BATAVIA (JAKARTA)

   In 1618–1619, Governor-General Jan Pietersz Coen founded a new fortress and a city near the old Jacatra on the island of Java in the Netherlands East Indies. He called them Batavia, after the Germanic tribe of Batavi that inhabited the re gions bordering the Rhine River during the Roman occupation of western Europe. Batavia became the capital of the colonial empire that the Dutch founded in Asia. Since 1949, Jakarta has been the capital of the independent state of Indonesia.