Pre-colonial era
There was little direct Chinese involvement in what is now Indonesia before the fifteenth century. Trade between China and the Indonesian archipelago was in the hands of Indonesians, rather than Chinese and later standard word for a Chinese trading vessel, junk, is derived from the Javanese word jong, which described large teak vessels that trekked north from Southeast Asia to southern China. Chinese sources, however, are a useful external source of information on early Indonesia, including the records of a few emissaries, such as Fa Hien (Faxian, ??) the Buddhist monk who passed the region in the 5th Century on his way to India. Kingdoms of Indonesia and China had some relationships that thrived during the Tang dynasty.
Ironically, though most of the present Chinese Indonesians are not Muslims, some of the earliest Muslim evangelists in Java (who were called the Wali Songo or ‘The Nine Ambassadors’) were Chinese ancestry - at least four of those nine were original Chinese or Chinese descendants; they were Sunan Ampel (Bong Swi Hoo), Sunan Bonang (the son of Ampel and a Chinese woman), Sunan Kalijaga (Gan Si Cang), and Sunan Gunungjati (Toh A Bo). A historical theory even suggests that one of the first people who brought Islamic faith to Indonesia were the Chinese traders, especially those who came to Semarang under the leadership of Sam Po Kong or Admiral Zheng He(??) in the 15th century. Zheng He himself was not a Han, but a Muslim from a minority ethnic group in China.
Starting from the voyage of Zheng He, many Chinese considered the territory of what is now Indonesia as an attractive trading partner.
See: Zheng He#Zheng He and Islam in Southeast Asia.
Early Colonial Era (1500s-1800s)
Favored position under the Dutch
The largest waves of Chinese migration happened during early to middle Dutch colonial era, from about the 16th to the 19th Centuries, seeking to find new opportunities of trade.
Race relations between the Chinese Indonesians and native Indonesians (pribumis)have always been problematic, and remain so up to the present. Some commentators trace this to the Dutch era when colonial policy favored the ethnic Chinese, and in so doing established their economic dominance over the region.
The caste system established by the Dutch also made it disadvantageous for ethnic Chinese-as for members of other ethnic groups-to assimilate into the native population: this would mean being put in the third estate, the lowest one, together with the natives. Ethnic Chinese, on the other hand, together with Arabs and other “Foreign Orientals” were put in the second estate - just a notch beneath the first estate, a category reserved for Europeans and, ironically, Japanese and Siamese nationals as well.[1]
In this the Dutch were among the early practitioners of a classic colonial strategy practiced in many other times and places as well - namely, favoring specific ethnic or religious minorities and making of them a prop of the colonial rule and a buffer between it and the majority of the indigenous population. (In later times, the French and British were to use the local Christian and Jewish communities in the Arab World in the same way.)
Having the favor of the Dutch and being considered by them “intelligent, diligent, and capable of overseeing Dutch plantations”, many ethnic Chinese were supporters of colonial rule. Indeed, in the early years of the Netherlands East Indies, ethnic Chinese actively helped strengthen Dutch domination in the region. Souw Ben Kong, the Kapitan Cina (i.e. “Captain of the Chinese”) of Banten, for example, organized a large-scale immigration of Chinese under his rule to Batavia in the seventeenth century. This significantly destabilized the Bantenese economy, thus facilitating Dutch conquest of the Sultanate.
As a reward, Souw was made the first Kapitein der Chinezen of Batavia. His successors, the Kapiteins and later, the “Majors” (Majoors der Chinezen) of Batavia, were given landed fiefdoms and the hereditary title of “Sia” by the colonial government.
Between them, these aristocratic “Peranakan” families controlled a great deal of Java’s land and wealth. Through the officership system, moreover, they governed the Peranakan and ethnic Chinese population of Batavia. The system was later extended to other centers of Dutch power in Java and parts of the rest of the archipelago.[2]
Massacre of 1740
In spite of the above, Dutch attitudes towards the Chinese were not invariably friendly, and in the early decades of the Eighteenth Century tensions started building up, in some ways resulting from the very fact of the Chinese having settled in and around Batavia, ever since its foundation, and came to be a major element in its economic life.
Chinese workers were greatly involved in building Batavia and cultivating the adjacent agricultural areas. And Chinese traders, who were arriving in growing numbers, made the East India Company (VOC) increasingly dependent on them. The VOC’s came to make most of its profits from trade among different Asian destinations rather than back to the Netherlands themselves - and it was naturally the Chinese traders resident in Batavia who had the best contacts in China.
Dutch and Chinese needed each other - which in theory should have ensured a good relationship. But an element among the Dutch colonists came to increasingly resent the situation of the Chinese being their effective social equals and economic rivals. The Chinese traders, like the Dutch ones, were tax-payers - which was an economic burden but also conferred considerable privileges (a phenomenon comparable to the later resentment of French settlers in Algeria to local Christians and Jews being legally their equals).
What set off a cataclysm of hatred and bloodshed was not the Chinese trading but the other major branch of their economic activity on Java: agricultural work carried out by poor Chinese coolies who were imported and employed by rich Chinese entrepreneurs. Such coolies were, for example, the dominant part of the labor force employed in the sugar plantations at the Ommelanden of Batavia, a major field of economic activity.
The importation of ever more coolies caused an enormous increase in the Chinese population in the VOC-ruled area of Batavia and its environs, and they came to constitute nearly half of the total population just before 1740. Already in 1690, the colonial authorities had imposed severe limitations on further immigration from China. This did not have, however, the effect of stopping the importation of more coolies. Rather, they continued to be imported through the payment of bribes to the authorities, and were all the more dependent on their employers (usually Chinese themselves) and susceptible to lucrative exploitation.
From about 1720 the sugar market went through a deepening crisis, with the markets in Europe becoming saturated, and the plantations of Java facing sharp competition from cheaper Brazilian sugar. Many of the sugar planters went bankrupt, and the authorities took no step to alleviate the situation of the workers thrown out of their jobs - with the result being bands of unemployed, hungry and desperate coolies turning to brigandage.
Belatedly, at July, 1740 the colonial authorities decreed that all the coolies of the Ommelanden were to be transferred to Dutch-run plantations at Galle in Southern Ceylon. That might or might not have been the true intention, but rumors rife among the coolies were that the Dutch actually intended to throw them overboard once out of sight of the shore. Instead of boarding the ships, the coolies burst into an all-out revolt, with roaming bands robbing and killing in the countryside and some even attempting to attack Batavia itself.
There is no evidence that the better off Chinese living inside the walled area of Batavia, some five thousand in number, were planning to join the rebellious coolies outside. However, many of the Dutch inhabitants did have such suspicions. On October 9, 1740, the order was issued to search the houses of all the Chinese residents in Batavia. This soon degenerated into an all-out, three-day long massacre - with Chinese being massacred in their homes, and earlier captured Chinese being killed out of hand in prisons and hospitals.
A preacher fanned the flames from the pulpit, declaring that the killing of Chinese was “God’s Will”, and the colonial government itself reportedly posted a bounty for decapitated Chinese heads. The number of victims in these three days is variously estimated at between five thousand and ten thousand. The name Kali Angke (”Red River” in Indonesian) is said to date from that time, recalling the blood flowing into the river.[3][4]
Afterwards, the “restoration of order” was proclaimed, with surviving Chinese henceforth ghettoized in specific quarters of Batavia and other Dutch-ruled cities. The Chinese area of Batavia was designated Glodok, where many Chinese still live in present-day Jakarta.
Following the massacre, the Dutch Governor-General Valckenier was arrested and required to account for himself to the Heeren XVII (”Seventeen Lords”, the VOC directors in Amsterdam). He died in prison, however, and the charges against him were declared “annulled by death”.
The affair continued to crop up in later periods, especially in times of tension[5]
Continued Immigration and division into three sub-communities
Even such bloody events did not put an end to the continued Chinese emigration to the Indies, where economic opportunities not available in China itself outweighed the dangers of discrimination or persecution.
Earlier Chinese immigrants had much closer ties toward mainland China. This was manifested in their strong desire to return home and consideration of the Indies as yet another temporary settlement.
Attitudes started changing from the middle 18th century, when the Qing Emperor of the time, Qian Long, considered these expatriates to be “turncoats” and thereby a threat to China. Still, while Emperor Qian Long adopted a general “closed-door policy”, there was no evidence that Chinese expatriates were banned from returning to their original homeland.
Many of them, however, found the Indies an increasingly attractive abode. The hostile and oppressive Manchu government of the Qing dynasty brought even more migrants from China. Lulled by comfortable lives, some of them no longer associated themselves with mainland China. They were called Cina Babas or Peranakans. Cina Babas often intermarried with indigenous Indonesian (pribumis).
Some of them, however, identified themselves as Dutchmen, embraced Christianity, generally enjoyed higher education and social status, and thereby considered themselves as more culturally refined. They got to be called Qiao Sheng (literally, “foreign-born”). Beginning in the late Nineteenth Century, most of the aristocratic “Sia” families underwent rapid westernization. By the early decades of the twentieth century, many of them-especially those domiciled around Batavia-had become “more Dutch than the Dutch themselves”. The Sias were consequently some of the strongest proponents of colonial rule.
Those who still maintained ties toward China, whose main belief was Confucianism, considered Cina Babas and Qiao Shengs unfilial, all the more so because Cina Babas and Qiao Shengs typically shunned Chinese tradition. The ones who still maintained “purity” were called Cina Totoks.
These three groups of Chinese Indonesians had starkly different nationalistic views and tendencies. At the time
Qiao Shengs were more inclined toward the Dutch;
Cina Totoks were more inclined toward mainland China;
and
Cina Babas were more toward the indigenous population of the Indies.
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