Holland holds the second place among the successful colonizing nations, though Powers like England, France, and Germany surpass her in the actual area of their colonies and protectorates. Besides her East Indian possessions, which form by far the most important part of her colonial empire, she holds Surinam, or Dutch Guiana, and six small islands, including Curaçao, in the West Indies, and her colonial subjects number in all more than thirty-six millions, being as many as the colonial subjects of France and at least seven times the population of the Netherlands in Europe. The East Indian Archipelago belonging to the Netherlands consists of five large islands and a great number of smaller ones. It is not within the scope of a book like this to go into details of geographical division, but a glance at the map will show us that the three groups which make up this dependency are extended over a length of about three thousand miles, and inclucle Java and Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, New Guinea, the Timor Laut archipelago, and the Moluccos. The northern part of Borneo is a British possession, and the eastern half of New Guinea is divided between England and Germany, while half of the island of Timor is Portuguese; the rest of the archipelago forms the possession known as Netherlands India, or the Dutch East Indies. The most important and the most densely populated of these islands are Java and Sumatra; at the last census, in 1899, Java alone had twenty-six millions of inhabitants, more than four times as many as in 1826, but the richness of its soil is so great that it could support a much larger population, though the island is only about the same size as England. Java was taken by the English in 1811 from the French flag, but was restored at the Peace of Vienna to the Netherlands, together with some of the other Dutch colonies. As Dr. Bright remarks in his 'History of England,' 'it has been believed that its value and wealth were not thoroughly known or appreciated by the Ministry at the time.' It has now become by far the most important of the Dutch dependencies, and the favourite colony for fortune-hunters.