Don't be sorry, Arif. I don't like straight boundaries more than
other ones, and anyway, there is more of a story to it when it is not
a perfectly straight line, like in this case.
Thanks for the information. That the boundary is not completely
straight I had gathered from reading the treaty. That the reason
might be the river mouth at the southern starting point of the border
I also presumed from reading this treaty. That it is also a
compensation for the Fly river territory which would otherwise be
part of the Neth. Indies, is new to me, however. Which makes it even
more plausible that the 141 deg. line was already seen as the
approximate boundary before the treaty was concluded, and that the
treaty only specified it further.
If the Fly river detour was designed because a people were in the
way, it most likely was indigenous, since at that time there was very
little colonial activity in the central parts of the island. The
Netherlands had only started to establish real colonial power on the
island (and not just saying they had sovereignty over it), and were
so to say forced to make a stand because of the fact the British and
the Germans did make a point of colonising the island.
You wouldn't know by any chance any other anomalities that occur on
the old Netherlands Indies-German New Guinea border, would you?
Peter S.
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., Arif Samad <fHoiberg@y...> wrote:
> Sorry to inform you of this, but the Papua New
> Guinea-Indonesia boundary is not completely straight
> even when you discount Fly River. Yes, there are two
> straight sections, but they would not connect if they
> were extended. The southern part of the boundary is
> slighly to the east compared to the northern part.
> This automatically tells us that it is not a mistake
> as the thin extra southern part was compensation to
> the Dutch, who had control of Indonesia. The other
> reason the southern part of the line was slightly
> moved was because it now ends at the mouth of a river
> instead of following an imaginary line all the way.
> By the way, I believe the Fly River boundary was
> created ao as not to separate a population on the
> Eastern bank of the river, but I am not sure if this
> population was colonial or indigenous.
> Arif
>
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