shophouses and residences in Batavia, such as here in the Glodok area, fronted on a lane and were aligned along a canal in the back, circa 1890.
The equatorial climate across the archipelago fostered an abundant array of flora, fauna, and marine products that had substantial markets in coastal China. What the Chinese found and preferred was a cornucopia of raw and processed items: aromatic and preservative spices like nutmeg, cloves, and pepper; medicinal herbs and animal parts; agar-agar (a gelatinous substance derived from seaweed); animal and vegetable waxes; avian and marine delicacies such as birds’ nests and sea cucumber (also called trepan and bêche-de-mer); tortoiseshells; rattan; resins; hardwood timber; among other commodities, which were gathered or harvested in the wild. In return, Chinese monsoon traders brought back from China manufactured and processed goods such as fired earthenware, silk thread, cotton textiles, umbrellas, paper, tea, and tobacco. The gathering of natural products involved both local and immigrant labor. Feeder networks using vessels of various types and sizes brought communities of indigenous peoples into an evolving network of globalizing trade that involved not only Chinese junks but also Dutch ships.
When Dutch seafaring traders first reached the coast of northern Java in 1596, they found Chinese settlement along the lower courses of many of the streams. Unlike in the Americas where the Dutch encountered and interacted only with aboriginal or native American populations, the Dutch in Asia benefited from the additional presence of mercantile networks already set in place by countless Chinese sojourners and settlers. In the early part of the twentieth century, a French traveler offered this effusive judgment: “What would become of the European and the Dutch Government without the presence of the Chinaman in Java? A hard worker, meditative, mindful of his responsibilities, he is the linch-pin of all great public or private enterprises; to the native the necessary intermediary, the obscure but necessary cog-wheel, the middleman, the go-between, whom the European would not and Javanese could not as yet replace. One finds him everywhere; one needs him everywhere; one must therefore accept him, while limiting as far as possible, the bad effects of his role.” He preceded this with an explanation: “One finds them wherever there is money to be made; and their presence anywhere is enough to denote some known or possible source of gain” (Cabaton, 1911: 158–9).
Some of the oldest Chinese residences in Indonesia are found in the small coastal towns of the north, while nineteenth-and twentieth-century structures are best found in the major cities. Ten of Indonesia’s fine Chinese residences are presented in Part Two. Nine are spread across the island of Java, from Tangerang in the west to Pasuruan in the east: the Oey Djie San plantation home in Tangerang (pages 180–5); the Khouw family manor (pages 172–9), the Tjioe family residence, which is now the St Maria de Fatima Catholic Church (pages 186–7), in Jakarta; the Tan Tjion Ie home in Semarang (pages 188–9); Kwik Djoen Eng’s mansion, now the Institut Roncalli, in Salatiga (pages 198–201); the Siek family home, now the Prasada Mandala Dharma, in Parakan (pages 190–7); the Liem compound in Lasem (pages 202–3); the Han Bwee Kio ancestral hall in Surabaya (pages 204–9); and the Han and Thalib residence in Pasuruan (pages 210–13). The magnificent Tjong A Fie mansion in Medan in northeastern Sumatra is also included (pages 146–55).
Many portions of the wooden framework within the Souw Tian Pie dwelling survive and suggest its past grandeur.
The residence of Souw Tian Pie, whose forefathers had migrated from Fujian in 1696, was built in Batavia in the early nineteenth century. Originally it was composed of three parallel buildings and a pair of perpendicular side wings, but its overall scale has been diminished over time, first by the destruction of the tall rear building at some time in the past, second by the demolition of a wing unit in the 1980s so that a multistoried block could be built, and third by modernization of the opposite wing.
Batavia/Jakarta
In late 1596, when the Dutch arrived on the northwest coast of Java, they entered the Ciliwung River where they encountered a small village of Chinese peasants who planted rice and vegetables and made arrack, a beverage distilled from fermented sugarcane and rice. This Chinese settlement, about which very little is known, was adjacent to a trading center called in succession Sunda Kelapa and Jayakarta. Portuguese traders had visited as early as 1513 and Arab, Indian, and Chinese traders, who had come even earlier, continued to arrive seasonally. It was not until 1619 that the Dutch destroyed Jayakarta, which had a population of about 10,000, on the west bank. In its place, they created both a fortification on the right bank at the mouth of the river and began to lay out a colonial town surrounded by a wall and moat.
By 1650 the planned settlement of Batavia, with more canals than streets, became a commercial emporium for regional and global trade. Its ordered ground plan was filled in with administrative buildings, offices, churches, residences, bridges, wharfs, and godowns, collectively a cosmopolitan center for a thriving Asian commercial enterprise, with separate quarters for Javanese, Chinese, and others from islands near and far. Chinese traders, shopkeepers, craftsmen, and laborers who dredged the canals and constructed buildings, arrived in increasing numbers in search of opportunity. They had been permitted to live within the walled city, where their shops sold silks, lacquerware, porcelain, tea, and other products from China. Outside the walls, they engaged in market gardening for the residents of the town and built ships. Their numbers varied from year to year. In 1699 the number of Chinese reached 3,679, followed by 2,407 freed slaves called Mardijkers, 1,783 Europeans, 670 mixed race people, and 867 classified as others. Between 1680 and 1740, the population of Chinese doubled in Batavia (Blussé, 1986: 84).
Tensions that arose with the increased numbers of Chinese immigrants led to stringent Dutch regulations to control them and plans to remove them en masse to Ceylon. Following on the heels of an uprising by Chinese, whose passions were fueled by rumors, a senseless massacre of perhaps 5,000 Chinese in 1740, the survivors either fled to other locations in Java or returned to China. The massacre is well documented and memorialized in a visually striking mid-eighteenth century engraving of their residences being burned to the ground. A census after the riot revealed that the total Chinese population had dropped to just 3,431: 1442 traders and merchants, 935 peasant farmers, 728 working in sugar mills and as woodcutters, and 326 as artisans (Lohanda, 1996: 16). Chinese eventually returned to Batavia but settled in an area outside the southern wall known as Glodok, which is today at the heart of Jakarta’s Chinatown. Yet, from early on, the Chinese, many of whom were Peranakan, dominated the commercial life of Batavia, even surpassing other groups in population. Leonard Blussé indeed describes Batavia as a “Chinese colonial town under Dutch rule” (1981: 159ff).
There is little evidence that remains in Jakarta of the presence of Chinese in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Of significance is the grave, the yin zhai or “residence of the dead” in contrast to the yang zhai or “residence of the living,” of Souw Beng Kong, also known as Souw Bwee Kong, the first Kapitan China of Batavia, who was selected by the Dutch to settle disputes, carry out an annual census, collect various taxes, manage benevolent associations such as cemeteries and hospitals, and participate in Dutch civil entities. All the while, he gained wealth and experience as a building contractor, shipbuilder, leaseholder, and proprietor of a gambling house. Appointed in 1619, Souw had previously served as Kapitan of the Chinese community at Bantam, which had been a thriving port on the Sunda Strait to the west of Batavia for the spice trade with Europe
