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ABSTRACT
This study considers Batavia’s first Chinese captain, Souw Beng Kong (1580–1644) as an example of the memory politics of urban Chinese Indonesians in Jakarta. It explores how and why he has been remembered in the contemporary era. While the stereotype of Chinese Indonesians has its roots in the Dutch colonial period, this study takes the Dutch institution of the captain as a framework to examine what is remembered as a way to bind group members together in a shared community of memory. This study argues that remembering Souw represents an implicit but defiant response to a long-standing negative stereotype that the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia are perennially alien outsiders.
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Notes
1. The term ‘Chinese captain’, also spelled Kapitan Cina, Kapiten Cina or Kapitein der Chinezen in Dutch, was a position created by the colonial authorities in the Dutch East Indies and later in the British-controlled Straits Settlements. In a narrow sense, the captain was the headman of an ethnic group, and more broadly a senior member of the colonial officer system of governance.
2. Heryanto, “Ethnic Identities and Erasure.”
3. The members of the Foundation mainly comprise the Jakarta Su (Souw) Clan Association, scholars who care for historical sites, and other enthusiasts.
4. Suryadinata, “Chinese Indonesians in an Era of Globalization.”
5. Chirot and Reid, Essential Outsiders; and Aguilar, “Citizenship, Inheritance, and the Indigenizing,” 517.
6. Suryadinata, Pribumi Indonesians; Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis; Chua, “Defining Indonesian Chineseness”; and Hoon, Chinese Identity in Post-Suharto Indonesia.
7. Kuhn, Chinese among Others, 297–8.
8. Herlijanto, Old Stereotypes, New Convictions.
9. The author is aware that there is a large body of scholarship regarding the historical rise and fall of the Chinese captain. Here, a brief account from the secondary literature is used as a backdrop to show that the purpose of the modern memorialization of Souw is not to delineate a comprehensive history. The purpose of the memory politics exemplified in this instance is to defy the long-standing stereotypes about the Chinese.
10. Blussé, Strange Company, 81.
11. Claver, Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants, 18.
12. Ibid., 83.
13. For a detailed delineation of the relationship between the sahbandar and the captain, see Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, especially chapter 2.
14. Winzeler, “Overseas Chinese Power,” 143; Heidhues, “Dutch Colonial and Indonesian Nationalist Policies,” 252; and Gunn, “East–Southeast Asia in World History.”
15. Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, 47.
16. Ibid., 50.
17. Ibid., 53.
18. Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons.
19. Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, 2.
20. Thung, “Ethnicity, Nation-state and Citizenship,” 151.
21. Heidhues, “Dutch Colonial and Indonesian Nationalist Policies,” 251.
22. Blussé, Strange Company, 74.
23. Heidhues, “Dutch Colonial and Indonesian Nationalist Policies,” 253; and Lohanda, Growing Pains, 15.
24. Heidhues, “Dutch Colonial and Indonesian Nationalist Policies,” 255; and Lohanda, Growing Pains, 32.
25. Lohanda, Growing Pains, 31.
26. Skinner, “Change and Persistence in Chinese Culture Overseas,” 98.
27. Ibid., 56, 66.
28. Blussé, Strange Company, 87.
29. For detailed accounts of the Batavia massacre, see Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, 10–7; Blussé, Strange Company, 88–95; and Claver, Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants, 133. The estimate of the number of people killed is from Blussé.
30. Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, 15.
31. Ibid., 13.
32. Blussé, Strange Company.
33. Lohanda, Growing Pains, 8–9; and Claver, Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants, 14.
34. Lohanda, Growing Pains, 23.
35. Skinner, “Change and Persistence in Chinese Culture Overseas,” 60.
36. Heidhues, “Dutch Colonial and Indonesian Nationalist Policies,” 254; and Lohanda, Growing Pains, 37–8.
37. Suryadinata, “The State and Chinese Minority in Indonesia,” 78; and Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis, 5.
38. Lohanda, Growing Pains, 35; and Claver, Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants, 144.
39. Claver, Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants, 150.
40. Heidhues, “Dutch Colonial and Indonesian Nationalist Policies,” 255.
41. Lohanda, Growing Pains, 35; Heidhues, “Dutch Colonial and Indonesian Nationalist Policies,” 256; and Claver, Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants, 197–8.
42. Heidhues, “Dutch Colonial and Indonesian Nationalist Policies,” 255.
43. Lohanda, Growing Pains, 35.
44. Hsu, “Kai-pa Li-tai Shih-chi,” 25. Translated as “The Historical Records of the Foundation of Batavia through the Ages,” this publication was composed by an anonymous Chinese inhabitant of Batavia in the late 1790s. During the nineteenth century various manuscript versions of the same text circulated among the Batavian Chinese elite before it was published, first in a local journal in the 1920s and then in an annotated Chinese version by Hsu Yunqiao in a 1953 issue of Nan Yang Hsueh Pao南洋學報 (Journal of the South Seas Society).
45. The First Kapitan China of Batavia: Biography of Kapitan China Souw Beng Kong (1580–1644) is written in both modern Chinese and Indonesian, and thus has different page numbering systems for each language. All the page numbers quoted from the Biography are from the Chinese part.
46. Ibid., 62.
47. Ibid., 24–5.
48. Ibid., 45.
49. Ibid., 48, 67.
50. Ibid., 67.
51. As the major, Khouw Kim An held the highest-ranking Chinese position in the Dutch East Indies, with considerable political and judicial power. See also Salmon, “Ancient Chinese Cemeteries of Indonesia,” 2.
52. The First Kapitan China of Batavia, 51.
53. Ibid., 50.
54. Ibid., 48.
55. Ibid., 64, 93.
56. Ibid., 94.
57. Ibid., 56. See also “Desolate Grave of Forgotten Figure Souw Beng Kong, Oldest Tomb in Jakarta,” Jakarta Post, 21 August 2019. https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/08/20/desolate-grave-of-forgotten-figure-souw-beng-kong-oldest-tomb-in-jakarta-.html.
58. The First Kapitan China of Batavia, 64.
59. Some of the leading figures included Hendra Lukita 盧福全, Wastu Pragantha 鍾成康, Aswin Hinanto Tjandra 曾德興, and Eddy Sadeli 李祥勝.
60. The First Kapitan China of Batavia, 24, 30, 33.
61. Ibid., 63.
62. Budiman, “Portrait of the Chinese in Post-Soeharto Indonesia,” 98–101.
63. Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis, 30.
64. Arief, “Rasyid: Anies Mesti Cabut Status Cagar Budaya Makam Souw Beng Kong!”
65. Although the publication of the Biography predates the report, what the Biography emphasizes coincides with the points raised in it. The report touches on the pervasive long-term image of the Chinese, and may be seen to be part of the growth of a new wave of anti-Chinese sentiment most vividly expressed in the hostility of certain Islamist factions toward Ahok (Basuki Tjahaja Purnama), the ethnic Chinese governor of Jakarta from 2014 to 2017.
66. The First Kapitan China of Batavia, 31, 37.
67. Lohanda, The Kapitan Cina of Batavia, 10; and Blussé, Strange Company, 85.
68. Blussé, Strange Company, 84.
69. “Kai pa Li tai Shih chi.”
70. The First Kapitan China of Batavia, 42–3.
71. Reed, “The Colonial Origins of Manila and Batavia,” 556.
72. Ibid., 557. See also Blussé, Strange Company, 77–8.
73. The First Kapitan China of Batavia, 22, 30, 44.
74. Kitamura, “Museum as the Representation of Ethnicity.”
75. Carstens, Histories, Cultures, Identities.
76. Kuhn, Chinese among Others, 308.
77. Mackie, “Tackling ‘the Chinese Problem’”; Chua, “Defining Indonesian Chineseness under the New Order”; and Hoon, Chinese Identity in Post-Suharto Indonesia.
78. Kusno, “Remembering/Forgetting the May Riots”; and Purdey, Anti-Chinese Violence in Indonesia.
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Pi-Chun Chang
Pi-Chun Chang is an Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at National Taiwan Normal University. Her research field covers Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on cultural politics, memory and the human landscape in relation to postcolonial nation-building. Recent publications include: “Rewriting Singapore and Rewriting Chineseness: Lee Guan Kin’s diasporic stance.” Asian Ethnicity (2015); and “Divergent Memories for Malaysian Nation-Building.” In Museums and Communities: Diversity and Dialogue in an Age of Migration (2019).