Batavia, Dutch East Indies

Batavia was the Dutch colonial port city that served as capital of the Dutch East Indies and center of the Dutch East India Company's trading network in Asia, existing from 1619 to 1949. The Dutch founded it on 30 May 1619 by razing the existing settlement of Jayakarta and building their own fortified city on the north coast of Java, on marshy, hilly ground crisscrossed with canals. Batavia comprised two main centers, the walled old city of Oud Batavia and the newer administrative district of Weltevreden to the south, and grew over three centuries from a small trading post into a major colonial metropolis. The city was renamed Jakarta during the Japanese occupation of 1942-1945 and kept that name after Indonesian independence in 1949; its site is present-day Jakarta, Indonesia.