Sumba

This article is about the Indonesian island. For the village in the Faroe Islands, see Sumba, Faroe Islands.

Sumba is an Indonesian island. It has an area of 11,153 sq km. Located to the northwest is Sumbawa. To the northeast is Flores. To the east is Timor. To the south and southeast is Australia. It is in the province of East Nusa Tenggara. The largest town on the island is Waingapu.

Before colonization, the island was inhabited by several small ethnolinguistic groups, some of which may have had tributary relations to the Majapahit Empire. In 1522 the first Europeans arrived and in 1866 it belonged to the Dutch East Indies, although the island did not come under real Dutch administration until the twentieth century.

The Sumbanese speak a variety of closely related Austronesian languages, are a mixture of Malay (Austronesian) and Melanesian stock of people. Twenty-five to thirty percent of the population practises the animist Marapu religion. The remainder are Christian, a majority being Dutch Calvinist, a substantial minority Roman Catholic. A small number of Muslims can be found along the coastal areas.

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