Few days ago I bought book titled “The Social World of Batavia” by Jean Gelman Taylor.
This book is rarity among history-related books in the market. This is a very good book for these who are interested to see the social life in Dutch east indie which was centralized in Batavia, which was once called “the Queen of South East Asia”.
The price is Rp. 90,000 (around $10). It’s bit expensive for translated books (because most books here priced around Rp. 30.000-65.000) but I think the content worth the price.
This book explains many missing points from our history books, it fills the void from dutch perspective what topics that I believe, wont be covered in children’s history books.
I havent’ finished reading it since it’s pretty lenghty (300 pages and more) but I have gotten considerable interesting informations about social life in Batavia.
The first dutch people who came to Batavia were actually consisted of low-educated soldiers which made of different ethnicity. Many didn’t speak dutch fluently and took local women as their wife(s). As J. P. Coen assigned as Batavia’s governor general, he visioned that Batavia should be made a liveable, comfortable place so that its citizen wouldn’t need to return to Netherlands.
Citizens were divided according to their ethnicity: Dutch/European, Creole (Dutch/European born in Batavia), Asians (oriental people), and Eurasian.
The most interesting note was the culture adopted by people in Batavia. The dutch government had many times voiced their concern over the Creoles and Dutch people in Batavia being too asian. Dutch language must compete with malay and portugese, and it was not easy to replace them with dutch. The interaction between the diverse ethnicity in Batavia resulting unique indsiche culture. It was also partially result of intense interaction between dutch woman and their asian slaves.
The dutch creoles and eurasians were commonly uneducated, thus making their asian slaves as the source of moral ethic and behaviour. This resulting the dutch society in batavia adopting the local culture, and probably know local mores better than their european counterpart. The pure euopean have issued various laws concerning this, such as discouraging the usage of malay and portugese in hope to spread dutch language, or encouraging the creoles to adapt european culture and fashion instead the “impure” ones.
It’s also possible that the local natives actually have dutch blood too, because the interracial marriage was high. Dutch expats, soldiers often took local asian slaves as their wifes, making their children effectively eurasian. Due to constant exposure of eurasian toward local culture, they have higher possibility being more comfortable among asians and marry with asians instead dutch/creoles/eurasians. Even among eurasians/indo, many of them couldn’t speak dutch and more fluent to Malay and portuguese.
Have you been wondering why dutch was not lingua franca in the Dutch East Indie? Compared to English and French, the distribution of dutch language is small, but even during colonial time, dutch was not lingua franca on its colonies. There were only fewer people who spoke dutch compared to malay, and that’s rarely subject of discussion in Indonesian history books. This was the result of failure of dutch government to replace malay and portuguese, because the presence of abundant speakers which might cause administration became more complicated than already it was.
Know Your History, Indische
Pure Dutch never thought eurasian/indo people as “dutch”, but rather, second class citizen with asian blood which they thought deragotary. But natives, and Indonesians commonly always think Indo people as dutch, which is not entirely true. At least, history has shown that indo was ridiculed by dutch, while local natives always think them as dutch. And the irony still happens, I often asked my friends about whaty they thought about indo people, and they will usually answer Indo are bunch exotic mixed people who born with destiny to be celebrity and fabulously famous person, and they always consider indo as “bule”.
I don’t blame them for this rather twisted definition, because it is the myth constructed by media and Indo people never knew their history either because constant discriminations by government and natives. People these days only know indo people from local celebrities (which 50% consists of mixed heritage) which is not true representative of “Indo”. Sure, there were highly-educated Indo during colonial period but the number was very small, many indo people were uneducated and their “not-so-european” behaviour made them target for ridicule among dutch.
In my opinion, it’s time to deconstruct this myth. Time to stop to percept indo people as gonna-be-celebrity lucky people.
Even among third generations of indische here, they are afraid to accept and confirm their identity because they don’t look “bule” or “mixed”. Heritage and culture is something beyond appearances, and it’s time for indische to learn their own history. Appearances doesn’t matter at all, there were lot of indo/eurasians which consists only 1-25% but still considered eurasians during the colonial period. The third generations of Indische in netherlands found this culture worth preserving, and it’s up to us, the third generations of indische to follow this step or let our heritage gone as we passed away and leaving our descendants alienated to their predecessors’s history.
There are more to tell. If you enjoy reading Indonesia’s colonial history, I really recommend you to read this book. Indonesians rarely read history from dutch perspective. Indo people and the third generations should definitely read this book, because it will explain a lot of our ancestors, how they first arrived at Dutch East Indie and how possibly our ancestors lived in Batavia.
Memang vin org Indonesia kykny jg ga pny byk sumber ttg sejarah dr perspektif Blanda. Mungkin aku blg itu krn ingin dibentuk suatu image bahwa blanda identik dg penjajah yg mnguras slama 31/2 abad.
Jd kupikir itu spt lingkaran setan di mana stlh image itu tbntk scr turun tmurun kmdn org2 Indonesia ga mau brusaha melihat dr sisi yg lain shg ga mau jg tbuka dg perspektif versi blanda yg akhirnya toko buku / penyedia sumber lainnya jg ga ttarik menjual buku2/sumber2 yg bbeda dg versi sejarah nasional krn takut rugi.
pdhl Blanda sbnrny jg byk membri sumbangsih bagi pembangunan bangsa ini ya vin! Sayank skali..
Thanks for sharing. It apparently is a very, very interesting book.
I didn’t know about the book, though I read the first edition was published over 25 years ago. I’m going to buy it ( at least order it) today.
[Reading your post I atb one point have some question marks.
Up to this moment I thought that limited diffusing of the Dutch language has something to do with the policies of the VOC - till the nineteenth century the company wasn't interested in creating a colony, but in trade and commerce only. From a range of forts they have been dealing with the local elite - no need to occupy the ' hinterland' or force a strange language on the people.
But I've to admit that when the VOC disappeared and the the Dutch from 1815 started to change Indonesia into a colony, and even more so after 1900, the spreading of Dutch didn't happen either.]
Btw: over here the price of the pocket edition is slightly over
wow, I never thought it’s an old book, colson, it’s first published here in 30 march 2009.
I would probably post more about this book in future posts, there are random interesting facts about the social life during the british administration and about the indische by the end of 19th century.