(2002 est. pop. 2.9 million). Bandung is the capital of West Java and Indonesia's third-largest city. The Sundanese language as spoken in and around Bandung has the highest social status. Bandung was developed by the Dutch after 1810 as a center for the region's plantation industry. It became the capital of West Java in 1864. The city grew rapidly after the building of a railway line to Batavia (Jakarta) in the 1880s. The early twentieth century witnessed a building boom, during which Indonesian architectural motifs were combined with European Art Deco architecture. Its many fine parks and gardens as well as its striking Indo-European buildings earned Bandung the title of the "Paris of Java." The Bandung Institute of Technology was opened in 1920 as the first Dutch-founded university for Indonesians. Here Sukarno, who was to become Indonesia's first president, finished his engineering degree in 1926. The city was proposed as an eventual capital of the Netherlands Indies, and after Indonesia's independence there was speculation (until 1962) that it was to become the capital of Indonesia. In April 1955, Bandung was the site of a grand diplomatic event, the Asian-African Conference (also called the Bandung Conference), in which twenty-nine states participated.
Further Reading
Murai, Yoshimori. (1983) "Bandung: The Birth and Development of a Priangan Town in West Java." Southeast Asian Studies 21, 1:29–46.
Voskuil, R. P. G. A. (1996) Bandoeng: Beeld van een stad. Purmerend, Netherlands: Asia Maior.
Wilianto, Herman. (1994) "Life Style and Housing Choice in the City of Bandung, Indonesia." Ph.D. thesis, University of Waterloo, Canada.
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