha - Muddin Bangka was ceded to the British in 1812, which they left to the Dutch in the treatise of August 13, 1814.

The fauna of the island is not particularly extensive, but includes a number of smaller mammals that are only found here, such as local squirrels and Pittas. General shows the wildlife of Bangka more relations with the Malay Peninsula as to the Sumatra.

After the population had led a nomadic life -like over the centuries, she was forced in the 19th century to settle in permanent villages.

On February 16, 1942 21 Australian military nurses on Radji Beach were shot by Japanese soldiers in the massacre of Bangka.