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Leonard Blussé, De Chinezen Moord. De Kolonisatie van Batavia en het Bloedbad van 1740 (The Chinese Massacre. The Colonisation of Batavia and the 1740 Bloodbath), Amsterdam, Balans, 2023, 395 p., 4 Maps, 21 Plates, Index, ISBN 978 94 638 2181 0

Claudine Salmon
p. 179-182
Référence(s) :

Leonard Blussé, De Chinezen Moord. De Kolonisatie van Batavia en het Bloedbad van 1740 (The Chinese Massacre. The Colonisation of Batavia and the 1740 Bloodbath), Amsterdam, Balans, 2023, 395 p., 4 Maps, 21 Plates, Index, ISBN 978 94 638 2181 0

Texte intégral

  • 1 Verzameling van verscheide echte stukken van Batavia herwaards gezonden : Concerneerende de opstand (...)
  • 2 W.R. van Hoëvell, ‟Batavia in 1740,” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, 1840 (3-1), pp. 447-556.
  • 3 J.Th. Vermeulen, De Chineezen te Batavia en de troebelen van 1740, Leiden, N.V. Boek. En Steendrukk (...)
  • 4 Cf. W.R. Hoëvell en Pieter Meijer (red.), ‟Chronologische Geschidenis van Batavia, Geschreven door (...)

1The first accounts following the massacre of the Chinese, including Governor General Adriaan Valckenier’s report, as well as other anonymous texts arrived in Amsterdam in 1741 to be examined by the Gentlemen XVII of the Dutch East India Company (hereafter VOC) and some were published.1 About hundred years later, Pastor W.R. van Hoëvell undertook a reconstruction of the events based on various archival accounts. According to him, it was not the colonial administration that had failed but one man, namely the Governor General.2 Still nearly a century later, J.Th. Vermeulen reconsidered the subject in a thesis defended in 1938 at the University of Leiden,3 and entitled “The Chinese of Batavia and the troubles of 1740” in which he came to the conclusion that all the faults could not be attributed to Valckenier, but rather to a weak government, led by an indecisive man who had been unable to provide leadership under very difficult circumstances. Although these two authors were aware of the existence of the Kai ba lidai shiji 开吧历代史纪 or “Chronicle of the Chinese of Batavia” and its adaptation in Dutch, which gives the author’s point of view on the massacre, they hardly made use of it.4 But for the Chinese historian, who sometimes interprets a little freely, but on a basis of truth, this catastrophe would not have taken place if, on October 9, “Van Imhoff had not given the order to send to the sea and to drown during the night all the Chinese who had been gathered on the sugar cane plantations and inside the city, falsely saying that they were going to be embarked on boats.”

  • 5 The Chinese Annals of Batavia, the Kai ba lidai shiji and Other Stories (1610‑1795), Translated, ed (...)
  • 6 See Denys Lombard, « Pages d’exotisme IX : ‟Agon Sultan de Bantan” Tragédie en cinq actes et en ver (...)

2Leonard Blussé felt that the time had come to give a new interpretation of the facts by placing them in a more global perspective of the socio-economic relations between the VOC and the Chinese of Batavia and its surroundings, or Ommelanden, since the 17th century, but also of its relations with other European companies as well as with Imperial China. The author has also taken care to reintroduce quotations from the chronicle of which he had previously published a new translation in collaboration with Nie Dening 聂德宁,5 thus restoring a certain balance between the Dutch and Chinese views. He divided his work chronologically into five parts presented like the acts of a classical tragedy: setting, plot, climax, catastrophe, events and catharsis, having, he tells us, been inspired by the poet Onno Zwier van Haren’s (1713-1779) tragedy: “Agon, Sultan of Bantan.”6

3In the first part, which deals with the seventeenth century, the author emphasizes a form of partnership and even economic cooperation between the VOC and Chinese merchants. First of all, with Governor General Jan Pietersz Coen, who felt that the Chinese had much to offer the Dutch (even to the point of devising a policy of forced emigration towards them); then with Pieter Jane van Hoorn (1619-1682) and his son Joan (G.G. from 1704 to 1709) who had a very original perception of China and the Chinese, with whom they engaged in agriculture and the sugar cane industry —a speciality of southern Fujian, the place of origin of the emigrants to Java— in the vicinity of Batavia, under the guidance of a chief of their nation. After his return from an official mission to China in 1675, P.J. van Hoorn, who had experienced “culture shock,” went so far as to publish in Batavia an anthology of Confucian precepts in verse (Eenige voorname eygenschappen van de ware Deugd, voorsichtigheydt, wyshseydt en volmaeckheydt, Getrocken uyt den Chineschen Confucius), possibly adapted from a Latin translation of the Confucian classics by the Jesuits, and apparently lost.

  • 7 See here Claudine Salmon, “The Massacre of 1740 as Reflected in a Contemporary Chinese Narrative,” (...)

4The two following parts, which in our opinion would have benefited from being more synthesized, deal with the various changes of the end of the 17th century and the first decades of the 18th century: —socio-political upheavals in the Chinese world leading to significant migratory flows of a new type and difficult to integrate economically, —natural disasters, epidemics of malaria, mismanagement in the management of the sugar industry,— bitter competition with the other European trading companies, —strong rivalries between these gentlemen of the Company, in particular between G.G. Adriaan Valckenier and Gustav Willem Van Imhoff, former G.G in Ceylon, who had just returned to Batavia on April 21, 1740. In summary, according to Cheng Xunwo 程逊我, Chinese scholar who stayed in Batavia in the 1730s, the Dutch authorities worried about the development of the Chinese community, took oppressive measures and established abusive taxes which made the atmosphere unbearable and were the cause of strong discontent and widespread fear, which sparked the rebellion.7

5In the fourth part, the measures taken on the initiative of Van Imhoff are considered in order to deport as many Chinese as possible without work and without papers, which Valckenier was not in favor of and which he ended up opposing, but without being able to erase the harm they had caused to society. Then, the author analyzes in detail the reactions that followed: rebellion in the Ommelanden, attacks in the direction of Batavia, military repression, but also looting, fire, and systematic massacre of the Chinese inhabitants by the dregs of the European society, finally continuation of the war in the interior of Java until 1743.

6It also follows the chronology of the conflicts between Valckenier and van Imhoff. The former, who had thought he could get rid of the latter by having him arrested and sent to the metropolis in 1741, was finally stripped of the office of G.G. and put in prison where he died in 1751, before his trial had been completed. As for van Imhoff, he returned to Batavia in 1743 and took up the post of G.G., which he held until his death in 1750. The local society took a long time to recover, as did the sugar industry and trade with China. The Chinese community remained without leaders until 1747 and the Chinese were forever banned from the walled city and their freedom of movement was tightly controlled. Before the authorities had time to fully appreciate the significance of the changes in the social fabric of the 1730s, colonial society had exploded as a result of extremely brutal administrative measures. Social harmony was gone forever, and Batavia never regained its former status.

  • 8 For a partial list, see Mary Somers Heidhues, “1740 and the Chinese Massacre in Batavia: Some Germa (...)

7At a time when many countries are looking back, not without difficulty, at their colonial past in order to rewrite their respective histories, Blussé’s approach is significant. The question that arises is why the author chose to write in a rather arduous Dutch language that seriously limits the impact of his work? Judging by some recent publications in Indonesian on the massacre of 1740, and the various reinterpretations of the 1740s disturbances in the newly privately built museums, the horror of this massacre is undoubtedly much more present in the memories of Indonesia than in those of the Netherlands.8 Such an account in English would have helped to broaden the historical reflection on this still painful past.

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Notes

1 Verzameling van verscheide echte stukken van Batavia herwaards gezonden : Concerneerende de opstand der Chineezen buiten, en de daar op gevolgde gruwelyke massacre binnen gemelde stad, Dordrecht, Van Braal, a.o. (1741) (published anonymously).

2 W.R. van Hoëvell, ‟Batavia in 1740,” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, 1840 (3-1), pp. 447-556.

3 J.Th. Vermeulen, De Chineezen te Batavia en de troebelen van 1740, Leiden, N.V. Boek. En Steendrukkerij Eduard Ijdo, 1938. English translation by Tan Yeok Seong 陈育崧, ‟The Chinese in Batavia and the troubles of 1740,” published (without the notes) in Journal of South Seas Society, Vol. IX (1), June 1953, pp. 1-68.

4 Cf. W.R. Hoëvell en Pieter Meijer (red.), ‟Chronologische Geschidenis van Batavia, Geschreven door een Chinees, uit het Chinesisch vertaald door W.H. Medhurst,” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, 1840 (3-2), pp. 447-556. It is in fact the adaptation of an English translation by W.H. Medhurst since lost.

5 The Chinese Annals of Batavia, the Kai ba lidai shiji and Other Stories (1610‑1795), Translated, edited, and annotated by Leonard Blussé & Nie Dening, Leiden, Brill, 2018; compte rendu dans Archipel 97, 2019, pp. 308-309.

6 See Denys Lombard, « Pages d’exotisme IX : ‟Agon Sultan de Bantan” Tragédie en cinq actes et en vers », Archipel 15, 1978, pp. 53-64.

7 See here Claudine Salmon, “The Massacre of 1740 as Reflected in a Contemporary Chinese Narrative,” Archipel 77, 2009, pp. 149-154.

8 For a partial list, see Mary Somers Heidhues, “1740 and the Chinese Massacre in Batavia: Some German Eyewitness Accounts,” op. cit., pp. 117-119; Claudine Salmon, & Myra Sidharta, “Sino-Indonesian Private History Museums, Cultural Heritage Places, and the (Re)construction of the Past,” Asian Culture, 42, 2018, pp. 1-28.

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Claudine Salmon, « Leonard Blussé, De Chinezen Moord. De Kolonisatie van Batavia en het Bloedbad van 1740 (The Chinese Massacre. The Colonisation of Batavia and the 1740 Bloodbath), Amsterdam, Balans, 2023, 395 p., 4 Maps, 21 Plates, Index, ISBN 978 94 638 2181 0 »Archipel, 105 | 2023, 179-182.

Référence électronique

Claudine Salmon, « Leonard Blussé, De Chinezen Moord. De Kolonisatie van Batavia en het Bloedbad van 1740 (The Chinese Massacre. The Colonisation of Batavia and the 1740 Bloodbath), Amsterdam, Balans, 2023, 395 p., 4 Maps, 21 Plates, Index, ISBN 978 94 638 2181 0 »Archipel [En ligne], 105 | 2023, mis en ligne le 01 juillet 2023, consulté le 24 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/archipel/3526 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/archipel.3526

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Claudine Salmon

CNRS

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