Company Island: A Note on the History of Belitung

Indonesians automatically link the islands of Bangka and Belitung for the two neighbors are known as the center of the nation's tin mining. Whereas Bangka's production has always been a state enterprise, the Billiton Maatschappij, or Mij as it was first known, (Billiton is the Dutch pronunciation for Belitung), a single company, and its successors controlled the mines and dominated the history of Belitung for the century from its opening in 1850 until 1958, when Indonesia nationalized Netherlands' properties and dissolved the tin company.