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Robby I Chandra

Exploration of the History, Narratives, and Spirituality: The case of Chinese Indonesian

THE POWER OF NARRATIVESExploration of the History, Narratives, and Spirituality:The case of Chinese Indonesian

By Robby I ChandraEditing by Arvin Nathanael and Jeddie SophroniusLayout by Seni Riyanti

Copyright © Cipanas Theological Seminary

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro-duced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Printed in IndonesiaFirst printing edition, 2019

ISBN : 978-602-70123-8-7

Published by Cipanas Theological SeminaryJl. Gadog I/36, Cipanas, Pacet,Sindanglaya 43253, Indonesia

www.sttcipanas.ac.id

CONTENTS

FOREWORD By The Chairman of Cipanas Theological v Seminary

FOREWORD By Lawrence C. Brook vii

PREFACE xi

Introduction: The Background 1

Chapter 1 The Problem: Residue Of Trauma Expressed In Narratives 7

Chapter 2 Reasons For Further Exploration 15

Chapter 3 Hypotheses And Reason For Further Exploration 20

Chapter 4 Hypotheses And Reason For Further Exploration 25

Chapter 5Pre-Colonial Era: The Arrival Of The Chinese 43

Chapter 6Discussion Of The Finding 194

References 209

FOREWORD

By The Chairman of Cipanas Theological Seminary

Rev. Em. Robby I Chandra explores an interesting but rare topic: The Power of Narratives. This work is the result of several years of his study to explore the influence of spirituality as God-cen-tered narratives on the negative narratives created by and about the Chinese Indonesian. It mainly relates to the influence of trau-ma caused by the newest riots in 1998 and many more before. His writing describes the factors that potentially enable social groups that have experienced past trauma to modify their narratives. In particular, the study delves on the potential of the Chinese Indonesian spirituality in modifying the existing narratives.

Cipanas Theological Seminary (Sekolah Tinggi Teologi Cipanas) where he teaches as Associate Professor (lektor kepala) publishes this book as part of its commitment to Tri Dharma (Education, Research, and Community Service) of an Indonesian higher education institution. May God bless this publication so the study will contribute an insight concerning practical spirituality in the context of Indonesia and the world.

Cipanas, 17 September 2019Rev. Martin Elvis, D.Min

FOREWORD

By Lawrence C. Brook, Author, Training Consultant with Innovative Learning Solutions and Media Associates

International, Chicago, Illinois.

When I first came to work with writers in Indonesia in the 1980s, most of them wrote exposition. That is, abstract ideas, theological concepts, theories. Such writing can be efficient and lucid, but in my view, it is not effective for the general reader. It doesn’t illu-minate the heart and life of the writers.

When I introduced the skill of narrative writing – writing sto-ries - at a conference center in Jakarta, I saw writers catch on fire. One of these young writers was Robby Chandra. With the others, he began describing actions, characters, and scenes from memory, incorporating taste, touch, fragrance, sound, and startling visual detail. The writing came alive with personal lives, memories, hopes for today, and anticipation for tomorrow.

What a joy it was then to learn that Robby Chandra, who has blessed Indonesian readers with many powerful narratives, including the several stories of early Chinese Christians, now has written a book in which he explores the power of narratives re-lated to the Chinese. In this book, Dr. Chandra shares what he has learned through many years of hard work - that narratives open up

viii THE POWER OF NARRATIVES

our personal journeys, recaptures the past, deepens the meaning of present moments, and seeks truths about tomorrow.

Narrative’s power is not new, of course. The Franciscan writ-er Richard Rohr noted that “most of the world religions” which emerged between 800 and 200 B. C. were “deeply connected to …story.” Jesus Christ told stories to convey the truths of God’s love and grace in a way that connected with people. Rohr stresses, in fact, that the entire Bible reveals “God in ordinary times and places.” He suggests that is why the Bible is filled with “prostitu-tion, adultery, murder, polygamy…” It is full of “contradictions.” It is “Just like life. Just like me.” Isn’t that where the sacred text gains its authority? Leaders throughout history also sensed the power of narrative, and the good ones like Abraham Lincoln, en-gaged their followers through stories.

One of Chandra’s interesting contentions is that when some storytellers become believers, the stories they tell are transformed into stories where God becomes the main character. I read a power-ful example of this recently in the book of Exodus. According to Moses’ story, God was determined to annihilate the people of Israel, but Moses persuades God to “change his mind.” How’s that for a narrative where God, the main character, is not depicted as a somber unchanging deity, but a personal God who interacts with us?

In a WhatsApp call this morning, Chandra shared with me his concern, discussed in his book, for those who become Christians yet are frozen in their original narrative or cultural models. Such believers refuse to “thaw” and join in a new narrative transformed by Christ. In this way, they settle for an idealistic concept of God that doesn’t prompt new narratives of the heart.

I mentioned on the call that Carolyn Dweck, Stanford profes-sor and author of Mindset, suggests that we all can change and

ixFOREWORD

begin new stories if we have a “growth mindset” rather than be-ing stuck in the past with a “fixed mindset.” Dweck is convinced that the “growth mindset” is “based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others.”

I would only add that we can grow into new life – new sto-ries - through the Holy Spirit working within us. And what else? I believe strongly that it would help as well for you to read Chan-dra’s thoughts here on narrative as it relates to what it means to be human and what it means to be open to new life in the church.

Chandra provides a new and practical vision that is consis-tent with Carol Dweck’s goal to build “organizations that value a growth mindset” in order to “create contexts in which more people grow into the knowledgeable, visionary, and responsible leaders we need” today.

Chicago, September 22, 2019

If a school of fish tries to study the sea, they would face difficul-ties since none of them ever live apart from water. They wouldn’t be able to distinguish the water from their own body. Such dif-ficulties are also apparent when we try to study the narratives we live by. Creating narratives is certainly an ability that the Creator embeds into humans. With such ability, we can make sense of the past, both the joyful and miserable moments. Narratives also help us to perceive our present reality and our future. Within our narra-tives, we create definitions and the cause-and-effect of events. We even define ourselves, including our roles and identity, in the plot. In short, a narrative is a created reality. However, most of us live with a certain kind of narrative and we can’t distinguish it from reality.

When we embrace spirituality, our spirituality becomes a God-centered narrative. It means that we have a deep relationship with the Creator. We believe that God, instead of us, acts as the central character who defines the storyline. Therefore, we learn to define the meaning of life differently than before, and as a result, our old narratives will change.

PREFACE

xii THE POWER OF NARRATIVES

This writing started as observations on the Chinese Indone-sians. There have been many popular narratives about them. They even create their own narratives. Where did the narratives origi-nate? When reality changes, how, if at all, do the old narratives change? As they confess that they embrace a certain kind of spiri-tuality, how much does spirituality gives them the power to evalu-ate and change their old narratives? Above all, can the narratives riddled by trauma ever change? We might not find quick answers to the series of questions above. However, perhaps a comparative study between several kinds of spirituality and the Chinese Indo-nesians’ past could provide us with enlightenment.

This work wouldn’t have been completed without the encour-agement of my mentor, Larry Brook. Through the criticism and questions of wife Julia, and my son Jeddie, this study continued until the last page. Also, for Arvin who helped editing some parts of the final work. Thank you. I am also thankful for Rev. Mar-tin Elvis without whom this book wouldn’t have come to being. Finally, I’m forever grateful for the support from all the people whose names will be too long to mention here one by one.

For me, undergoing this study caused me to reflect on my own narratives. I thank God, who I realized is the Main Character in my narrative.

Part One: THE ISSUE

INTRODUCTION

THE BACKGROUND

Human cultures have a unique characteristic. They try to recre-ate events both tragedy and comedy from their experience into narratives. From theological study, Coyle states that “All cultures use story as a way to make sense of life experiences.” Thus, nar-ratives give human beings a kind of coherence to deal with past events, especially the unpredictable or the painful ones. In turn, the narratives will influence their response to present and future events. The narratives even have power to define their identity, the causal relation between events, and how they should relate to others. The power of narratives in creating the dynamics of a society or nation is much stronger than most people might believe. However, human beings can modify or recreate the narratives when changes in the culture take place or if they have the courage to reflect on them. Only through serious evaluation toward the narratives they live by and reflection on the meaning of their lives, can such changes take place.

Human cultures also have a connection with spirituality of the people. Although spirituality can be defined in various ways,

4 THE POWER OF NARRATIVES

basically people in the West or Middle East view spirituality as way to define meaning of life and relationship with the Supreme Being or Beings. In the East, the concept of relationship with something bigger than human beings or nature differs from the West or Middle East. For example, among most Chinese who are religious, relationship is more with Tian or Heaven, a unique and complicated concept with a lot of varieties. As comparison, in the West, the relationship is with a divine person.

Logically, spirituality might either enable or hamper people to make meaning of life, to change their world view, and to evaluate their narratives about life events. At a glance, even a group of people might create a syncretistic or a pragmatic spi rituality that will not be able to have capability on making meaning of life events especially of changes in life.

Concerning changes, after 1998, in Indonesia, some signi-ficant changes took place. Most of the citizens enjoyed new ex-periences as they started to enter democratic era more fully. The Chinese Indonesians also show some changes in dealing with intimidation based on ethnicity as they began to use aggressive expressions. Further observation shows that after 1998, a large group of Chinese Indonesian Christians took part more significant ly in social actions and humanitarian acts. Few initiatives in political sphere also emerged from the younger members of that group.

The phenomena were opposite to the popular narratives about the Chinese Indonesian and their self-narratives. In most of those narratives they saw themselves as safety-players, conflict or risk-avoider, insecure, exclusive, and apolitical as for seve ral generations they have been suffering from repeated trauma. Others narrated them similarly or even worse.

5The Background

The above questions triggered exploration concerning the power of the inherited narratives the Indonesians live by. Where did the narratives come from? How accurate or inaccurate are they? Concerning the Chinese Indonesian, have there been changes or modification in the narratives or even the psyche of them? How far does spirituality influence negative narratives from the past?

Thus, an empirical research was done. It tried to study the main hypothesis that the Chinese Indonesians had been living with the residue of traumatic experiences in the past. To prove the hypothesis, basically the study will explore the residue of the trauma as expressed in narratives used by the Chinese Indonesians. Also, it explores the narratives used by a group of Chinese Indonesian Christians who has shown significant diffe-rences from other Chinese. At the operational level the study explored whether religious background, and the age groups of the subjects influence the narratives they lived by. For the data gathering, the study relies on written questionnaires and few focus group discussions that follow.

The findings proved that most of subjects still lived with a negative narrative consisted of conflicts. In it, there is a narration that the Chinese Indonesians have been in continuous conflict against the natives, primarily the Muslim since the earliest peri-od of their encounter. A deep insecurity as expressed in the self- narratives shows that the Chinese Indonesians regardless of the age groups and religious background might still suffer from interge neration trauma. If there was a change, it was minimal. The finding beckoned for further exploration.

When exactly did the trauma of the Chinese Indonesian or the negative narratives around them start? Why do most of the modern Chinese Indonesians still harbor the residue of trauma


even after many political and religious leaders have shown significant changes in their outlook? Why are narratives that the Chinese Indonesian who belongs to a Christian community live by still powerful? What factors prevent their spirituality which is God-center narrative influencing or modifying the inherited negative narratives?

This writing consists of two parts. In the first book, after describing the initial socio-psychological research, there will be description of the results of exploration starting from the beginning of the encounter of the Chinese with the people the archipelago until the Forced Cultivation Era (Tanam Paksa). Mainly, it will explore the starting point of the negative narra tives about the Chinese and from the Chinese describing themselves. The possibility of the relationship between spirituality with the power of the inherited narrative will also be discussed at the end of the exploration.

The second book will analyze whether spirituality as God-centered narratives can influence inherited negative narratives. The focus will be on the history of a group of Chinese Indonesian Christians that came into being in the late 19th century which have shown a serious struggle to modify their identity and to make peace with their past.

CHAPTER 1

THE PROBLEM: RESIDUE OF TRAUMA

EXPRESSED IN NARRATIVES

As a nation, Indonesia has been blessed with more than seven-teen thousand islands and an amalgam of sub-cultures. Hundreds of tribes live in their villages or islands. When, they encounter each other, they find out that reality appears to be much more compli-cated than what they used to perceive. Thus, in order to maintain mental coherence, they develop narratives about themselves and others as well.

As a nation, Indonesian also created a self-narrative. First, they are diverse but united. The narrative is summarized in the national motto: Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, unity in diversity. The second self-narrative is that they are a religious nation. As in the essence of religion is spirituality, by having this second self-narrative as such the Indonesians are supposed to seek for meaning of life and relation to a Supreme Being continuously. This national commitment has been formulated by the founding Fathers of the nation and become the first in the Five Pillars of the country’s ideological foundation.


Narratives are neither history nor fantasy. To a certain extent, it is supposed to represent reality and guide people to deal with life, but when the reality has changed, the power of the old or inherited narratives might still bind the people. It happens because narratives live in the context of communities or cul-tures that creates, de velops, and evaluates them. When, the past truly contained repeated traumatic experiences for a community, ethnic or national one, the power of the past narratives rooted in them seems to last forever. In the case of Chinese Indonesians, the phenomenon might be more recognizable as their history as immigrants is complicated.

This writing explores the relation of the residue of trauma within inherited narratives. As narratives contain actors, events, and causal relationship, thus, the study will also encompass self-image, perception of other, and probably reconciliation efforts expressed in inherited narratives.

In the study, the narratives from other Indonesians about the Chinese Indonesians will be compared with the Chinese Indonesian self-narratives about themselves. Thus, it will also link the narra-tives with spirituality.

The trigger of this study begins as an observation on a couple of changes that took place in Indonesia during 2013. The first ob-served change was related to an election process in the capital city of Indonesia –an election for the governor and vice governor po-sitions of Jakarta. One of the candidates, Basuki Tjahja Purnama was running for the vice governor position. Later, after success-fully winning the election, he becomes the Governor of Jakarta.

Before occupying such high prestige position, during the election process, Basuki had to endure cruel verbal attacks from several political and religious leaders who repeatedly pointed

9The Problem: Residue Of Trauma Expressed In Narratives

out that he belongs to an ethnic minority group. Worse still, they stigmatized him as he is a Protestant Christian. His opponents brought racist themes in the process of election and even more after Basuki started his work. One short message that came through cell phones network was as follow: “If you dare to choose a Chinese for our governor, we will make Indonesia explode exactly like in the riot of 1998.”

In short, his enemies intimidated Chinese communities where they thought this leader belong to by threatening them that the large scale and well-concerted mass ethnic violence that have resulted in hundreds of Chinese descendant victims would take place again. In the past, the popular narratives about Chi-nese Indonesians both from others as well as from themselves were clear: they were a self-centered ethnic group, subservient, material istic, conflict avoidant, and only concerned about busi-ness profit through working hard or tenacity. It is in their gene to show such features from the beginning of their encounter with people in this archipelago.

In 1998 and later, responses from some of the Chinese Indo nesians to the intimidation is unusual. One of the respons-es was: “If you dare to create another violence against us as a minority group, this time we will arm ourselves and attack you. As fellow citizen, we will defend our rights. We warn you that racism no longer has a place in this country.” Instead of showing silent responses, the phenomenon evidently was an expression of aggression.

The second observed change that triggered this study is re-lated to a religious community. The community was started in the 19th century by a half-breed Chinese (known as Peranakan Chinese) in Indonesia who decided to become a Christian after


reading a Bible. In the 1950s, they narrated themselves as Indo-nesian church with Indonesian as their mission context. After the riot of 1998, that religious community seriously takes part in helping marginal societies in the outskirt of Indonesia and in supporting disaster relief efforts. Furthermore, the leaders and the members of this Chinese Indonesian Christians showed their willingness to carry the burden of the nation, such as al-leviating poverty, helping natural disaster victims, and received new members from different tribal or ethnic background into their community that later caused intermarriage as they narrate their church as “Indonesian” and no longer maintain her tie with “Chineseness.”

The Problem

1. The observed phenomena that have been described above triggered several questions. Do the popular and negative narra-tives about the Chinese Indonesian, both from themselves as well as from others, that they basically have tendency to avoid open conflict, play safe, and chase only profit-oriented activities come from unchecked perception?

2. If the narratives about the Chinese Indonesians have some truth, where do they originate? Or, has there been a substantial change in the psyche of the Chinese Indonesians and their self-image as trauma victims as expressed in their own past narratives?

3. Has there been any Chinese community in the past that pur posely managed to use their spirituality to modify their narratives similar with the Christian Chinese Indonesian as described above?


To sum up, the study is geared to examine whether the popu-lar narratives are inaccurate, or somewhat false in representing the history. If it is proven that the narratives do represent history, the study tries to find their origin. Then, the possibility of a substantial change among the Chinese Indonesians in their perception of life, others, and themselves as represented in their narratives will also researched.

In other words, the study will focus to answer the question whether the Chinese Indonesian as an ethnic group has gotten over their past trauma or whether the residue of the trauma still influences their perception of others and future. The study will also explore whether the other Indonesians have been able to modify the popular narratives about the Chinese Indonesian that have been inherited for generations.

The Method

A concept was chosen to be used as a framework for the study: Residue of an ethnic minority group trauma as expressed in their narratives. The first focus is on the self-narratives which are the way the Chinese Indonesians perceive themselves for example, as victimized group. The second focus is on the narratives used by the others about the Chinese Indonesians.

The residue of trauma as a concept might help to understand deeper the psyche of the Chinese Indonesians as a distinct ethnic group in Indonesia that has been living in the nation for centuries and now faced changes of the society. Also, the term might shed light to understand the collective memory both the Chinese Indo-nesians and the others expressed in the narratives about history that they live by.


As the method, two simple questions will be posed to Chi-nese Indonesian and other Indonesians whose age ranges from 14 to 50 years old from various religious groups: “Do you think there will be another anti-Chinese riot in the future?” Then, “If there is another riot at national scale, do you think the Chinese Indonesians will become the main target again like in the past?” Those two questions could point out to the residue of trauma if it still exists in form of perception of future and their role either as victims or others.

The subjects of the study are 360 respondents from 6 cities in Indonesia. They are Muslim Chinese, Protestant Chinese, Catholic, and other Chinese Indonesians who embraced tradi-tional Chinese religions or beliefs. They are selected by cluster and availability.

After the results are analyzed, 5 focus discussions would be held with participants taken randomly from the questionnaire respondents. In the process, they are encouraged to tell stories.

The Initial Findings

First, in general, the result of the study shows that 326 respon-dents that belong to the Chinese Indonesian group, including members of the Chinese Indonesian Christians who significantly have taken part in humanitarian action in the society still harbor the residue of the trauma.

Second, only the Chinese Indonesian Catholic respondents (24 persons) have shown a more optimistic view of the possible future of the Chinese Indonesians. They stated that majority of the Indonesian have gradually become well informed and more


intellectuals. They also narrated that the so-called indigenous Indonesians will no longer be susceptible to mass-propaganda or political manipulation as in the past.

Furthermore, according to the Chinese Indonesian Catholic respondents, the economic gaps between the Chinese Indonesians and the others have substantially narrowed down. Thus, wide-spread jealousy should no longer have any ground to exist.

However, most of other Chinese Indonesian respondents, including the Chinese Indonesians Muslim (19 respondents) and the Christians still have a strong negative narrative of the possible future riots in which they will become the main target due to their ethnic background. One of the reasons that they use as the basis of their negative narratives is what they perceived as the existing cultural and historical hostility between the majority and the Chi-nese descendants that have been there for centuries. They believe that the narrative about the issue really represent reality.

Fourth, during several in-depth interviews with some Chi-nese Indonesian leaders of Christian groups as the follow-up of the study, they still narrated the trauma which their parents and they had experienced. They pointed out to the last tragedy that took place in 1998, meaning 15 years ago. A couple of them pointed to a book with a provocative title “Tired of Being a Non-Indigenous” about such trauma.1

Fifth, even teenagers who have been born after 1998 and thus have never experienced any large scale anti-Chinese violence be-lieve that the Chinese descendant and the majority cannot easily get along and will always be in conflict due to combinations of

1Alfian Hamzah, ed. Kapok Jadi Non Pri: Warga Tionghoa Mencari Keadilan (Tired of Being A Non-Indigenous: Chinese Citizens Search for Justice” Band-ung: Penerbit Zaman Wacana Mulia, 1988


various differences, primarily related to religious, economic, and cultural factors.

Six, focus groups sessions of other Indonesians yield result that the other Indonesians (non-Chinese) might have not shown a mo-dified narrative about the Chinese Indonesian, but somehow have distinguished the Chinese Indonesian with those who live in China.

Thus, it is difficult not to conclude that the negative narratives are still powerful. For the Chinese Indonesia, the residue of ethnic trauma is still alive in the psyche of most of them. Furthermore, the spirituality of the Chinese Indonesians whatever religious group they belong to seems might not have much in fluence on their inherited narratives.

Discussion of the Findings

In October 2014, the finding was then presented in Hebei Uni-versity, China during an international seminar on violence. The participants of the Conference appreciated and affirmed the find-ings. Yet, despite the empirical result of that study and acceptance in the wider scholar community, other questions have not been addressed: where do the narratives originate? Why do the self-narratives of the Indonesians as a religious nation seem unable to modify the inherited narratives?

A more in-depth historical and qualitative approach and wider range of respondents seems to be needed to discover the root of such a persistently gloomy outlook of life of the Chinese Indonesian expressed in their narratives and from others to them. With such approach, the influence of the spirituality could be studied alongside.

CHAPTER 2

REASONS FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION

Before embarking to the sequel of the previous study on the Chi-nese Indonesians, as a comparison, exploration on the view of the majority or non–Chinese Indonesians toward this issue was conducted again. Their narratives about the Chinese Indonesian become the focus of the exploration.

It is not uncommon that when one’s talk about the Chi-nese Indonesian with the non-Chinese, even the well-educated members of middle-class Indonesians use this narrative, “They are exclusive or asocial… They feel that they are more supe-rior than the rest of the society. They do not trust us, yet we have to admit that they are also high-achievers in business.” It is evident that the positive narrative laced with admiration and negative narratives intertwined when one talks about the Chinese Indonesian.

To compare with the above finding, a study was done to gain insight about the self-concept of the Chinese Indonesian


as a group and their perception toward others as appear in the narrative they used. Questionnaires were sent to the Chinese Indo nesian second year college students (60 participants) in Sura-baya concerning their perception of others and group self-image. The result shows that they used a popular believe expressed in their narratives that the Chinese Indonesian have more superior-ity in the business world due to cultural traits. Their superiority complex and distrust toward the natives is quite apparent in the narratives. Such superiority complex at the one hand and distrust or negative view about other people on the other hand logically could bring about conflict.

It can logically be summed up that, those two narratives, from the Chinese Indonesian toward the other groups and vice versa have been strengthening the mutual prejudice and distrust which will be expressed in communication and social relation.

One possible cause is that for a long time since the 19th century, Western writers or scholars tend to use narratives that describe the Chinese and the Indonesian never coexist harmoni-ously. They pointed out that the cause of the disharmony was the ruthless competition in the economic life. They often narrated the Chinese Indonesian as greedy and smart intermediaries between the VOC or later between the Dutch colonial govern-ment with the natives from the moment when they encountered each other.

Such narratives were challenged by a writing of Phoa Liong Gie, a well-known lawyer and later a national leader of Chung Hoa Hui in Indonesia 1930. In his book, Phoa in 1936 write that, “we are inclined to conclude that the crucial role of the Chinese played before the arrival of the Dutch was as im-porters of Chinese handicrafts and exporters of products of

17Reasons For Further Exploration

the Indies.”15 Thus, Phoa proved that the Chinese were mostly engaged in wholesale business even before the colonial era. It means that originally the Chinese merchants were com-petitors of the Dutch. Then he added, “… with the arrival of the Dutch… the Chinese became the link in pretty trade in the Indies.16 Only, later in the 17th and 18th century, the Dutch managed to force Chinese to become collaborators and interme-diaries as they served as revenue farming collectors and opium merchants.

Modern Chinese Indonesian scholars such as Ong Hok Ham supported the findings of Phoa. He started a new narrative that the Chinese formerly functioned as the partner of Dutch while they served as distributors for them. Later, they also became the victims of the Dutch discriminatory regulations. (Ong, 2008)17 To be able to survive especially in the late 19th century, the Chinese merchants tried to collaborate with the Dutch as they had been collaborating with the kings or other rulers in order to maintain their trading activities as the Armenian traders or as others also did somewhere else. Thus, it is evidently inaccurate to view that the Chinese traders were the collaborators or intermediaries that served the Dutch agenda from the beginning. At least as Ong Hok Ham stated that, the Chinese were not the willing collaborators.

Yet, the narratives had become an ammunition for the in-digenous rulers at the 19th century to develop a distrust or hostility

15 Phoa liong gie, The Changing Economic Position of the Chinese in the Neth-erland India, in Chinese Economic Activities in Netherland India, Selected Translations from the Ducth, by M. R. Fernando, David Bulbeck Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Sept. 1993), pp. 406-408 16 ibid 17 Ong Hok Ham, Anti Cina, Kapitalisme Cina dan Gerakan Cina: Sejarah Etnis Cina di Indonesia, Depok: Komunitas Bambu, 2008, pp. 2-3


against them. The natives viewed that the Chinese did not want to oppose or develop a critical attitude to the oppressive Dutch for the sake of their business interest. The hostility became worse as most Indonesians were not able to distinguish different groups or tribes among the Chinese Indonesian. For them, the Chinese Indonesian is one homogenous ethnic group. They miss a fact that, the Chinese who came in the ancient time and in the 19th century or even later, were not similar with their contemporaries.

In the context of so much prejudice and inaccuracies as expressed in the narratives that continued to live even after the Republic Indonesia came into being, it is then understandable that only after a more democratic era of Indonesia in 1998 be-gan, some scholars and writers or political leaders dared to expose narratives about the forgotten role of the Chinese.

For example, only in the last decade scholars began to admit the significant and decisive role of the Chinese Muslims in spread-ing Islam in Indonesia together with traders from Gujarat and Arab peninsula. Before that era, for decades, the relationship between Islam and Chinese was once an unspoken topic in Indonesia. Com-mon folks easily adopted narratives that the Muslims developed a deep-rooted distrust to the Chinese and vice versa due to busi-ness competition since their first encounter—a thoroughly inac-curate narrative. Hardly any Indonesian historian mentioned that China and Arab had a close and friendly relationship during the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907). Neither had people ever heard or read that during the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644) that followed the Yuan-Mongol Empire, the appreciation of the Emperor toward the Muslim Chinese or foreigners was very significant. Historical evidences were indisputable that some leaders of the inner circle in the Ming palace were devout and admirable Muslim.

19Reasons For Further Exploration

Thus, the result of such findings brought more questions and served as a foundation to embark to a more qualitative and deeper study. Not all questions could be answered, but at least they will be listed for future researchers.18 The most important question is concerning the origin of the first negative narrative.

18 For example, after reading several books of the pre-colonial era, most books mentioned that the trading motives were the main drivers of the Chinese arrival in the archipelago. Between the 9th till 12th century how much did their religious motives also play roles in the relationship? For long time, the first Chinese Christians were those who live in Java while the first Catholic Chinese lived in Bengkulu. Yet, after the arrival of the European, was there any Chinese in Batavia who became slaves and converted to Christian faith between the 16th till 18th century? If there was, in what way their outlook of live differed from the Chinese Indonesian today?

Which group was the more dominant in social life of Batavia in the 16th till 18th century? Did the slaves or the Chinese immigrants play more dominant roles during that time in building the city?

Why did the Dutch official of VOC accuse the Chinese as dishonest and lack of integrity while most of employees of VOC were known as corrupted? Does corruption that is widespread in this nation today have roots in the old time VOC and in the feudalistic lifestyle of the rulers both natives as well as the Dutch?

After some of the Chinese became Christians in the late 19th century, did their undergo changes in their trading conduct?

Did they have a distinctive outlook of life? How about the early Muslim Chi-nese, how much did their faith influence their business conduct and their world view?

CHAPTER 3

HYPOTHESES AND REASON FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION

To find answer to the questions described in Chapter 2, this study will trace back the history of the Chinese and the ancestors of the Indonesian to the earliest periods and to uncover forgotten events or facts, starting with the time when the Chinese came. The exploration will also trace the origin of the negative narra-tives as the representative of reality, effort to find coherence, and give meanings of the users. Lastly, the study will delve into the spirituality of the Chinese Indonesians in relation to its influ-ence on the narratives in comparison to the spirituality of the Java nese who have been through intensive encounters with them, the Dutch, and the Moslem.

Hypotheses

Several Hypotheses will be listed as the foci of the study1. Between the first arrival of the Chinese until the arrival of


the Colonial Europeans, contrary to popular narratives. there was no narrative of hostility or open conflict between the local rulers or Islamic power and the Chinese

2. During the arrival of the Muslims the 16th century, possibly some narratives existed about real positive interactions between the Chinese with the Javanese and Islam

3. In the early era of the VOC, the narrative that the Chinese mainly played the role as the middle party in all aspects of economic life as they have been playing the roles of traders for ages has its origin.

4. The massacre of the Chinese immigrants called the Angke Mas-sacre was the first incident that was supposed to cause trauma and the negative narrative from the Chinese about the Dutch.

5. The worst negative narratives about the Chinese from the Chinese toward the local were developed during the Dipone-goro war and the Forced Cultivation era. Since then, the Chinese were narrated as greedy, inconsiderate, materialistic, oppressive, and uncivilized pagans. Meanwhile the Chinese developed a self-narrative that they are hardworking, cautious, agile, smart, and always become victims when the new govern-ment adopts new policy. They also developed negative narra-tives toward the natives, especially the Javanese as “lazy, do not practice moral obligation to maintain loyalty and paying moral debts, superstitious, and untrustworthy.”

6. The spirituality of the most of Chinese was related to syncretism with various roots in Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and local beliefs. It had been blended completely with the Chinese culture. The belief or spirituality emphasized on human moral and cos-mic obligation, thus looked down on those they narrated as lack of such virtue. Thus, as such spirituality becomes ethnocentric

23Hypotheses and reason for further exploration

and pragmatic, it lacks openness to evaluate their own narratives toward others who were different.

7. The Calvinist-based spirituality of the most Dutch colonials as expressed in their narratives as the chosen people served as a driving force to achieve technological superiority, cultural domination, and material possession.

8. The local beliefs and spirituality, especially the Javanese were more mystical, harmonious, dualistic in their view of life and as expressed in their narrative, thus they ignored suffering, avoided conflicts, and did not pursue material achievements. Such features made the Dutch and Chinese have open space to dominate the local culture.

9. When the local spirituality blended with the Islamic spiritual-ity, they managed to modify their narratives by including the Dutch and the Chinese as pagans.

The Expected Contribution of the Study

First, the intention to embark on this study is caused by the fea-tures of Indonesia as a nation: the rich culture, the friendliness, and the generosity it offers. This nation might become a model in the world as its cultural diversity, and the variety of faith or beliefs system that color this country is so unique. Along with this conviction, such future role cannot be discovered and played effectively unless most of its citizens or social groups dare to evaluate most of the narratives they live by. Another way to say, they might need to make peace with their past and grow over their past prejudice. The nation will be able to be a significant player in the modern world if they can develop a narrative of the


historical facts with what Karl Popper names as verisimilitude or “truthlikeness.”6

Thus, if in the past, the nation has created a negative narrative of their history and as the result, mutual bitterness that existed between ethnic groups is still in power, today they need to deal with it and develop a new narrative. Mental and existential avoidance to tackle the past as a nation is not the right answer for a complicated future. Undergoing such inner reconciliation process will shed light to the past and future. They can begin by honestly evaluate their narratives and uncover their best potentials that might still be buried. Such honesty can be obtained only with their spirituality as the source as spirituality is also a narrative, but not a human-centered one. This conviction is related both to the Chinese Indonesians as well as to other groups in this country.

Second, there have been many studies on Chinese minority (a term that is skewed) or other ethnic groups that suffer from trauma and maintain their negative narratives. One can study the Rohingya, the Karen, modern Jewish communities, Aborigi-nes, and others. Yet, the Chinese Indonesians are unique in their unspoken but significant roles in the nation due to unusual poten-tials and the experience they have in regional and global context especially in the business arena for generations.

Together with other Indonesians, they can do so if they discover an inclusive or universal spiritual insight that enables them to make peace with the residue of trauma or their past and name their fears. Such achievement will exist if all of them dare to embark on a spiritual journey that needs courage, honesty, and openness.

6 See: Karl Popper, London: Conjectures and Refutation: The Growth of Scien-tific Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963

CHAPTER 4

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION AND THE EXPLORATION

METHOD

As has been stated before, residue of trauma as a concept will be used as the frame of the exploration. The residue will be found by investigating the narratives and their development from one era to another beginning with the first arrival of the Chinese in Indonesia.

Study of the Residue of Trauma

The term “trauma” points to an event that is unexpected, un-predictable, and shocking. Furthermore, the event is a sudden, overwhelming that may cause deep physical and psychological wounds. Trauma has potentials to supersede a person’s ability to cope and persevere in the face of overwhelming circumstances. The negative influence of trauma on individuals has been widely


documented in the field of psychology, sociology, and medicine.7

Herman states, “Trauma is that which overwhelms the ordi-nary systems of care that gives one a sense of control, connec-tion and meaning.”8 Concerning the characteristics of trauma, McCann and Pearlman stated,9 “An experience is traumatic if it is: (1) sudden, unexpected, or non-normative; (2) exceeds the individual’s perceived ability to meet its demands, and (3) disrupts the individual’s frame of reference and other central psycho lo-gical needs and related schemas.”

One of the consequences of trauma relates to one’s capabil-ity to mobilize intellectual and personal resources to effectively solve problems. Trauma will hamper one’s capability. Trauma also causes the decrease of cognitive ability to appraise the situation and respond with positive coping skills to meet the im-mediate demands of the situation. One of cognitive responses to trauma may include difficulty in cognitive processing such as denial or cognitive distortions. Such impacts of trauma could be processed, but the residue might still exist. To understand and gauge it, we can listen to the narratives used by those with traumatic experience,

When a group of individuals of the same ethnic group expe-rienced repeated trauma, as the consequence, they created narra-tives to deal with the painful incidents. Such trauma resides in ethnic memory and will be transmitted to the next generation as expressed in their negative narratives about life and their own

7 Kay Newberry Brooks, The Lived Experience of Posttraumatic Growth and the Influence of Spirituality, a Doctoral Dissertation, Argosy University, March 20128 J. Herman, Trauma and Recovery, New York, NY: Basic Books, 1977, p.33 9 T.L. McCann and L.A Perlman, Psychological trauma and the adult survivor. New York, NY: Brunner Muzel, 1990, p. 10.

27Theoretical Foundation And The Exploration Method

role. Most of time, they narrate themselves as powerless vic-tims. This writing defines the residue of trauma in such under-standing.

The residue of trauma can be identified by exploring the trauma’s victim capability to access their present situation and perceive their future. The group’s perception of the future can be heard from the narratives they use, particularly, how much they view the possibility of re-occurrence of the traumatic events.

Related to shocking experiences and trauma, an article by Tedeschi and Calhoun is very insightful. Those researchers found that response of an individual to trauma is based on his or her perceptions, cognitions, and affective processing, which includes the need to create meaning and construct personal narratives.10 Thus, in this case, spirituality will be a relevant issue in the process of meaning creation or personal narrative reconstruction.

Thus, trauma is triggered by violence and sense of power-lessness. Yet, over the years, if someone or a group of people admit that its residue still lingers, the process toward inner recon-ciliation could take place.

Study of Narratives

From philosophical studies, when discussing narratives, no other scholar is more influential and contributive than Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005). Ricoeur acknowledges his indebtedness in studying metaphor and narratives to Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. Aristotelian teleology pervades Ricoeur’s textual hermeneutics

10 RG. Tedeschi and L.G. Calhoun, Time of Change? The Spiritual Chal-lenges of Bereavement and Loss. Omega, 2006, 53,105-116.


and is most obvious in his adoption of a narrative approach. His foci of works are into the question concerning “who am I” and “how should I live?”

For Ricoeur, human beings exist in relation to river of time which elements are the past, present, and future. It is natural, cos-mological, or universal. In plain language, two factors determine human life. First, there is time in which human live in the past, present, and future. Second, there is also, human perception of the past, present, and future which play decisive role in life. Ricoeur calls it subjective experience of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Combining those two, human can create narratives. Narrative has the possibility of re-descripting the past and to offer us the possibility of re-imagining and reconstructing a future inspired by hope. Narratives even give potentials for human beings to deal with “if” future and define their identity.

From theological study, Coyle states that “All cultures use story as a way to make sense of life experiences.”11 It means that, while facing reality, people often need narratives in order to make sense of their experiences, especially the traumatic ones. More precisely, narratives are a way to create coherence and make meaning of their perceived reality. Humans use narratives as a way of reconstructing reality to deal with their present situation or even future. Therefore, we can describe the relation between reality, narratives and behavior. Even more, humans can define who they are in life through depicting themselves as the actors in the narratives.

11 Suzanne M. Coyle, Uncovering Spiritual Narratives: Using Story in Pastoral Care and Ministry, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2014


That understanding concurs with the concept Ricoeur. In relation to the question “Who am I?”, Ricoeur acknowledges a long-standing debt to Marcel and Heidegger, and to a lesser extent to Merleau-Ponty. In addressing the question “who am I?” Ricoeur sets out first to understand the nature of selfhood – to understand the being whose nature it is to enquire into itself.

In the study of narratology, it is stated that the human brain is constructed in such a way that it captures many complex rela-tionships in the form of narrative structures, metaphors, or analo-gies.12 Human may also conceive of each experience as a part of journey constituted by narration. “In reconstructing our own lives as stories, we like to emphasize how particular occurrences have brought about and influenced subsequent events. Life is described as a goal-directed chain of events. Despites numerous obstacles and thanks to certain opportunities, it has led to the presence which may yet have further unpredictable turns and unexpected developments in store for us.”13

It is evident that, the role of narrative is extremely powerful. A social or ethnic homogenous group might easily replace pure logical analysis with narratives which do not have reality as their foundation as its members strengthen each other’s perception. The narratives only help them to simplify complicated reality. It is also evident that narratives could live much longer than the people who have created it, especially those who are related to traumatic events in the past.

12 Donald E. Polkinghorne, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences, New York: State University of New York Press, 198813 Monika Fludernik, An Introduction to Narratology: 1st. edition, Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis, Inc., 2009


Spirituality and Religiosity

Discourses and effort to define spirituality have come a long way and across many disciplines as written by Liu and Robertson in 2011. Along the way, several efforts were done to distinguish spirituality from religiosity and other concepts like meaning in life, or paranormal beliefs. Even before the first decade of the 21th century was over, at least from psychological studies, McDonald and Friedman listed around 100 measurements of spirituality and related concepts were invented.

First, to define spirituality, scholars in psychology (such as. Saucier and Skrzypinska, social services (as Hodge), and religion (among others Hall and Edwards) tried to separate differences and similarities between the concepts of spirituality and religios-ity, although those terms are related and overlaps.

Spirituality derived from the Latin word “spiritus” which means “breathing or Spirit” as written in Merriam-Webster-dic-tionary. According to Michael Downey, for some, spirituality is a construct to describe the depth dimension of human existence. Joan Wolski Conn defines spirituality as the capacity for self-transcendence. Also, other scholars, such as Elkins or Zinnbauer use the term to point out to an overall individual experience of the Transcendent. More precisely, spirituality is concerned with a search for a higher power and meaning of life, which is not bound to any religious institution or tradition. Earlier, John Macquairre in his popular book “Paths in Spirituality mentions that spirituality is related to the concern of becoming a person in the fullest sense.”

Yet, spiritually is an umbrella term that is complex and multi-dimensional. Sandra Schneiders is one of the unique scholars who points out that spirituality is a way of consciously integrate one’s


life through self-transcending knowledge, freedom, and love in light of the highest values perceived and pursued. Thus, the key dimension of spirituality for her is integration, conscious effort, and values, which means that spirituality might or might not have any reference to God explicitly.

Spirituality begins as a rather private, informal, personal, less authoritarian, nondenominational, and emotionally oriented endeavor. Emmons, as cited by Csikszentmihalyi, stated that spirituality adds meaning “to personal goals and thus, elevating the significance of a person’s experience.” Spirituality also offers the experience of specific “spiritual emotions”, for example, awe, reverence, and wonder (among others). Thus, scholars such as Hodge, or Roof stated, one can derive a motivational and subjec-tive experiential component from spiritual endeavors.

Elkins mentioned that the subjective experience of spiritual-ity has been described as end products that comes about through the awareness of the infinite or a transcendent dimension. There are nine components of spirituality that include: the Transcendent Dimension (i.e. experiencing spirituality), Meaning and Purpose in Life, Mission in Life (i.e. living for a cause), Sacredness of Life, Material Values (i.e. belief that there is more than material satisfaction), Altruism, (i.e. compassion), Idealism (i.e. positive view about life and humankind), Awareness of the Tragic (i.e. be-lief that from suffering comes growth), and Fruits of Spirituality (i.e. how spirituality affects one’s own life and relationship with others). Individuals differ in their propensity of these values, which in turn influences their subjective experience they derive from their spiritual orientation.

To shed light to the complexity of the concept spirituality, Emmons categorizes spirituality on three levels. That is spirituality


as a personality trait, spirituality embedded in individual’s inten-tions and goals to achieve, that is really a motivational driving force to find meaning in one’s existence, and spirituality as expressed in specific emotions.

Then, how does this writing define beliefs, spirituality, reli-gion, and their interrelationship? The term “religion” stems from the Latin word “religio” which means “to bind”, emphasizing the very community focused nature of the concept. As written in the work of Hyman and Handal, religion mainly describes a concept that is formal, organized, observable, dogmatic, empha-sizing rituals, worship, and community traditions around a cer-tain supernatural power or Supreme Being. Many scholars agree that religiosity is clearly associated with an institution and the parti cipation in a specific belief system or doctrine.

This writing follows the views of spirituality as “spontaneous and universal sense of belonging to the infinite” and religiosity taking as part in “a faith community rooted in spiritual traditions that seeks to enhance morality and the search for the sacred” as writ-ten by Csikszentmihalyi. Also, in relation to spirituality, religion is a specific or more narrowly defined component of spirituality. Thus, a person can be spiritual while not religious, but not the other way around. To explain the above statement, views of Friedrich von Hugel in the 19th century can shed light. He states that human beings are intrinsically religious. Religion has various dimensions, among others, institutional, intellectual, and mystical. Those three dimensions need to be interrelated or cross-pollinated. Therefore, spirituality is one of the core dimensions of religion.

In the West, especially in Christian faith context, according to Emmons, spirituality is derived from the Latin word spiritus. The word means “breath or the animating or vital principle of


a person”. More abstractly, Rolheiser says that we and the whole universe are moment by moment actively breathed into existence and held by God. A scholar, Briskin introduces the Hebrew terms ruach and nephesh, describing the life-giving process through which ‘breath of life’ was literally breathed into the ‘dust of the ground’ or adamah (compare Adam in this regard). Nephesh then refers to a ‘living soul’ or a human being animated by breath.

Parallel to the opinion of Briskin that linking of soul, spirit-uality and meaningfulness, Seifert suggests that spirituality has emerged as important in meaning studies. The cause is ‘the inter-nal struggles in the search for meaning’. Furthermore, Harris and Purrone confirm this and add a relational dimension to spirituality.

Louw also states soul as an existential relational matter. In this regard he posits that “we are our souls and that we reveal who we are through our attitude within our relational networks, through the way in which we interpret our lives as being mean-ingful”.

In short, this writing mainly adopts a concept that spirituality is defined as a construct that relates to human conscious effort to find meaning or integration with experience or reality where others interrelate with him or her.

Louw mentioned that in the Western tradition, the meaning is created as human in their existence has the soul with capacity to embrace the transcendental dimension of life that enables the person to relate with experience, or life, and others in light of God’s existence. In the Eastern tradition including in the Chinese or Hindu tradition, the transcendental dimension of life is defined differently as described later.

Further this writing also adopts the concept of Lips-Wiers-ma who links spirituality and the search for meaning in life even


in their ‘definition’ of themselves. Continuing the thought of Vaill she then proceeds to state that spirituality is intimately involved in individuals’ fundamental perceptions about ‘who they are, what they are doing, the contributions they are making.’ Therefore, spirituality and identity are closely related. This is confirmed by Thomas West who associates this spiritual identity with particular meanings.

Another expert, Canale also places spirituality in a meaning context. Primarily, by using a relational approach, he suggested that spirituality is a search for connection with one’s self and what he refers to as ‘a core reality’. This is a real quest for value and meaning in life. In Christian context, the understanding of this description of spirituality would position God - as Father, Son and Spirit - as ‘core reality’ that defines the believers’ self-identity.

In practical term, Michael White’s conversation with Hoyt and Combs regarding spirituality shows that three versions of spirituality, namely immanent spirituality, ascendant spiritual-ity, and immanent-ascendant spirituality are distinguishable. As-cendant spirituality are forms of spirituality which are ‘achieved at planes that are imagined at an altitude above everyday life’. This conforms to an understanding of spirituality as concerned with the Divine, the Sacred. White defines immanent forms of spirit uality as a process of reflecting on one’s true self, who one really is. Immanent-ascending spirituality combines elements of the first two forms of spiritualities, describing a relationship both with something which is bigger than oneself and with oneself as a relational being. Thus, spirituality is being in touch with or having an experience of a soul or the Divine that is deep within oneself and that is manifest through one’s relationship with a god or goddess who is transcendent. (p. 36). The three forms


of spirituality proceeds to ‘spiritualities of the surface’. This is a material spirituality which he relates to people’s ‘identity projects’.

Concerning spirituality, relation, trauma, and narratives, Smith outlines that trauma can be a catalyst or a detriment to post trau-matic growth. She explains that trauma and spirituality are in-teracting domains as a person attempts recovery from trauma. Trauma affects spirituality, and spirituality can shape or direct the journey through trauma. Decker stated poignantly that the result of a traumatic experience will increase the search for a more meaningful view of existence, which is spiritual development. He sees spiritual development as a necessary result of trauma. Various trauma therapists use the narratives of the trauma victims as a method to gain insight about the psyche of the trauma victims and their spirituality.

To sum up, the above theoretical discussions and with various concepts that are available make it possible to link the theological and philosophical discourses on spirituality with the discussion of practical and meaningful living, in which concepts such as narra-tives and residue of trauma could be thoroughly analyzed.

If both narratives as well as spirituality serves as human methods to reconstruct reality, to find meaning, to develop iden-tity, and to understand others, how do they differ from each other?

Following the Greco-Roman concepts, spirituality is in-deed a narrative, but this narrative is centered-on-God. Then, theology is also a narrative on spiritual experience with God at its center, however this narrative meets scientific or logical crite-ria. Religion is the system where spirituality and theology are maintained. As a narrative, spirituality has a unique feature. It has an unusual power as it is centered on God. It also depicts that God is the One who writes the narratives. God also plays as


the actor in the narratives together with human beings. Further-more, God enables human as one of the actors in the narrative to rewrite the scripts. It means that human can redefine the role of the actors in the narrative either as the victims or the perpetrator, the causal relation between events, the meanings, and the future. In short, God can help humans to have a more holistic narrative about their past, presence, and future, including to mod-ify narratives of trauma and the residue of trauma they endure.

Such concept shows quite a different cosmology and theology compared to the one in Chinese or Hindu spirituality.

A. The Spirituality or beliefs and Self-narrative of the Chinese:There are at least three beliefs, traditions, and philosophies that influenced the folk spirituality of the Chinese related to the topics above.

1. The first one is Taoism which emerged in the 6th century BC. Taoism refers both to the philosophies of some Chinese scholars and to certain practices including alchemy in the search of elixir vitae, hygienic breathing and meditation, faith-healing, and magic. Tao means the way. Further, it means the way toward ultimate reality. Tao is also the ultimate sources of all things and events. a. The principle of Wu wi in Taoism teaches people to listen

to the nature and go beyond the human realm or our human existence. It is the main concept of Tao that teaches human to live naturally with the flow of life. By living naturally, Therefore, human observes nature and could attain wisdom of life from such action. Human can attain wisdom of life by


not controlling, forcing, or changing life, but simply by be-ing there. People who can do so can have a mind that is non-conceptual or human oriented. Thus, the existence is geared toward being with the nature.

b. As the consequence of such teaching, the Chinese narrate the assertiveness of human as an interference with the flow of Tao. Thus, human beings’ main role are the mediators between heaven and earth. The function of the mediators is to enhance others and live with them through self-emptying and self-sacrifice. Such function should be done spontaneously.

c. Taoism also teaches about yin and yang – a dualistic force that complements each other in the universe. Thus, good and evil are two sides of reality that complements to each other. Evil mostly comes from human will and interference with the flow of Tao. With such teachings, the Chinese developed several narratives about themselves and others.

2. The second teaching or belief, philosophy or spirituality root of the Chinese came from Confucianism. Confucianism is not. a religion, although it is sometimes mistaken for one. It is a body of philosophical teachings about human beings, their values, their institutions, and so on or about, simply, a way of life in this, but not the next, world.

Most Confucian teachings aimed at the achievement of ping. Ping denotes peace, harmony, evenness, equality, fairness, and the like. To achieve ping, Confucianism teaches the Great Ways as follow:1. investigation of things;2. extension of knowledge;


3. sincerity of thoughts; 4. rectification of the heart; 5. cultivation of the person; 6. regulation of the family;7. government of the state; and then 8. Ping is the final or ultimate achievement.

The eight are meant to be accomplishable in succession. Each one is prerequisite to and preparatory for the next. Each person should pursue ping as the ultimate and virtuous goals through those ways. A “world” of ping is the environment where the Great Way and harmony is evident.

The word “world” or tienhsia is difficult to interpret. The earlier teachings might refer it to the concept of a kingdom with the Caesar as the mediator between Heaven and Earth. Later teachings might have a broader understanding of tienhsia which means a world community.

It is evident that from Taoism and Confucianism, the role of human beings as a responsible being is quite signifi-cant in Chinese spirituality. Both are humanistic and have an optimistic anthropology or teaching about human nature. In Confucianism, the role of human to create and maintain order, moral and social ones, is very apparent. An ideal person is the sage who can bring about social order and good government. It is also apparent that both roots did not drive the Chinese toward theistic spirituality.

3. The third teaching that influenced the Chinese is Buddhism. Buddhism is clearly a religion that originated from outside the Chinese culture. In India, Buddhism focussed more into inner


life of a person, primarily to control his or her awareness. Most Buddhist traditions share the goal of overcoming suffering and the cycle of death and rebirth, either by the attainment of Nirvana or through the path of Buddhahood.

There are Four Truths as the basic teachings of Buddhism. a. humans crave and cling to impermanent states and things,

which is dukkha, a suffering, a state, or condition that is “incapable of satisfying” and painful.

b. This tendency causes humans being caught in saṃsāra (misery) or the endless cycle of repeated rebirth, dukkha and dying again.

c. There is a way to free ourselves from this endless cycle and enter the state of nirvana.

d. Human can achieve such nirvana by disengage themselves from the impermanent states and things, thus can show a good ethics, meditation, and wisdom.

Compared to the Taoism and Confucianism, Buddhism views life and reality as impermanent. The goal of life is to achieve awareness, enlightenment, bliss, serenity, emptiness, detach-ment, and non-self. Buddhism also teaches humans to enter a condition without detachment from sensory desires, discursive thoughts, loose feelings of raptures, or feeling of pleasure and pain. Evidently, it teaches people to deny the worldly or material things.

As Buddhism entered China from India, there was syncretism. Buddha became a venerated divine. Buddhism’s moral teachings attracted some from the upper classes who had been Confucian–some of whom found a different meaning


in Buddhism’s reincarnation than did the poor: they believed that those who suffered a low station in life did so because of misdeeds in their former life.

Soon, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism added with local folk beliefs became a unique syncretism. It is panthe-istic, ancestor worship, mysticism, moralism, and dualistic. With such syncretism, it is complicated for simple lay persons to grasp. It ends up the Chinese folks lived with many rituals to make sure their life run smoothly with a very pragmatic and realistic view of life. Therefore, it might be come a spiri-tuality that was unable to influence human daily life and their narratives.

B. The Hindu spiritualityThe root of many spiritual life of the tribes in the archipelago, especially the Javanese is the Hindu spirituality. Hinduism be-lieves in an ultimate reality called Brahman which is the source of all living things in this universe. Brahman is the ground of all reality and existence. In Hindu concept, Brahman is uncreated, external, infinite and all-embracing. It is the ultimate cause and goal of all that exists. It is One and it is All.

Then, Hinduism believes that all beings emanate from Brahman; all beings will also return to the same source which is Brahman. Thus, Brahman is in all things and it is the essence of true Self (atman) of all beings.

With such spiritual view, many Indonesian, especially the largest tribe, the Javanese perceived life as a journey of their spirit to get reunited to the Supreme Spirit, a belief which might originate in Hindu view that human spirits are the emanation of the Ultimate Being. Thus, the aim of life is to unite with the One.


The phrase that they used is: Manunggaling kawula gusti (getting united to the Lord).

Concerning meaning of reality, life is just a big wheel where humans should adjust themselves when the wheel is bringing them upward or downward. Life is also dualistic, the outer layer and the inner life. Only the wise ones can recognize its essence and connect themselves to Atman, the Supreme Spirit.

The above description points out that, the influence between the different spiritualities (of the Chinese, the Javanese as the largest Indonesian tribe, and the Christian) toward the narra-tives that each adherents live by predictably will show significant differences.

The Method

The study will explore the historical records on the efforts of the Indonesians including the Chinese Indonesians and the Chinese Indonesian Christians to make meaning of their lives, their past trauma, and use their God-centered narratives to make a new frame and story as expressed in their popular narratives.

The exploration will divide the history of the encounter between the Chinese Indonesian as an ethnic group and the other Indonesian into thirteen eras. In each era, the narratives related to the Chinese will be explored and analyzed1. The pre-colonial era: from the first arrival of the Chinese in the

archipelago of Indonesia till the fourth wave of the Chinese immigrants

2. The arrival of the European merchants


3. The Era of the Pioneers in Batavia or the era of VOC and Dutch Colonial Government

4. The VOC era in 18th century5. Diponegoro War of the 19th century6. The Era of Forced Cultivation7. The Spread of the Worse Narratives: The Transition between

the 19th and 20th century

In the effort to explore the narratives, their origin and the development, focus will be on how the narratives relate to the self-image, views about others, and how they define the meaning of life or the Supreme Being.

Part Two:THE EXPLORATION AND ITS RESULTS

CHAPTER 5

PRE-COLONIAL ERA: THE ARRIVAL OF THE CHINESE

The earliest arrival of the Chinese in the archipelago

The earliest date of the coming of the Chinese from mainland China to the archipelago which at this present time known as Indonesia has taken placed more than two thousand years ago.14 Paul Pelliot, a Sinologist and Orientalist from France who trans-lated many antique Chinese travel records concluded that during the Han dynasty (206 B.C), there was already an ongoing trade between China, Malaya peninsula, and some islands in the archi-pelago which is now Indonesia.15 As has been widely known, they

14 From this point onward, the term “people of the Archipelago” will be used15 Paul Pelliot, “Le Fou-nan,” Bulletin de 1 Ecole Franrqaise d. ’Extreme-Orient.3 (Hanoi, 1903), p. 303; also see: statement of Darini, professor of History and Education of the Jogjakarta National University, in Ririn Darini, NasionalismeEtnisTionghoa Di Indonesia, 1940-1945 (Nationalism of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia 1900-1945), unpublished paper. See: Mitos Islam Ma suk ke Nusantara Abad ke-13 (The myth that Islam entered Nusantara in the 13thCentury), http://moefarticles.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/mitos-islam-masuk-ke-nusantara-abad-ke-13.


visited Indonesia not merely for trading purposes, but also for the propagation of Buddha faith and discovering forgotten Buddhist arcane manuscripts.

Also, according to Kong Yuanzhi, a professor from Beijing, China, during that era China has cemented cultural and business relationship with many Southeast Asian nations. In their histori-cal notes, it was written that they even have arrived at Java Dwipa which is today Java Island.16 Whether they also lived in the island for a long time, scholars stated that it is debatable issue.

For example, a well-known Dutch writer, Groeneveld whose writing has become one of the primary sources about the archipe-lago colonial history proposed that the Chinese only visited the archi-pelago during the 4th century. According to Groeneveld, a well-known ancient Chinese traveler, Faxien stranded and stayed in Java for five months. In Faxien’s journal, he did not mention at all the existence of his fellow Chinese in that island. Based on such fact, according to Groeneveld the Chinese had not lived in the archi-pelago at that time, because, if there has been Chinese presence in Java during that era, Faxien should have made a note of that fact.

Groeneveld might be correct that there was not many Chinese in the area where Faxien stayed, which was East Java. However, few European scholar criticized him as Indonesia archipelago has more than 17 thousand islands. His contention might be overly simplistic.17

Who is Faxien? Between 399 and 414 CE, a Chinese monk Faxien (Fa-Hsien, Fa Hien) undertook a trip via Central Asia to

16 Kong Yuanzhi, Silang Budaya Tiongkok-Indonesia (Cross-culture China-Indonesia), Jakarta: Bhuana Ilmu Populer, 2005. p. 2517 WP Groeneveldt, Nusantara dalam Catatan Tionghoa (Nusantara in Chinese Journal). Depok: Komunitas Bambu,2009, p. 13

47Pre-Colonial Era: The Arrival of the Chinese

India seeking better copies of Buddhist books than were currently available in China. His account does provide interesting informa-tion on the conditions of travel, the Buddhist sites and practices he has witnessed. For example, he indicates clearly the impor-tance of the seven precious substances for Buddhist worship, the widespread practice of stupa veneration, and his acquaintance with several of the tales about the previous lives of the Buddha Sakyamuni, tales which are illustrated in the paintings at the Dun-huang caves. James Legge who wrote a book in 1886 with a title A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of His Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399-414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline, translating his journey records.18 One of Faxien’s journeys brought him to the archipelago, where his ship was damaged heavily. The inci-dent caused him to stay somewhere in one of the islands for four to five months. Indeed, whether many Chinese have lived in the archipelago during that era or not is debatable.

The Chinese Muslim who lived in Palembang

Later, an Indonesian historian, Ririn Darini from State University of Yogyakarta, Central Java (Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta) pre-sented an interesting finding. Darini is a very productive historian or researcher. She mentions that during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 AD) there have been many Chinese in Srivijaya Kingdom in the island of Sumatera. The statement of Darini is based on

18 James Legge tr. and ed., A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of His Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399-414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline, Oxford: 1886, pp. 9-36


the writing of Kong Yuanzhi. Kong is a Shanghai-born professor from Beijing University whose has done his researches in Leiden and University of Indonesia. As an expert in language, culture, and Indonesian studies. For decades he explored old and rare historical records. If Kong Yuanzhi is correct, at least, by the 9th century there had been many Chinese living in the archipelago.

Apparently, Kong, used two older writings to support his statement. First, it is the writing of Li Changfu in the year of 1937, and second, the work of Chen Lite in 1946. Both are about the Chinese migration.19 In Chen Lite book, he mentioned the journey report of an Arab explorer, Al Masudi, who in 943 vi-sited Sumatera and found many Chinese who lived there as they had left the mainland China as refugees. This finding is similar with a statement in Sejarah Nasional Indonesia, a book which is published by the Department of Education of the Republic Indonesia in 1976.20

In this book, the name of Al Masudi, an Arab traveler who lived between 895 till 957 appeared. Most Indonesians have read about Ibu Sina (Avicenna), Al Farabi, Ibnu Chaldun or Ibnu Batuta, yet, in this case, until the work of Kong Yuanzhi, the name of Al Masudi never appeared in Indonesian literature. Even until today, it is a fact that Masudi is not known in Indonesia although internationally he is known as the Herodotus of the Arabs.21

Who is that person? Al-Masudi whose complete name that shows his lineage is Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn ibn Ali

19 Kong Yuanzhi, opcit, p. 3620 Department of Education and Culture, Sejarah Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta: 1976. p. 10921 See: Al Masudi, From the Meadows of Gold, London: Penguin Traveler Book, 2007


al-Mas’udi was born in Baghdad (c. 896). Masudi is a descen-dant of Abd Allah ibn Masud, one of the prominent colleagues of Mohammed. Al Masudi was the first Arab who combined his-tory and scientific geography as shown in one of his 20 books, Muruj al-dhahabwama’adin al-jawahir (the Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems).22

Since his childhood, Al Masudi was known as learner of extraordinary curiosity, excellent memory, and capability to write. He was twenty years old when he made his journey to Persia. Returning to Baghdad the following year, he proceeded to Mansura and Multan (today’s Pakistan). Mansura was the outer limit of Islamic domains. Situated in the delta of the great river, it was a prosperous region that made Masudi excited. Later, from Mansura, Al Masudi traveled to Surat in Gujarat.

Traveling further South, Al Masudi landed in Malabar on the Western coast of India, visited Sri Lanka and sailed from there to Sumatra in Indonesia and Malacca (modern Malaysia). Then as today, the Straits of Malacca were the conduit for ships from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea. There was busy trade between the eastern seaboard of India and Malacca. From here, Al Masudi moved north to Canton in China. He found out that even though the city had been ruined in the anti-foreigner riots of 865, the trading post had recovered some of its trade by the year 920 when Al Masudi visited it.

Retracing his course around the rim of the Indian Ocean, Al Masudi traveled Southward to the island of Madagaskar and the eastern seaboard of Africa. He describes Shofala as a city of gold

22 Aloys Sprenger (transl.) Kitab Muruj Al-dahab Al-Masudi. El-Masudis Historical Encyclopaedia, Entitled “Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems: “ Transl. from the Arabic London: W. H. Allen 1841.


and the cities of Africa as rich and prosperous. He returned to Basrah in 922 and there wrote his first historical compendium

-- Muruj-al-Zahab wa al-Ma-adin al- Jawahir - as has been described above. In this collection, he described in fascinating detail the habitation, geography, and ecology of the lands he had visited. He saw them like gems that he was given to arrange and tie in order to produce a beautiful necklace.

Later in his life, Al Masudi moved first to Damascus (Syria) and then to Fustrat (Cairo), Egypt. Here, he wrote his second volume Muruj al Zaman, in thirty volumes. In this masterpiece, he records the cultures, religious practices and customs of the peoples he had visited and makes observations on their civiliza-tions, including of the people of the archipelago.

He was the first historian who based his writings on empiri-cal observation and inductive science. As such, he was a precur-sor to the great historian Ibn Khaldun and the father of modern historiography. In 955 CE, he wrote Kitab al-Awsat, in which he listed chronologically the historical events from ancient times till the year 955 CE. This was the first scholarly effort to sort out historical events from myths, legends and hearsay. His last work, Kitab al-Tanbihwa al-Ishraf,23 which was written in the year of his death 947 CE, provides a summary of his earlier works.

Al Masudi’s methodology was anchored in the inductive method which was adopted by the Muslims after their encounter, and their rejection, of the rational, deductive methodology of the Greeks. The empirical method belongs to the Muslims, just as the rational method belongs to the Greeks, and it was al Masudi, not

23 Kitab al-Tanbih wa-al-israf / li-Abi al-Hasan Ali b. al-Husayn al-Masudi. M.J. de Goeje’s Classic Edition (1894) with Indices and Glossary to BGA I: 7–8


Herodotus, who was the inventor of empirical historiography.24 Quality of Al Masudi’s work caused scholars from Islamic world and the West to admit it. The Western affirmations of his signifi-cant contribution to historical science is the translation of Muruj Al Zahab wa Ma’adin Al-Jawahir into French. Societa Asiatique had the honor to do the translation which took several years to complete that is, 1861 until 1877.

Thus, the Chinese scholar, Chen Lite stated that according to the record of this admirable and trustworthy Arab explorer, histo-rian, and geologist, there have been many Chinese Muslims living in Palembang during the 10th century. It is quite a staggering state-ment which could quickly be suspected if this finding was based on a Chinese Muslim record or based on a study done by a Palem-bang expert. Yet, an Arab traveler, known as an objective and dili-gent scholar stated that there have been Chinese Muslims there!

Relying on the record of Al Masudi, one of the questions that logically emerges. “Where did the Chinese Muslim come from?” Or, what happened at that time? Apparently, the exploration to go backward through time needs to retrace the history further to the unknown land of the Ancient China in the 9th century.

The First Wave of Chinese Muslim to Southeast Asia

Events that triggered the Chinese immigrant to reside in the King-dom of Srivijaya in Sumatera started in mainland China during the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty (618-907) is known as a dynasty that brings golden ages in China. Even in Indonesia, most Hokkien Chinese will address themselves as Teng lang or in

24 http://historyofislam.com/contents/the-classical-period/al-masudi/


Mandarin: Tang ren which means the people of Tang. The exalted Tang Dynasty was internationally connected. Tang Dynasty had also developed intelligent military approaches. It meant that the Tang was respected and feared throughout the region.

By the beginning of the 9th century of the Tang Dynasty, Guangzhou as a major port with a direct route connecting it to the Middle East is estimated to have had a population of 100,000 foreigners. Some of the settlers from overseas were Muslim immigrants.

There is a legend about the Muslim there. Tradition and an old Chinese manuscript said that Guangzhou’s Huaisheng Mosque has been built in 627 AD. If the record is correct then, it is one of the oldest mosques in the world. The maternal uncle of Muhammad, Sa’d ibnu Abi Waqqas built the building. Like the other earliest mosques in China, it was built for the grow-ing number of Arab and Persian settlers who came primarily for business. As the consequences, thousands of the indigenous of Chinese embraced Islamic faith of the Hanafiah version.

By the second half of the 9th century the Tang, though still one of the world’s most powerful empires, was evidently declining. A wide-spread rebellion led by Wang Xianzhi took place. One person who followed Wang and ultimately broke away to start a much more widespread rebellion was salt pri-vateer Huang Chao. Formerly, he wanted to become an edu-cated person who would occupy a government position. Yet, he failed the Imperial Examination three time.25

In 878, after Wang Xianzhi had died, Huang Chao continued to spread the rebellion which he was now the sole leader. The

25 Glen Dudbridge, A Portrait of Five Dynasties China: From the Memoirs of Wang Renyu (880-956), Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 44.


rebellious force subsequently turned south. In Fall 879, his army attacked Guangzhou and massacred the foreign settlers, with some estimates putting the death toll as high as 200,000. The sto-ry of how the foreign community became so large and why these foreigners were so resented goes back to the early Tang.

According to Arab writer Abu Zayd Hasan As-Sirafi, Huang Chao’s rebels slaughtered Jews, Arabs, Persians, and Christians. The main motivation behind the massacre, as is asserted in A History of Chinese Civilization by Jacques Gernet, was re-sentment at the foreigners’ wealth. Abu Zayd Hasan As-Sirafi estimated the death toll to be 120,000 while Masudi put it at 200,000.26

Why did the rebels single the Muslims? Accounts from the periods of both the An Lushan and the Huang Chao rebellion as well suggest that, these foreigners tended to do well for them-selves. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker points out in his 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature, when a minority group is doing noticeably well economically such as Jews in the United States, this can lead to resentment.27 This negative outlook toward the foreigners increased in 758. Arab and Persian pirates who had probably based themselves on Hainan Island raided Guangzhou, looting warehouses and causing unwanted headaches for the new Tang crown prince. As a sign of things to come, the wealthy Arab and Persian population of Yangzhou was massacred in the year of 760 by the rebel forces of Tian Shengong.

26 Donald Daniel Leslie, The Integration of Religious Minority in China: The Case of Chinese Muslim, Paper Presented at the Fifty-nine George Ernest Morrison Lecture in Ethnology, 1998 Australia National University, Canberra, 1998. 27 Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, London, England: Penguin Book, 2012


William J. Bernstein, author of A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, claimed that not content to massacre traders, Huang Chao also tried to kill the Tang’s main export industry by destroying the mulberry groves of south China.28

In that situation, as mentioned above, in the second half of the 9th century, when the rebel army of Huang Chao occupied Guangzhou, Chinese Muslims and traders from Arab and Persia in great number moved to Srivijaya.

According to Al Masudi records, in the year of 877, during the reign of the Tang emperor Hi-Tsung, there was a colony of almost 200,000 Muslims in Canton, China. According to Al Masudi, the peasant rebellion in 887 forced these Muslims to flee and settle at Palembang. However, a modern expert, Nazeer Ahmed29 mentioned that the refugees settled at Kedah on the west coast of Malaya instead of in Palembang, Sumatera. Which opinion is the accurate one? Did the refugees go and settled down in Kedah or Palembang which is the capital city of the mighty but friendly Srivijaya Kingdom?

From historical records and archaeological evidence it is understood, that in the 9th century, a Kingdom named Srivijaya had made colonization of almost all the kingdoms of Southeast Asia, among others: Sumatra, Java, Malaya Peninsula, Cambodia and South Vietnam. Srivijaya controlled the Straits of Malacca and Sunda straits. The Kingdom charged every ship that passed the straits, thus controlled the trade routes of spices and local commerce. Srivijaya accumulated wealth as a trading port and warehouse market serving China, and India.

28 William J. Bernstein, author of A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, New York: Grove Press; First Trade Paper Edition, 2009)29 Nazeer Ahmed in http://historyofislam.com/contents/the-post-mongol-period/islam-in-indonesia/2015


Under Srivijaya powerful influence, Kedah was also its subject and subordinate. In the early days, the Khmer empire was also a colony of Srivijaya. Many historians claim that in Chaiya, the last capital of the Khmer Empire, the influence of Srivijaya Kingdom is apparent on the pagoda style (Boromthat). After the fall of Srivijaya, Chaiya was divided into three cities namely (Mueang) Chaiya, Thatong (Kanchanadit), and Khirirat Nikhom.

Srivijaya was also closely related to the Pala kingdom in Bengal, and a number notes state that in 860 CE, King Balaputra dedicated a monastery to the University Nalada of Pala. Relations with the Chola dynasty of southern India initially was quite well and then became worse after Rajendra Coladewa ascended the throne and launched an attack on the 11th century. Although it had a powerful influence, Srivijaya was friendly and eager to get connected with more powerful Kingdoms or Empires, like China.

With such network, Srivijaya undoubtedly benefited from trade with other countries. In the year 903, the well-known Muslim writer Ibn Battuta was impressed with the prosperity of Sri vi jaya. Urban areas include the kingdom of Palembang (especially Se-guntang Hill), Muara Jambi, and Kedah.

Thus, professor Kong concluded that, those factors became sufficient attractors for the Muslim Chinese and others to choose Palembang which was the capital of Srivijaya as their temporary refuge rather to settle down in Kedah which was also part of the Kingdom (although a scholar, Nazeer Ahmed, in Encyclopedia of Islam, chose Kedah as the destination).

Apparently, the Chinese Muslim immigrants blended well into the existing majority despites their faith differences. As the center of Buddhism at that time, Srivijaya inhabitants also got used to


ethnic differences and very open minded or welcoming the new immigrants. Thus, the faith of Islam started to have a foot hold in the important state of Srivijaya and later Indonesia. The Hana-fiah Islamic teaching was probably attractive and making sense for most people at that time. The lifestyle of the Muslim Chinese was also exemplary and inspiring.30

If such opinion was questionable, at least it is certain that Chi nese sojourners had become a socially visible group within the archipelago as early as the ninth century as Li Minghuan, wrote in Southeast Asean Studies Journal.31 Li Minghuan is a pro-fessor at the Institute of Population Studies at Xiamen University, China. Her findings were often the results of transnational scholar endeavor. Similar finding also appears in the book of Martin Stuart Fox, a well-known Australian professor in 2003.32

The Second wave: Chinese Muslim in East Java

After the 9th century, according to a passionate writer, Andrian Perkasa, in his book Orang-orang Tionghoa and Islam di Maja-pahit (The Chinese and Islam in Majapahit)33 there were some im-portant leaders in the old Majapahit Kingdom, in East Java and

30 Ibid31 Li Minghuan, From Sons of the Yellow Emperor to Children of Indonesian Soil, Studying Peranakan Chinese based on Batavia Kong Koan Achieve. Journal of Southeast Asean Studies, 34 (2), p. 215-230.32 Stuart Fox, A Short History of China and Southeast Asia: Tribute, Trade and Influence. New South Wales: Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 200333 Andrian Perkasa, in his book “Orang-orang Tionghoa dan Islam di Majapahit.” (The Chinese and Islam in Majapahit) Yogyakarta: Ombak, 2012 describes in detail the presence of the Chinese leaders in Majapahit.


they were Hanafiah Chinese Muslim. The archeological finding in Troloyo, East Java in forms of old Islamic graveyards show the Muslim Chinese had settled down there. Where did they come from? Perkasa quotes that according to Ma huan, the known-Chinese traveler in his report, before settling down in Majapahit, they had created a Muslim Chinese community in Kukang (Palembang).

Thus, one answer to the questions of this study is found. In the past, the Muslim and Chinese not only lived side by side har-moniously, they even blended well. It is evident that the Chinese Muslim was not the only ethnic group who moved to Srivijaya or Sumatra by crossing the ocean. Studies show that in Barus, North Sumatra, Nestorian Christians had also arrived and settled down in 645. Ancient book by Shaikh Abu Salih al-Armini34 “Tadhakur fihi Akhbar minal-Kanais wal Adyar min Nawahin Misri wal aqthaaha” testified about that fact. Paul Tahalele and Thomas Santoso in, The Church and Human Rights in Indonesia,35 also mentioned about the presence of the Nestorian Christian Churches in Pancur batu, Barus, Sumatera. Yet, although the Nestorians had been in mainland China before that time as proven by the Chang’an stone inscription, no one spoke about the Nestorian in Pancur Batu. The famous French expert, Claude Guillot in his book, Lobu Tua, Sejarah Awal Barus, Volume 1,36 wrote that the explorer from Armenia Mabousahl noted that the Nestorian Churches existed in the 12th in Indonesia.

34 See: Abu Salih al-Armani, The Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and Some Neighbouring Countries, BiblioLife, 2009 35 Paul Tahalele and Thomas Santoso in, The Church and Human Rights in Indonesia, Jakarta: Indonesian Christian Communication Forum, 1997, page 226.36 Claude Guillot (Ed.), Lobu Tua, Sejarah Awal Barus (Lobu Tua, The History of Early Barus), volume 1, Jakarta: Yayasan Obor, 2001


One might question the findings of the exploration above. Did the peaceful coexistence between the Chinese immigrant and the locals take place because the Chinese influence and their population were not significant or because mutual respect did really exist at that time? Could it be that the tolerant nature of the Buddhist and Hindu faith play a decisive role here?

The Third Wave of Chinese Muslim: The Yuan Soldiers

The answer to the question came later when the exploration touched the 13th century. That was the time when Yuan Dynasty ruled over China. In the year of 1293 the mighty Kubilai Khan who lived between the years of 1280 to 1367 ordered his Chi-nese army to attack Java as a retaliation to the King of Singosari, Kartanegara who had refused to pay homage to the Yuan Dynas-ty and even hurt the envoy from Empire. The conflict has been unavoidable as Kertanegara, himself had a dream to build and expand his own empire to encompass the archipelago of Nusan-tara (Indonesia today) and further.

The Yuan army arrived and found out that along the Northern coast of Java there had been many Chinese communities. The Chi-nese inhabitants had come from Fujian who most of them worked as farmers, traders, and artisans who then in Java lived harmoni-ously with the locals. Thus, they were not only traders at that time.

After the Yuan army expedition, some of Kublai Khan’s troops mostly who came from Fujian did not return to China. The expedition was a failure because instead of destroying King Kertanegara, they were allured by raden Wijaya, his son in-law to attack King Djayakatwang (whom they called haji Katong).


Djayakatwang whom previously took over the kingdom from Kertanagara was killed before the Yuan army arrived. The Yuan army were later trapped by raden Wijaya and ambushed. They escaped to the coast and sailed away. As they worried of the possibility facing punishment of Kublai Khan due to their failure and had to deal with pirates or hazard of the seas, they decided to stay in Java. They married the locals, or members of the existing Chinese immigrants in East Java. Later they shared their superior technical skills such as producing bricks, terracotta, boat dockyard and long canons. 37

In short, some of the Yuan soldiers never returned to their homeland as they decided to live and marry the locals. All the above findings have pointed out that the relationship between China to Sumatra-Java-Kalimantan has been strongly cemented for centuries even before arrival of the famous Cheng Ho, a referred Chinese Muslim Admiral.

The Fourth Wave: Cheng Ho in the XVIth Century

The book about Cheng Ho became one of the most popular books read by the Muslim Indonesians, the Chinese, and other groups since the year of 2008. Before that year, the history of the Chinese role in Islam propagation in Indonesian archipelago before his arrival was the forgotten or unacknowledged.

What happened with the Yuan dynasty at that time? In 1368, some heroes rebelled and established the Ming Dynasty (in Fujian

37 Wang Dauyan, A Brief Account of Island Barbarians島夷誌略 (Dǎo Yí Zhì Lüè), circa 1339 NTI Reader. NTI Buddhist Text Reader project. Retrieved 17 March 2015. http://ntireader.org/corpus_entry.php?uri=gloss/daoyizhilue-gloss.html


language it is known as Beng Dynasty) that replaced the Yuan. Popular narratives of some wuxia stories mentioned that Muslim heroes took an active part in that historical event. The narratives could be true as later, during the 15th century, the Emperors of Ming appreciated the Chinese Muslim roles in the government. The Chinese Muslims from Yunan had also freedom to spread Islam in Southeast Asia including in the archipelago, primarily in Java.

One of the main characters during the Ming era was the well-known Admiral Zheng He, or Cheng Ho aka Sam Po Kong as the subordinate of Caesar Yung Lo. He arrived at least twice in Indonesia, in the year of 1410 and 1416. Until his old age, a great number of Chinese came to archipelago together with Admiral Cheng Ho at least seven times.

A popular book written by Kong Yuanzhi and was trans-lated in the year of 2000 into Bahasa gave a new understanding for the readers about the Chinese’ role in propagation of Islam in Indonesia or Southeast Asia. Overnight, Cheng Ho becomes a popular and admired Chinese Muslim leader in Indonesia. It was a unique book, because in fact almost ten years before, prof. Kong had spoken and written a book on Cheng Ho in 1993 and got it reprinted twice but only received limited reception from the nation which was still under restrictive Suharto regime that prevented any substantial research about Chinese culture to be spread out.38

Kong narrated that during his career, Cheng Ho travelled to many countries with his armada. At that time, China really ruled over the seas and created trading or political network. In Java, he landed in the coast of Simongan, Semarang. Besides serving as

38 Kong Yuanzhi, Sam Po Kong, Jakarta: Masagung, 1992, 1993


the envoy of Yung Lo to the King of Majapahit, privately, Cheng Ho also had his own mission that was to spread Islam faith.

During that era, the relationship between Kingdoms in Java and the Yuan Dynasty was quite close and intensive. According to a book, Yiyu Xhi (Records about Foreign Countries), in the end of the 13th century between Guang Zhou at Fujian and Tuban in East Java there was a regular shipping line. The closeness was more than related to trading activities. In the year of 1406, there was a war between the descendants of King Hayam Wuruk at Central Java. The war, which was known as War of Paregreg caused 170 envoys from the Emperor of China were accidently killed. The Yuan Emperor punished the West Palace by demanding 60,000 kilograms gold to be surrendered to him.39

Experts have pointed out that Cheng Ho’s visits created a strong impact. The influence of Muslim Chinese in the archi-pelago increased substantially and more noticeably. In the year of 1415, he built a light house or fire pagoda on the hill of Amparan jati. Three Chinese Muslim communities were established in Cirebon as the result of the work of Cheng Ho’s staff.40

Who were the Chinese Muslims in the archipelago at that time? In 1416, Ma Huan who in the staff of Cheng Ho, was sent by the Ad-miral four times to the archipelago. He was a devout Muslim and wrote a document called Ying Yai Sheng Lan which is today still stored in the Chinese Library in Shanghai. According to Ma Huan, there were two kinds of Chinese in the archipelago at that time, the Tang ren (men of Tang Dynasty) and Hui-hui ren. Both groups are Muslims.

39 WP. Groeneveldt, ibid p.5240 Abdul Wahid, Bertahan di Tengah Krisis: Komunitas Tiong Hoa dan Ekonomi Kota. (Survival in the Midst of Crisis: Chinese Community and Urban Economy), Cirebon: Penerbit Ombak, 2009; https://miftah19.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/kesultanan-cirebon-tinjauan-historis-dan-kultural


According to a well-known Indonesian professor, Slamet Mulyana who wrote a controversial book entitled The Collapse of Hindu-Javanese Kingdoms and Emergence of Islamic States in Indonesia, in 1447 Islam has already started to have significant influence in Java. The characteristic of Islam that was being propagated was piety, logical, and responsive to the dynamics of the society. Therefore, Islam attracted many adherents of Hindu or Buddha as many concepts in their own religions were too complicated to grasp and then overly ritualistic without adequate room for clear cognitive exploration. The leaders of this Islamic movement were known as the Walisongo or the Nine Trusted Ones/Elders. In his study, Mulyana discovered unusual findings concerning those Nine Elders who propagated the modern Islam in Indonesia. Among others, more than half of those Muslim Leaders were Chinese descendant. The summary of his discovery is as follows:

In 1447, Sunan Ampel, the leader from Demak Kingdom, apparently married a woman of Chinese origin called Ni Gede Manila. Her Chinese father, Gan Eng Cu, was formerly a captain in Manila and was transferred to Tuban, East Java in 1423. From this marriage, Sunan Bonang was born, “Bonang” being a deriva-tive of the Chinese name “Bong Ang”. Sunan Bonang is one of the prominent nine elders.

Another of Gan Eng Cu’s sons was Gan Si Cang, who be-came a captain in Semarang. In 1481, Gan Si Cang headed the construction of Demak mosque, employing carpenters from the Semarang dockyards.

Furthermore, prof. Slamet Mulyana believes that Sunan Kalijaga, also one of the elders, who was known in his youth as Raden Said, was none other than Gan Si Cang. Meanwhile, Sunan


Gunung Jati, or Syarif Hidayatullah was Toh Bo, the son of Tung Ka Lo, aka Sultan Trenggana.

Not only these four sunans – title given to the trusted men who first brought Islam to Java -- but also others were, accord-ing to Mulyana, of Chinese origin. For example, Sunan Giri, a student of Sunan Ampel, also came from China. His father, Sayid Ishak, was none other than Sunan Ampel’s uncle, Bong Swi Hoo. Meanwhile, Sunan Kudus, or Jafar Sidik, was also believed to be Chinese, with the birth name Ja Tik Su. Mulyana concludes that at least six sunans were of Chinese origin.

Other source supports Mulyana’s finding about the Chinese Muslim’s presence and influence in Indonesia. It is a fact that in the year of 1448 Prince Campa, a Muslim Chinese passed away and buried in Troloyo near Trowulan at the burial complex of the capital city of Majapahit Kingdom at East Java. 41

How did other experts respond to the study of Mulyana? Tasyriq Hifzhillah, a researcher at the Liberation Studies Insti-tute (LSP), Yogyakarta wrote his review concerning what Slamet Mulyana proposed:

Historical reality is often too bitter to swallow or too hot to stand. History is a large mirror that reflects the facts of the past, and all that has been etched into the glass of history can never be erased.

If you don’t like a particular historical fact, you may try to cover it up or forget it, but you can never remove it. A historical fact can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but regardless of the interpretation, the fact will never change.

In this light, the history of the collapse of the Majapa-hit kingdom, followed by the emergence of Islamic states in

41 Adrian Perkasa, opcit.


Indonesia, contains many interesting facts or notes. As the old-est kingdom on Java, the Majapahit not only represented the historical romanticism of the apex of Hindu-Javanese civiliza-tion, but also served as evidence of its political struggle during its wane and amid the Islamization of Java.42

What do other writers state about the issues? The findings of Mulyana counter and, at the same time, criticize the thesis generally accepted by many historians that Islam in Indonesia is another branch of Islam that developed on the Arabian Peninsula.

Mulyana believes that Islam in Indonesia, and in Java in particular, was not the “pure” Islam that originated in Arab coun-tries, but a hybrid Islam with many variants, and that various elements contributed to its development.

In his book, Mulyana refers considerably to unofficial his-torical documents like Babad Tanah Jawi (The Chronicle of Java) and Serat Kanda, both written during the 17th-century period of the Mataram kingdom. Yet, several historians have questioned the validity of these two books, because indeed they contain a mix-ture of history and tales in such a way that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. Moreover, they judged the book does not refer to any reliable historical sources, such as the ancient inscriptions and historical works on the Majapahit in the authoritative Para-raton and Negarakertagama.

Mulyana’s book, divided into nine chapters, also draws upon a number of archival documents summarizing the Preambule Prasaran, Chinese documents from Talang Temple, Portuguese

42 Tasyriq Hifzhillah, Illuminating Chinese Role in History of Indonesian Islam The Jakarta Post, Jakarta July 03 2005- See more at: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2005/07/03/illuminating-chinese-role-history-indonesian-islam.html#sthash.v8tG3K0U.dpuf


sources and documents from Sam Po Kong Temple in Semarang, written by Poortman and quoted by Mangaraja Onggang (M.O.) Parlindungan.

Poortman, a neighborhood head during the Dutch colonial era, was originally assigned in 1928 by the colonial administra-tion to find out whether Raden Fatah was of Chinese ethnicity. As events developed, this fact was later politicized when the Chinese were linked with the 1926-1927 uprising staged by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Poortman searched Sam Po Kong Temple in Semarang and confiscated three cartloads of documents written in Chinese, some of which were 400 to 500 years old. M.O. Parlindungan, author of the controversial book Tuanku Rao, referred to Poortman’s archives.43

Thus, Mulyana concludes that at least six wali were of Chinese origin. However, Mulyana’s weakness, as Asvi Warman Adam writes in the preface, is that he based his research solely on the book of M.O. Parlindungan and did not himself check Sam Po Kong’s documents from Sam Po Kong Temple.

Regardless of this weakness, in using these sources, Mulyana has undeniably produced “another” historical perspective, some-thing quite different from the history interpretation that arises from heavy reliance on official literature.

This type of reconstruction or narrative provides many benefits: people can enjoy an “unofficial” version of history and additional stories, tapes and interesting tidbits that have escaped the attention of many.

43 Mangaradja Onggang Parlindungan, Ponginangolngolan Sinambela gelar Tuan ku Rao: Terror Agama Islam Mazhab Hambali di Tanah Batak, 1816-1833 (Ponginangolngolan Sinambela gelar Tuanku Rao: The Terror of Islam Sect Hambali in Batak Land, 1816-1833). Yogyakarta: LKiS Pelangi Aksara Yog-yakarra, 2007.


Unfortunately, Slamet Mulyana book was viewed as a threat by the Indonesian Suharto’s New Order regime, in line with its policy of systematic removal of all things Chinese. Decisively, they banned the book in 1971 for its controversial claim that the six sunans were of Chinese origin.

Despite the works of Mulyana, there was another source that depicts that era and Chinese’s role in the Islam propagation in Java. It is the writing of H.J. De Graaf and Theodor Pigeaud, Cina Muslim di Jawa Abad XV dan XVI Antara historisitas dan Mitos (Yogjakarta, Tiarawacana, 1998) (Muslim Chinese In 15th and 16th century Java: between History and Myth).44

In that writing, the writers conclude as follows:“The most surprising fact that was not known in Indonesia is

that the first Islam leaders at the coast of Java who established the first Islam Kingdom in Demak were from Chinese background. Among the leaders were Sunan Bonang (Bong Ang), Sunan Ka-lijaga (Gan Si Cang), Sunan Ngampel (Bong Swi Hoo), Sunan Gunung Jati (Toh A Bo). They came from Champa (Kamboja or Vietnam), Manila and China. Also, Raden Patah alias Jin Bun (Cek Ko Po), the first sultan of the Demak Islamic Kingdom, was the son of Kung Ta Bu Mi (Kertabumi), King Majapahit (Brawijaya V) who married a Chinese prince, son of Chinese trader, Ban Hong (Babah Bantong).”

Thus, two separate studies came to similar conclusion despite the suspicion of many scholars. Fortunately, there is a rare source of information to give light to the condition in that era that had become the issue. It came from Tomé Pires (1465–1524 or 1540).

44 HJ De Graaf and Theodor Gautier Pigeaud, Cina Muslim di Jawa Abad XV dan XVI Antara historisitas dan Mitos (Yogjakarta, Tiarawacana, 1998) (Muslim Chinese In 15th and 16th century Java: between History and Myth)


Pires was a Portuguese from Lisbon who spent 1512 to 1515 in Malacca immediately after the Portuguese conquest, at a time when Europeans were only first arriving in Southeast Asia. After his arduous experiences in India and the East Indies, he led the first official embassy from a European nation in China (Portugal to the Emperor of China, Zhengde, during the Ming Dynasty), where he later died.

Pires was apothecary to the ill-fated Afonso, Prince of Por-tugal, son of King John II of Portugal. He went to India in 1511 invested as “factor of drugs”, the Eastern commodities that were an important element of what is generally called “the spice trade”. In Malacca and Cochin he avidly collected and documented information from the Malay-Indonesia area, and personally visited Java, Sumatra (the two dominant islands of modern-day Indonesia) and Maluku.

In his notes, Tomé Pires mentioned that Raden Patah (Pate Rodim) who is also known as Panembahan Jin Bun was the son of Angka Wijaya from Palembang who married the grand daughter of Sunan Ampel.

Under the leadership of Raden Patah, the rule of Islamic Demak Kingdom included Jepara, Semarang, Tegal, Palembang, Jambi, and many islands between Kalimantan and Sumatera. In the 16th century, Demak has conquered the whole Jawa. All the old Majapahit kingdom area became the areas of Demak. Even, west Java (Sunda area) was under the power of Demak included Cirebon.45

Another opinion which is in agreement with the previous sources is Reconstruction of the Arrival of Islam into Java by

45 Uka Tjandrasasmita, Arkeologi Islam Nusantara (Nusantara Islamic Archelogy), Jakarta: Gramedia, 2009, p. 52.


Muhammad Husnil.46 The presence of Chinese-Muslim in the early period of Islam arrival in Java has not only been proved by what were written in the journals of the explorers, Chinese texts sources, Javanese historical text or oral traditions, but also by the ancient archeological sites of Islam in Java. They point out that the influence of Chinese was quite strong to the point that suffices to summarize that between the 15-16th century there has been an amalgamated culture coined as Sino-Javanese Muslim Culture.

However, among the opinions over that debate, the most in-fluential study has been done by an Indonesian scholar, Sumanto Al Qurtuby who later published a book with title: Cross current of China-Islam and Java: to Discover the Roles of Chinese in the Spread of Islam in Nusantara during the XV and XVI Century.

According to Sumanto, the discussion about the history of how Islam entered Indonesia is still dominated by two theories which are both classic and cliché, and allegedly experts who supported either one were content with authenticity concept or ideology. The authenticity ideology summarized; if Islam that entered the archipelago didn’t come from Arab or the Middle East, the purity and orthodoxy in its teachings will be question-able. Therefore, the first theory claimed that Islam was brought to Indonesia by traders from Arab/Middle East. This theory is known as the Arab theory.47 The second is the Indian Theory, which stated that Islam who entered the land originated from India. The pioneer of this view is Jan Pijnappel, an orientalist

46 Muhammad Husnil, Reconstruction of the Arrival of Islam into Java. http://islamlib.com/?site=1&aid=46&cat=content&cid=7&title=rekonstruksi-sejarah-masuknya-islam-ke-jawa47 Sir Thomas Walker Arnold (1896). The preaching of Islam: a history of the propagation of the Muslim faith. WESTMINSTER: A. Constable and co. p. 388


from Leiden who lived in 1822-1901.48

Apart from the two theories, according to Sumanto, histo-rians generally overlook one community that has contributed greatly to the development of Islam in Indonesia, especially in Java. That community is the Chinese-Muslim. There are many sources that cited the presence of Chinese-Muslim in Java, but the commentaries available are very few and they only covered specific aspects. The resources used to compile the history are also limited. Wrote Sumanto: “That is why up to this point, a scientific writing about the contribution of Chinese-Muslim is yet to be written.” He then filled the gap.

Sumanto states that, the existence of Chinese-Muslim in the early development of Islam in Java is not only mentioned in the testimonies of foreign explorers, Chinese sources, and local Javanese texts, but also supported by the evidence of various ancient Islamic remains in Java. This indicated a strong Chinese influence, which has evoked an assumption that during the 15/16 century, there was mixture known as the Sino-Javanese Muslim Culture.

The carvings on the rocks of the mosque in Mantingan-Jepara, the mosque tower on Chinatown Banten, the construction door of the tomb of Sunan Giri in Gresik, the architecture of the palace and its gardens in Sunyaragi Cirebon, the mosque in Demak – espe-cially the mosque and its decorated pillars, the structure of Sekayuq mosque in Semarang and so on, they all show the strong influence of Chinese culture. Other evidences are from two mosques that stand majestically in Jakarta, namely the Angke mosque, which

48 Drewes, GWJ. 1968. “New Light on the Coming of Islam to Indonesia”, BKI, 124, pp.: 439 – 440; Azyumardi Azra in his book Jaringan Ulama Timur Tengah dan Kepulauan Nusantara Abad XVII dan XVIII, (Network of Mediteranian Uelema and Nusantara Archipelago) Jakarta: Penerbit Mizan, 1994


is associated with Gouw Tjay and the Garden Citrus mosque, founded by Tamien Dosol Seeng and Mrs. Cai.

Sumanto’s investigation did not stop there. He found out that there have been “verbastering” from Chinese to Javanese names in the names of key figures who helped in the shaping of history. The name Bong Ping Nang, for example, was known by the name Bonang. Raden Fatah was nicknamed Prince Jin Bun, in Chinese means “handsome”. Raden Sahid (also known as Sunan Kalidja-ga) is derived from the word “sa-it.” In Hokkian dialect, sa means three and it means one. Thus, together sa-it means 31. It served a reminder of the time of his birth when his father was 31 years old.

The historians who doubted the strong contribution of Chi-nese-Muslim over the Islamization of Java, usually depart from the historical fact that religious belief which was brought and developed by the Chinese-Muslim is the Hanafiah which is also a branch of Sunni Islam. Hanafiah is rationalistic on its character. They link it with the fact that Indonesian Muslim these days area Syafi’i. Thus, they accused the strong presence Hanafiah Muslim role in the past is a merely a subjective conclusion.

The most likely reason to explain this phenomenon is there had been changes in Indonesian Muslims from Hanafiah to Syafi’i. It was driven by the sociological reality of the Java community that did not allow the cultivation of the Hanafiah sect because of its rationalistic and strict approach. On top of it the Syafi’i sect is considered more compatible with the spirit of Javanese cul-ture that was syncretistic and inseparable from the local animistic tradition.

It needs to be noted that the area used as the locations of study by Sumanto is Java, the main island or the most populated one in Indonesia. Sumanto’s contention might not be accepted


by many scholars as mentioned above. For example, Azyumardi Azra in his book Jaringan Ulama Timur Tengah dan Kepulauan Nusantara Abad XVII dan XVIII proposes that Indonesian Islam came from Midwest ulemas.49 However, the object of the study examined by Azyumardi Azra is Sumatra, besides the time factor studied by each of them are different. Thus actually, the finding does not oppose Sumanto’s contention that the Chinese did play a vital role in the propagation of Islam in Indonesia.

Later, when Islam managed to be as political power while still maintained its influence as social power by the establish-ment Demak Kingdom in the north Java coastal area, the Hindu Kingdom began to perceive them as threats. Therefore, they sent a noble man to go to India to revitalize and synergize Buddhism and Hinduism, but the effort failed. Hinduism and Buddhism at that time had lost its vitality and capability to get out from their old traditions.

Further exploration into the era before the arrival of the European merchants yields two more forgotten records that might need triggered further curiosity. First, there is an important record from Ludovico di Varthema, an explorer from Italy who arrived in the archipelago in the year of 1503 to 1508. He found out that the local ship captain had a sophisticated map and compass. He happened to notice it when he rented a ship to cross the sea of Java to Borneo.50

Most historians agree Ludovico was obviously clever and

49 Ibid50 John Winter Jones Esq, trans, George Percy Badger, ed, London: Hakluyt Society, 1863, p. 24; see also: Travels of Ludovico di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix, in Persia, India and Ethiopia, A.D. 1503 to 1508. See. Richard Carnac Temple, The Itinerary of Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna from 1052 to 1508 , 1st ed, Wisconsin, USA, Argonaut Press, 1928


observant, two important traits for a traveler of his time period. That he knew how to read and write points to a family that had either some money or influence as in those days, education was reserved for those who could afford it. Later he was conversant with several languages including Arabic.

In 1502, Varthema apparently decided that merely reading about exotic locations and the strange customs of foreign lands was inadequate. With that, he packed up and left Europe, hoping to find adventure and, no doubt, profits in the mysterious East. Early 1503 found Varthema in Egypt, where he enjoyed in the sights and sounds of the capital city, Cairo. During an extended stay in Damascus, Syria, Varthema picked up some basic Arabic, which helped him communicate with his Muslim hosts.

It is in Damascus that Varthema revealed himself to be something of a shady character. According to his later account, he took the Arabic name of Yûnas (a form of the name Jonah, one of the Biblical prophets) and joined the local garrison, the army tasked to protect Damascus. Pretending to be a Muslim was a serious crime, not just in predominantly Muslim Syria, but also back in Varthema’s native Italy. In disguising as a Muslim, Varthema made his way to the holy cities of Medina and Mecca, being one of the first (and only) European to see important Islamic holy sites.

Then, he traveled almost the entire length of the Indian subcontinent’s coastline, Varthema ended his journey visiting Ceylon and later, the Spice Islands which were Columbus’s original destination in 1492. He wrote his traveling experience in Itinerario de Ludouvico de Varthema Bolognese (Route of Ludovico di Varthema). It was eagerly read by Europeans who


were fascinated by the East, especially the portions claimed and jealously guarded by the Portuguese.

Concerning the archipelago which now is Indonesia, Varthema recorded that the inhabitant of the archipelago pos-sessed quite sophisticated technology and had good charac-ter. The seafarers called the Bugis from South Celebes already mastered the southern maritime line all the way to Madagaskar. The kings in Srivijaya or North Java were not unaccustomed to follow the shipping line to Indochina or even Fujian. This is really a surprising finding.

Second, a faculty member of a well-known business school shared a strange story. His name is Poniman. He is one of the Chinese descents who mingles smoothly with people of diverse background. As an outspoken person, several times during lunch breaks, he either told stories about his golf tournaments or his car, stories which we ignored dutifully. But one day, during a lengthy lunch, when he narrated a story that cannot be disre-garded. Proudly, he said, “I am the descendant of Banten royal blood…“ His colleagues who listened to him simply smiled and asked one simple question: “How come you as a Chinese descent claim such lineage and you are not Muslim at all?’ He frowned and then shared with them an untold history which later proven to be a probability. It was about the Chinese who worked for the rulers of Banten Kingdom and later with the Dutch VOC. If the story is truthful, most narratives about the Banten people and how they related to the Chinese are evidently flawed. In the next part, exploration toward historical records proves that his statement could bear truth.


Summary

No evidence is found to prove the accuracy of the popular narra-tives about the hostility or conflict between the Chinese Indone-sian and the Muslim since the beginning of their encounter. There has never been any substantial conflict, prejudice, or negative relationship between the Chinese who came to the archipelago which is today Indonesia with the inhabitants of the islands or the kingdoms before the arrival of the European.

It is evident that the Chinese became dominant traders and in many coastal ports, the harbormasters were Chinese Muslims who intermarried with local natives, mostly from the upper class. Also, although many more Muslim leaders came from Gujarat or Yaman, the Chinese Muslims also played substantial roles in spreading Islam in the archipelago.

In short, the results of the exploration concerning the arrival of the earlier Chinese from China mainland before the arrival of the European point out to high probability that the Chinese and Islam used to have an amiable relationship that brought mutual benefit.

It is not evident that the spirituality of the Buddhist or Hindu might influence such harmonious relation. It is an educated guest as both religions leaned more into universalism. Both did not dis-tinguish people based on their origin or ethnic background and faith. Both might view human daily life as temporary and that its essence lies deeper. Disharmony can be tolerated as people get used to let it go. Meanwhile, some elements of Chinese Muslim faith at that time were peaceful and more inward-looking. Their spirituality did not show any tendency to spread their faith or to overcome others. Evidently, they were respected because of their


orderly and pious lifestyle. Only later, during the Zheng Ho era, such conscious efforts to share their faith were evident. However, the presence of the Sampokong Temple indicates that the Chinese who were not Muslim venerated Zhengho as a person whose ac-tions and life followed the moral and cosmic obligation as their spirituality taught.


______________________________

The Arrival of the

European Merchants ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

Francis Bacon

The Driving Force: The Reconquista

Long time ago, in the year of 711, the Muslim conquered Spain. Ever since, the local Christians kept on making effort to recon-quer the Iberia peninsula. This is what we know today as the Reconquista movement. The process took more than 700 years, until Granada fell in 1492.

The success of Reconquista during that era triggered first the Spaniards and then the Portuguese to do more, that is to seek for the centers of the “Muslim” over the world. They rekindled the Crusade spirit along with other non-religious motives.

The drive to find a maritime route to Asia gave birth to the success of persons like Bartholomeus Dias, Vasco da Gama, and Ferdinand Magellan. Two voyages in the 1490s laid the foun-dations for sea route to Asia: Columbus, sailing west for Spain, stumbled upon America in 1492. Vasco da Gama, adventuring south and east for Portugal, reached India in 1498.


Historians realized that the Portuguese led the way in this quest for many reasons. First, Portugal’s location on the south-western most edge of the Europe placed the country at the busy maritime crossroads between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Second, by the fifteenth century Portugal was an energetic, unified kingdom led by a visionary, military aristocracy. As they had no more territory on the peninsula to conquer, they began to seek for new fields of action overseas. Third, as have been written above, Portuguese kings were motivated by a deeply held belief that their role in history was as the standard-bearers of Christianity against the Muslims. Fourth, the kings of Portugal had, since the found-ing of the monarchy, encouraged maritime activities. Portugal led the world at that time in nautical science, having developed the ship added with sophisticated navigation instruments which made sailing the wide and uncharted ocean possible.

Such achievement was not only a fruit of religious zeal. Other Europeans also inched toward a higher level of cultural and technological achievements. Somehow, the spirit of Renaissance played a central role here. Long time ago, Asia, China and India showed uncontested achievements in forms of sophisti-cated civil izations in their era when European rulers were busy wagging wars against each other and simply forgot all the greatest of Greco-Roman cultures. Then, Islam emerged in the 7th century and rapidly became a dominant and competing power. The power of Islamic culture was apparent in Alexandria, Iberian cities, and further especially after Constantinople fell into the hand of Muslim rulers. Among other, later, the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad became the center of science, technology, philosophy, and Islamic studies. The emergence of Islamic power was not


uncontested. There was a lengthy clash of civilization between the European nations against the Islamic rulers at that time. Yet, regard-less who got the upper hand in the clash between the civilizations, the wars brought the European nations to new experiences. They learned that the Islamic Caliphate in Baghdad and other places proved to be the true center of science, culture, and studies of faith. Islamic culture showed an admirable and more sophisticated level of scientific achievement. Comparatively at that era, the Europe-ans were in stagnant and in a defensive most of time. The clash between the civilizations brought the Europeans to realization that they had to thoroughly evaluate their condition.

The evaluation went deep into the realm of science, tech-nology, politics, social and faith. The European scholars and philosophers did not hesitate to borrow the technology and science from Islamic civilization centers. The result was the Renaissance, a science, philosophy or cultural movement from the 14th to the 17th century that gave European nations the impetus to go to a higher path in their civilization, and later moved away from the debilitating condition that had bound them for centuries.

The Renaissance changed the way Europeans thought about themselves and the world including the Portuguese. It paved the way for the Age of Exploration (or Age of Discovery). New tech-nological inventions also paved the way for European voyages and exploration. Better maps showed the directions of ocean currents and lines of latitude. Magnetic compass significantly improved navigation.

After the Spanish and Portuguese in Iberia were successful in their Reconquista and the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1157) in Bagh-dad as the center of science, culture, and technology prosperity


declined, the impact sent tremors to Asia. Timur Lenk conquest of Baghdad in 1401 sent more wake up calls for the Muslims.

Some Islamic centers in Asia emerged as efforts to brace for the probable invasion of the Europeans. Southeast Asia was not then stagnant. The arrival of Muslim traders and explorers had impacted many small kingdoms. Such activities were not a new thing. The record of Marco Polo on his travel from China back to Europe mentions his visits to several ports in Sumatra in 1291. He wrote that there was a significant development of the Islamic Law in that region.51

Another development in Southeast Asia was that in 1445 Sultanate Malacca was established. Undeniably, it was a strong Islamic State. At that time, whoever mastered Malacca as the ruler would occupy the crossroad of maritime line to Europe, India, China, Japan, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, one of the three main junctions in the maritime world.

European interest in Asia began to grow during the Middle Age. The Crusades in 1095 brought Europeans into contact with Middle East where Arab merchants sold spices, sugar, silk, and other goods from China and India. Those products were rarities at that time and very expensive. In 1296, Marco Polo wrote Travels, an account of his trip to China. European then learned about the Silk Road, a land line from China all the way to Europe as his book was widely read in Europe and even inspired Christopher Columbus 200 years later. European merchants knew they could make a huge fortune selling goods from Asia. Yet through the Silk Road, Arab merchants, however, charged high prices for their goods when they sold their goods overland by caravan. Especially after the Turk took over a crossroad, Constantinople in 1453,

51 Marco Polo, La Description du Monde, Livre De Porche: 1998


the flow of the merchandise to Lisbon, Portugal was unstable. Thus, the commercial motive to find the sea route to Asia which was the source of the huge fortune was strong. The Portuguese began looking for a route to the East that bypassed the Arab merchants, which means, finding a maritime route which had been unknown or kept secret during that time. The writing of Varthema was one of its sources after the records of Marco polo, with the support of the Pope and the humanist Cardinals who sponsored the writing to be printed in 1510.

In Asia, as the Portuguese with the combination of their various military and other advantages managed to conquer Goa, Calcutta, Ceylon, Nagasaki, and Taiwan. The role of land route from India to Europe declined as the cost to carry products via the land was much more expensive compared to shipping the merchandise through the ocean from India via Africa to Europe.

Later, the Portuguese looked carefully to Malacca as one the primary strongholds of the Muslim and trade centers in Southeast Asia. In 1509, King Mahmud Shah in Malacca received Diego Lopez de Sequiere from Portugal. A couple years later, in 1511, a larger fleet under the command of Alfonse d’Alburquerque arrived and soon occupied Malacca. Bombay was ceded to the Portuguese in 1534. An early Portuguese presence in Sri Lanka also steadily increased during the century. And in 1557 Portu-guese merchants established a colony on the island of Macao. Thus, the route from India to Europe and from India to Malacca and to Southeast Asia maritime lines were under the Portuguese.

Meanwhile, the Spanish took the other side of the world. Thus, basically, the world was under the duopoly of the Spaniards and Portuguese, the two prominent Catholic Kingdoms.


The Arrival of the Dutch

The Dutch who harbored a deep hatred toward the Spanish and Portuguese also tried to discover their way to Asia. The naviga-tion sources that the Dutch possessed at that time was made by Plancius in 1592 and by a cartographer, Lucas Janz Waghenaer between the years of 1584-1598.52 Some said that the effort was later successful due to the notes of adventure of Huyghen.53

Jan Huyghen was born in Haarlem in the Netherlands. The addition of van Linschoten could indicate that his family had origins in the Utrecht village of the same name. He left for Spain during December 1576 to be with his brother in Seville, staying in Spain until 1580 when he got a job working with another mer-chant in Lisbon. A downturn in trade led him to seek alternative work. With the help of his brother, Willem, who was acquainted with the newly appointed Archbishop of the Portuguese colony of Goa, he got a job. Soon, the Archbishop Vicente da Fonseca appointed him as his secretary, Jan Huyghens sailed for Goa on 8 April 1583, arriving five months later via Madeira, Guinea, the Cape, Madagascar and Mozambique.

While in Goa, Jan Huygen kept a diary of his observations of the Portuguese ruled city, amassing information about both the European and the Asian people who lived there. He also col-lected accounts from travelers who had been to faraway places, such as Dirck Gerritsz “China”, a fellow resident of Enkhuizen

52 Johannes Vermuelen, Tionghoa di Batavia dan Huru Hara 1740, Depok: Komunitas Bambu, 2010, p.153 Arthur Coke Burnell, The voyage of John Huyghen van Linschoten to the East Indies, from the old English translation of 1598. [Edited], New York: B. Franklin Reprint of the 1885 ed., a reprint of Philllip’s translation which was published in 1598.Series, Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, no. 70-71.


who earned his nickname from his travels in the Far East. As well as cultural facts about the different peoples in Asia, Jan Huygen made note of the trading conditions between different countries, and the sea routes for travelling between them. Later, this infor-mation helped both the Dutch and the English to challenge the Portuguese monopoly on East Indian trade.

Several years later, he landed in Lisbon in 1592 and there-after returned to his home at Enkhuizen. In 1595, with assis-tance from Amsterdam publisher Cornelis Claesz, who special-ised in shipping, geography and travels, Jan Huyghens wrote Reys-gheschrift vande navigatien der Portugaloysers in Orienten Travel Accounts of Portuguese Navigation in the Orient.54 This work contains a large number of sailing directions, not only for shipping between Portugal and the East Indies colonies, but also between India, China and Japan.

In the same decade, in 1592, during the war with Spain, an English fleet had captured a large Portuguese vessel off the Azores, the Madre de Deus. This ship was loaded with 900 tons of mer-chandise from India and China, worth an estimated half a million pounds (nearly half the size of English Treasury at the time). This foretaste of the riches of the East galvanized interest in the region.

Thus, the competition among the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British intensified in finding and dominating the sea route to Asia and South Asia due to the perceived wealth that they could obtain.

As a summary, it is the combination of the commercial motivation, that is to find the sources of spices, such as peppers

54 Jan Hughens van Linschoten, Reys-gheschrift vande navigatien der Portu galoysers in Orienten, E. Kloppenburch: 1644 at http://objects.library.uu.nl/reader/index.php?obj=1874-310569&lan=en#page//10/16/40/101640897616034903801863806776590165235.jpg/mode/1up


and nutmegs, and the religious drive, that is to bring revenge to Islam strongholds that has brought mainly the Portuguese and the Spaniards to Southeast Asia. Later, the British, French, and the Dutch followed suit, perhaps with more commercial motives that religious one. In short, spirituality did not play a decisive role in their endeavor as proven later when they managed to have their colonies. Thus, India, Ceylon, Formosa, Malacca, the Philippines, and other areas of Asia had to face the European traders. Rulers of Southeast Asia kingdoms then, had to deal with the foreign powers who possessed superior war technology such as, gun powder and canons.

Forgotten History: The Chinese in the Palace

In Java the three main power centers during the late 15th century and early 16th century were Banten, Jepara and Gresik. Mean-while, the old Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms were dwindling down. Internal conflicts ruined those kingdoms from inside out. The Islamic power started to grow but also at war against each other.

In 1527, just as the Portuguese fleet was arriving off the coast, newly converted Javanese Muslims under Sunan Gunungjati cap-tured the port of Banten and the surrounding area from the Sunda-nese leaders and established the Sultanate of Banten. The center of this sultanate, according to J. de Barros, was Banten which was a major port in Southeast Asia rivaling Malacca and Makassar.

The location of Banten city was in middle of the bay which is around three miles across. The city was 1530 metres in length while the seaside town was 720 metres in length. At that time, through the middle of town there was a river which boats and


gale junks could sail into. There was a fortress very near to the town whose walls were made of brick and was half a metre wide. There were wooden defense buildings consisting of two levels and armed with good weapons. The middle of the town square was used for military activities and folk art, and as a market in the morning. The king’s palace was located on the southern side of the square.

When the Dutch arrived in Indonesia the Portuguese had long been in Banten. In addition, the French and Danes also came to trade in there. The English merchants also established a representative site in Banten, a “factory”, and the Dutch fol-lowed suit. In the ensuring competition between the European traders, gradually the Dutch emerged as the winners. The Portu-guese left Banten in 1601 after their fleet was destroyed by the Dutch fleet off the coast of Banten.

In, Chu-fan-chi, a record written circa 1200, Chou Ju-kua mentioned that in the early 13th Century, Srivijaya still ruled Sumatra, the Malay peninsula, and western Java (Sunda). The source identifies the port of Sunda as strategic and thriving. The people worked in agriculture and built their houses on wooden poles. However, robbers and thieves plagued the country. It was highly possible that the port of Sunda mentioned by Chou Ju-kua was probably refer to the port of Banten.55

Ever since the ancient time, Banten had relied on the pepper trade as its primary source of income. The kingdom promoted the cultivation of pepper and became famous to foreign traders as the prime producer of pepper. These merchants competed with each other to capture the limited supplies of pepper, often resulting

55 See: Chau Ju-kua: His Work On The Chinese And Arab Trade In The Twelfth And Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-fan-chï, Nabu Press, 2011


in riots or warfare within Banten territory. One of the sultans (kings) ordered that all pepper bushes must be cut down to pre-vent further turmoil. As a result, there was a partial shift from cultivating pepper to planting rice and sweet potatoes. During this time, however, pepper was selling at a very high price in the world’s markets. The next sultans decided to change the strategy and ordered people to concentrate on cultivating pepper again.

According to the famous Portuguese explorer, Tome Pires, in the early 16th century the port of Banten was an important port within the Kingdom of Sunda along with the ports of Pontang, Cheguide (Cigede), Tangaram (Tangerang), Calapa (Sunda Ke-lapa), and Chimanuk (estuarine of Cimanuk river).56

Guilliot, a well-respected French scholar stated that the rulers of Banten were very open to people from different ethnic backgrounds. Even later when the Muslim Sultans were in power, the relationship with other ethnic groups and race con-tinued. For example, during the reign of Sultan Ageng (1631- 1692), several foreigners were appointed, but they were required to become Muslims. In return, in Banten, continually the Sultans gave them high level positions in the government bureaucracy.57 During the time of the Dutch sea blockade, a Chinese merchant named Kaytsu, who was both an economic advisor and a harbour master, was sent by Sultan Ageng to lead a Banten delegation to negotiate with the Dutch. Another name mentioned is Tan tse ko, also known as Kiayi Ngabehi Cakradana, a Chinese man who had the position of a harbour master and played an important role

56 See: Bibliography Armando Cortesao, tr, The Suma Oriental of Tome Pires, London, 1944, Reprinted in 196757 See: Claude Guilliot, Banten: Sejarah dan Peradaban Abad X-XVII (Banten: History and Civilization X – XVII Century), Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, 2008, p. 138


in changing the administration of Banten city. He also built the Banten castle. Tan had an international network all the way until Europe.58 His outstanding bills were in Copenhagen and kept in the museum today.59

When Sultan Haji came to power, he appointed Kiayi Arya Mangunsadana, a Chinese man, as both a harbor master and prime minister. He was also named a nobleman with the title Prince Dipaningrat. According to tradition, the Banten mosque minaret was built by a Chinese architect named Cek Ban Cut, or Prince Wiradiguna. Yet, he felt that the Chinese as a group had received too much privileges from his father, Sultan Ageng.60

Later when the Dutch attacked the palace, many members of royal family flew to various regions and mainly according to folk tale, to Cirebon. To prevent being arrested, many of them married with Chinese and hid their true royal blood lineage. This historical fact points out that Poniman’s story about how his royal ancestor married Chinese to hide their royal identity might probably bear truth in it.

The Portuguese in Banten

On August 1522, Enrique Leme led some Portuguese ship from Malacca to Banten. The Sunda Banten King received them well. An economic agreement was signed. The Portuguese also were

58 Naerssen, F.H. van et al. (1977), Catalogue of Indonesian Manuscripts, part 2, Copenhagen: The Royal Library.59 Guilliot, ibid.60 Guilliot, opcit, p. 213. Also, see: Titik Pudjiastuti (ed.) Perang, Dagang, Persahabatan: Surat-Surat Sultan Banten, (War, Trade, Friendship: Letters of Banten Sultanes), Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia / Toyota Foundation, 2007.


more comfortable to relate with the Hindu merchants or kings compared to the Muslim ones. The capital city of this kingdom was Banten. According to Tom Pires, its location as about three miles from Iacatra or 10 miles from the gulf of Banten.61

The ruler had also the authority over the port of Kelapa which is located at the northern coast of West Java. It was at the tributary of the river of Ciliwung that runs from south to north. This port was one of the prominent ports along the northern part of Java. The ruler decided to grant the Portuguese free access to the pepper trade. Also, the Hindu King allowed the Portuguese to make their first fort in Kelapa harbor areas.Thus, the Portuguese obtained several facilities. The Portuguese merchant used the pepper from this kingdom to enter the market in China.62 The amicable rela-tionship between the Portuguese and the Banten rulers at that time was written in a rare source that was kept in Lisbon Library that a friend of Guillot found and gave to him to study.

To commemorate the closeness and an important treaty, a big stone, called a Padrão was erected near Kelapa, yet vanished for some years. The Padrão stone was uncovered later in 1918 during an excavation for a new house in Kota area on the corner of Ceng-keh road and Nelayan Timur Street, Northern Jakatra. This Padrão can now be seen in the National Museum on Medan Merdeka Barat road. A popular understanding was that the original location of the stone suggests that the coastline in the early 16th century

61 Heriyanti Ongkodharma Untoro, Kapitalisme Pribumi Awal: Kesultanan Banten 1522-1684, Kajian Arkeolog-Ekonomy (Early Indigenous Capitalism: Banten Sultanate 1522-1684, Archeological-Economic Analysis)- Ekonomi, Depok: Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya, UI, 2007, p. 2662 Geoffrey Gunn, History Without Borders, History Without Borders: The Making of an Asian World Region, 1000-1800, Hong Kong University Press, 2011, p. 88


formed a nearly straight line near along the present Nelayan road, some 400 meters south to the Lookout Tower. Guillot questioned the accuracy of its original place although he supported the close relationship between those two kingdoms.63

Why did the Banten Hindu king welcome the Portuguese as warm as it was? For long time, Banten had been one of the most important kingdoms in the trading line at that time. The fall of Malacca Muslim Kings to the Portuguese in 1511 caused many Muslim merchants to avoid Malacca and started to utilize Banten as their trading center. Gradually, Banten became a more prominent center for trading in Southeast Asia. The rivalry be-tween the Islamic kingdom and the old Hindu kingdoms seemed to be evident. The Muslim kings in Java decided to take it over. As the result, the Hindu Banten king had felt the threat and needed strong allies. Thus, the king hoped the Portuguese would help him protect his important harbor.

But the Portuguese came rather late. In 1526 the Muslim leader Fatahillah with more than one thousand soldiers from King-dom of Cirebon and Demak defeated Banten Kingdom. In 1527, he appeared before Kalapa. According to some historians, this vic-tory of 1527 provided the reason for Fatahillah to rename Sunda Kelapa, Jayakarta, which means “Great Deed” or “Complete Vic-tory.” Ever since, Jakarta celebrates its birthday on June 22, 1527, the day Fatahillah achieved his decisive victory of over Sundanese Hindu army and Portuguese sailors. Thus, the old Hindu Kingdom of Banten disappeared and the Islamic Sultanate in 1526 replaced them while also ruling over Sunda Kalapa a year later.

When Banten was already ruled by the Sultans, on the 23rd of June 1596, Dutch ships under the leadership of Cornelis de

63 Guillot, ibid


Houtman succeeded landing in Banten Harbor. That year was re-membered as the first time the Dutch armada entering the archi-pelago. After stopping in several ports, de Houtman obtained infor-mation about the geography and trading conditions in Asia. It was quite a surprise for him when he found many Chinese communities that lived harmoniously with the locals and the king in Banten for decades. In fact, Banten was not unique. In Hội An, Patani, Phnom Penh, and Manila or other towns in Southeast Asia, there had been peaceful relationship between the Chinese and the locals for ages before the presence of the Europeans. In the year of 1642 in Hội An itself there had been around 4000 Chinese, while in the year of 1600 Banten there were already 3000 Chinese living there.

At the time, it was customary in Europe for a company to be set up only for the duration of a single voyage, and to be liquidated upon the return of the fleet. Investment in these ex-peditions was a very high-risk venture, not only because of the usual dangers of piracy, disease, and shipwreck, but also because the interplay of inelastic demand and relatively elastic supply of spices could make prices tumble at just the wrong moment, thereby ruining prospects of profitability. To manage such risk, the European traders thought of establishing a cartel to control the supply. The English had been the first to adopt this approach, by bundling their resources into a monopoly enterprise, the English East India Company in 1600, thereby threatening their Dutch competitors.

Two years before, in 1598, competing merchant groups from around the Netherlands sent out an increasing number of fleets. Some fleets were lost, but most were successful, with some voyages producing high profits. In March 1599, a fleet of eight ships under Jacob van Neck was the first Dutch fleet to reach the


‘Spice Islands’ of Maluku, the source of pepper, cutting out the Javanese middlemen. The ships returned to Europe in 1599 and 1600 and the expedition made a 400 percent profit.64 Facing the situation, later, in Europe, several merchants of Bataaf, Nether-lands established VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) or Dutch East India Company in 1602.

Soon, VOC tried to take away the control of the trading from Cape Hope, Ceylon, Japan, and others from the Portuguese. The company was led by de Heeren XVII (The Lords Seventeen) while the regional leadership was in the hand of a Governor General.

At the same year, in June, British East India Company (British EIC), another company which was established earlier in Britain, launched its first voyage, commanded by Sir James Lancaster. Their ships arrived in Aceh and sailed on to Banten where he was allowed to build trading post which becomes the center of British trade in Indonesia until 1682.

The arrival of de Houtman was a success of a long endeavor as the knowledge about the route to Asia was a protected secret. Four years before, Cornelis and Frederik were sent to Lisbon in 1592 as commercial representatives of nine Dutch merchants. Their mission was to find the route that lead to Asia, a route which was monopolized by the Portuguese. The brothers were imprisoned by the Portuguese for attempting to steal secret charts of East Indian sailing routes. After their release in 1595 they returned to Amsterdam, where Cornelis was appointed commander of four merchant ships of the Verre Company, a syndicate founded by the nine companies. At the same time he returned to Amsterdam, Jan Huygen van Linschoten returned.

64 Ricklefs, M.C. A History of Modern Indonesia Since c.1300, 2nd Edition. London: MacMillan, 1991. p. 27


They determined that Banten provided the best opportunity to buy spices. On the 2nd of April, 1595 four ships left Amsterdam: the Amsterdam, Hollandia, Mauritius, and Duyfken.

De Houtman was introduced to the Sultan of Banten, who promptly entered into an optimistic treaty with the Dutch, writing “We are well content to have a permanent league of alliance and friendship with His Highness the Prince Maurice of Nassau, of the Netherlands and with you, gentlemen.”

The local Portuguese traders became very suspicious when De Houtman did not buy any black pepper and wanted to wait on the next harvest. Unfortunately, De Houtman was undiplo-matic and insulting to the sultan, and was turned away for “rude behavior”, without being able to buy spices at all.

Later in November 13, 1596 De Houtman arrived at Jaya-karta or Kalapa. A year later, the prince of Wijayakrama of Jayakarta signed an agreement with him. The Dutch got permis-sion to build a stone walled house near the Chinese houses.65

After that day, the ships then sailed east to Madura, but were attacked by pirates on the way. In Madura, they were received peacefully, but De Houtman ordered his men to brutally attack and rape the civilian population in revenge for the unrelated earlier piracy.

In 1600, the battle between the Portuguese against the Dutch fleet on the sea of Java near Banten started. At the end, the Dutch gained victory. Thus, the Portuguese left Banten for good.

In 1611, VOC Governor-General, Pieter Both sent JP (Jan Pieterzoon) Coen to buy pepper in Banten. Before his arrival, the Dutch had to compete with the Portuguese, the British, Spanish,

65 see: Jacobus A van de Chijs, De Nederlanders te Jakartra- Amsterdam: F. Muller, 1860 pp. 201-203


and even French. Furthermore, there had been local traders such as the Bugis, Malays, Indians and Chinese who had been develop-ing business relations with prominent ports for ages

The European traders had been aware of the roles of the Chinese from mainland in the maritime line and trading. After Marco Polo brought the information about the Empire of China, they developed a perception that China was rich, well-cultured, civilized, and well-educated. Report by sojourners such as Dirck Gerritsz about China cemented the perception of its richness and a potential profitable source of trade. At the same time, evidently the Chinese merchants were formidable competitors.66

JP Coon soon realized that wherever he went, he had to deal with a Chinese merchant, especially in Banten. In Banten, the Chinese were busy with trading, producing wines, and sell-ing peppers.67 They had been living there for centuries beginning when the trading lines started between China and Southeast Asia. The Chinese in Banten were the most reliable sources of pepper production and collection besides offering the product with sta-ble price and large quantity (one of de Houtman staff members, Willem Lodeswijcks mentioned it).

The Chinese also collected products from China such as porcelain and satin. They also bought sandal woods from Timor. In short, the European traders, especially the Dutch had to deal or compete with them. Later, the Chinese role became a signifi-cant problem for the Dutch as they kept on increasing the price of the pepper commodity in cooperation with the Palace officials

66 Vermuelen, opcit67 Ibid, p. 5


in Banten. Two reasons caused them to do so. First, the high profit that they obtained by selling Banten peppers in mainland China was enormous. Second, the competitions between the European traders. JP Coen perceived the Chinese as “They do not care about distinguishing right from wrong, they are unfaithful, often tell lies and cheat a lot.”68 This was the first narrative from the Dutch that later became popular. This narrative is rooted in the real experience of the Dutch with the Chinese who played the role as their competitors.

Coen had a vision to establish a trading network center in West Java. He realized that he needed the Chinese as the majority in that place. The leader of the Chinese in Banten was Souw Beng Kong whom the Banten Sultan and all locals trusted wholeheart-edly. Souw Beng Kong, himself also had his own large pepper plantation. Among the natives, he had a wide influence. All foreign traders such as the Portuguese, British, and Dutch had to negotiate prices and other procedures with Souw Beng Kong. The narrative about this fact is evidently forgotten by most Indonesians.

Knowing that fact, Jan Piterszoon Coen made several efforts to draw Souw to take side with him but failed a couple times as Souw perceived that Coen was overly demanding. Meanwhile the Sultan and the people of Banten respected Souw and other Chi-nese as they shared the new technology to the natives especially in agriculture areas. Furthermore, from the Chinese, the Banten people learned to adopt the wet rice (sawah) planting method.

Meanwhile, in 1618, a British fleet of 15 ships arrived in Sun-da Kelapa under the leadership of Sir Thomas Dale, an English naval commander and former governor of the Colony of Virginia (present State of Virginia) to build a fort. The relationship

68 Ibid, p. 7


between the Dutch and the British soon deteriorated. Coen had only few ships at his armada and they were filled with merchan-dise. After the sea battle between the Dutch and the British, Coen escaped to the Moluccas to seek military support since as in 1605 the Dutch had already overtaken the first of the Portuguese fort there. Coen left an order that the existing Dutch soldiers had to defend the fort as much as they could.

In the 23th of December 1618, the tension between the Dutch who stayed in the fortress and various groups who resented them escalated. The Banten ruler, prince Jayawikarta’s soldiers besieged the Dutch fortress. A senior Dutch trader, Pieter van den Broeck collected all Dutch, other European, and their families, including slaves and concubines. More than three hundred people stayed with him to defend the fortress.

The Dutch army was on the verge of surrendering to the Brit-ish when, in 1619, a sultan from Banten sent a group of soldiers to summon Prince Jayawikarta. He was charged by the Sultan that he had taken an initiative to foster a closed, exclusive relationship with the British, without prior approval from Banten authorities. The internal conflict between Palace of Banten and Prince Jaya-wikarta, as well as the tense relationship between Banten and the British, presented a new opportunity for the JP Coen.

Summary

When the European came, they realized that they had to com-pete with the Chinese merchants and immigrants who had lived in the archipelago. Thus, it is evident that the narratives about the primary role of the Chinese as the middlemen since their


first coming to Indonesians or their first encounter with the European is inaccurate.

Concerning the narratives about the hostility between the Chinese and Muslim, it is also inaccurate. Opposite to such nar-ratives, in Banten Kingdom, which was one of the major Islamic Kingdoms at that time, there had been large number of Chinese immigrants more than most people have known before. Some of the royal positions were even trusted to the Chinese Muslims. Thus, returning to the original question: “what is the root of the today’s Chinese trauma residue expressed in the narratives” the answer could not be found in the pre-colonial era. For the first 600 years of the Chinese being in the archipelago, there was no record about massacre, violence, or open conflict between the indigenous and the Chinese immigrants or merchants.

Concerning the power of spirituality, it is not evident that the spirituality of the Chinese and the indigenous Hindu, Buddha, or Muslim in this era either gave positive or negative impacts in such harmony. However, the incoming European, especially the Span-ish and Portuguese who lived by two narratives caused changes. First, the archipelago spices are the hidden motherload of future wealth. Second, the Reconquista should continue as the exten-sion of the Crusade to overcome Islam. It is an acade mic issue to determine which narrative was more significantly determina-tive as Catholic Church, Kings, and business communities were deeply interrelated in that era. However, it is evident, the deepest motives were not peaceful as they were rooted in negative narratives about the indigenous and Islam.

The European only narrated the Chinese at that time as ob-stacles to their dream as the Chinese were the inter-insular traders with some harbor masters were also Chinese descents. It is not


evident that their spirituality influenced anything in the narratives about the Chinese. Later, perhaps, the Dutch with their Calvinistic concept of chosen people created superiority complex in them, but empirically this study has not discovered any record as such.


______________________________________

Era of the Pioneers in Batavia––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.

Erich Fromm

Jan Pieterzoon Coen: A Visionary or Cruel Master?

After escaping to Mollucas, Jan Pieterszoon Coen returned with a fleet of 19 ships from his base in Ambon. Along the way to Sunda Kelapa, Coen had burned down Jepara and its British post. After his arrival, the VOC leveled the old city of Jayakarta and built its new headquarters, Batavia on top of it. JP Coen as the second most powerful man who led VOC in Asia had a big dream as he gained supremacy in Jayakarta.

JP Coen built a fort in the harbor area. Then, gradually the town was built around that fort. His dream was to make Batavia, a trading center of the archipelago. Yet, later for years, Batavia just became a huge warehouse of the islands as most of the Dutch who came to Batavia during his time did not share his dream. They just tried to find fortune then after a couple years, quickly move back to Europe. Combination factors of Batavia, such as, the weather, water resources, manpower, and social environment caused re luctance among the Europeans to settle down there. In certain years, Batavia was even known as a city of the death.


JP Coen realized that his dream to have a center of the archi-pelago which is named as the Dutch East Indies or the Netherland Indies might come to naught. Several times, he realized that he needed manpower to build the town according to his dream. Only the Chinese immigrants who lived in Banten were the available resources, but their leader, Souw Beng Kong did not want to assist the Dutch. They and as the Banten Kings had cemented a long-last-ing friendship that created mutual benefit. In the early encounter, the Dutch did not leave a positive impression among the Chinese. Yet, JP Coen kept on trying. He added some Chinese population in Batavia by inviting people from Cirebon, Jepara, and other areas to move to Batavia. He even asked Jacques Specx, the Dutch repre-sentative in Japan to get labor force from Southern China. He also tried to blockade Macau, Manila, and Malacca from having a direct maritime line to Batavia. In 1623, he sent a letter from Batavia to another governor near China and mentioned “...send another fleet to visit the coast of China to take as many prisoners… as possible for the peopling of Batavia, Amboina, and Banda. …69

In the process of getting the Chinese into Batavia, at last, Coen succeeded to have Souw Beng Kong’s agreement to bring 300 Chi-nese from Banten move to Batavia and help him. Some historians mentioned that Beng Kong decided to leave Banten as at that time be cause of two factors. First, there was a long draught in Banten. Se cond, there was a friction between one of the Sultans and the Chinese immigrants when the Sultan wanted to erase the Chinese

69 See: Barie, http://www.indonesialogue.com/destinations/who-are-indonesias-ethnic-chinese.html, Jan 30, 2008, see also: On June 22, 1622, Coen sent a fleet of eight ships with 1024 man for Maccao that belonged to the Portuguese to conquer and to capture as much as possible Chinese in order to populate Batavia and to commit to the construction of the forts. The attack fails. http://www.voc-site.nl/geschiedenis/personalia/coen.html. Also, Johannes Theodorus Vermuel-len, Tionghoa di Batavia dan Huru Hara 1740 (Chinese in Batavia and Riots of 1740), Depok: Komunitas Bambu.2010, p. 10.


settlements that they had built along the coast as the Sultan con-sidered it to ruin his ocean view. Other experts stated that the Dutch forced some Chinese who lived in the northern coastal areas to move to Batavia.

As the governor, Coen awarded the Chinese a special quarter for them in Batavia. Meanwhile, Souw and JP Coen became close friends. Souw was awarded the title Chinese kapitein/Captain (titular) in 1619. As the first Chinese captain, his task was to create a Chi-nese official system to lead the Chinese community and influenced the long ships that brought goods from Chinese to land in Batavia harbor instead of Banten. Souw had also the power to collect taxes from the Chinese, from which eight per cent became his revenue.

Gradually, the population grew. However, the morality was in a dire situation. People who came to Batavia were the worst kind of European or others. A well-known French scholar, Denys Lombard wrote that in 1622, in Batavia garrison, there were only 143 soldiers. Among them, only 57 were Dutch. The rest were Swiss, Danish, Scotts, and Irish.70 This information was con curred with the statement of Taylor, a researcher.71

The role of Souw Beng Kong as the founder and developer of Batavia in the 17th century was significant. Without him, it would never become one of the most visited harbors in Asia at that time and the destination for immigrants. In 1632 the largest group of population in Batavia was Chinese, excluded the slaves.72 Until 1636, acting as the Chinese Captain, Souw mobilized the Chinese

70 Denys Lombard, Nusa Jawa: Silang Budaya I - Batas-Batas Pembaratan (Nusa Jawa: Silang Budaya #1) ,Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama 2000, p.6971 Jean Gelman Taylor, Kehidupan Sosial di Batavia, Jakarta: Matsup, 2009,72 Leonard Blusse, Persekutuan Aneh (Strange Companion), Jakarta: Puztaset Perkasa, 1985, p. 126, quoting N. Mac Leod, De Oost-Indische Compagnie als zeemogengeid in Azie, Rijswijk, 1927, 2 Vols.


immigrants to build the city, copper currency, and system of custom, etc. In his old age, Souw moved to Taiwan, but later when he passed away, he was buried in Batavia. During his service, Souw was assisted by a Muslim Chinese as his secretary.

Annabelle Gambe in her book, Overseas Chinese Entrepre-neurship and Capitalist Development in Southeast Asia, men-tioned that the Chinese constructed first canal in Batavia and sugar mill. Later, there was no single industry that they did not create. The carpenter that built houses and ships were Chinese. The collectors for the supply of sugar, rice, nutmeg, or pepper the principals were also Chinese.73

As the governor general, according to a scholar, Vermeulen, Coen managed to rule with justice and fairness. He would not allow any European to treat the Chinese unfairly. He even re-lated well with Chinese. In Christmas 1627, when some people from the Banten arrived with the boat to kill Coen, the Chinese in Batavia informed him about it.74 He even showed an ability to treat even the poor humanely.75

The Chinese who were engage in sugar production were granted general permit to cut fuel wood freely in the forest out-side Batavia outer wall for the production process with a condi-tion that they had to sell all the product at the price that VOC had decided. In the islands outside Java, VOC assigned the Chinese to take care salt farms and collect taxes. VOC also imported tea from China to Java and then sold them to Europe at enormous profit. Thus, VOC monopolized intercontinental maritime line

73 Annabelle Gambe, Overseas Chinese Enterpreneurship and Capitalist Development in Southeast Asia, New York: St. Martin Press, 2000. p. 5674 Vermuelen, opcit, p. 1475 ibid, pp. 14-15.


while the inter-insular trading was given to the Chinese who had more experiences in dealing with the local rulers.

Analysis on the structure of the VOC civil servant in Batavia shows that it consists of clerk at the bottom of the rung. To climb the hierarchy of VOC, they stepped to the position of assistants, accountants, junior traders and later, merchants. To do so, they had to work very hard. In the long run, they could even become a VOC warehouse administrator or as a chief master in one of the trading posts. If they were, they could be sent as a gover-nor of Ambon or other colonies. Yet, most of them died before they could be in a high position.76 Only those who had a special family connection, such as Imhoff in the 18th century could be-come a governor general in 15 years.

As in total, from 1618 till 1710, only few Dutch lived and settled down permanently in Batavia, the influence of their cul-ture on the locals was limited. The role of the Chinese in the archipelago was conspicuous not only in Banten or Batavia. In their exploration in the archipelago, the Dutch, the British, and Portuguese found many Chinese harbor masters such as, Ince Muda at Jepara who also had ships and relationship with Jambi (1616), Nyai Gede Pinatih (a Muslim Chinese lady) at Gresik, a harbor master in Martapura (1692) and also at Jaratan (the harbor-master who married one of Souw Beng Kong’s daughters).77

76 Taylor, opcit, pp. 5 – 8. 77 Leo Suryadinata, Seong Tan Yeok, ed, Chinese Adaptation and Diversity: Essays on Society and Literature in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, Singapore: Published for Centre for Advanced Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Science, NUS [by] Singapore University Press, National University of Singapore, c1993. Also, Tan Yeok Seong, Chinese Element in the Islamization of Southeast Asia: A Study of the Story of Njai Gede Pinatih, the Great Lady of Gresik, in Admiral Zheng He and Southeast Asia, ISEAS, Yusof Ishak Institute, 2005 pp. 58-71 Leo Suryadinata (ed),; Also: Benny Setiono, Tiong Hoa dalam Pusaran Politik (Chinese in Political Turmoil)


Meanwhile, in the year 1643, the Ming dynasty collapsed in mainland China, causing migrants to run out of China towards Southeast Asia, including to Batavia. Surviving Ming officials also took refuge in Nusantara. Soon, the Chinese outnumbered the Dutch in Batavia. Those Chinese who lived inside the city of Batavia were trading magnates while most who lived outside the city wall (called ommelanden) were small traders.

Gradually, the Dutch felt threatened with their increasing population and thus decided to prohibit the Chinese to possess land or work in the government. On the other hand, the Chi-nese were exempt from physical labors in exchange with paying various taxes. Continuing the existing policy, the VOC gave the Chinese freedom to move around and between the islands in the archipelago. Therefore, they became the masters of the inter-island trading. Living with their self-narratives that they moral and cosmic belief caused them to have work ethics that enabled to work meticulously, to endure uncomfortable condition, and to excel in whatever they did, most Chinese were successful in the trading even when they began with a meager financial capital.

Observing the opportunity, many VOC officials started to lend money to the Chinese at high interest rate with 30 to 50 per cent profit to be shared. This was the first collaboration between the Chinese and the VOC officials.78

After Souw Beng Kong, in the year of 1648, in Batavia, VOC appointed Phoa Beng Gan to dig canals and to take the toll fee for each the boats that passed through. At the time, the canals served

ISEAS, Yusof Ishak Institute, 2005 pp. 58-71 Leo Suryadinata (ed),; Also: Benny Setiono, Tiong Hoa dalam Pusaran Politik (Chinese in Political Turmoil)

78 See. Taylor, opcit, p. 13.


as the solution to floods that hit Batavia several times. With the other members of Chinese community, Phoa succeeded to build a canal that cut through the Molenvliet (now Gajah Mada and Hayam Wuruk streets). Later, the Chinese connected the canal with the river of Ciliwung. Eight years later, in 1654, the Dutch took over the toll right, buying from Beng Gan with the sum 1,000 real. Unfortunately, Phoa passed away as a poor man. Until today, no one knew where his wealth disappeared.

The XVII Century: The Wrong Majority and Multiple Problems

The vision of Coen was to develop their colony and trading center with the Dutch minorities as their backbone while the Asians majority played their supporting role. Unfortunately, Batavia could not attract people from the Netherlands to move to the city permanently. The Dutch soldiers and citizens only stayed there until their contract time was over and then they went home. The climate and the limited resources tortured the inhabitants. Thus, during their stay, they lived with alcohol and adopted low moral standards as there were very few women living in the city compared to the number of men. No sane European wished to live among people as such.

Before successfully occupying Jayakarta which later became Batavia, VOC had been through several competitions and even battles against other Europeans. In 1606, a Spanish fleet occu-pied Ternate and Tidore at North Mollucas. Pirates, British or Portuguese forces, competed with the Dutch to gain hegemony in Asia. Meanwhile, there was a war between the Portuguese and


the Dutch that lasted for 80 years. Thus, the VOC leaders did not concentrate their energy only on Java or Batavia. They were just in the first phase of their plan to control the whole trading and create network between the archipelago and Europe.

In 1609, they established a factory in Hirado, Japan. VOC traders also made forays into South Sulawesi and Banjarmasin, Borneo. To consolidate the network, they conquered Colombo, Banda, Ambon, Malacca, and west Sumatera. It was quite an achievement that brought financial gains. On the next phase, they started to pay attention to the affairs of the local rulers in the interior. Later, they would involve the Chinese for the second phase.

Meanwhile, in Batavia, with so many wars and battles, some European free traders (vrijburgers) outside the employees of VOC made initiatives to take part in the war or pirating. For example, in 1627, they who lived in Batavia managed to bring 170 Portuguese, Mestizo, and others who they captured when they went for piracy expedition.79

In Batavia, with the limited number of the Dutch population, Jan Pieterzoon Coen realized that he was facing a difficult choice. Either he had to construct of a colony solely run by the VOC or, to allow the European entrepreneurs (burghers) take part in the trade with the people of Asia. At first, he gave permission for them to get involved in building Batavia permanently. Later, his predecessors changed his decisions.

As has been described, the economy and labor force in the early history of Batavia largely depended on the Chinese skills

79 Niemeijer, Batavia: Masyarakat Kolonial Abad XVII (Batavia, Colobial Society in the 17th Century), Depok: Komunitas Bambu, 2012, pp.22-23, his findings are based on National Archieve VOC 1092, Res. HR 22 Juli 1627 Den Haag, Netherlands


and the use of forced labor. This also involved thousands of slaves. Half the city consisted of slave, the majority imported from the traditional slave markets of India, Sulawesi, Bali, and the islands of eastern part of the archipelago. Most slaves were privately owned and among these private owners were also many Asian citizens and small agricultural entrepreneurs.

Thus, the population of Batavia consisted of VOC employ-ees, private European entrepreneurs (either former VOC soldiers or others), Chinese immigrants, the people of Bali, Makassar, Bugis, Ambon, and Java. There were also former Portuguese slaves (some were the offspring of Portuguese and local women) who VOC released when the Dutch defeated the Portuguese forts somewhere in Asia, or those who were former slaves in India and later sent to Batavia. They are called Mardjikers or inlanders and many were already Christians (hence, the term inlanders at that time was not associated with the so-called Indonesian native as known today). Also, beside them, there were some mix-blood, between the Europeans and the Asians.

What were the social problems that emerged in Batavia during the 1620s? First, low morality was the most significant factor in this early decade of Batavia. European who came to Batavia only stayed a while, then moved on or returned to their homeland. Also, there was not enough European woman, thus, many local women became concubine or just lived together with the Dutch or Chinese. During 1621-1639, total of 1660 couples got married, including interracial marriage between the Asian and the Dutch. The marriages were conducted in Christian tra-ditions.80 Gambling and drinking were other issues that created many violent fights among the inhabitants.

80 Ibid, p. 37


Second problem also added to the difficulties. Many of the Dutch, who faced troubles adapting to the life in the colonial territory wanted to go back to the Netherlands. At first, they could bring their Asian wives with them, but then later the practice was forbidden. Those who ended up living in Batavia, including the private entrepreneurs started private-owned enterprise, such as blacksmith, cobbling, publishing, etc.

Third problem was related to the relation between the Amsterdam and the colony. Heeren XVII Lords Seventeen in Netherlands who were the Board of Director of the VOC viewed the European entrepreneurs who also worked in Indonesia as simply annoying groups. In 1652, it was recorded that the European entre-preneurs armed and funded their own pirated ships (looted from the Portuguese) and attacked the Portuguese strongholds in Ma-lacca. There was also a Malay captain, Wan Idop, who joined the battle.81

Later, as the VOC grew stronger, the Heeren XVII decided to take a more decisive action. The European entrepreneurs had to be restricted in doing their business. VOC firmly decided to prohibit the private European entrepreneurs to come to the colony with VOC ships. They no longer had freedom as all must be under the permission of the authorities. They could only conduct busi-ness in areas that were not essential for the VOC. In their business process, they must also sail with their own ships.

Fourth, another difficulty that VOC had to face was the con-tinuous resistance of the local rulers to their presence. The King of Mataram Kingdom in Central Java dared to attack Batavia di-rectly. The war took place in the year of 1628-1629. Yet, the attack toward Batavia failed. Thus, until 1638 the people of Batavia

81 Ibid, p. 23


lived under high stress and fear because besides the Javanese who were against them, the soldiers of Banten Kingdom could any-time become a threat especially at the city outskirt. Also, there was a shortage of rice, while the Dutch immigrants had to deal with difficult adaptation to the tropical climate.

Fifth, to make matter worse, there were many problems related to slaves. In Batavia, the European harbored a wide-spread suspicion toward the slaves, including the slave women who were Christians and already married. They perceived and narrated that the slaves could easily shift their loyalty. Thus, they could become treacherous or might have tried to poison their husbands. Furthermore, people suspected them as practicing witchcraft. In one incident, several slaves who were Christians and concubines were accused to conspire with two Europeans, Catharina Sassembroot and her sister, to give the spices of estrus and kill several men. The governor general decided to give them death sentence.82

Although the moral life was low at that time, in 1633, a Malay- speaking church was already established to care for the soul of the descendants of half Dutch and for their people in the archipelago. Yet, the church functioned mostly as a guard for society moral life. The church disciplined its members strictly, however when a Dutch slandered, the church officials did not enforce the moral discipline to the Dutch as strong as when a native or a half breed when they disregarded the standard.

In a book titled Batavia, written by historian Hendrik Nie-meijer who spent years studying VOC archives, it is said that in the long run, the Dutch vigorously managed an ethnically diverse nation with different religions and beliefs allowed, along with

82 Ibid, p. 19


a sense of social control in the behaviors and lifestyle in Bata-via. The main problems existed at that time were slavery, concu-binage, prostitution, neglected children, and alcohol. The VOC often solved the challenges with brute power, such as forcing the people to take Christian lessons, endure various tortures, and death through gallows.83 The Calvinistic concept that Christians are the chosen people of God might have caused the Dutch to look down to others who were different from them. Yet, the teaching that the chosen people lived in the world where being sinful was a fact seemed to be more influential. It is easier to define the religiosity of the Dutch at that time was more significant compared to their spirituality. The religiosity of them seemed to be more cultural rather than evangelistic.

In 1656, due to a conflict with Banten, the Governor-General no longer allowed the Javanese to reside within the city walls. As the consequence, they settled outside Batavia. In 1659, a tem-porary peace with Banten enabled the city to grow. Many kinds of people entered the city and thus, as some of them were poor, during this period, more bamboo shacks appeared in Batavia. From 1667, bamboo houses, as well as the keeping of livestock, were banned within the city. In the second half of the 17th century, Batavia progressively became an attraction for many people and outside the city wall, suburbs began to appear.

Thus, in the last two decades of the 17th century, most of Batavia’s residents were of Asian descent. Slaves were the larg-est group in the city. The Europeans brought thousands of slaves were brought India and Arakan (near Burma today), and later, from Bali and Celebes. To avoid an uprising, a decision was made to free the Javanese people from slavery.

83 Ibid, p. 20


There was also a large group of liberated slaves, usually Portuguese-speaking Asian Christians, who formerly lived under the rule of the Portuguese. VOC made the members of this group prisoners during numerous conflicts with the Portuguese. There-fore, Portuguese was the dominant language in Batavia until the late 18th century, when slowly Dutch and Malay replaced it. Additionally, there were also Malays, as well as Muslim and Hindu merchants from India who came with their own dialects.

Initially, these different ethnic groups lived alongside each other; however, in 1688, VOC decided to have a complete seg-regation of the indigenous population. The government forced each ethnic group to live in its own established village outside the city wall. There were Javanese villages for Javanese people, Moluccan villages for the Moluccans, and so on. Each person had to bring a tag to identify their ethnic group; later, this identity tag was replaced with a parchment. Furthermore, reporting was compulsory for intermarriage that involved members of different ethnic groups.

An interesting article on Jakarta Post by Ida Khouw, a journalist, depicted the slavery in Batavia as one of the interesting features of the city.84

Three hundred years ago, the measure of a man’s wealth was not merely by his property or jewels, but also by the number of slaves he owned. The 72nd article in our series on Old Batavia looks at the slave trade in the Dutch colony, when people were handled and sold like cattle in the market. Slaves were a luxury commodity, and only the richest citizens of Batavia could afford them. But those who could,

84 Ida Khouw, Jakarta Post, Jakarta:| January 27 2001


would display their wealth by having hundreds of slaves. Although Batavia was known as “the queen of the East” for its beauty, a more fitting name would have been the “city of slaves”. The city’s population was dominated by slaves. Detailed records were kept of the slave population in Batavia. A 1673 statistic showed that there were 13,278 slaves in Batavia out of a total population of 32,068; and in 1815 it was 14,249 out of 47,217 people. In her monograph Slaves in Batavia: Insights from a Slave Register in Antony Reid’s Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia, historian Susan Abeyasekere wrote that the slave population might have been even larger as population census before the 20th century was questionable. The slaves were often tricked or kidnapped by dealers and chieftains from areas such as Sulawesi and Bali, Abey-asekere wrote, “They endured horrendous conditions on cramped ships before arriving in Batavia to be sold at market. Those who could not be sold were auctioned.” The Dutch extended the slave trade to other areas, but Batavia remained its center. Old drawings often show slaves holding parasols for their masters or performing other menial tasks. The slaves are nearly always depicted as having black skin and wide eyes, the males bare-chested and with a piece of cloth wrapped around their heads. They appeared physi-cally different from the indigenous people of the city. The Dutch did indeed prefer to bring in slaves from out-side Java, and for good reason. “As there was no free labor available locally, and since the Sundanese and Javanese were regarded as hostile, the Dutch preferred to bring in slaves


from outside Java to serve as menials,” Abeyasekere wrote. “It was also more advantageous because slaves from distantplaces and of diverse origins were unlikely to unite or con-spire against their masters.” Slaves from Sulawesi were the highest in number, fol-lowed by those from Bali, Batavia, the Lesser Sundas (Mang-garai, Bima, Dompo, Ende, Sumba, Sumbawa and Timor as well as Cirebon, Ambon, Padang, Nias and Ternate. In a popular book, “Being Dutch” in the Indies: A History

of Creolisation and Empire, 1500-1920, the writers Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben,85 wrote that during the 17th century, many Europeans managed to bring their slaves to church and to have them baptized. The practice took off after 1648 when baptized slaves were admitted to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper in the Dutch Reformed Church. Some of those slaves were the offspring of the Dutch and the slave women. Once they received baptism, the former slaves merged with the Mardijker community.

The Mardijker used to be the amalgam of different kinds of people, mostly from India who spoke Portuguese and others. Therefore, between 1688 till 1708, there was already Portuguese speaking Church that accepted around 4000 people into it. Later this group became the minority as slave supply from India was replaced by supply from Makassar when VOC defeated the Goa kingdom of nearby Makassar.

Besides those churches, the Dutch Reformed Church that was related closely with VOC ministered in Batavia. They had also

85 Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben, Being “Dutch” in the Indies: A History of Creolisation and Empire, 1500–1920, tr. by Wendie Shaffer (National U. Singapore Press, 2008), pp. 46-47


Mardijker as their members. How did it happen? As has been writ-ten, when the Portuguese entered Asia, they were driven by their religious besides the economic motivation. The dual motivation brought them closer to the natives and even had intermarriage with them in the church. The acculturation took place. The descendants of those intermarriage were called the Black Portuguese. Most of them adopted Catholic faith. The Portuguese community in Java began when they arrived at the Fort of Sunda Kelapa. When the Dutch occupied Sunda Kelapa dan built Batavia, they also brought many war prisoners from Malacca. Later, in 1661, the VOC and the Reformed Church agreed to free them if they were willing to em-brace Protestant Faith. They managed to free around 150 people at that time. The VOC even granted the former prisoners a lot of land which is in Tugu Area, north Jakarta today. They were named the Mardijkers. This group was separated from the “Indo-European” which were those who had Portuguese and local blood. The separa-tion was made because some Mardijkers were the slaves of other colonies of Portugal who could speak Portuguese but did not have Portuguese blood line.

In the work of Blusse, Persekutuan Aneh (Strange Compan-ion), the list of the population of Batavia in 1699 was as follows:

1 Chinese: 36792 Mardijker: 24073 Eropean: 17834 Crossbreed: (mostly of Chinese and Balinese): 67086

As a note, it is a fact that the Dutch nation was the last nation in the whole world that abolished slavery in the 20th century.

86 Source: Leonard Bluesse, opcit, p.128


Meanwhile, as one takes a closer look at the Chinese popula-tion at that time several things are of interest. Some of them with their Kapitein lived inside the city. Most of them managed to ac-cumulate wealth through their trading activities. The rest of them lived in Omelanden or the land beyond the city walls. Among them, there were illegal alien Chinese. Most of them worked in the sugar plantation, a commodity that grew exponentially dur-ing that era. Until the second half of the 17th century, the VOC treated the Chinese who they needed badly to build the city and its economy in a special way. VOC gave them special privileges and favorable tax policies. As the result, some Dutch protested about such special treatments.

After 1657, especially after VOC spent so much money on war against the Banten Kingdom, heavy taxes were created also for the Chinese. Governor-general Joan Maetsuycker stated that “... if the Dutch enjoyed half of the special treatment given to the Chinese in East India, I believe that Batavia will become a better city.”87 Yet, the Chinese kept on coming to Batavia. Some of them were not the kind of persons that the VOC government wanted.

Financial Problems of VOC

Meanwhile, there were setbacks of VOC in their business resulted in losing competition against The British East India Company, which was centered in Calcutta, India. To overcome the situation, Heeren XVII (VOC Chamber of Commerce) urged the Governor-General of Dutch East Indies to increase the amount of earnings

87 Vermuelen, opcit, p.17


and finance to the VOC bank vault. A note is to be taken, that although VOC had to deal with financial struggles, the officials who were employed by VOC at that time still enjoyed growing personal income. Their income either came from corruption, having private business with the Chinese, and bribery from the Chinese when the latter tried to obtain various permits.

Meanwhile, the VOC’s effort to establish trading posts in several coasts were also costly. The growing number of Chinese immigrants who had financial bankruptcy and became social burden added more difficulties for VOC. The leaders of VOC viewed the Chinese especially who lived at the ommelanden (outskirt of Batavia) as a serious threat. They also viewed that the continuity of VOC business was jeopardized if this issue was neglected.

To solve both problems simultaneously, the Dutch East Indies council and the Governor-General (at that time the title was held by Valckeneir) decided to promote a program that forced the indigenous locals to produce certain kinds of plants. Thus, VOC could obtain various beneficial products to be sent to European market.

Meanwhile, they planned systemic efforts to control the Chinese immigrants who were known to be more successful. The start of program “Staying Permit” was one of them.

The government of VOC required the whole ethnic of Chinese living both inside and outside of the walls of Batavia to have a “Staying Permit” issued by the government of VOC with a short expiration limit. If VOC found an immigrant who did not have permit, they would give the person heavy penalties such as a fine or imprisonment, or even worse – VOC could expel him from the Dutch East Indies regions.


The VOC government stated that with the program they intended to maintain Batavia and its surrounding territories free of illegal immigrants who were narrated as causing disorder.

Records mentioned that there were totally 7550 Chinese im-migrants residing in Batavia back in 1719. This number skyrock-eted throughout the years until 1739. Census indicated 10.574 Chinese immigrants lived inside the borders of Batavia and its neighboring areas.

During that early era of Batavia, was there any Chinese who embraced Christian faith as they related to the Dutch? Thus far, no account that states that some of the Chinese was already Christian or turned to embrace Dutch Reformed Christian Protestant faith as the Mardijkers is found. Only, a quotation from Niemeijer pointed out to an unheard story: in Moluccas in 1600s there had been Dutch school and the Chinese children went there to get educated. Some of them became Christians.

Thus, after 1619, the Chinese had to abandon their roles from farmers, workers or builders to become traders for the Dutch. Later, they gradually became the mediators between the Dutch and other parties. They also played the role as tax collectors, harbor masters, and even opium suppliers for the local. Gradually as the power of VOC increased, they became the main target of the VOC tax system in order to add the Dutch depleted treasury.

The officials of VOC were happy with the tax system. Evi-dently, they were engaged in extortion with the Chinese as their objects. At the same time, the Dutch strengthened the stereotyp-ing toward the Chinese. They created narratives about the Chi-nese. In the narratives, it was introduced that, the Chinese were diligent, hardworking, meticulous, and subservient, yet, could


not be fully trusted. Yet, cooperating with the Chinese was a better option compared with other tribes. Thus, in the beginning of Batavia, the Governor-generals developed a narrative among the government functionaries that the Chinese were the founda-tion of the colony.88 Later, their successors treated the Chinese as the target of extortion.

Summary

It is evident that superior gunpower and religious narratives added with business motive of the European brought violence to the archipelago. Yet, there is no significant narrative about it. The strong narratives that emerged were created by the Dutch about the Chinese. It is a mix-up between positive and negative one.

Concerning Batavia, it is evident that toward the end of 17th century, the majorities of the Batavia population were not the Chinese immigrants as envisioned by Coen, but the slaves. The extortion practices of the VOC officials mainly targeted the Chinese as their main source of income. For their own survival needs, somehow some of the wealthier Chinese collaborated in the VOC’s practices. Yet, the poorer and unemployed Chinese did not care to collaborate or obey the Dutch. It is not evident that most of the Chinese were playing the roles of middlemen during that era as they worked in home industry or planting something outside the city wall. The inherited popular narratives about such role is evidently inaccurate.

It can also be summarized that spirituality of the Dutch did not show any significant influence in their daily lives as shown in the fact that the VOC officials were so corrupt and low in their

88 ibid, p.16


moral standard. Among the population, low moral standard was clearly recorded.

No record exists of the spirituality of the Chinese at that time, thus we could not extrapolarize anything about its influence toward the narratives about the Dutch or the indigenous.

At last, for unverified reasons, the Chinese who helped deve-loping Batavia were those who moved from Banten Kingdom. The narrative about that fact is related to the friction of one of the Princes of Banten with the Chinese who had received much privilege from his father for decades.


_________________________________________________

Angke and Lanfang: When the Chinese Immigrants Faced

the Weapons of the Dutch–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

I learned a long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It’s a strange truth, but forgiveness is a painful and difficult process. It’s not something that happens overnight. It’s an evolution of the heart.

Sue Monk Kidd

When the Dutch came, originally, their purpose was to get sources of spices then to monopolize them. They managed to defeat Banda. Later, after successfully monopolizing the trade of nutmeg, peppers, cloves, and cinnamon, they introduced non- indigenous cash crops like coffee, tea, cacao, tobacco, rubber, sugar, and opium, and safeguarded their commercial interests by taking over surrounding territory of Batavia.

How did the local rulers in other parts of the archipelago respond to the growing power of VOC? How did the other South-east Asians perceive the Chinese merchants? A letter from a rul-er who lived near Mollucas to the governor general of VOC in Batavia at that time provides an answer to the question.89 This letter is from Sri Sultan Amirol Amra Zhumra Alam Abnu, Sultan Drascha Abnu, Sultan Zala Ima Nairodin, to Fuhul Labu Bibie

89 From: Daily Journals Of Batavia Castle, 21 July 1700 [Beginning With Vol. 381] Translation of a letter in Spanish addressed to His Excellency the Lord Governor General Willem van Outhoorn by the King of Manguindanao


Val Musilmin, Kings of the realms and lands of Manguindanao, and is addressed to his and brother, the Lord [Governor] General of Batavia:

My Lord I inform you that on the 6 July of this year 1699 my eldest brother, Carnal Groot Sarry Snu Jamodsa Bra-haman Abnu Sultan Sayefo Drasha passed away. As all the business of the realm has devolved into my hands, and I have now acceded to the position of Sri Sultan of this kingdom and of the lands of Mindano, it behoves me to inform your Excellency of the great goodwill shown to our people which only augments my [sense of] obligation. In his testament my said eldest brother acknowledged such matters, not least that the friendship and correspon-dence which was current at the time of my grandfather and of my father should be kept up, and that it shall continue to be as steadfast and as regular as it is at that moment, and that there should not be any interruptions. Therefore, should any-one else who wishes to deny this say to Your Excellency that this is not true, you should attach no credence to this, as our amity shall be as fixed and constant as the Sun and the Moon. I also inform Your Excellency that in the month of June a galiot called the Lasdragh arrived here on the shores of this kingdom. Her skipper was Cornelis Calesz. Sekver and the first mate Pieter Bolarte. She came from the harbour of the Moluccas on her way to Menado, but heavy weather and con-trary winds stranded her in this kingdom without any letter or pass from the Honourable Company [addressed] to this my kingdom. I immediately gave orders that they should come in because here it was winter, and otherwise they might possibly


have found themselves in difficulties. Hence they sailed into this Sumuay River and often frequented my house, where I entertained and treated them as I would have done Your Excellency yourself. We have helped and assisted the said skipper, his first mate and their crew, as we remain indebted to Your Excellency for the many courtesies we have received. And, in the event of the Governor of the town of Molucca (Ambon) sending a ship to my realm in the forthcoming good season, we would prefer that Your Excellency to order said skipper Cornelis Calsesz and First Mate Pieter Bolarte to sail on her, this would be a [gesture] of great friendship to me, as I have great affection for them as they were a great help. For this reason, I entreat and prevail upon Your Excel-lency that the said skipper may be promoted, as he is a man of honour and astute. The reason the afore-mentioned galiot tarried here so long and did not put to sea earlier was that, as the variable and contrary winds persisted so long and there were more reports of disasters at sea, it seemed more sensible to wait. Now in the month of September he has departed as the prevailing winds are blowing and the right season has arrived. I arranged matters so as the affairs of the Honourable Company are as dear to me as my own. I also entreat Your Excellency that orders may be given to me at the price for which they were sold to the King of Ternate. Payment of said muskets will be handed over punc-tually next year. I also request that Your Excellency sell me two metal 500 or 600 pounder cannon of equal size with a rather long barrel so that they might be used effectively and should it please


Your Excellency to demonstrate your friendship, they can be dispatched to the Governor of Molucco and from there be sent on to my address. Their value will be promptly recom-pensed. I send Your Excellency two piculs of wax, entreating that you graciously accept this and will pardon the imper-tinence that they are so few and of such little value, being no more than a token of the affection and gratitude of the many benefactions we have already enjoyed and shall still [continue] to receive. And though I offer nothing else, I wish that the future will still bring Your Excellency long years of peace and beneficial law and order, which I wish from the bottom of my heart. (Dated) Semuai 16 November 1699, most faithful friend and brother of Your Highness, [your] affectionate servant (was signed) Humrxa Alam and Dayyo (the royal seal affixed to the side). I inform Your Excellency that in the year 1688 a vessel arrived in the harbour of Sarangam [Island] whose skipper was a mestizo Chinese from Japara named Loanko. My brother in-formed the Lord Emperor of this and the latter sent four of his people there to discover what they had come to do. They answered that the vessel was the property of the Chinese Cap-tains Pinco and Concua, sailing to my realm of Mindanao with a pass from the Company to trade and do business as contrary winds had meant that they were unable to make their destination. Whereupon my brother’s people told them that they were forbidden to trade or buy or sell with the people of Sarangam. Should they wish to dispose of their goods they should do this to our people. Consequently, the people of my afore-mentioned brother unloaded and took possession of


goods and wares to the value of 727¼ rix-dollars. Thereafter we returned here with the clerk of the afore-said vessel of Loanko. Three months later the vessel put in here laden with wax of which they had purchased more than 100 picul as well as 3 picul tartaruga (tortoiseshell), therefore they have brought their troubles on themselves, because it is our convention that Chinese vessels which put in at the harbour of Sarangam may purchase no more than 500 catties wax. When they were asked if they were carrying letters from Cap-tains Pinco and Concua, they answered ‘No’. Moreover, the Company pass did not specify my realm but [that of] Passick. Later Lianko and five of his associates departed for Manila where they sold all their wax for gold pieces-of-eight (gold re-als) and leather and, upon returning to this kingdom Leanko settled down and married, under the terms of his marriage contract incurring a debt to the tune of 4 gold thalers and one slave, for which I stood guarantor, until my brother pardoned him for his offence and infringement of the [allowed amount of] wax bought at Sarangam. However, to settle up the 727¼ rix-dollars, it was neces-sary to have the letters from the Honourable Company Cap-tains Pinco and Concua, authorized by [the department of] Justice and the Honourable Company because, [designating them] qualified and sanctioned [to do so], it was they who were the recipients of the money with which Leanko departed with a letter from my brother to the Emperor to Your Excel-lency, and nothing more has been heard of him since then. Afterwards, in the year 1695, my brother the Emperor dispatched a vessel to Batavia with a skipper but no ambassador only letters for the Honourable Company, but


on account of terribly strong contrary winds said vessel fell apart in the harbour of Caily. The skipper wanted to continue his journey to Batavia but there was a Chinese in Caily whose name was Luanco who obstructed him with threats, declaring that should he do so he would run into consider-able difficulties on account of the debt of a mestizo Chinese in my country by the name of Najoda Sandit who owed a subaltern in Malacca I do not know how many rix-dollars. Hence the skipper remained in the harbour and sold the Chi-nese all the effects he had with him, which were worth 1,500 rix-dollars. Since the skipper has departed and arrived here in his vessel demanding his outstanding dues as said Chinese has paid only 500 rix-dollars, retaining 1,000 rix-dollars for himself and refusing to pay them on account of the debt of oft-mentioned Leanko who had settled in my realm. This information has been passed on so that Your Excel-lency will be aware of the threats and sinister tricks the Chi-nese employ. Skipper Cornelis Claasz and First Mate Pieter Bolarte will supply you with better and more detailed oral reports, as I have shown them the papers and the letter of the Chinese Cuanc[k]o.

The letter might describe the atmosphere of the relation be-tween the local ruler, the VOC, and the Chinese merchants. Com-petition, collaboration, and scare information due to distance were the name of the games at that time.

In the beginning to allure the Chinese to enter Batavia and work there, there was tax exempt for them. Later, in 1620 VOC imposed monthly and fixed tax for each Chinese. They also had to pay tax for every product that they brought to the city. Several


Governor-generals, as Cornelis van der Lijn, Carel Reynierz, and Joan van Hoorn made positive narratives about the Chinese. Van der Lijn even narrated that the Chinese were the foundation of the colony. He even decided to reduce tax for the Chinese. In 1650, Reynierz erased the tax for the Chinese which was known as Head Tax-the narratives brought forward governmental policies.

During the 1650s century, some of the Chinese and Dutch owned the sugar cane plantation and simple sugar producing factories along the river of Ciliwung. Yet, the sugar sales were under the monopoly of VOC.

Unfortunately, during the reign of Governor-general Maetsuycker, in 1657, VOC reimposed the Head Tax. In 1683, as the Ming Dynasty in China collapsed and replaced by the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty, immigrants from China flowed in an alarming number to Batavia and other places in Java. VOC responded by imposing a regulation to prevent the Chinese who came after 1683 staying in Batavia. For them, it was not difficult to distinguish between those who came after and before that year. Before 1683, the Chinese who came to the archipelago had long hairs while those who came after that time shaved half of their front head long and had ponytail according to Manchu custom. Those who had Manchu appearance faced all kind of difficulty to enter the harbor let alone to stay in Batavia. Unfor tunately, the number of Chinese in Batavia kept on increasing. Chinese ship captains often allowed the passengers to slip through the harbor and disappeared in the city.

In 1690, VOC issued a regulation concerning the Chinese who had arrived in the archipelago as unskilled labors in the first place. VOC tried to limit their numbers. As the result the number of ships that stopped at Batavia from Chinese decreased.


The Heeren XVII realized that if that trend continued, the number of products arriving from China would also decrease. Especially when VOC imposed their own price ceiling for tea, the Chinese merchants responded by discontinuing their business with the Dutch who then suffered serious financial lost.

Thus, Governor Zwaardecroon took a different approach and managed to bring back the ships from China to appear at Batavia harbor. As the result, the Chinese immigrant increased again.

In 1690, some wealthy and prominent Chinese in Batavia asked the government to limit the number of incoming Chinese immigrant. However, the illegal immigrant could not easily be stopped.

In 1713, one hundred fifty Chinese settled at the outskirt of Batavia. Their presence made the road there unsafe at night. Yet, in 1723 VOC even issued a decree that the Chinese should be treated with respect.

Then, in June 1727, VOC declared again that all Chinese who could not show that they had residence permit can be arrested and deported from the archipelago.90 The strong measure strongly hit the Chinese. They perceived that the Dutch were not their business partners as before. The implementation of the deportation program created opportunities for new extortion practices among govern-ment officials with the Chinese became their victims.

For the Batavia Government and its own council circles, that enforcement program was viewed as very effective. In addition of increasing earnings from the tax side, the program could also be a tool of control for all Chinese trading activity. As the result, the staying permit enforcement and assortments of fines led to an

90 Johannes T Vermuelen, Tionghoa di Batavia dan Huru Hara 1740, Depok: Komunitas Bambu, 2010, p.38-39.


increasing unrest among the Chinese. Those who honestly made effort to obtain the permit would have to deal with complicated bureaucracy. Negative narratives were ready to emerge. They narrated that through such method VOC wanted to maintain the wealthy Chinese immigrants while limiting the poor ones living inside Batavia wall.

In 1739, there were already 10,574 Chinese in Batavia. Some of them who lived in the city were shopkeepers, while others managed junk yard, built churches, sold used ships, daily provi-sions, and fulfillment of all daily life needs of the city. If there were shortage of a certain product, VOC knew that the Chinese would have information concerning the sources of that product. However, they viewed some of the Chinese, especially who lived outside the city walls becoming the threat for the society. The oth-er ethnic groups such as, the Bugis, Balinese, Betawi people also disliked the Chinese who appeared to be more affluent compared to them. This is the time when the negative narratives about the Chinese immigrant emerged in other ethnic groups.

At that year, VOC released a policy concerning the Chi-nese that they could arrest any suspicious Chinese. Such policy triggered more anger and fear among the Chinese who could be affected by the policy. Due to economic life, many of them had been bankrupt. Chinese who were arrested for not having stay-ing permit would be sent out to China or Ceylon (Sri Langka). Dark narratives were widespread that on the way to Ceylon, VOC tossed out some of them overboard to the sea.

However, many Chinese and Dutch still befriended each other as they learned to know each other through parties or public events.91

91 Ibid, p. 33


Thus, in early 18th century, VOC had to deal with two issues. First, due to global economic upheaval, their products could not compete with similar commodities from other parts of the world, especially sugar. Second, they had to deal with the increasing number of unwanted or unproductive Chinese immigrants.

The Angke Tragedy—The Power of the Narrative about the Chinese

The economy of Batavia under VOC after 1720 was unstable. In that year, the price of sugar as commodity decreased globally. The sugar price from VOC could not compete with the price of the Brazilian sugar. In 1738, the government of Batavia sent letter to the council of VOC to report the decline economic life in Batavia, including the description of the epidemic of all kinds of sickness and many deaths occurred daily. In 1740, the price of sugar was half of that of 1720, and as sugar was the major export, the impact on economic life was damaging. As a response, the government tried to find a new method to find money by having the Chinese as the target.

Dissatisfaction and suspicion spread among the Chinese population, directed to the Batavia Government. Recorded since September 1740, various small riots had already occurred out-side the complex of Batavia walls. Such condition did not trigger the VOC to respond quickly. There was even a conflict between VOC Governor-general, Adriaan Valckenier and his vice, Gustaf Wilhelm Baron van Imhoff concerning the issue.

Only on September 26, 1740 an instruction to act was issued. This incident culminated on October 7, 1740. At that time, more than 500 Chinese from different regions gathered to attack


the fortress complex after destroying the outposts of the VOC in Jatinegara, Tangerang, and Tanah Abang simultaneously.

In October 1740, riots occurred in all the entrances of Bata-via. Hundreds of Chinese who tried to enter the VOC forces were intercepted under the direction of Governor Van Imhoff.92 By using heavy artillery, VOC forces managed to handle the situa-tion and saved the Batavia from the riots. The VOC cavalry army began pursuing the riot perpetrators. The Chinese houses and the trading center, which were in the surrounding areas of Batavia were searched and burned. In the incident, they even arrested Captain Nie Hoe Kong who was considered the mastermind of the riot. Thousands of Chinese who survived the riot were hunted and killed without caring for the ones who were really involved in the rebellion or not. Many of them ran toward the river but soldiers who had been waiting for them shot them one by one. Some sources stated that “Tragedi Angke” name shows that the massacre took place in the River of Angke.

The night of October 9, 1740, soldiers of VOC were back on the hunt in search for the remaining of the Chinese who were hiding at home or other buildings around Batavia. This time the slaughtering activity was more brutal and sadistic because it involved the slaves and citizens who was deliberately lulled to join the massacre of the Chinese. According to the narrative from General-governor Valckeneir himself, the government had promised a prize of two ducats for every Chinese head that had been cut off.

On the 10th of October 1740, after the incident of the re-bellion had subsided, General Governor Valckeneir ordered his

92 Source: Hembing Wijayakusuma, Pembantaian Massal, 1740-Tragedi Berdarah Angke, Jakarta, Yayasan Obor Indonesia, 2005


soldiers to return in order to collect all the remaining Chinese including those who were still lying in the hospital or in jail. They were gathered in front of the city hall building (now Fatahillah Museum) to be hung.

It could be noted that some of the Chinese refugees that escaped from the massacre in 1740 managed to settle down in Banten Sultanate area. They exist until today and are known as Cina Benteng. In several areas, they still maintained their tradition and identity, while mostly working as farmers.

In the Angke tragedy, Chinese survivors reached up to 3,441 persons composed of 1,442 merchants, 935 farmers, 728 plantation workers, and 336 blue-collar workers or laborers. This incident was one of the worst ethnic massacres event that ever happened during the long history of Chinese in the archi-pelago.

As the aftermath the incident, the Chinese refugees from Batavia who later cooperated with the Javanese people made a war against the VOC in Central Java. The war lasted three years from 1740 to 1743. If there were never any betrayal from Sunan Pakubuwono II from Mataram and also with the help from Prince Adipati Cakaningrat IV from Madura, the VOC forces that had already been surrounded and held captive in Semarang city would have been successfully expelled from Central Java and likely from all over Java.

The Chinese and the Javanese troops battled side by side. The VOC was assisted by a prince from Madura but was defeated. After three years of war, as the result, VOC gained victory. At that time there were many Chinese that had held high positions in local kingdoms and became Muslim as well having been assimi-lated to the Javanese society. For example, regent of Lasem was


Oey Ing Kiat, alias Tumenggung Widyaningrat that was a Mos-lem then helped the Chinese.93

Forgotten Narratives from Borneo: Lanfang Republic

The open conflict between the Dutch against the Chinese immi-grants also took place in Montrado and Mandor, near North Borneo (Kalimantan). The immigrants resisted the VOC expansion through many battles. It took more than 130 year (1750-1885) that the Chinese immigrant who established a republic-look-alike govern-ment withstood many assaults from VOC before they succumbed.

Borneo was the largest island in Indonesia. In the 18th century, gold mining was one of the main incomes in the area. Sultan Sam-bas, one of the rulers also had a serious interest in that industry. It is generally assumed that the Chinese miners in West Borneo 婆罗洲 arrived around 1750. The Sultan invited them because of their fine reputation as miners and their superior mining- technology. With their technological skills, they also brought their own system of values. Their social organization had a strong religious undertone hence they introduced the cults from their motherland and built temples as their community centres. The original associations and partnerships which were set up by the Chinese immigrants, who had faced hardships in their mother-land, soon became a larger and more powerful kind of organiza-tion: the Borneo kongsi (association).

The Chinese did not arrive in a no-man’s land, but in a place where witnessed over many centuries a succession of highly

93 Daradjati, Geger Pacinan 1740-1743: Persekutuan Tionghoa-Jawa melawan VOC, Jakarta: Kompas 2013, p xxx1, 163, 216


structured political powers. Some of these, like the Malay sultan-ates, were linked to international commercial and religious net-works. The Dayaks, the indigenous inhabitants of the island, had their tribal organization, each moving within its own territory according to the requirements of their slash and burn type of agriculture. The Malay, who had arrived in Borneo rather recent-ly, were also recently converted to Islam. Although they invited the Chinese to exploit the gold fields, they did not mingle with the immigrants. Marriage between these two groups was prohibited.

For the Chinese immigrants, the working conditions in the great mining operations were extremely demanding. They also had to deal with extortion by the Malay overlords and, frequently the harassment by the Dayak tribes. On top of such suffering that they had been enduring, it turns out that the Chinese who Sul-tan Sambas had employed to become miners did not receive fair treatment. The Sultan only gave them limited food supply and demanded them to produce more gold each year. Thus, revolution broke out. After the revolt, Sultan treated the workers better, and out of fear he gave the mines to the Chinese for concession and in return they pay him taxes.

Unfortunately, none of the other Chinese mining settlements in western Kalimantan left written accounts.94 It is only known that a number of mining communities or associations (kongsi) enjoyed some political autonomy but Lanfang is the best known. Fortunately, Yap Siong-yoen, the son-in-law of the last kapitan of the Lanfang kongsi, wrote their history which was translated into Dutch in 1885.

94 Yuan Bingling, Chinese Democracies: A study of the kongsis of West Borneo, (1776 – 1884) http://www.xiguan.org/yuanbingling/see also: Mary Somers Heidhues, Southeast Asia: A Concise Histor, New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001, p. 169.


Having succeeded however in establishing themselves in the mining regions where they cleared the forest, constructed irriga-tion works and brought the land under cultivation, the Chinese immigrants considered these places as their new homeland.

Faced with the need to adapt to circumstances which they had never experienced before, they created new social and economic frameworks. They established the new political institution which was named the zongting (总厅) or “assembly hall.” It functioned as the general assembly and executive council of an alliance of kongsi communities and settlements. The zongting had their own courts of law, their own financial systems, minted their own money, levied their own taxes, and maintained treaties with the neighbour-ing Malay sultanates and Dayak tribes. The Chinese settlements developed in symbiosis with the former, and in competition with the latter, during the Napoleonic wars when the Dutch were entirely absent from the West Borneo scene.

The system of government exercised by the Chinese – and this has been analyzed systematically by all observers and historians – was remarkably democratic. Hence scholars, such as J.J.M. de Groot, speak of “republics” when addressing the character of the Borneo kongsis and their zongting government.

As Dutch colonial force encroached upon the archipelago, Luo Fangbo established the Lanfang Republic in 1777 to pro-tect the Chinese settlers and other indigenous peoples from Dutch oppression. The settlers subsequently elected Luo as their inaugural president.

Although the Hakka tribe was the largest group, it is incor-rect to state that the kongsi tended to unite people from certain regions or clans of China. In fact, there might be a great variety of surnames in the kongsi. Even people of many different ethnic


backgrounds as well were included in the Lanfang Republic. Among the predominantly Hakka miners were also a great number of Hoklo, Penti (bendi本地), and even Hokkien (Fujian 福建) as well. Such diversity was not just confined to the labourers but was also present among the leaders. This was so different compared to the idea that traditional village society and lineage organization based on a same surname. This conclusion is strengthened with the fact there is no evidence of a lineage temples (citang 祠堂) in that area of Borneo.

Luo implemented many democratic principles, including the idea that all matters of state must involve the consultation of the republic’s citizen. He also created a comprehensive set of execu-tives, legislative, and judicial agencies. The Republic did not have a standing military, but had a defense ministry that administered a national militia based on conscription. During peacetime, the popu-lace mostly engaged in farming, production, trading, and mining. Lanfang’s administrative divisions included three domains (pro-vince, prefecture, and county) with the people electing leaders for all levels. Luo even cemented relationship to other rulers, such as with Sultan Abdurrahman of the Pontianak Sultanate.

Although Luo discarded the ancient institutions of monar-chism and dynastic succession, he continued to adhere to many Chinese traditions. For example, he established the founding year of the Republic as the first year of the calendar. Moreover, he submitted a report to the Chinese emperor notifying him about the Republic’s founding and paid tribute to the Chinese Qing Empire.

Luo served as head of state until his death in 1795. After-wards, Lanfang citizens elected Jiang Wubo (江戊伯) as their next top leader. Lanfang citizens continued electing a total of twelve leaders, who helped improve agricultural techniques,


expand mine production, develop cultural education, and organize military training. These measures allowed Lanfang to increase its wealth and power, which encouraged the non-Chinese indigenous population to pledge their allegiances to Lanfang.

Although the Republic had both ethnic Chinese citizens (numbering in the tens of thousands) and indigenous subjects (numbering in the hundreds of thousands), the ethnic Chinese were the only ones who voted in presidential elections. Thus, Luo would not dare call himself a king in front of the ethnic Chinese citizens, but in front of his indigenous subjects he used the term.

The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed two major developments: First, the progressive establishment of the VOC at Sukadana, Landak and Pontianak, and second, the arrival of the Chinese miners. These combinations would then create a conflict.

The first known diplomatic contact between the Dutch and the people in West Borneo took place in 1698. When the ruler of Landak was engaged in a war with Sukadana, he asked the sultan of Bantam who was a vassal of the VOC for help. The Dutch authorities decided to help the latter. The Dutch army managed to destroy Sukadana. From then on, during the entire first half of the eighteenth century, the VOC had regular contacts with the different ruling powers of West Borneo, but without making any binding contracts or undertaking military occupation. Most of the negotiations concerned the buying of diamonds from Borneo.

A milestone in the history of West Borneo is the establish-ment of Pontianak, its present capital city. Its founder was Sjarif Abdoel Rachman Alkadri, a trader of Arab origin. His father, Hussein bin Achmat Alkadri, settled at Matan in the interior of


Borneo in 1735 as a Koran scholar. Here he obtained a Dayak spouse who, when the couple had later moved to Mampawa, bore him Abdoel Rachman, in 1742. The boy was betrothed to a girl from the Mampawa ruling family. This family was of Bugis origin. After an adventurous career as trader and pirate, he found himself at the head of a small fleet of trading vessels, including a Chinese sea junk and a French ship. He returned to Mampawa to succeed his father. Instead of establishing himself there, he rallied around him a number of followers and in 1772 with fifteen vessels moved to up the Kapuas River, to a small island situated at the junction of the Kapuas with the Landak River, a place said to be haunted by ghosts. Having first subjected it to intensive gun fire for a couple of days, Abdoel Rachman and his people went ashore and built a settlement. This very strategic point soon developed into an important trading junction.

By 1778 Abdoel Rachman already found himself sufficiently powerful to try to extend his authority to trading places upstream on the Kapuas River which fell under the authority of the sultans of Landak and Sanggau. As Landak had been under the protec-tion of Banten Kingdom, the ruler of Banten sent a complaint to the Governor-general and the Council of the Indies in Batavia concerning Abdoel Rachman invasion. That same year, the Dutch sent an official, named Nicolaas Kloek, with two men of war to Pontianak to check the situation. Here he was very well received and given many presents, among them a large diamond. Abdoel Rachman suggested to Kloek that the Dutch East Indian Com-pany should take Pontianak under its own protection. Kloek did not believe that the Dutch East Indian Company would willingly shoulder such a task. He made it clear that the Dutch authorities did not intend to expand their territory.


In the same year, however, the sultan of Banten also seized upon the idea of placing Sukadana and Landak under Dutch administration, because he no longer considered those two areas to be of any profit to himself. Kloek received orders to take over these states from Banten and to establish Dutch rule over them. In a decree of 6 November 1778, the VOC gave Abdoel Rachman the power to rule over Pontianak and Sanggau, as the Company claimed the sultan of Banten had renounced his territorial rights.

The Resident of Rembang, Willem Adriaan Palm, was sent to West Borneo as Commissioner to make the necessary arrange-ments. He found Abdoel Rachman quite willing to accept Dutch supremacy. In a contract sealed on July 5, 1779, the VOC obtained many privileges in all commercial transactions at Pontianak. The harbour would be closed to all vessels which did not have a Dutch permit. All foreigners, especially the Chinese, would fall under the direct authority of the Company.

Meanwhile, in the mid-to-late 19th century, the Chinese Qing Empire clearly disintegrated and became increasingly unable to support the Lanfang Republic as its vassal state. Thus, the Lang-fang Republic found themselves to be alone facing others. Soon, they really had to battle the Dutch head to head.

The three campaigns waged by the Dutch East Indies Army against the Chinese kongsi, that caused the Kongsi Wars, were:

• Expedition to the West Coast of Borneo (1822–24)• Expedition against the Chinese in Montrado (1850–54)• Chinese uprising in Mandor, Borneo (1884–85)

Thus, Lanfang Republic’s vigorous development suffered from the expansion of the Dutch. The Republic’s citizenry


waged a courageous resistance, but ultimately failed due to poor weaponry. The last campaign of the Dutch caused Lanfang Republic to be annihilated. At that time, Lin Ah Sin was the last leader of Langfang. Many of the Lanfang’s citizens and their descendants escaped and made their way to Singapore, which subsequently became another ethnic Chinese republic in Southeast Asia.

The Bankruptcy

Groeneveld wrote that since the middle of the 18th century, VOC had experienced setbacks due to several reasons. These setbacks resulted in the disbanding of VOC. Some of those reasons are1. Many VOC employees were involved in extortion and VOC’s

large expenditures were spent for the funding of wars, for example, the war against Hasanuddin from Gowa.

2. Fixed cost was too high, due to the vast regions under rule, which required many personnel.

3. VOC had to pay dividend (profit) for its shareholders, an obligation that was getting harder to fulfill after the reduced earnings.

4. The increase of competition in the trading market in Asia, especially against the British and the French.

5. The change of politics in Netherlands, following the establish-ment of Batavian Republic in 1795 which took liberal outlook and supported free market.95

95 See: WP Groeneveldt, Nusantara dalam Catatan Tionghoa. Depok: Komunitas Bambu, 2009, p. 13


After working for about 193 years, in the end, VOC was disolved in December 31st, 1799. It left a debt of 136.7 million guilders and wealth that were left behind included trade offices, fortresses, ships and the regions under rule in the archipelago.

Summary

The popular narrative is evidently inaccurate. It depicts that the Chinese always managed to survive and benefit although the VOC always treated them unfairly and with inconsistency. Some of them indeed managed to benefit by adjusting well to any situation in order to survive. However, it is not evident that most of them enjoyed opportunities that the Dutch had opened for them. The poor Chinese have been discriminated by the VOC and ignored by the wealthier Chinese.

The massacre in the year 1740 occurred because various vari-ables that brought VOC government to felt threatened or overly insecure and thus overreacted to violence that was started by some Chinese in the outskirt of Batavia. It is then evident that in the popular narratives that the Chinese are subservient, gentle, conflict avoidant and non-aggressive is completely inaccurate.

In the bloody tragedy, some local groups supported VOC to hunt and murder the Chinese. Before that tragedy, it is evident that until the 18th century there were no problems between the Chinese and the Javanese or other tribes in Indonesia. The involve ment of the non–Chinese slaves in the massacre was the policy and encouragement of the VOC.

Meanwhile, during that period in Mandor, Borneo, the Chi-nese immigrants could establish a democratic government that


lasted for more than a hundred years. This is rather an ignored history that most of the Dutch scholars fail to recognize. The so-called Lanfang Republic consists of different kinds of tribes orig-inated from China, contrary to popular belief that they were the Hakka. Again, they showed that the Chinese are as courageous and aggressive as other groups. They also showed that their spiritual-ity, which rooted in ancestral veneration and heaven served as a driving force for rule of conduct in their daily life. The spiritu-ality colored and strengthened their culture and identity.

The residue of trauma syndrome of the Chinese as parts of their collective memory should have started at during the first two decades of the 18th century, yet there is no trace of such narrative. Either it has been forgotten or a newer and stronger trauma existed sometime later. Another possibility is that the spirituality of the Chinese at that time enabled them to deny the painful reality or the tragedy. The combination of Buddhism, Taoism, or Confusianism and local Chinese beliefs might create such spirituality with the belief in karma or fate which caused them to forget the pain.


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Era when the Dark Narratives Emerged: The Diponegoro War

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A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

The Changes

Since 1790s, many states in Europe had entered a new phase of revolution as challenges against the feudalistic or monarchical ruling class mounted. Napoleon Bonaparte was the key figure that created a tremendous change that reverberated in Asia. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars of 1793–1815, France took over the Netherlands. Napoleon installed Louis Napoleon, his brother to govern the Netherlands or Batavian Republic. The development of technology and industry at that time also added to the already unpredictable situations.

Thus, we can see that in that era, the Dutch in Java and other parts of the archipelago were engaged in wars against England. After the incorporation of the Netherlands by the France under Napoleon, the British as their main enemy attacked and took over most of the Dutch colonies in the world, with the exception of four places, which is the Dutch East Indies, Suriname, the Dutch


Antilles and the Dutch trading post at Deshima in Japan. The British army tried to blockade the whole Dutch East Indies which then belonged to the Batavian Republic of Louis Napoleon.

Historians noted that the Anglo-Dutch war had a serious im-pact in the Dutch East Indies, Indirectly, it influenced the break-out of the War of Diponegoro and the establishment Cultivation System.

As Louis Napoleon governed the Bataaf Republic or the Batavian Republic, in 1806, he sent his Marshall, Willem H. Daendels, a loyal and experience statesman. Thus, since then, the Dutch East Indies was governed by him. Daendels never knew much about the Orient, but the government in the Repub-lic viewed him as the most suitable person to get rid of the British from the island and shape up the leftover Dutch colonial govern-ment.

The arrival of Herman Daendels who became the Governor started a significant change in Java. Although Daendels only ruled for three years (1808-1811), he created deep impacts. First, as he saw that the military defense of Java was inadequate, Daendels worked fast and demolished the castle of Batavia, then replaced it with a new fort at Meester Cornelis area (today: Jatinegara). He also built Fort Lodewijk in Surabaya, East Java, besides establishing hospitals and military facilities.

At that time, the Chinese roles in the economic life had been significantly conspicuous and systemic. The hands of Chinese were in every economic sector from collecting crops for the government, managing tax collection, trading various products, taking care gambling houses and pawn houses. They even took care of market tax and tollgate tax. Most of the local aristocrats


especially in Java worked together with them. So did the Dutch officials. It is difficult not to view it as systemic collusion with misconducts done by all parties involved were rampant.

To stop the practices of collusion, corruption, and extortion of the government officials, Daendels increased their salary and added military personnel. As he disliked feudalism, he treated the local rulers or aristocrats as his officers in the government bureaucracy. Many Dutch officials who were used to make living by extortion and corruption did not like Daendels’ new work style, but out of fear they obeyed him. Neither, the aristocrats who used to impose various obligations including taxes to their own people opposed him openly.

In the previous decades, the focus of the colonial government was to obtain the commodities from the archipelago, mostly by using the Chinese merchants as the middlemen between the colonial leaders with the native rulers. The colonial government also controlled the outbound trades or maritime line to other countries. In his era, with the fierce competition against the British, Daendels adopted a new strategy. Systematically, he exploited the agricultural sources in the interior of the islands. For the Dutch, this was a breakthrough.

He started by interfering with the local rulers, primarily in Yogyakarta, the main kingdom in Central Java that has long history. Later, he took over the right of the traditional rulers and created a kind of cultivation system. He imposed a regulation that farmers had to plant certain kinds of agricultural commodities and then sold the harvest from him. The government only set the price for the crops and gave the money directly to the farmers. Among others, during his era, the peasants had to plant coffee. Coffee plants increased in number from about 27 million in 1808 to 72.6


million in 1811.96

He also boldly changed the government structure as he di-vided Java to become several residences. In each residence, there were regents Bupati who he empowered to collect tax and the crops as much as they wanted. Although the regent seemed to have a power as an absolute aristocrat but in fact, Daendels placed him under the position of a resident and became the part of Daendels’s bureaucracy. Unfortunately, Daendels did not sense the resentment of the aristocrats in Java due to his new power constellation and interference in the affairs of the palaces.

As a leader, Daendels did not tolerate any insubordination or rebellion. Working as a dictator, his iron fist was well known in many places. Banten, Cirebon, Bandung, Banjarmasin, and other places felt his strong presence. He did not hesitate to start battles. Yet, in the middle of waging his battles, Daendels managed to build road from West to East Java through which people could transport the crops as the commodities easily. The road was known as the Great Post Road. More than 12,000 Javanese be-came the victims as they were forced to build the road. Around 4,000 people died in the northern coast.97

Another bold and decisive step that he took was to sell some lands to private parties, including to the Chinese merchants. With the income, Daendels could cover the mounting military expen-ditures of his government. However, he might not recognize that there was a social consequence. The owners of the land burdened

96 Jan Breman, Keuntungan Kolonial Dari Kerja Paksa: system Priangan dari Tanam Paksa Kopi di Jawa 1720-1870 (The Colonial Profit from Force Cultivation: Priangan System of Forced Cultivation in Java 1720-1870), Jakarta: Obor, 2014. Pp 108-110.97 William Thorn, Memoir of Conquest of Java with the Subsequent Operations of the British Forces in the Oriental Archipelago. London: Egerton, 1815


many peasants who worked with higher taxes. The local people started developing hidden grudges.

Later, things got worse as the native aristocrat rulers lost their income when Daendels sub-contracted opium tax and other tax collection to the Chinese. Underlying that decision, Daendels came to the archipelago with an opinion that the whole land belonged to the Batavian Republic instead of the local rulers.

Furthermore, Daendels alienated the local feudal rulers with his demeanor as they also sensed that Daendels hated aristocracy or monarchy. However, some of the elite or inner circles in the palaces seemed to adopt European culture, either to pave the road for closer collaboration with the Dutch or to enjoy more egalitar-ian freedom. Meanwhile, most of the common folks also suffered as they were being impoverished and felt restless to hear that their traditional culture was eroded in the palace.

As the relation got worse, in 1810 Raden Rangga, the son-in-law of Sultan Hamengku Buwono II, the Sultan who had a close relationship with the Chinese in East Java, decided to start a war against the colonial ruler.

The war began in November 1810. He proclaimed himself as the “protector” of the Javanese and Chinese who had been neglected by the Dutch East Indies government. He also urged the Chinese, both Muslim and others, especially who lived in the northern coast of Central Java to work together with the Javanese to end (anyirnakna) the Dutch government who had been unfair to the Chinese and Javanese in Java.98 It was evident that Raden Ronggo viewed himself as Ratu Adil or the Messianic figure in the old Javanese myth.

98 Peter Carey, Takdir, Riwayat Pangeran Diponegoro 1785-1855, Jakarta: Kompas, 2014, pp. 128-129


In bringing the restoration of the old Javanese culture that was being tainted by the Dutch, Ronggo called the Chinese and Javanese to take control of the Dutch offices and stations. He also asked the Chinese to guard themselves from any retaliation. With his stance, during the process of war, he earned the deep trust of the Chinese. The trust and camaraderie were proven when later the colonial army cornered and destroyed Raden Rangga’s soldiers in the borders of Solo River, there were twelve loyal Chinese among a hundred Rangga soldiers who decided to stay beside him and die together. Later during the Diponegoro war, the loyal Chinese Muslim also supported Diponegoro.

Later, in Europe, the Anglo-Dutch war was over. Napoleon surrendered to the British, Dutch and other countries. Southeast Asia also received its impact. In the year 1811, the British ruler of India, Lord Minto ordered the Lieutenant-General of the Straits Settlements colony based in Malacca, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, to take over Java, the Dutch main center of military-economic operations. Thus, Thomas Stamford Raffles who was stationed in Penang (Malayato) invaded the island of Java.

A new era began to replace Daendels’ eras. Raffles divided Java into eighteen regions after he had appointed selected regents to be-come salaried employees. He also decreed that the court should use a jury system. Moreover, he prohibited slavery. At last, he estab-lished central government in Bogor Palace, 60 miles from Batavia.

Second, to change economic and financial condition, he tried to bring land that had been rented or bought by Chinese under the control by the government again.99 But he also decided to

99 M.R. Fernando and David Bulbeck (eds), Chinese Economic Activity in Netherlands India, Singapore: Asean Economic Research Unit, Institute of SouthEast Asian Studies, 1992, p. 11


implement tax system for land ownership, this action was based on the understanding that the British government had authority over all lands. This decision would certainly harvest rejection from the feudal rulers as in the past, the lands were considered as belong to the Kings. Now, the citizens who were occupying the land were bound to pay taxes to the British.

Third, instead of imposing the farmers to plant only certain kinds of commodities in Daendels’ way, Raffles allowed them to plant whatever they deemed necessary. He asked them to pay tax based on the width of the land, not the amount of their crops. The tax should be paid with money, not agricultural products.

Without he realized the latter regulation caused social up-heaval that was long lasting.The Javanese had to borrow money from Chinese money lenders as the native were not skillful in managing their own financial affairs, the narratives about the Chinese’s cruelty was born and grown.

Furthermore, Raffles monopolized salt production and trade, in order to prevent any party to control this main necessity of the people. As salt trading monopoly was the Chinese trading activ-ity during the VOC era, the resentment was clear. Lastly, he also erased slavery which the Dutch had started since VOC.

Comparing with the approach of VOC toward the local rulers, since Daendels and now Raffles, the penetration of the colonial power was increasingly deeper to the inner life of the Javanese, that is the palaces of the feudalistic ruling class. The Chinese did not get much impact of Daendels’s regulations. They still became landowner or managed their own plantations, something that the VOC rulers had encouraged from the beginning. However, during Raffles a serious set of changes concerning land ownership and rent started to emerge.


Whenever the Chinese occupied the position as the tax collector for the palace or the Dutch, they imposed extravagant amount on the natives. One of the stories, an old woman was carrying her baby on her back when she passed through a tollgate. The Chinese who managed the toll requested the woman to pay a certain amount of money as he stated that the baby was equivalent to a product to be sold in the market.

Meanwhile, after the war was completely over in 1814 the British and the Dutch held the Convention of London. It was agreed that The Dutch received back its conquered territories which were given to the British. The consequence of the agree-ment was that Raffles must leave Java. Afterwards he was sta-tioned in Bengkulu.

A deeper study on the history of Netherland Indies shows that compared to the the previous government before 1800, the government under Daendels or Raffles have changed their approach to the archipelago quite radically. Compared to the previ-ous Dutch government that had installed forced trading or later pure monopoly, they used softer approaches, yet their penetra-tions to the internal affairs of the local rulers deepened.

In 1816, another era started. The Dutch reclaimed its con-quered territories in the East India from the British. King William I of Netherlands appointed three commissioners with Baron van der Capellen as governor-general. The King decreed freedom of cultivation and trade. The slave trade was still prohibited.

The restoration of the Dutch government in Java during that time brought a vigorous economic policy in order to create more revenue for the Netherlands. But, when the Dutch returned to Java in 1816, they found the island in increasing turmoil. Colo-nial interference in court affairs, especially in Yogyakarta, left


the royal family and aristocracy in a state of constant uncertain-ty and instability. Some of the elite in the court leaned toward accommodating attitude toward the Dutch. Other refused to co-operate.

Before in 1812, the Javanese rulers lost some of its territo-rial controls and had to share their powers with their aristocrats. Internal competition over fewer resources brewed more intense. In order to preserve their incomes, many Javanese aristocrats leased their lands to European and Chinese entrepreneurs who used them to plant sugar, coffee, cotton and pepper plantations. On their premise, Javanese peasants were now forced to labor for little return. The peasants lost their time and energy to grow rice or staple food that they needed. Hardship in the countryside was worsened by a tax system which was executed by the wealthy Chinese especially, exorbitant tax imposed to the natives at toll-gates that increased the cost of moving people and goods from place to place.

The Chinese played a major role in various economic areas. Formerly, they supported the government by producing and de livering sugar in large scale for them. Later, when the Dutch regime changed their approach, the Chinese continued with sugar production but in a much smaller scale. They primarily sold the product for local market. Most of the Chinese became money lenders, skilled craftsmen, revenue farmers and traders. They pe-netrated deep to the villages in Java despites the official restric-tions. As has been mentioned, they also collaborated with the Dutch regime to place heavy taxes on the natives, often more than the sum that the government decided. The Dutch knew such mal-practice but as they narrated the Chinese as their partners to cre-ate cash flow, they simply ignored the complaint and suffering of


the locals. All kinds of negative narrative about the Chinese were spread during that time in the Javanese communities.

Van der Capellen was less progressive than other commis-sioners; after they left in 1819, he increased the power of native aristocrats. He intended to protect the government’s system of coffee plantations by not allowing European planters or Chinese to settle in Priangan or to do their trading activities there. But later, he allowed the Chinese to have their plantations.

Thus, there was a system that the government created that the Chinese took part resulting in impoverishing the common folks. Abdul Wahid in his paper, In the Shadow of Opium: The ‘ Pachtstelsel’ and the political economy of colonial extractions in Java, 1850s-1890s100 described one of them. It was called Pachtstelsel or revenue farming.

First, revenue farming was the practice of the colonial rulers to offer the licenses to collect taxes to private parties. For example, the system caused a market tax to appear. Each Javanese who wanted to sell their products in the market that was owned or managed by the Chinese had to pay quite a sum of money as tax. It meant that when there was a market day, whoever sold food or any other products at the market had to pay tax up to 40 per cent of the price of the product sold. There the Chinese collected the toll-tax for the aristocrats or the Dutch. The Chinese increased the tariffs higher than normalcy, a fact that created hostility from the locals. This was one of the profitable business for the Chinese.

As a political economic institution, such system was an efficient method to collect taxes from various groups of

100 Abdul Wahid, In the shadow of opium: The ‘Pachtstelsel’ and the political economy of colonial extractions in Java, 1850s-1890s, 2010. Paper for the workshop on Colonial Extraction in the Netherlands Indies and Belgian Congo. Utrecht: Utrecht University


population and several benefiting economic activities. Later, besides the Dutch, the aristocratic local rulers also chose the Chinese to manage their tax collection system.

Furthermore, revenue farming also allowed the license holders to buy or sell valuables and monopolize commodities in a delimited area for a certain period.101

Thus, parties that wished to buy the license and become the middle agency to collect various tax from the population of the Netherland Indies and to monopolize a certain kind of commod-ity had to compete in an auction. As the license holders would be responsible to pay a fix amount of revenue, the government decreased the risk that they might face due to inconsistencies in crop harvest or tax collection process.

From the Dutch’ view, by mobilizing the Chinese with close cooperation with local aristocrats, they could establish a system to exert their influence effectively and maximized profit from local resources.

Unpredictably, in 1824 Capellen cancelled contracts of land tenancy, forcing the foreigners and the aristocrats who had be-come tenants or owner to pay back the rent they had received from the peasants who planted various crops in that land for them. His decision was based on the view that the land masters forced the peasants to work illegally as force labors.102 This caused unrest in Yog yakarta.

As the post-war boom in coffee and sugar exports faded, The Dutch faced financial problem as Javanese ports went into

101 Alexander Claver, Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants in Java, Colonial Relationships in Trade and Finance, 1800-1942, Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2014, p.145102 Bernard H.M. Vlekke, Nusantara: Sejarah Indonesia, Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, 2008.


deficit. Money was spent quelling riots outside of Java in Maluku (Moluccas), Kalimantan (Borneo), Sulawesi (Celebes), Palembang, and on the west coast of Sumatra. With the economic situation was as bad as it was, hard-pressed cultivators had to pay taxes in money and turned to Chinese money lenders.

Thus, the Chinese became the collaborators of the Dutch financial system that allow the government to strengthen its grip at the cost of the local population. Peter Carey in his book, mentioned that many people noticed that the Chinese managed the tax of opium and tollgates. The Chinese saw it as a lucrative business that brought a tremendous amount of financial gain for them. The aristocrats also disliked the Chinese role as the middlemen minority—a term that was introduced by Blalock in 1967 or even before.103 Gradually, the majority harbored suspi-cion, hatred, and jealousy toward them. Especially, the Chinese started to protect themselves by developing armed guards to secure their tax collection system, mainly in tollgates.

In short, during Daendels and Raffles governments, the prac-tices of the European to interfere the affairs of the local palace increased hostility among the feudal princes or kings. The Chi-nese made the matter worse by impoverishing the peasants and other natives through various imposed taxes and heavy loan. The combination of the simple folks’ hostility and the feudal princes’ anger gradually placed the archipelago, especially the people in central Java, the Colonial rulers, and the Chinese on a powder keg. The hatred narratives emerged and increased.

103 See: Edna Bonacich, A Theory of Middleman Minorities. American Sociological Review. Vol. 38, No. 5. (Oct., 1973), pp. 583-594. Also, Martin N Marger, Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Persepctive. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1994. Pp. 51-52.


A Unique Case of Tan Djin Sing

In 1813, while things were changing in the relationship between the Dutch and the British, in Central Java, a Chinese entrepre-neur and captain, Tan Djin Sing received appointment to become a regent in Yogyakarta with the title Raden Tumenggung Seco-diningrat. He also received a charter giving him the rights of a land of 800 hectares that covered 14 villages in the area of Bagelen and Yogyakarta, including Mrisi, located in south Yogyakarta. The population in that village was around one thousand people.

Who was this Chinese leader? Tan Djin Sing lived from 1760 till 1831. In general, by most scholars, by the Javanese, and by Chinese he was considered as someone of Chinese descent. How ever, a segment of Javanese stated that it is a certain false presumption.104

One of the narratives about Tan Djin Sing is as follow. It was said that, he was born in Wonosobo, north of Yogyakarta, into a noble Javanese princely family. His father passed away while he was still in his infancy, thus, he was then adopted by Tek Yong who was very close to his family. His mother was Raden Ayu Patrawijaya, one of the daughters of Raden Mas Kunting, third descendant of his Royal Highness the Sunan of Mataram Mang-kurat Agung (Tegal Arum). From the former he learned the eti-quette and kromo inggil (high language) of the Javanese palace without knowing at all the real identity of the woman that loved him so much. From his adoptive Chinese family, he learned the ways as well as the language of the Chinese. The Malay and

104 (https://ellycho40.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/krt-secodiningrat-alias-tan-jin-sing/) ((https://gudeg.net/id/news/2014/01/7753/Tan-Jing-Sing-Kapiten-Cina-yang-Njawani.html#.VRijGOHrS88).


common Javanese languages were absorbed through everyday conversations with his friends and servants.

In fact, when he was a child, he was already known as Tan Djin Sing. His unique background helped him easily accom-modate himself into three different worlds, namely: Chinese, Javanese, and Occidental. Westerners knew him as a friend. Even his enemies acknowledged his wisdom and intelligence. Chinese narrated that he was talented in synthesizing Chinese meticulous- ness with Javanese courtesy. Therefore, at the age of 30 years, he became a successful entrepreneur who then attained the rank of Chinese Kapitein (Chinese Captain) at Kedu, northern part of central Java.

Several years later, he held office with a similar responsibility in Yogyakarta. He really committed himself to the political arena, thus risking both his life as well as assets. He helped Prince Suroyo and the Sri Sultan Raja to liberate the throne of Ngayogya kar-ta Hadiningrat, hence being enthroned with the title Khalifah Ngabdurrachman Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono III. Thereupon, Captain Tan Djin Sing was appointed as a major royal aide with the aristocratic title Raden Tumenggung (Lord Regent) Secodiningrat, and still retained his status as the Chinese Captain of Yogyakarta.

His extensive relationship with people of various ethnicities and his equal love for diverse cultures made him a figure who probably could be viewed as a worthy example someone who contributed significantly to a pluralistic nation.

Yet, those who disliked him, often labeled him as “Cino wurung, Jowo tanggung, Londo pun durung” or in other words, that he had not yet a Chinese, half-way to become Java nese, and not yet a Dutch. Whatever people viewed him, it is evi-dent, as the Regent of Yogyakarta, Secodiningrat worked hard


so that this Sultanate would advance and prosper, but when he began to show signs of success, political upheavals occurred which prevented much his diligent efforts to bear fruit.

As in the 1813, the British was ready to take over Java and the Dutch was trying to repel them. Whether they liked it or not, people in Yogyakarta were thus being obliged to resist the forth-coming British army, at the same time Secodiningrat was taking as much risk as possible to achieve a peaceful consensus between the Sultanate and the English authorities.

This initiative became a futile effort. The courier of Secodi-ningrat to Sir Stamford Raffles was intercepted. This took place as the result of palace intrigues, supported by certain Dutch colonial administrators who wished to maintain their power and prevent the affiliation between the Javanese Sultanate with Raffles.

Secodiningrat also had to witness the appointment of the new Sultan. This ruler, Sultan Sepuh was an oppressive king. His cruel treatments both towards the nobility as well as towards the com-moners reaped rejection from many parties. Secodiningrat prom-ised Prince Suroyo, the former and abdicated Sultan that he was going to resolve this problem. His unfaltering resolution paid off with the reinstallation of the new king after the British power over Java expired.

Secodiningrat had two lines of decent namely Javanese and Chinese. Raden Dadang succeeded his father both as Chinese Captain and Bupati. Later, he carried the title R.T. Secodi ning-rat II. As permitted by Islamic tradition, he had three wives: a local Peranakan Chinese woman addressed to as Nyonya Kapi-tein (Madam, or simply Captain’s wife), a Javanese woman with the title Mas Ajeng Secodiningrat, and another Javanese woman known as Raden Nganten Secodiningrat. One of Raden Dadang’s


daughters, B.R.A. Kumaraningrum (Putri Bhe Siu Kai) married Prince Mangunkusumo of the Yogyakarta Sultanate.

Until today, people still visited Secodiningrat’s grave in Mrisi, Bantul. Indeed, he showed an example of someone who could enter different ethnic circles, a model member of plural-istic society and contributed actively even to the point of taking a high risk for himself. He is a role model of someone who showed an authentic willingness to integrate himself as a Chi-nese into a larger cultural context and with loyalty to his nation. He showed that a person could live with three or multiple identi-ties simultaneously instead of with one only. Such choice was not taken because of social pressure or crisis, but it was simple a natural choice that anyone could opt to have. Only later, after the Diponegoro war, the Javanese hated such multiple identi-ties. Peter Carey in his writing, The British in Java, 1811-1816: A Javanese Account, mentioned that the hatred or dislike toward hybrid or multi-identities emerged as the world changed too rapidly and the Javanese dug deeper to their mono-cultural identity based on Javanese tradition and worldview. Thus, they even looked down on Chinese who were Muslim and named them as cultural chameleon.105

Diponegoro and the Chinese

In 1825, no one realized that a widespread and decisive war was about to break out in Java. It was called today as the Diponegoro War that last from 1825 till 1830.

105 Peter Carey, “The British in Java, 1811-1816: A Javanese Account,” In J. van Goor (ed.) Trading Companies in Asia 1600-1830, Utrecht: HES, 1986. p. 148


The background of the war is the economic calamity in the life of the local rulers and the common folks in central Java as the result of Daendels and Raffles’ policy.

When a new kingdom of Ngayogyakarta was established in 1755 even before he Europeans came, their financial need for the Kingdom were already overwhelming. The feudal rulers believed in narratives that only the Chinese were able to find ways in ful-filling the financial needs as such. Thus, the Sultan appointed the first Chinese Kapitein, To In, to serve as their tollgate tax collec-tor. This Kapitein and his successor managed to fill the coffer of the Sultanate. Forty percents of the income of the Kingdom came from the result of their work. Yet, the common folks perceived and narrated that the Chinese and Dutch (not the feudal ruler) coali-tion had created an oppressive system that impoverished them.

At that time, there were at last two layers of the society. At the first layer lived the Dutch officials, the wealthy Chinese in-termediate or money lenders and tax collectors added with the respected aristocratic rulers. The common folks were being im-poverished because the Dutch government, wealthy Chinese, and the local aristocrats collaborated to use the agriculture in Java as their source of income. Those parties who were in power did not show any empathy toward the suffering of the common folks, who were mostly simple peasants.

At the second layer, lived the poor peasants and the simple Chinese retailers who worked by carrying goods on their shoulder and selling them from one village to another. They knew each other and helped each other as their needs intersected each other, although the peddlers did not suffer as much as the peasants.

Meanwhile, internally, inside the palace of Yogyakarta sul-tanate of Central Java there were ongoing problems and hidden


conflicts. The problems started when a long-standing conflict between the elites became more heated as a transition of heir oc-curred during the British interregnum. The reappointed Sultan Hamengkubuwono II, after being forced to resign by the French-Dutch representative, enjoyed only one year of rule. The British then appointed a new sultan, Hamengkubuwono III, in 1812 and banished Hamengkubuwono II to the island of Penang, off the coast of the Malay Peninsula.

Diponegoro or Bandoro Raden Mas Mustahar was born in Yogyakarta palace on November 11, 1785. His father was the el-dest son of the Hamengkubuwono II. From his mother side, he in-herited Islam faith. After he was seven years old, his grandmother took him to live with her in Tegalrejo, three kilometers away from the Palace, there, he learned that he was connected to one or two Wali Songo, the Islamic Leaders from his maternal lineage. He also learned to take Islamic faith deeply and frugal lifestyle of the common folks in the village. Furthermore, he got connected to many religious teachers. More significantly, during his child-hood, her grandmother’s rejection toward the lifestyle of her own son who lived in the Palace or decreasing loyalty toward the old Javanese customs influenced Diponegoro to adopt a similar view.

Diponegoro often went for solitude in southern coast of Java. He spent days for meditation and soul searching. Later, he got connected with Kiayi Mojo, an Islamic leader from Surakarta. He also learned Islamic laws from various resources. Meanwhile, although he maintained his relationship with the Palace where he belonged to, he did not enjoy his participation in several rituals there.

Besides, his interest in religion and spirituality, Diponegoro was educated in history, literature, and Javanese philosophy.


Thus, Diponegoro had a unique identity as a Javanese, a Muslim, and a prince. In term of his religious or spiritual journey, Carey mentioned that he was more interested to dzikir – or to recite short prayers repeatedly to worship God. He said that reciting dzikir would enable someone to have The Holy Name engraved in his soul.106

In the palace, Hamengkubuwono III only reigned for two years before his untimely death. Earlier, the British had asked Dipone-goro to accept the title of crown prince, but he declined. He was the oldest son of the King but from a concubine. The British govern-ment then appointed Prince Jarot, or Raden Mas Sudama, the son of the official wife of Hamengkubuwono III, as Hamengkubu-wono IV, sidestepping Diponegoro. During this period, the sultan’s mother, along with the chancellor (patih) Danureja IV, and a com-mander of the sultan’s bodyguard, Wiranegara, formed a strong power coalition within the palace. Diponegoro became the outsider.

The reign of Hamengkubuwono IV was also brief. The sultan died in December 1822, and Yogyakarta was handed back to Dutch power. In exchange, the Dutch East Indies government appointed Prince Menol, a three-year-old child, as Hamengkubu-wono V. Diponegoro and three other distinguished persons served as appointed members of the prince’s guardianship. Patih Danu-rejo took over the tasks of the guardianship except the internal palace financial affairs. Danurejo worked closely with the colo-nial government and was hostile to Diponegoro. Diponegoro was left with a feeling of bitterness toward his many political oppo-nents who had several times humiliated him in public.

106 Peter Carey, Babad Dipanegara, An Account of the Outbreak of Java War (1825-1830), Kualalumpur: Art Printers, 1981, p. 39. Quoting Babad Dipanegara IV:98-9


The situation became more complicated with the appearance of Dutch Resident Smissaert, whose attitude offended the Java-nese etiquette and customs. In routine meetings with the sultan inside the palace, for instance, Smissaert made it a habit to sit at the seat appointed especially for the Sultan. The Resident and his community and some sultanate elites also introduced West-ern ways into the palace, resulting in many changes in the daily lifestyle of the nobility. There were even reports of sex scandals between foreigners and the princesses inside the palace.

Many palace courtiers frowned upon such practices as they continued to uphold traditional Javanese values. Among them was Diponegoro.

In the Palace, the conflict among the elites intensified and resulted in political tensions that were difficult to control. Tension was heightened further as more impoverished Javanese common folks began to throw their support behind Diponegoro.

Why did it happen? Land owned by families of the sultan and the Javanese aristocracy had been rented to some Europeans and wealthy Chinese. This practice started during the British period in 1814 and was continued by the Dutch East Indies govern-ment. The right of the Javanese community to work and live on their land was undermined. The opening of Chinese or European plantations on these leased lands caused the degradation of the people’s status from farmers to laborers with meager incomes. In addition, many people were forced to move from their homeland. At the same time, the introduction of a land-tax system by Raffles (1781-1826), along with the government’s practice of adminis-tering tollgates by subcontracting through three to four Chinese tax-collectors, created more tension because the abuses of the tra-ditional services system by local Javanese officials had continued.


People were further impoverished by various kinds of indirect taxes that were monopolized by Chinese. Even goldsmiths, cop-persmiths, copper workers, and the owners of Javanese musical orchestras, for example, had to pay an annual tax to the Chinese, or they would be sent to jail. In the narratives of the local people, many of the existing taxes caused unbearable burden.

The wealthy Chinese who either became tax collectors, money lenders, or middlemen for various commodities added more suffering to the common folks. Darker narrative became popular among the natives. Then, the distressing social and economic burden of the early 1820s became even worse when a cholera epidemic and harvest failure took place in many parts of Java. Each day, several hundred people passed away.

During this dark period, to deal with the suffering, the lead-ers and common folks of Javanese culture returned inwardly to their belief. Before Diponegoro rebellion, few other leaders in Java also dreamed about the coming of End-Time and their roles as the Messiah.

In the second decade of the 1800, Diponegoro observed with deep empathy the suffering of the common folks. Being a mystic in Islamic and Javanese way, he understood the place of human beings in the course of distress. He learned about acceptance and surrendering to God. Often, he received supernatural intervention until one day, he heard a voice that he would play a decisive role in the history.

The superstitious people saw Diponegoro as the reincarna-tion of the mythical Ratu Adil or Messiah figure in Javanese mil-lenarian tradition. Thus, the Java’s traditional belief system lent strong support to Diponegoro. The social narratives emerged and interplayed with spiritual one. Furthermore, in the narratives of


the Javanese people, Diponegoro not only brought hope to native Javanese, to return the strength of the pure Javanese cultural values, but he also represented the idea of holy war within an Islamic frame, especially if the enemy were the arrogant gentiles. Thus, Diponegoro could serve as the only hope for the restoration of Javanese-culture society at that time and the pure religious practices of Islam.

Beginning in 1825, the penetration of the colonial power into the policies of the Yogyakarta palace elite became more conspicuous. The palace elite increasingly disregarded Dipone-goro. For example, the government placed poles to designate the location of a planned new road that passed directly through his property without going through his permission. The event resulted in a spontaneous mobilization of people to defend Diponegoro’s land rights in mid-July 1825.

Diponegoro was further disappointed when, in early 1825, Patih Danurejo, acting as caretaker of the sultan, signed a thirty-year agreement with the colonial government to lease lands in the areas of Jabarangkah and Karangkobar without the consent of the guardianship board.

After Diponegoro refused to meet with the representative of Resident Smissaert, the Dutch sent an invitation to Diponegoro to have a meeting with him on July 20, 1825. A day later, Smissaert sent an army of fifty men and two cannons to capture Diponegoro. They destroyed his home area, but Diponegoro managed to re-treat to the south, through Selarong, which then became the center of the struggle and the place where Diponegoro declared himself “Heru-cakra”, another name for Ratu Adil, the just king.

Battles between the Dutch army, supported by few local rul-ers, against the supporters of Diponegoro took place over a wide


area that extended beyond the borders of Yogyakarta, especially in the areas around the Menoreh Mountains, Kedu, Bagelen, and Banyumas. The war also spread to the northern coastal areas of Java, such as Rembang, Lasem, Tuban, and Bojonegoro, and far to the east, crossing Surakarta as far as Madiun, East Java.

The widespread support of the Javanese people for Dipone-goro could not be underestimated. Although the Islamic groups became his main supporters, this largest war in Java’s history also involved many other groups, from farmers to noblemen, from clergy to bandits, from the Javanese to Chinese.107 The soldiers called to the field of battles did not consist of men only; many of Diponegoro’s troops were women. It is known that at least one of Diponogoro daughters also became a commander. Even Chi-nese women took part.in the war. This fact was forgotten in later post-war narratives.

The war in Java prevented the Dutch from continuing their political and military expansion elsewhere in the archipelago, especially in islands outside Java. The Dutch tried various strate-gies, from battle to negotiation, but they failed to stop the war. Finally, their military expert implemented a new approach known as the Bentengstelsel (Fortress System) to eliminate and corner Diponegoro. Prior to that, however, the Dutch offered Dipone-goro the status of prince similar with the position of princely king held by Mangkunegoro and Pakualam, if he would agree to stop the war, but he declined.

Unfortunately, by mid-1829, among Diponegoro’s most important supporters – Dullah Haji Abdulkadir, Pangeran Bei, Pangeran Joyokusumi, Pangeran Adikusumo, and Raden Basah Prawirodirjo – had either been killed or captured or had

107 Peter Carey, (ed. and transl.), ibid, p. 260.


surrendered. Diponegoro decided to stop the war in February 1830, and he commenced with negotiation.

Diponegoro was invited to the Dutch resident’s house in Magelang on March 8, 1830. During the negotiation process, on March 28, the Dutch captured him and sent to Manado, North Celebes. Diponegoro was later transferred to Makassar, South Celebes, where he remained until his death on January 8, 1855. During his years of exile, Diponegoro produced many works of literature on Java and Islam.

The war caused the deaths of more than 200,000 Javanese. The Dutch lost more than 8,000 European soldiers and 7,000 local soldiers, and not less than twenty million guilders were spent to finance the five-year war.

The war was the first large scale and major war against the Dutch involving Javanese leaders who were motivated by social reasons, rather than the usual aristocratic or dynastic reasons that had caused repeated earlier conflicts in Java. After the Diponegoro War, the feudalistic power and society of Java become a highly dependent subject of the Dutch, not only politically, but also so-cially, economically, and culturally.

According to the scholar, Ricklefs, Diponegoro as a central figure in the war was in a unique position to mobilize both the elite and the common people against the colonialists: “as a senior prince, he had access to the aristocracy, as a mystic to the religious com-munity, and as a rural dweller to the masses in the countryside”108

Although the revolt was led by Diponegoro and other aristo-crats, its considerable popular appeal based on Islam and Javanese

108 Merle Calvin Rickelfs, A History of Modern Indonesia, ca. 1300 to the present. London & Basingstoke: Macmillan; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981


mysticism, created a scenario similar with the twentieth-century wars in Southeast Asia. The Dutch did not foresee the exten-sive power of the guerrilla insurgency. For the first time, a large scale rebellion took place after the Dutch created the economic suffering of the common folks and traditional culture displace-ment. In a way, Diponegoro was a predecessor of nationalism of later Indonesia. He also brought a messianic war with End times teaching to a higher level. Similar wars would later also take place elsewhere. At the aftermath, the territories of Yogyakarta and Surakarta were substantially reduced, although the sultans were paid compensation.

The Narratives of the War

We need to take note, that during the Java War (1825-1830), Secodiningrat aided Prince Diponegoro by teaching martial arts to the commanders of his army. He also helped Prince Dipone-goro by funding the Prince’s guerrilla wars against the Dutch armies. Even his most beloved horse was given to be the steed for the Prince – a gesture that meant more than a material support.

Also, many Peranakan or half-breed Chinese supported the struggle of Prince Diponegoro, and helped supply his armies with, silver, weapons, opium and many other things.109 Peranakan were those who had been born in the archipelago, cut their pony-tail, embraced Islam, or one of their parents was Javanese. Even,

109 Peter Carey, Orang Cina, Bandar Tol, Candu dan Perang Jawa: Perubahan Persepsi Tentang Cina 1755-1825 (Chinese, Tol Owner, Opium and Java War: The Perception change about the Chinese 1755-1825, Jakarta: Komunitas Bambu, 2008, p. 3


furthermore, many of this Peranakan Chinese fought back-to-back against the Dutch.110

Their involvement in the war could be seen in the battle that was planned by Raden Tumenggung Sasradilaga, the brother-in-law of Prince Diponegoro from the area of Lasem, North Central Java, during the year 1827-1828. The Chinese in the area who were mostly Muslims and had long been in Java were active in joining and helping Sasradilaga’s army.111 The Sasradilaga’s army, with the aid of the Chinese Muslims, fought fiercely in the borders of the northern Java around Rembang, Lasem and Bojo-negoro. In consequence, when Sasradilaga’s army was defeated, the same Chinese become the victims of the Dutch’s revenge who slaughtered them without mercy.

Yet, surprisingly, in the middle of the war, on 23 September 1825 the first Chinese mass murder committed by the Javanese took place. The cavalry lead by Princess Sultan Hamengku Bu-wono I, Raden Ayu Yudakusuma, attacked Ngawi, a small town on the borders of Middle East Java, which was located near the banks of Solo River. Ngawi was a trading town occupied by many Chinese community, which were consisted of rice sellers, contrac-tors, private businessmen, and workers.112 Even though they had constructed defenses in the houses of the local Chinese traders and leaders, they still failed to fend off Raden Ayu’s attack. Unheed-ing the cry and request of the women and children, Yudakusuma slaughtered all of them. The mutilated bodies were scattered in the streets, doors, and the houses which were stained with blood.

110 See: Pieter Johan Frederik Louw, and Eduard Servaas Klerck, De Java-oorlog van 1825-30, Nabu Press, 2011.111 Peter Carey, Babad Dipanegara, opcit, p. 260. Footnote no.106112 Peter Carey, Orang Cina, ibid.


There were more than 85 families murdered at that time.113 Thus, the Chinese simple folks also became the victims although those who collaborated with the colonial power to impoverish the peasants and common folks were the affluent Chinese.

What was the reason behind it? It was evident that in Ngawi or some other towns the ethnic Chinese lived in peace and har-mony with the local residence for long time although the jealousy and distrust toward them who were more affluent existed.

Evidently, Raden Ayu had even once borrowed money from the Chinese in East Java. As has been stated in the beginning, the reason behind it is the widespread hostility of the Javanese toward the Chinese who became tax collectors. The Sultan of Java had long employed the Chinese to become tax collectors in the main roads, bridges, harbors, opium sales, and markets. Seeing the ef-fectiveness of the Chinese people in collecting money, the Dutch and the British utilized the same course of action in their colonies. This stirred negative feelings which eventually have the potential to cause a long conflict in the future between the Javanese and the Chinese.

In the eve of Java War, many local bandits raided and commit-ted arson of the gates where the taxes were being collected. Plenty of gatekeepers were also killed. The feelings against the Chinese people rose to its peak after the Chinese tax collectors established their private bodyguards which consisted of Javanese people. From here on, the hostility began to increase to its peak until ready for bursting. The massacre at Ngawi was a manifestation of the hidden hatred and stereotyping narratives about the Chinese that already bloomed at that time. The leaders and their folks in Cen-tral Java viewed the Chinese as oppressors who brought bad luck.

113 Peter Carey, opcit, end note 2.


In fact, they might just be only tools of the existing authority, whether that be the Sultan of Java, the Dutch or the British.

In the aftermath, the massacre of the Chinese provoked a disappointment and deep suspicion in the hearts of the Chinese against the people of Java. A narrative with long-lasting influ ences started to be born. Thus, fear and distrust were traded between the two ethnic groups.

Prince Diponegoro had the same negative prejudice by for-bidding his soldiers to engage in relationships with the Chinese. He also prohibited the taking of Peranakan Chinese to become mistresses, because he believed that it will bring ill-omen. Dipo-negoro developed such a view and narratives because his experi-ence of losing battles during October 1826. In accordance with what he wrote himself in the Babad Diponegoro, he was capti-vated and “destroyed” by the beauty of a Chinese lady who he captured in area Panjang and later became his personal masseuse.

Furthermore, he blamed the defeat of his brother-in-law, Sas-ra dilaga, in the war in Lasem, which happened because Sasradilaga had raped a Chinese woman in Lasem, the coastal city of northern Java.114 From his point of view, such incident gave a foundation for his negative narratives about the Chinese influence.

We can note that the number of the Chinese Muslim greatly decreased after the Diponegoro War because they viewed that several of Diponegoro men attacked all the Chinese, Muslim or non-Muslim alike. This accident happened due to the mispercep-tion of the Javanese that all Chinese were owners or suppliers of the logistics much-needed by the Dutch.

The information about Diponegoro war is overwhelming. Although the name is well known, the depth of destructive legacy

114 Ibid, p 93. Quoting Louw, and Serat Dipanagara 2:26 XXXIII 71, 72, 73.


that he left until today is not remembered. As written by Carey in Chinese People, Bandar Toll, Opium and the Java War, the Dipo-negoro War left two main legacies that influenced later Indonesia society. First, the Chinese Muslims developed a self-narrative that it was impossible for them to be recognized or accepted as Java-nese, since their position as mediators in the trading, as vendors, and as tax collectors caused the Javanese to hate them. Dipone-goro, using the Sacred War concept inherited a legacy in form of narratives that all Chinese were the enemy of Islam. Second, Diponegoro taught that if a Chinese would not convert to Islam, they would be killed and slaughtered. Later, he also emphasized the sharp distinction between the Javanese and Chinese by forbid-ding the people to marry a non-Muslim Chinese.

The opinion of Carey is parallel with the view of Lombard. In Java Nusa: Cross-Cultural. Volume 2 Denys Lombard com-mented about this “completely racist idea” as follows:

Perhaps, even worse ... was a dangerous ideology which be-gan to be distributed by Diponegoro and his followers: that the Chinese were not just categorized as unbelievers, but followers of Diponegoro were also officially forbidden from marrying Chinese women or to take a Peranakan woman as a concubine.115

Thus, Diponegoro destroyed the ideals of intermarriage be-tween Chinese and Javanese that had been there before. As told by Peter Carey the myth arose that Java men should have fear of marrying Chinese women, as the “ashes” of Chinese people are more dominant, so that later the mixed children would have more dominant Chinese features.116 A powerful negative narrative that

115 Denys Lombard, Java Nusa: Cross-Cultural. Volume 2 116 Peter Carey, Chinese People, Bandar Toll, Opium and the Java War (2008).


lives until modern era was born at that time.Through social environments and context such as these,

more and more Chinese people were alienated as ‘foreigners’ (outsiders). The narratives about their vulnerable position as the ‘intermediary minority’ linked with the narratives that they were the immoral opportunists and oppressors. In fact, those Dipone-goro’s legacies were a reaction toward the practices of the Sultan and Dutch who used the talents of the Chinese in Java to serve as the mediator between authorities and the people—a reaction that overlooked the fact the Chinese at that time did not have much choice either in form of military power or numbers, and thus were not in position to oppose the rulers.

At this point it is clear, the adoption of those narratives as legacies and its penetration to the mind of the simple folks of the archipelago became a thorn in the later Indonesian society. Not many people made narratives that Islam in the archipelago of Indonesia, especially, before 1820s, was essentially a ratio-nal, strict, pious, open-minded, and kind-hearted that embraced the Chinese decents. The positive narratives were buried and replaced by newer and dark ones. Not many people remem-ber that the Chinese Muslims played one of prominent roles in propagating Islam in Java and beyond as the existence of such narrative was forgotten or even denied. Not many people remem-ber that Islamic technology, science, and culture had cosmo-politan and once an extensive influence in the world.

After Prince Diponegoro made Islam more mystical and in-ward looking, the consequence was that the distinction between Javanese, Islam and Chinese cultures became sharper. Narratives that were developed consisted of the Javanese Muslims as vic-tims and Chinese as the oppressors. Furthermore, political and


social leaders added religious framework with intuition, revela-tions, and sensing that were often subjective or based on super-stition. In a way, it strengthens the feudalistic mind-set meaning that the opinion or wisdom or persons who are in the authorita-tive position, either political, social, or religious should not be questioned.

At this point, the exploration of this study as a quest to find the root of the residue of the Chinese trauma with the indigenous and the negatives narratives derived from both groups might have discovered the answer. Its root was in the war of Diponegoro when for the first time being in the archipelago, the Chinese felt alien-ated and created their own self-narratives as surviving victims.

Historian easily realizes that the native rulers at that peri-od had also burdened the common folks with heavy taxes, but such a practice was a normal way anywhere else in the feudal-istic society. However, the common folks did not mind with the practice as the rulers gave consistency and stability to the nation. Later, when the Dutch took over the nation and imposed heavier taxes, the Javanese could accept as their rulers cooperated with the Dutch. Also, the Dutch gave military protections for the na-tion. However, when the wealthy Chinese collaborated with the Dutch as tax collectors and other trade owners, the natives viewed that the heavy tax burden became even heavier under the Chinese management who wanted to accumulate wealth without much re-gard about the suffering of the simple folks. From the villages and tollgates or else, the already wealthy Chinese obtained revenue but did not give back anything to the nation. From the market tax, similar thing happened. Therefore, negative narrative was spread with themes such as “anger, victims, and injustice.” Finally, ac-cumulative anger and hostility of the natives burst to become


widespread violence. When the simple petty Chinese peddlers ran away from the war and tried to find refuge in the houses or towns where the affluent Chinese resided with their guards, the Javanese no longer made distinction about their enemy or the bystanders.

The spirituality of the Chinese at the Diponegoro era

In the archipelago, the Chinese are known as an ethnic group who combined the heritage of Confucianism, Taoism, Chinese Bud-dhism, and the local cults. It is like a complicated syncretistic belief. Yet, there is a common core that can be described as four theological, cosmological, and moral concepts: Tian, Heaven, the source of moral meaning; qi, the breath or substance of which all things are made; the practice of jingzu, the veneration of ancestors; and bao ying, moral reciprocity.

The first concept is Tian or heaven. Confucianism, Taoism, and other schools of thought in China have similar concept of Tian. In their narratives Tian is both the physical heavens, the home of the sun, moon, and stars. Tian is also the home of the gods, or spirits, and ancestors. However, concerning gods and spirits (both words in Chinese is shén) the Chinese believed the following concepts: 1. There are shén of nature; gods who were once people, such as

the warrior Kwan Kong (in Hokkian dialect), household gods, such as the Stove God; as well as ancestral gods.

2. Shén is also the “psyche”, or the power within humans. They are intimately involved in the life of this world.

3. As spirits of stars, mountains and streams, shen exert a direct influence on things, making phenomena appear and things


grow or extend themselves.An early Chinese dictionary, the Shuowenjiezi by Xu Shen, explains that they “are the spirits of Heaven” and they “draw out the ten thousand things”.

4. A disciple of Zhu Xi noted that “between Heaven and Earth there is no thing that does not consist of yin and yang, and there is no place where yin and yang are not found. Therefore there is no place where gods and spirits do not exist”. As forces of growth the gods are regarded as yang, opposed to a yin class of entities called “guǐ” (meaning “return, contraction”), which is chaotic beings.

In their narratives, to extend life to its full potential the hu-man shén must be cultivated, resulting in ever clearer, more lu-minous states of being. It can transform in the pure intelligent breath of deities. Taoist schools in particular teach an explicit spiri-tual method which pushes human beings to the edge of eternity.

Immortality is also to be found within oneself because human body is a microcosm, enlivened by the universal order of yin and yang like the whole cosmos.

It is hard not to conclude that, in the Chinese beliefs there is no distinction between gods (shen) and immortal beings (xian), transcendental principles and their physical manifestations. Into human body, Gods can incarnate. Meanwhile, human beings can reach higher spiritual states by the right way of action, such as by emulating the order of Tian.

Following the first concept as such, there is also the second concept of bao ying. In the word, it means that human beings will be rewarded by their choices of action precisely, their moral cos-mic quality actions. However, in the Chinese spiritual or belief-related narratives, they also mention the concept of fate or given


condition of each person. It means there is a destiny for each of human beings. By realizing one’s own given condition inscribed in the ordered world, the person should be responsible towards oneself and others; to respond to events rather than just resigning or flowing through.

Thus, their narratives were somehow influenced by their com-bined beliefs: Confusianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. At that time, Confusianism functioned more as ethical system based on orderliness and hierarchical view of life. Taoism guided people to seek deeper meaning and negated the material world. Buddhism helped them to understand life as series of incarnation and reincarnation, fate, and denial process of material world while seeking for inner peace.

With strong beliefs or spirituality as such, the Chinese had the tendency to see the Javanese as people who did not act accord ing to their moral responsibility, that is, realizing their destiny and choose proper moral-cosmic actions. They also did not maintain moral order, working obligations, and their posses-sion. The Chinese created narratives that the Javanese tended to resign when things get tough. In short, they looked down on the Javanese and narrated them as “superstitious, lazy, illogical, and subservient.” The Chinese also viewed themselves as the people who inherited a noble tradition and sophisticated work ethics.

Summary

When the Diponegoro War took place, many Chinese took part to support him especially, the Muslim Chinese decents. Yet, Dipo-negoro did leave a legacy that later influenced narratives of a lot of people in modern Indonesia.


In Diponegoro era, the narrative that the Chinese either the wealthy and oppressive ones or the poor peddlers were the antag-onist of Islam started. Further narratives related to their roles as oppressors and pagan emerged. Diponegoro simply spread such a narrative in order to restore the Javanese conservative or traditional culture rooted in Hindu spirituality or cosmology that was being eroded by the influence of the Dutch.

In his spirituality, Diponegoro combined Javanese intuitive, superstitious, or mystical approach to make meaning the suffer-ing in life with his Islamic paradigm. The negative narrative was then interlaced with religious tone. The impact was devastating. Diponegoro viewed the Chinese and the Dutch as pagans to be annihilated.

The residue of trauma of the Chinese Muslim might have the root during that era as they felt being treated unfairly by their fellow Muslim, by the majority of the Javanese, by the Chinese majority, and by the colonial ruler after all they had done. There-fore, until today they still live by such negative narratives.

The other Chinese who were bystanders and did not support Diponegoro might also be traumatized by the war. Their position was brittle. They narrated the locals as did not have filial loyalty, lazy, subservient, unreliable, and treacherous.

It is evident that the Dutch narrated the Chinese as a necessary evil to be with, while the rulers used them for their own financial needs and could dispose them at will. No spirituality of the Dutch Christians is evident to influence the narratives.

With or without the influence of their spirituality, the Chinese often developed narratives that they were alone and in the posi-tion of victims but managed to survive in whatever situation they were facing although they began to distrust the native.


Fifty years later, such narratives, hostility, and suspicion would spread more during the Era of Cultivation System that came after the Diponegoro War. Even more, the negative narra-tives with hostility and suspicion became mutual and stronger.


_____________________________________________

Era of Cultivation System: The Spread of the Worst Narrative

about the Chinese –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

Salvador Dali

Cultivation System

After the Diponegoro War, the second big event during the 19th century took place. The name was the Cultivation system or more precisely, the Imposed Cultivation System. Most people have heard a lot about it, but they might not be able to distinguish it from the cultivation system that Daendels or Raffles had started earlier.

After the defeat of Diponegoro, the Dutch formed the Pax Netherlandica. They occupied a central position in determin ing everything that occurred in Java after 1830. The victory also gave them the opportunity to expand their colonial empire to other islands. However, at that time, as the result of Diponegoro War, financially, the Dutch were in a really bad situation. The fact gave them pressure to find quick remedy.

At that time, the Chinese still played the social and economic roles as the tax collectors, pawn house owners, product suppliers,


crop gatherers, gambling house managers, tollgate tax collectors, and others. Their revenue never stopped flowing in as they were cunning in capitalizing each opportunity. They did not hesitate to collaborate with the returning Dutch or the local aristocrat part-ners of the Dutch government such as, the assistant of Resident or the Resident himself as long the collusion brought income for their coffers.

After the Diponegoro War, the Governor-general Johannes van den Bosch started the new cultuurstelsel or Cultivation system. In that new system, each village had to set aside 20 per cent of their land in order they could plant three agricultural commodities most needed in European market. The Dutch even set the price for the harvest. If the local farmers could not fulfill the require-ment, another choice was available. They could work 75 days for the government instead of setting aside that harvest. This could become a choice for those who no longer owned a land.117

Later during the implementation of the system, some of the government officials, often the members of the local aristocrats forced the village to plant 100 per cent of their land with those commodities. If they failed to have a good harvest, they had to pay the loss with their own money.

As the result of such forced system, poverty and hunger in-creased exponentially in Java. In the past the peasants used to have two harvests per year. The first harvest was the rice as their staple food. The second harvest was the other vegetables or wood that fulfilled their daily consumption. With the Cultivation system, often there was no more harvest of rice or the others as they had to plant whatever the government ordered them. The Chinese and

117 Hans Bakker, Class Relations in Java in the Nineteenth Century: AWeberian Perspective.Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 8(1) 1987, pp. 137-156


the native rulers also imposed harsher measure toward the farm-ers, either in forms of taxes or various additional regulations.118

It took only ten years for the Dutch to apply the system thoroughly. Between 1831 until 1871 from the income, Batavia managed to erect many buildings. Net profit of the sum of 823 million guilders was sent to from the archipelago to the Kingdom of Holland.119 Thus, the coffer of the Netherland overflowed.

As has been written above, the Dutch really enjoyed prosper-ity at the expense of the Javanese. As rice cultivation and harvest decreased, and in 1843, famine took place in Cirebon, West Java. Same incident also took place in Central Java in 1850.

During the era of Cultivation System, gradually, the Chinese in Java occupied the uncontested position as the middlemen in trading and tax collectors license holders. As license holders, their main concern was to be able to reach their revenue target to pay the agreed annual amount of income to the government. With such target, illegally they increased the tax either, the market tax, tollgate tax, slaughterhouse, pawn house, and others. Unfortunately, when they became wealthier because of the revenue, the Chinese became greedier and imposed even more excessive taxes to the natives.

Another Chinese groups, mostly the simple folks worked as peddlers. They brought various household products by walking on foot to villages. Without realizing, they also taught the natives to

118 Bernard H.M. Vlekke, Nusantara: Sejarah Indonesia (Nusantara: The History of Indonesia), Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, 2008, pp. 328-329119 From the government’s point of view, the Cultivation System was an overwhelming success. Exports soared, rising from 13 million guldens in 1830 to 74 million a decade later. The products were disposed of through the Netherlands Trading Society, and between 1840 and 1880 their sale brought to the Dutch treasury an annual average of 18 million guldens, approximately a third of the Dutch budget. (source: http://users.skynet.be/network.indonesia/ ni4001c9a.htm)


become consumptive and willing to buy most of the products that they saw. When the natives could not afford to pay the tax, the Chinese peddlers allowed them to postpone the payment if they left their weapon, rings, or clothes in the pawn house, but both valued the collateral much lower than normal price.120 The Chi-nese simple folks then, also played roles as money lenders which eventually made the natives financially dependent on them.

The abusive behavior of the powerful Chinese when they im-posed taxes was protected by some native government officials. If a Chinese committed an offence against a Javanese by demand-ing a payment over the due tax, and the latter reported the case to the government officials, the Chinese simply bribed the officials. They also explained that if they did not impose such a heavy tax on the natives, they could not collect enough money to pay the government.121

The popular narratives about the Chinese at that time was they had become the distribution channel players or middlemen between the Dutch government and the natives. Such narratives continued until the end of the 20th century. Indeed, as the Dutch government needed to accumulate fund through the collection of the crops, sales of opium, pawn house, market, and toll tax, etc, the wealthy Chinese were collaborating for that end, thus truly, they played middlemen, suppliers, money lenders, and tax collec-tor roles. Thus, the narratives have historical basis.

Yet, as has been mentioned before, some of the Chinese simply worked as petty traders or simple peddlers who penetrated

120 M.R. Fernando and David Bulbeck (eds), Chinese Economic Activity in Netherlands India, Singapore: Asean Economic Research Unit, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1992, even Chinese women took part.op. 29121 ibid, p. 30


deep to the villages and lived in harmony with the natives. They spoke the language of the natives, enjoyed the same food, walked barefoot, and knew each other. They simply worked hard to use opportunities and make their living without collusion or power abuse. Neither were they wealthy nor powerful. The Dutch, wealthy Chinese, the local feudalistic aristocrats, and village dwellers looked down on them. For the wealthy Chinese, on the one hand, those petty traders were narrated as uncivilized, rude, but on the other hand no one denied that they were hard workers, and diligent. For the aristocrats and the Dutch, those petty traders were on the one hand viewed as needed economic players, but on another hand, no one enjoyed being around them.

For the Dutch government, the impact of the Cultivation system success was significant. Some modern Western writers even spoke with positive views that the system alleviated the buying power of most peasants, an opinion that was rejected by Breman.122

Van den Bosch confirmed a high profitability when as the foundation of official policy, their focus was mainly to Java, Su-matra and Bangka. However, from about 1840 when money was more than enough,123 the Dutch started further expansion pro-grams by waging series of wars to enlarge and consolidate their domination in the outer islands. The Dutch planned to strength-en the protection of already occupied regions. The expansion would open ways for Dutch officials ambitious for glory or

122 See: Jan Breman, Keuntungan Kolonial Dari Kerja Paksa: system Priangan dari Tanam Paksa Kopi di Jawa 1720-1870 (The Colonial Profit from Force Cultivation: Priangan System of Forced Cultivation in Java 1720-1870), Jakarta: Obor, 2014. p.341.123 Ibid. It was roughly calculated that the Dutch obtained 500 million gulden as the result of the Cultivation System


promotion. Another objective of the expansion is to establish Dutch claims throughout the archipelago to prevent interven-tion from other Western powers during the European push for colonial possessions.

As exploitation of the archipelago resources expanded off Java, most of the outer islands gradually came under direct Dutch government control or influence. The Dutch subjugated the Minangkabau of Sumatra in the Padri War (1821–38). The Ban-jarmasin War (1859–1863) in southeast Kalimantan resulted in the defeat of the Sultan. An 1849 intervention brought northern Bali under Dutch control. Later, the island of Lombok came under Dutch control in 1894, and Batak resistance in northern Suma-tra was quashed in 1895. The most prolonged military expedition was the Aceh War in which a Dutch invasion in 1873 was met with indigenous guerrilla resistance and ended with an Acehnese surrender in 1912.

Then, a major shift took place. Towards the end of the nine-teenth century, the Dutch government allocated more budget for the industrialization of the colony while decreasing the spending of the military. Military leaders and Dutch politicians developed a narrative that they had a moral duty to free the natives from indigenous feudalistic rulers who were oppressive, backward, or did not understand international law.

The Attitude Change of the Dutch toward the Chinese

During the post Diponegoro war era, at least the government introduced three new factors into the life of people in Java, pri-marily the Chinese. First, a resolution by the governor general


in 1835 (Staatsblad 1835 no.37) demanded people to live in a separate area. The governor required that people “notify the lo-cal authorities when there is some tendency foreign Asians in Java such as Malays, Buginese, and Chinese to assimilate with the native population. The government considers such tendencies inappropriate and has decided on the contrary to implement the old custom of forcing such foreigners to live in specific quarters or neighborhood under a chief of their own nationalities….”124 Thus, the Chinese had to live within the designated areas – or ghetto (nowadays called Pecinan). They had to have residence permit and exit-entry pass. This law was made to prevent Chinese get connected with the natives. The reason behind such measure toward the Chinese was the Dutch’s discomfort to realize the domination of the wealthy Chinese in the economic life of Java. It is the result of a fact that since the beginning of the 19th century until the second half of that century, the power of the Chinese increased in various economic factors such as land ownership, gambling management, money lending, tax collection, crop col-lection, supplying goods from big merchant to the retailers, and vice versa.

As the consequence, the Dutch also enforced the law to the effect to those Chinese who had adopted Islam, spoke Malay or Javanese and lived like the natives. They were also forced to live in the Chinese town area. They might have to suffer much re-jection from other Chinese for they had undergone assimilation process to the local culture and abandoned Chinese belief system or some of their original culture. However, narrative about such possibility does not exist.

124 M.R. Fernando and David Bulbeck, ibid, p. 12


The Dutch strengthen such segregation significantly when in 1854, the government issued a new constitution. There was a segregation between the Europeans and the Natives/Inlanders. In the past, the Dutch government only grouped the inhabitants into two classes: The European and the Heathen, where the Christian natives were considered as belonged to the first group, although in practice the governor general could decide differently at will. In 1854 the Dutch issued a law that distinguished the people into the Europeans and Indigenous, where the Chinese were considered as the indigenous regardless their religion.125

Then, came a second factor that created another shock wave for the Chinese and later for the total population. In 1852 the government started a process of dismantling of the old revenue system. In 1870, it was recorded that 3,574 Chinese were active in tax farming in Java.126 In 1892, their power expanded more. The Chinese in Java possessed 45 percent of lands that were le-gally obtainable, 34 percent of voluntary labor contracted and 18 percent of sugar mills under contract with the government.127

As the consequences, the Chinese lost their social esteem and lucrative income as well. Many their licensed enterprises shut down. As the Chinese could no longer move freely in the rural markets, the impact was also severe for petty traders or hawkers. Their outstanding debts were left uncollected. Products could not be sold. With such process where the Dutch government disman-tled the Chinese commercial system in the 1890s, a total economy

125 M.R. Fernando, ‘Famine in a land of plenty: plight of a rice-growing community in Java, 1883-84’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 41 no. 2 (2010) 291-320: 306-308. 126 Ibid. p.147127 Ibid, p. 150


crisis eventually came to the archipelago.128

The third significant factor that created irrevocable segre-gation taking place when the land ownership law came into be-ing. In general, the government no longer allowed any Chinese to have land ownership. The segregation approach and the land ownership law drove the Chinese to occupy only the roles as the middlemen at various levels in the society or conducting small business in cities.

Looking back, before 1890s, from economic perspective, the wealthy Chinese profited enormous sum of money. As a side effect, their dominance of revenue farms and financial success contributed significantly to the anti-Chinese feeling as heard in the popular narratives that kept on spreading even before the Di-ponegoro war.129 Gradually during the later stage of the Cultiva-tion System, the Dutch strictly limited the Chinese role to busi-ness area. Educational, social, governmental position, or other areas of life were close to them. Later, even living among the natives in villages no longer became an open option for them.

They dealt with such limitation by learning to focus, learn, and develop close-knitted network among themselves or Chi-nese abroad, a fact that made a strong and long-lasting narratives emerged: the Chinese were an exclusive ethnic group. In fact, objectively speaking it was the Dutch who planned, imposed or enforced a system that created exclusivity of the Chinese decents. Yet, no narrative about this fact is ever heard.

It was also the Dutch who created narratives that were full

128 Alexander Claver, Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants in Java, Colonial Relationships in Trade and Finance, 1800-1942, Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2014, p.175129 Kwee Hukian, The Political Economy of Java’s Northeast Coast, c, 1740-1800. Elite Synergy, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2006


of stereotypes about the Chinese or the natives. Such narratives were false. Historically, before the Dutch entered the archipe-lago, the Chinese in mainland China or the sojourners did not show any exclusive trait. For example, in Northern China, from the old time until today, the Chinese mingled with people of mixed blood. Intermarriages between Chinese and other ethnic groups took place. Thus, the Northern Chinese consisted of the descendant of the Pakistani, Iraqi, Iranian, and the Han Chinese or others. When the Chinese Muslims came to the archipelago, they also intermarried with the locals. Therefore, the soldiers of Kubilai Khan who decided to stay in Java during the 11th century after their defeat quickly assimilated themselves to the native society. Similar things happened in the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaya, or Thailand. Thus, in general being exclusive and being Chinese was not related.

Why did those factors come out? One of the causes be-hind the introduction of those three factors was a shift of world view among Dutch leaders in the Netherlands. In 1848, a liberal clergyman Dutch Reformed Church pastor, Baron van Hoevell, demanded the ruler to give freedom of press, education, middle school and a representative of Dutch East Indies in Netherlands. He was one of the leaders who after championing such a cause, later returned to Europe. In the Netherlands, he supported the Political Ethics movement, a movement to uplift the standard of living of the natives in the colony. In this movement, some of the Dutch later created narratives that pointed out that the Chinese served as the cause of the suffering of the natives. As the result, as early as in 1850s Chinese commercial activities was consi-dered conspicuous and endangering the welfare of the indigenous


population.130 The power of such subjective narratives that gave birth to an idealistic political approach might have been related to religious stance or spirituality of some Dutch Protestants.

In the colony, with the formidable buying power, the Dutch government also suffered paranoia toward any party that could criticize them or wished to change the profitable system. In 1854, the Dutch government made a law to regulate the areas where Zending or Mission Board can work. Each Mission Agency could only work in one region. The Catholic mission lost much due to this regulation. Why did this rule emerge? The government viewed that if a region was penetrated by the Mission Work, at the same time, the region became stable and peaceful, but on the other hand, the missionaries could launch various protests and bring up many human right issues to the society.

Later, in 1856, the Dutch also made a law regarding media: The Governor-general has complete authority over censorship. Eduard Douwes Dekker was dismissed from his government post in West Java after accusing local Regent of corruption. (Later, under the pen name “Multatuli”, he wrote the novel Max Havelaar, exposing conditions in colonial Java to readers in the Netherlands)

At the end 19th century, the financial deficits grew again as the Dutch were too active in wagging war everywhere. The number of the Dutch living in the archipelago continued growing. People could sense the increasing spread and adoption of the culture of the Dutch in all region.

130 L. Vitalis, Over de pachten in het algemeen, de onzedelijkheid van sommige, en de verdrukking waaran de overmatige misbruiken van andere de Javaanesche beveling blootstellen, Tijdscrift voor Netherlandsch Indie, 13, pp. 365-386. Quoten in Claver, opcit.


The Patience of the Indigenous native

The 19th century brought a series of deep level or substantial changes. The first half of the 19th century was the era where the Dutch systematically tried to penetrate the lives of several kingdoms in the interior of Java. Whatever happened, the simple folks became more impoverished.

The natives could withstand stoically such changes only until a certain level. They watched with concerns that their traditional culture was gradually tainted and eroded by Western customs that even some of their own aristocratic leaders adopted. Then, they realized that they were being oppressed and their freedom was eliminated. However, when famine and further disaster took place, still they did not rebel or resort to violence although gradually they came closer to boiling point of their anger.

In the early 1880s, two concurrent famines took place in Banten residency and in the region of Indramayu (Cirebon residency). Both had a direct cause: the deadly epidemics among livestock that spread over West-Java during those years. There were several parallels between these famines and that in Sema-rang. It was preceded by severe epidemics among both cattle and people. As the result, the population suffered much. In Banten, malaria took ten percents of the population, while cattle diseases reduced the livestock in the residency. Consequently, many fields remained unplanted.

West Indramayu population also had to deal with cattle dis-ease and crop failures in the early 1880s. Part of Indramayu had been leased by the government to landholders, who forced the po-pulation to produce only rice. Under the lease agreement, the land-lords collected the land rent. They often charged exorbitant rates.


The region was poor, with the population farming at subsistence level, unable to save meaningful capital from year to year. Then the same epidemic that killed livestock in Banten also affected West-Indramayu. The government further increased the suffering of the local population by mass killing buffalos to prevent the epidemic from spreading. For the people, those animals were the sources of milk and meat. Combined with high tax burdens and falling in-come, this greatly impoverished the residents of Indramayu.131

Retracing back the history of the nineteenth century, clearly that the changes of social and economic approach of the Dutch East Indies government, the Batavian Republic, the British and back to the Dutch East Indies governments caused the power of local rulers diminished. In such condition, the common folks suffered more and were impoverished as the aristocratic rulers tried to utilize available sources of fund, which was their own people.

The local rulers and the Dutch colonial government used the Chinese to collect the tax and the wealthy Chinese collaborated for their own financial and social needs. The colonial did not even directly connect to most of the Chinese or the people, but they used the native ruler’s officers.

During that period when there were several unrests, the wealthy Chinese experienced oppression and discrimination from two parties, the Dutch and from the Javanese officers or the rulers. Whatever happening, those wealthy Chinese rarely responded to the problem by using brute force or violence. They relied more on diplomacy, adaptation or submissions. But toward the parties that they perceived as weak, the common folks, they oppressed. They

131 See AEG Sander Tetteroo, Famine in the Netherland Indies, c1900-1904, unpublished master thesis, Leiden, Netherlands: Leiden University, 2014 p. 31. https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/24908,


were traumatized by the unpredictable tragedy, but they also created trauma in other people’s lives, especially the native simple folks.

Although felt being severely manipulated, the simple folks did not create narratives to point out their feudal rulers as the source of oppression, but the Chinese and the Dutch were the culprits. Yet, they narrated the Dutch and the local ruler’s officials who worked also for the Dutch as parties that gave military pro-tection and thus gave stability while the rulers assured cultural continuation. In comparison, they developed narratives that, the Chinese took much and even more, but never gave back substan-tially to the local people. In fact the wealthy and greedy Chinese kept on adding the suffering of the common folks.

Weber’s concept might shed light to the hostility toward the Chinese in the 19th century. Borrowing from Weber’s frame-work to analyze the social class in that era, apparently the Dutch ruled over Java in that century by indirect power over the tradi-tional patrimonial native rulers and their prebendary officials. In such traditional society, the top of power was in the hand of one patrimonial ruler. He could rule over a wide territory by having prebendary officials. The term “prebend” came from Roman Catholic milieu where prebend was a stipend paid from endow-ment held by Cathedral. The officials were not part of the aristo-cratic extended family. Their jurisdiction was thoroughly defined by the rulers. They existed as they received financial support from the ruler and they also showed allegiance by obeying them. The prebendary officials were not the local feudal lords who held feudal rights. Among many differences, the prebendary officials did not hold property under their own names. In that traditional economic, political, or social system, the people belonged to the patrimonial ruler and the prebendary officials who worked


as the extension of his power. Thus, when dissatisfaction of the general population was ready to burst, their traditional mind-set prevented them to go against their ruler and his officials, or toward the Dutch who had power over both the ruler and his officials as well. That left only the Chinese to receive the wrath of the suffering people. Interestingly with inaccurate narratives, the hostility that was brewing up did not distinguish the Chinese simple folks with the wealthy ones.

Another way to interpret that hostility is by relating it with the success of the Dutch. The success of the Dutch as a colo-nial power lies in their specific mindset. The Dutch came with a mindset of intercontinental seafarers. Their mindset geared them toward occupying many lands and the natives by using mili-tary power. They had a competitive, expansive, and aggressive mentality. They were also quick learners. As they realized that they had limited human resources, they used the Chinese as their middlemen. Thus, their outward-looking mindset helped them to explore, to take risk, to capitalize opportunity, and to use military power without hesitation.132

The Chinese wealthy groups did not seriously reject the opportunity to work as the middlemen because for centuries they had developed an inter-insular trader mindset. This mindset drove them to be pragmatic in identifying material gain or financial opportunity in any circumstance and to avoid financial lost caused by being engaged to conflict or war. It does not mean that the Chinese did not have any courage to stand up and raise arm. They simply calculated carefully and weighted the available choices of response toward any challenge. Thus, resort to brute force was chosen only when other courses of option no longer available.

132 Outward looking mentality is a term borrowed from professor ToruYano.


The victims of the collaboration between the wealthy Chinese traders and the Colonial power was the native, mainly the peasants. The simple folks could withstand prolonged unfair treatment and various pressure to them due to two factors. First, they saw them-selves as the servants of the ruler. Second, they withheld their peas-antry or agricultural mindset. Such mindset guided them to observe life cycle, to harmonize themselves to natural or social changes, and to endure hardship of the material world stoically. Such inward-looking mindset also helped them to cope with poverty and distress by finding solution in spiritual realm. This inward-looking mental-ity had been there for ages, rooted in Indic dualistic view of nature: inner and outer life, soul and physical, or Atman (The Great pri-mary spirit) and Brahman (human spirit as the extension of Atman).

Yet, later when the pressure was inhuman and overwhelm-ing, few messianic-end time movements emerged as the reaction toward the suffering. Various rebellions occurred. Most of them related to Islamic faith, a post-traditional world view that did not merely accept fate of life without any effort to change it.

The above analysis has its foundation in the writing of Douwes Dekker. In 1860 Douwes Dekker published the novel Max Havelaar that exposed the corruption and oppression of Dutch colonial rule in Java. The autobiographical novel satirizes the greed of the Dutch bourgeoisie, who paid the Javanese just enough to keep them from starving. They were busy to maximize their profits while ignoring the corruption of their feudal aristo-crat. He compared his book to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and concluded by saying that the Dutch were mistreating thirty million Javanese. Dekker showed that the government at that time ruled over the archipelago through local feudalistic lords. Both reaped profits through such cooperation at the cost of the common people’s life


quality. They impoverished and oppressed the common people. Not many large-scale rebellions took place in that decade because besides being unable to face the more technologically advanced Dutch and to deal with the cunning and wealthy Chinese, their feudalistic mindset created self-censorship to rise against their traditional rulers whom they perceived have so much mythical power. Thus, in fact the combination power of the Dutch, the Chinese, and the feudalistic aristocrats or the natives who were in government positions controlled the population with each worked for their own economic and social interests.

There was also another group that repeatedly became vic-tims as the result of the social and political system at that time. They were the petty Chinese peddlers who made living by sell-ing products to villages. In a way, they helped the population by making the daily household needs available in the countryside. Yet, often they also offered credits that included high interest in it. The gullible peasants became the victims of such practices and often saw the Chinese as leeches in their lives. Thus, when there was eruption of violence, the petty peddlers who also became money lenders would become the targets of the hostility. They were around, they were noticeable. The ordinary petty peddlers also took the beating as the local did not distinguish one kind of Chinese from others in their narratives.

Summary

The hostility from the common folks emerged as the natives could no longer stand watching special privileges and buying power that the rich Chinese received from the Dutch, their determination to


reap as much profit in their work, and their absence of giving back to the nation after they had taken so much.

As later the Dutch forced the Chinese to live in Pecinan (Chinatown) separated them from the rest of the population, the impact was the Chinese became more isolated from the rest of the society and had to live by the stigma or narratives that they were a wealthy, materialistic, and exclusive ethnic group.

Such approach of the Dutch government caused more mis-understanding, prejudice, and hostility between the Chinese and the natives. Especially the result of such segregation strength-ened the legacy of Diponegoro in the mindset of the natives and no opportunity appears to correct it. Trauma of war and violence could easily grow in such segregating social context added with prejudice that was uncontested.

Yet, a question has arisen. Why did the Chinese narrate the Dutch who had been treating them at will and inconsistently in a positive way? Why did they not create narratives that the Dutch was their primary source of suffering and trauma? The answer perhaps lies in the fact that for good or bad, the wealthy Chinese viewed the Dutch as their source of opportunity and partner to gain material and financial success. For the simple Chinese folks, the Dutch with their system also gave them opportunity to make living,

Gradually, some of the Dutch leaders who had a con-science and deeper Christian values managed to ask the people in the Netherlands to evaluate the system. In 1870, the system was abandoned, yet the Forced Planting for coffee in West Java continued until 1915. From one decade to another, the mutual negative narratives laced with prejudice from the Chinese toward the natives and vice versa continued, even became more toxic and carried over to the next century.

CHAPTER 6

DISCUSSION OF THE FINDING

Narratives are powerful to help people maintaining coherency in their mind as they deal with complex reality. Their power in determining human cognition, emotional, and behavioral responses is very strong. Thus, they could define how people relate each other. Spirituality is supposed to function similarly, but it has a deeper and richer founda-tion as it touches deeper within the realm of human existence.

From the exploration on the residue of trauma expressed in the narratives about the Chinese Indonesians -both the narratives that others developed about them as well as their own self-narra-tives, several findings are found.

Concerning the narratives and their historical accuracy

1. During the arrival of the early Chinese in Indonesia, no nega-tive narratives or recall of trauma experience exists about that era. In fact, the existing narrative depicts the Chinese and the Muslim locals lived harmoniously. However, no spirituality is identified as the main factor that contribute to such harmony


2. After that era until the arrival of the Colonial Europeans, no major conflict between the local rulers and the Chinese exists. It is evident that some Chinese Muslims lived in Palembang who later inspired many inhabitants of the area to adopt Islam. During the era of Airlangga, some experts stated that the roles of the Chinese Muslims as leaders in the state are evident. No negative narrative has been found. Historical records show that the Hindu-Buddhist society before the Islamic arrival was decaying. They lost their dynamics. Therefore, no resistance toward the spread of Islamic power.

3. Later, concerning the 16th century, narratives from professor Slamet Mulyana, Qurtuby, and in some of the Nahdlatul Ulama communities pointed out to the emergence of the blend of the Chinese culture with the Javanese culture and Islam. Mean-while, Hindu-Buddhist spirituality with all kinds of its variety still influenced people’s mindset. In such spirituality, life is di-vided into two realms: the external or materialistic one which basically is considered “unreal” and the internal realm which is the true reality. Such dualism gives people unusual stoic and distancing attitude toward reality.

4. During the early life of the VOC, it is also not proven that the Chinese mainly playing the role as the middle party in all aspects of economic life. In contrary, evidence shows that they primarily served as the builders of Batavia canals and small entrepreneurs outside the city of Batavia. Thus, the narratives about that mid-dle-man role are inaccurate. The spirituality of the Dutch does not show any specific influence in relationship to the indigenous or the Chinese, either because the limited number of the Dutch population or their spirituality did not serve as the driving force compared to the economic motive in their endeavor.

197Discussion Of The Finding

5. The massacre of the Chinese immigrants as the first incident that was supposed to cause trauma and the negative narrative for them took place only in the early 18th century. It was called the Angke Massacre. However, no negative narrative about the Dutch from the modern Chinese Indonesian is found during the exploration. The Angke Massacre was known as popular narrative, but no emotional undertone exists in the response of the current listeners of it. There is no evidence to point out the influence of any kind of spirituality during that era. As an educated guest, the Dutch at that time had their religion, but no powerful spirituality existed to influence their self-image, view toward others, and the meaning of life

6. During the era when the Dutch colonial power developed more, two incidents which give birth to negative or dark narratives about the Chinese are the Diponegoro War and the Forced Cultivation era. Since then, the Chinese were narrated as greedy, inconsiderate, materialistic, oppressive, and uncivi-lized pagans. Meanwhile the Chinese developed a self-narrative that they are responsible persons, hardworking, cautious, agile, smart, and always become victims when the new government adopts new policy. The Diponegoro War which many Chinese Muslims had been supporting caused the significant trauma for the Chinese. Regardless their effort to integrate themselves to the local life, they were still labelled as “pagans.” The Javanese Muslims adopted Diponegoro’s narrative that the Chinese had a stronger force” and gentiles to be succumbed into Islam or annihilated. The narratives became toxic as it continued into the era of Forced Cultivation system.

7. During the transition from the end of 19th century to the early 20th century, the Dutch proclaimed the Ethical Policy.


Compared to the old narratives in which they saw themselves mainly as the chosen people, in the new narratives they saw themselves as the agent of transformation for the society or the world. In such narratives, they felt obligated to take side with the poor indigenous and set limit for the Chinese as the group that impoverished the natives. The narratives were somewhat related to development of Calvinistic or Reformed spirituality. Thus, many concessions originally given to the Chinese were cancelled. Yet, evidently, no negative narrative about the Dutch from the Chinese emerged.

Concerning Spirituality and the Narratives

The main issue is whether there was a Chinese community whose spirituality was able to influence their narratives. Modern studies especially in psychology or counseling state such influence is possible. Several studies about group narratives and traumas also indicate such relationship. However, the findings of those stu-dies have not been applied in Indonesian context, especially in relation to the Chinese sojourners. Therefore, even the findings listed in the chapter five consist of many assumptions without extensive historical documentaries or records as their scientific support.

Assuming there is relationship between spirituality or beliefs with the narratives created by a social group, several discussions can follow.

Before and after the eras of Diponegoro and The Force Cultivation System, there were three kinds of spirituality to be analysed deeply in their relations with the popular narratives


described above. They were the Chinese, the Javanese, and the Dutch Christian spirituality as shown in the schematic below.

Spirituality and Narratives Matrix

The ChineseThe Javanese

or localsThe Dutch Christian

The Chinese 1 2 3

The Javanese or other tribes

4 5 6

The Dutch Christians

7 8 9

1. The Chinese Spirituality and their self-narratives

How the spirituality impacts the Chinese self-narratives? As has been described several times, the Chinese were so syncretistic in their spirituality when they combined various spiritualities. With such syncretism they ended up having complicated teach-ings that most simple folk were not able to comprehend both the dimensions of their faith, as well as to integrate it with their daily life. Therefore, they mainly focus their energy only on maintaining and obeying the religious rituals to pass through their lives.

Somehow, with such syncretistic and pragmatic spiritual-ity, the Chinese managed to develop civilization with admirably


sophisticated innovation either in technology (gunpowder, tea, silk, etc) or socio-cultural life (order, work ethics, family rela-tionship, historical record, and arts). They also created various rituals that are exquisites. It is undeniable that inwardly the Chinese in mainland felt superior as they managed to maintain their identity through history. Thus, they even called themselves as the inhabitants of the center of the world (Zhung Guo).

In such spirituality, when order was ruined or shaken and they suffered, they viewed themselves as the victims who had to endure the injustice and survive in order to become better persons in the world. They also narrated themselves as belonged to a superior race who understood the way of the cosmos.

However, in the 17th until 19th century Indonesia, their self-narratives as immigrants in the archipelago were evidently inseparable with a strong insecurity feeling after they repeat-edly experienced traumatic tragedies. The residue of traumas which later becomes the main characteristic of this group was preserved across generations even until the 21st century in forms of self-narratives.

While such characteristic drives them to be ever-vigilant, always learning, adapting, goal-oriented, and taking the oppor-tunity, their pragmatic and syncretistic spirituality evidently could not influence or modify such insecurity as their inherited trait as they kept the self-narratives. At the same time, together with the Dutch political approach, they became exclusive group. When sufferings and pains kept on repeating in their lives, they might find solace only in their identity and exclusivity. Thus, the Chinese seemed to use two modes of response to reality. When things were good, they tried to comply to their moral and cosmic obligation that is by working hard and


become exemplary in whatever they did. When things were uncertain, they tried to use the same principles, but they might bend some principles for the sake of survival. For them, that was choice of a lesser in two evils. Such action was narrated as human normal shortcoming in life that they and other also had.

2. The Chinese spirituality and their narratives about the Javanese or other tribes

Before the Diponegoro and Cultivation eras, the Chinese already developed negative narratives about the Javanese and visa-versa. The narratives might have some relations with their syncretistic spirituality that has been described above, but there is no historical study done on such subjects. It means, the Chi-nese believed that humans had to live in accordance to the way of Heaven. People had to do their moral and cosmic obligation by merging the transcendence and the immanent spirituality through rituals and work ethics.

Therefore, there is a big possibility the Chinese viewed the locals, mainly the Javanese as people who did not care to do their part in relation to such moral and cosmic obligation. The Chinese narrated the Javanese and other locals as lazy people who live with a passive or resigning attitude toward life—a popular narrative that lives until the 20th century. It is an edu-cated guess that for the Chinese, such tendency of the locals would be narrated as lack of responsibility.

3. The Chinese spirituality and their narratives about the Dutch For the Chinese, the Dutch had system and weapon superi-

ority. The survival needs and sojourners mentality made the Chinese adaptive to the Dutch military and economic power.


The Chinese also noticed that the Dutch were so much different in their approach in social, political, economic, and religious life compared to the Chinese.

But, how did the Chinese beliefs influence their narrative about the Dutch? Thus far, this study has not found any dis-cussion or description to answer the question. However, if the syncretistic, pragmatic, and ritualistic were the main feature of their spirituality, it is possible that the spirituality as such did not much express their view of others who were superior in their narration.

There is no record about the Chinese’s narration about the Dutch beginning from the 17th century until the 19th century. Thus, for the Chinese, the Dutch were their competitors but later, when the Chinese adopted the intermediary roles, the Dutch was narrated as useful allies. If the narratives from many writers from the West about the Chinese were correct, the Chinese might view the Dutch as tolerable and useful party to bring economic and political environment that was profitable for them.

4. Javanese spirituality and their narratives about the Chinese The Javanese created narratives that, the Chinese as overly worldly,

materialistic, disruptive to the harmony, and lack of reference to the essence of life, or old Javanese culture. They also narrat-ed the Chinese as oppressors after the Chinese became the tax collectors and tollgate keepers. However, their dualistic spiri-tuality prevented them to take decisive and aggressive action as a response to the suffering caused by the Chinese.

Thus, during the Diponegoro War, the negative narratives from Javanese toward the Chinese and vice versa had historical basis. Diponegoro left a legacy that influences the mind of the


Indonesians until today in relation with the Chinese, even the Chinese Muslim. Last but not the least, the era of Cultivation system that followed the Diponegoro war even strengthened the inherited narratives around the Chinese. The narratives became potentially the driver for violence and disruption of harmony as it was toxic and full of anger.

Later response in Javanese narratives about the Chinese was significantly differed. Islamic faith at that era combined with mysticism of Javanese local spirituality built a new narra-tive.The shift happened as the limit of suffering of the Javanese had been crossed over. The Chinese were no longer viewed as tolerable foreigners, but pagans.

In short, in the era of Diponegoro, a more expressive and aggressive spirituality started to play a significant role in the Javanese culture. The yearning to reestablish the convention-al Javanese culture and old cosmic harmony added with the inherited conflict between Islam and the West defined the narratives—the first negative one—about the Chinese.

5. The Javanese (and other tribes) spirituality and their self-narratives

With their dualistic view of life, the Javanese managed to endure suffering and injustice caused by the Chinese or the Europeans stoically while waiting for the wheel of life turning by itself. In short, there was really a passive attitude toward life and willingness to flow to the river of life.

In the narratives they created, they saw themselves both as the enduring travelers in life as well as the victims in this temporary existence who need to find deeper inner wisdom in dealing with suffering. They also narrated their own suffering


as an entry point to find deeper wisdom and voice of the Supreme Being. In short, this view of life easily brings them to mysticism.

6. The Javanese spirituality and their narratives about the Dutch

Before the era of Diponegoro, the Javanese also developed narratives about the Dutch with spiritual tones. The narratives depicted the Dutch as materialistic, powerful, and uncontested, yet they created stability. In the narratives, the Dutch and the local aristocrats were lumped together in the same category. It could be coherent for them as their feudalistic mind-set put together those who were in power above them, the kings with their inherited legacy and the Dutch with their superior military power. Their superior presence was needed to maintain balance in the cosmic harmony.

7. The Dutch spirituality and their narratives about the Chinese

The Dutch at the end of the 19th century used spirituality to modify their past narratives about their own roles and then, the Chinese. The spirituality of the Dutch was evidently exclusive and not universalist. They echoed the Jews’ view of chosen nation with different term that is, the chosen people, perhaps based on Calvinistic predestination concept. Therefore, they narrated unsaved ones were the unfortunate ones.

In the new narratives begun by some Christian leaders in the Netherlands it was depicted that the Chinese had been playing the roles as oppressors who had been bringing poverty to the indigenous. The Dutch had their own self-narrative that


they are the actors who had the moral duty to remedy the suffering of the indigenous. They believed in the cultural man-date of transformation.

8. The Dutch spirituality and their narratives about the Javanese

As has been written the Dutch’s spirituality might not play a prominent role in influencing their narratives, it is possible that the narratives were affected more by the cross-cultural differ-ence. As the Dutch had an aggressive and expressive culture, they looked down at the Javanese whose culture is more unag-gressive and inexpressive.

Similar with the Chinese, the Dutch narrated the Javanese as unproductive, lazy, untrustworthy, introvert, and slow. They failed to recognize the inner strength and resilience of the Java-nese culture. They did not realize the capability of the Javanese to adjust to suffering as a sign of local wisdom.

9. The Dutch Christian Spirituality and their self-narratives Until the 18th century, the expansion of the VOC, the Dutch East

Indies Trading Company was noticeable, thus, it is a logical guess that for their leaders, the function of Christian spirituality represented by the church was only as an agent of the Dutch state to cast off the leftover of Catholic influences in the eastern parts of the archipelago and maintain stability afterward.

There is no record to show that the Dutch seriously inte-grated their commercial goals with their spirituality. In short, as the Dutch cared more for the spices and power to assure their access to the sources of such wealth, they paid limited attention to faith or spirituality.


However, the relationship between the church and the VOC stayed amiable as the operatives of the VOC supported many church activities. Such evidence is related to the fact the Dutch Reformed Church leadership and the VOC leaders were overlapped. Then, it makes sense that the church might have done self-censorship to prevent their activities to harm the Dutch commercial and political objectives.

Whatever their self-narratives or narratives about others, the spirituality of the Dutch at that time could not evaluate or modify. Instead, it strengthened the popular narratives.There is no indication that they have developed an in-depth theological study or spiritual reflection with holistic framework to learn or make meanings of the other religions or beliefs of the natives as their task. Neither there is any record to indicate that their intention was to evangelize the natives.

In short, at that time the Dutch church simply worked as a religious institution to maintain morality, stability, and a certain level of ethical behaviours of the town inhabitants where they were located. By becoming ethical according to their version at that time, they felt their task as church had been accomplished. Becoming ethical might also means they had been engaged mainly in preserving the European culture in the towns within their reach. Their narratives toward the natives or the Chinese stayed as the voice of their people.

Summary

Thus far, all spirituality whether, the spirituality of the Dutch, the Javanese, and the Chinese might have created negative narratives


of others, however there is no record found as the basis of the summary. Scientifically, only the Javanese spirituality was poten-tially more open to universalism in which others were viewed as equal travelers in their own chosen path on the cosmic wheel. However, spirituality placed them in suffering spots all the time, until Diponegoro brought Islamic spirituality and Javanese mysticism together, then created an aggressive narrative.

In the eras the follow, especially in the end of 19th century, the Chinese spirituality seemed to be unable to influence or modify their own self-narrative, especially the way they view themselves as traumatized victims, and people who do their moral or cosmic obligation, while others as the perpetrators.

In their complicated, syncretistic, and pragmatic spirituality, the meaning of life which might help most Chinese immigrants to evaluate their existing narratives seems have not been uncovered. Borrowing from the concept Paul Ricoeur, they manage to live in the stream of time but have not developed their subjective time in forms of holistic and meaningful narratives like the Javanese.

In the late 19th century, such absence of a deeper meaning might begin being fulfilled by a group of unique Chinese in Indramayu who embraced Christian faith with Pietism flavor. The combination of the Chinese folk beliefs, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism met the Pietism of the Protestant faith that later created a new narrative. Another exploration to study how the Christian Chi-nese Indonesian dealt with challenges in the next century either by developing a unique Christian spirituality or a new syncretistic faith will follow as the sequel of this writing.

Thus, the residue of the trauma of the Chinese was due to the self-narrative in which they saw them playing the role of the main victimized actors. They saw themselves as the group who


had made choices based on moral and cosmic obligation, yet the natives and the Dutch did not value them. The narratives are far from accuracy as they do not describe the other actors, the Java-nese or other tribes who historically became the real victims of the Chinese actions especially in economic life.

Meanwhile, the Javanese and other tribes might have devel-oped a capability to modify their inherited narratives. No study has been done to explore its development yet. As the Dutch spiri-tuality, evidently, various efforts have been done to modify their narrative of others and significant success. Either the Christian spirituality plays a significant role in such activities or others re-mains an issue to be analyzed in the future.

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