north became the most influential people in Malacca. By 1523 Gresik's Muslim population totaled more than thirty thousand.
Like Hinduism and Buddhism, Islam also worked its way into the designs and uses of batik. The textile was "encouraged by the Muslim rulers as a major element of social expression in garments and hangings." Not only did Muslim traders expand the batik market but because of the Muslim prohibition against depicting human forms, design motifs also changed. New shapes—flat arabesques and calligraphy—were introduced and became integral in the evolution of batik.
Near Borobudur, the temple complex of Prambanan (also known as Lara Jonggrang) rises majestically. This sacred monument was built in the tenth century to honor the Hindu trinity of Siva, Visnu, and Brahma.
A seventeenth-century Malay and his wife selling their goods in Batavia.
It is difficult to imagine that today's sleepy Strait of Malacca was once the main commercial thorough fare of Southeast Asia.
The Urban Chinese
The influence of the Chinese on Javanese batik was as profound as that of the Muslims, the Buddhists, and the Hindus. Trading such prestigious commodities as silk and porcelain for Java's textiles—not to mention its birds' nests—the Chinese had long been doing business in the area. From the ninth to the twelfth centuries, the princes of Java sent colored cotton cloth as tribute to Chinese leaders; indeed, they even sent silk to China. Now the Chinese brought mythical lions and lyrical flowers to batik designs along with a bright new palette of colors.
The city of Tuban, near the eastern end of Java's north coast, was known to the Chinese as early as the eleventh century, and by the fifteenth century it had become Java's greatest trading center, with many immigrants from southern China:
In this city dwell very many noblemen who do great trade in the buying and selling of silk . . . cotton cloth, and also pieces of cloth which they wear on their bodies, some of which are made there. They have ships that they call junks, which . . . are laden with pepper and taken to Bali, and they exchange it for pieces of simple cotton cloth, for they are made there in quantity, and when they have exchanged their pepper there for that cloth, they carry the same . . . to other surrounding islands . . . and exchange the cloth in turn for mace, nutmeg, and cloves, and being laden . . . they sail home once more.
Whether the king of Tuban, pictured in the sixteenth-century book illustration (opposite), was Chinese we do not know. We do know from the vivid description that there was considerable pomp and ceremony as he sat on an elephant and received his Dutch visitors.
This king, in addition to treating the Dutch men in a humane manner, had his keris presented to Prince Mauritius . . . . The king's dress was a black silk tunic with wide sleeves. The elephant . . . was as high as two men one on top of the other . . . . History says that this king was able to gather several thousand armed men ready for war within 24 hours . . . . After the Dutch men had rendered to him the proper honor . . . [he] showed them his magnificence and majesty.
Nearby Gresik rivaled Tuban, and in the fourteenth century it boasted a Chinese-born ruler. Fair Winds for Escort, a navigation guide, gave instructions for sailing to Lasem, Tuban, Jaratan, Demak, and Banten. Farther west along Java's north coast, Cirebon had been visited by Chinese traders hundreds of years earlier.
Direct trade between China and Java virtually ceased after the beginning of the sixteenth century. The long-reigning Qing Dynasty (1644-1894) in fact forbade Chinese trade and overseas settlement. Yet, by 1700, Java had about ten thousand Chinese residents; within another hundred years there were one hundred thousand Chinese, many of them married to Javanese.
And even in those early times, the people now referred to as "overseas Chinese" exerted an influence beyond their numbers. The Chinese were mostly urban dwellers, settling in such large centers as Batavia (now Jakarta), Semarang, Surabaya, and Cirebon. A seventeenth-century observer wrote: "The Chinese drive here a considerable traffick being more industrious . . . mainly they are in merchandising and are great artists of thriftiness." They became entrepreneurs and middlemen, and their orders were big enough to cause batik making to become something of an industry, with factories spotted along the Java coast.
How the King of Tuban received the Dutch men.
Explorers from the West
Javanese history from about 1400 to 1600 was tumultuous and is still not well understood. By the sixteenth century, power in Europe had shifted from countries with armies to those with navies, and a struggle began among the European nations for control of Asia's riches. Portugal came to dominate a vast trade route, extending from Goa on the west coast of India to Malacca, thence to the Spice Islands, to Macao, and northward to Japan. The critical port of Malacca was in Portuguese hands. As Portuguese traders increasingly pushed the Javanese out of the spice trade, the reaction was predictable: local Javanese rulers bitterly contested the spreading Portuguese power. The ruler of Demak, for example, built up Banten in an effort to create a new trade route through the Sunda Strait to the south of Sumatra. Several coastal cities joined together to launch repeated and massive attacks against the Portuguese, resulting in the exhaustion of the cities' manpower and resources.
And from the kingdom of Mataram in central Java came more bad news for the north coast. With the northern cities already decimated, Mataram's ruler, Sultan Agung, decided that the time was ripe to strike. Japara, Gresik, Cirebon, Tuban, Madura, and Surabaya all fell. The devastation was frightful.
The environs of Surabaya were completely laid waste, so that famine and loss of life forced the city to capitulate. Forty thousand Madurese were carried off prisoner to Java . . . . Countless inhabitants of the coastal centers took refuge on other shores.
The coast of northern Java was never to recover from such wanton destruction.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the Dutch had sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to Java. They proved to be good organizers. Rather than relying on dozens of individual free lances to capture the spice trade, in 1602 the Dutch put together the Dutch East India Trading Company, known by its initials, VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie). The VOC included a military force; more important, it was a monopoly operating in a single large geographic area. The VOC was the foundation of the Dutch commercial empire that was to last for nearly two hundred fifty years.
The VOC established a commercial settlement in Java. The Dutch settlers called it Batavia and built steep-roofed houses and dug canals that reminded them of home. Batavia flourished. Within fifty years it had become a center for trans-shipment of goods from the entire world. Wrote Adam Smith, the laissez-faire economist:
What the Cape of Good Hope is between Europe and every part of the East-Indies, Batavia is between the principal countries in the East-Indies. It lies upon the most frequented road from Hindustan to China and Japan . . . . Batavia is able to surmount the additional disadvantage, of perhaps the most unwholesome climate in the world.
Holland was now firmly established in Asia. Not only was Batavia thriving, the Dutch had also destroyed Banten in western Java, seized Malacca from the Portuguese, and were aggressively expanding their power. In return for Dutch protection, the sultans of the courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta were forced to give the Dutch a strip of land on the north coast. They also granted
