East Indies East Indies The East Indies or the Indies are the lands of South and Southeast Asia. In a more restricted sense, the Indies can be used to refer to the islands of Southeast Asia, especially the Indonesian Archipelago and the Philippine Archipelago. The name "Indies" is derived from the River Indus and is used to connote parts of Asia that came under Indian cultural influence. Dutch-occupied colonies in the area were known for about 300 years as the Dutch East Indies before Indonesian independence, while Spanish-occupied colonies were known as the Spanish East Indies before the American conquest and later
Dutch East Indies Netherlands formally recognized Indonesian sovereignty at the 1949 Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference with the exception of the Netherlands New Guinea (Western New Guinea), which was ceded to Indonesia 14 years later in 1963 under the provisions of the New York Agreement. The word "Indies" comes from (Names for India). The original name "Dutch Indies" () was translated by the English as the "Dutch East Indies", to keep it distinct from the "Dutch West Indies". The name "Dutch Indies" is recorded in the Dutch East India Company's documents of the early 1620s. Scholars writing in English use the terms "Indië", "Indies",