Indonesia flag is the national flag of Indonesia, an island nation in Southeast Asia. The flag consists of two horizontal stripes of equal size. The top stripe is red, representing courage. The bottom stripe is white, for honesty and purity. According to another interpretation, the flag represents a person. The color red stands for the body, and white symbolizes the soul.
The use of red and white in Indonesia’s flag was inspired by the banner of the Majapahit empire. Majapahit began in the 1290’s as a small kingdom on the island of Java. At its height in the 1300’s, the empire claimed most of the islands of present-day Indonesia.
European traders first visited Indonesia in the 1500’s. Between the 1600’s and the early 1900’s, the Netherlands gained control of most of the islands. In 1922, the Indonesian Association, a group of Indonesian students in the Netherlands who wanted self-government for their homeland, adopted a red-and-white flag. A few years later, the Indonesian National Party, a political group seeking independence, adopted the same flag.
Japanese forces seized Indonesia from the Dutch in early 1942, during World War II (1939-1945). They occupied the islands for the rest of the war. On Aug. 17, 1945, three days after Japan agreed to surrender to the Allies, Indonesian nationalists declared their country independent. The nationalists raised the red-and-white flag. The Netherlands formally recognized Indonesian independence on Dec. 27, 1949.
