Before human development, the coastal area of what is now Tanjung Priok was an area of brackish water with swamp and mangrove forest. The area was developed in the late nineteenth century as a new harbor of Batavia to replace the Sunda Kelapa harbor area to the west that had become too small for the increased traffic resulting from the opening of the Suez Canal. The construction of the new harbor was started in 1877 by Governor General Johan Wilhelm van Lansberge (1875-1881). The new harbor was named Tandjong Priok. Several facilities were built to support the function of the new harbor, such as the Tanjung Priok Station (1914).
Tanjung Priok is variously spelled in history as "Tandjong Priok", "Tandjoeng Priok" or "Tanjon Preeq".
Tanjung Priok was the site of a widely publicized incident on September 12, 1984, when army forces fired on a group of Muslim protesters. The protesters were demonstrating against proposed government regulations that would require all formal organisations in the country to adopt Pancasila as their ideology. There were conflicting reports about the total death toll, but most sources indicate that several hundred protesters were killed. After the fall of Suharto the case was taken up again, and in 2003 fourteen people, among them a former commander of the Kopassus special forces unit, were named as suspects in the 1984 killings.
The Subdistrict of Tanjung Priok is divided into seven kelurahan ("administrative villages"):
On November 20, 2011, the Jakarta administration inaugurated the city's first railways tourism package aimed at attracting more tourists and reducing traffic congestion from Gambir railway station to the Tanjung Priok railway station.
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