The Achinese (also Acehnese) a people in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam in Indonesia. They are of Malayan stock but darker and somewhat taller. Aceh (pronounced Ah-chay) is a special territory (daerah istimewa, or special area) of Indonesia, located on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra. ... The Federation of Malaya, or in Malay Persekutuan Tanah Melayu, was formed in 1948 from the British settlements of Penang and Malacca and the nine Malay states and replaced the Malayan Union. ...

Their language, also called Achinese or Acehnese, belongs to the Western Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages. ... The Austronesian languages are a family of languages widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. ...

Their homeland is located in the northern-most tip of the island of Sumatra and had an illustrious history of political struggle against the Dutch. An independent Aceh had successfully repelled Dutch attempts at colonization for roughly four hundred years.

They were at one time Hinduized, as is evident from their traditions and the many Sanskrit words in their language. They have been Muslims by religion for several centuries. The Sanskrit language ( संस्कृता वाक्) is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family and is not only a classical language, but also an official language of India. ...

They are industrious and skilful agriculturists, metal-workers and weavers. They build excellent ships. Their social organization is communal. They live in kampongs, which combine to form mukims, districts or hundreds (to use the nearest English term), which again combine to form sagis. Kampong or kampung is a word in Malay and Indonesian language which means village. The word is also a common title for names of places in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore which, although modern, retains the word kampong for historical purposes. ...

Aceh has been trying to regain its political freedom ever since it gave up its independence to join Indonesia. Indonesia, under the late President Sukarno, had critically at various periods undermined the rights of the Acehnese people including the dissolution of Aceh into the province of North Sumatra in the 1950s and the failure to keep the promise it made to Aceh with regards to its religious freedom.

Brutal repressions of their political struggle by Jakarta have further hardened the Acehnese resolve for a political divorce.

Aceh came to international attention as being one of the hardest hit regions of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake with 120 thousand lost. The December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hits Thailand The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, was an undersea earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC (07:58:53 local time) on December 26, 2004. ...

See also

• Aceh War

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain. The Aceh War (also Achinese War) took place from 1873-1904 between the Netherlands and the people of Aceh in Sumatra as the Dutch attempted to colonize this independent state on the northern-most tip of Sumatra. ... Supporters contend that the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) represents, in many ways, the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...