SMALLPOX AND SLAVERY: CAUSES OF A FREELANCE INTELLECTUAL

Willem van Hogendorp was a founding member of the academy, a senior VOC official, and a successful businessman. He spent the years 1774 to 1784 in Java. The academy gave him a reason for pursuing his intellectual interests and a means of disseminating them through its journal. He drew on Batavia’s archives to write histories of the Muslim kingdom of Jayakarta and of the VOC in Java. Van Hogendorp was also exponent and publicist of scientific developments in Europe. He worked to create public support for vaccination against smallpox by publishing a play and an essay in 1779 and by establishing a cash prize for the best essay on vaccination.

Van Hogendorp’s principles led him to be critical of slavery. He found the government-licensed printer, Lodewyk Dominicus, willing to publish his protest in the form of a play. Harsh Blows, or Slavery criticized the treatment of slaves by that segment of Batavia’s population called “Portuguese,” that is, Eurasians and Asian Christians. (It did not treat Dutch or Indonesian slaveowners.) In the play, the vicious treatment of domestic slaves by a Eurasian woman and her Indonesian overseer leads to murderous revolt by the household’s victims.

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SURAPATI’S LEGACY: THE CONVERSION OF EAST JAVA

In 1743 Pakubuwono II (r. 1726–1749) rid himself of problems in Mataram’s eastern provinces by transferring Surapati’s former lands to the   Dutch. Rebel bands used east Java as a place of retreat; Balinese princes still considered it as tributary territory to their kingdoms in Bali.

The VOC could defeat Indonesian armies, but it could not directly administer territories distant from its Batavia headquarters. Its method was to use local officials and Chinese networks to get production and trade moving. When it became chief landlord of east Java, the company continued Surapati’s system of administration. It appointed as officials only men who were Muslim, and ordered them to make conversion of the Hindu population a priority of office. The second strategy was encouraging immigration of Muslim farming families from Madura and central Java. In this way the VOC achieved Surapati’s goals: Balinese influence was lessened, the forest refuges of rebel bands were reduced, and the landscape was permanently settled by farmers who raised crops for export.

Over time Muslim immigrants became the majority population. East Java was detached from Bali’s orbit and was integrated into the history of Muslim Java under the Christian overlordship of the Dutch.

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HENDRIK LUKASZOON CARDEEL, A.K.A. PANGERAN WIRAGUNA

Hendrik Lukaszoon Cardeel was born in Holland, raised as a Christian,   employed   by   the   VOC   as   a   stonemason,   and   posted   to Batavia around 1670. By 1675 Cardeel was a Muslim and employee of Sultan Ageng of Banten in charge of constructing a new fortified palace following the latest European design. His conversion to Islam was signaled by circumcision, Indonesian name, and Muslim marriage. Cardeel became Raden (later Pangeran) Wiraguna, husband to Nila Wati, one of Ageng’s palace concubines.

European men entered Indonesian histories when they found an Indonesian employer for their skills. They established families with local women and usually disappeared from VOC records. Wiraguna distinguished   himself   from   such   men,   however,   because   in   1682,   when VOC forces were fighting in Banten, he sought to return to Christianity and a new life in Batavia, Ceylon, or Holland. A VOC investigation conducted in 1684 described Cardeel as “completely Javanese,” unemployed, and husband to a “shrewd” woman. Eventually the VOC permitted Wiraguna to reestablish himself among the Dutch as Cardeel. He appears in VOC records in 1695 as a self-employed resident of Batavia, a landowner and operator of a saw mill with a contract to supply the VOC with timber. In 1697 he divorced Nila Wati. Four years later he named as his heir a boy born to the slave woman Magdalena of Batavia. In 1704, the Banten palace demanded that Cardeel make restitution for the eight male and female slaves who had been given him as a wedding gift by Sultan Ageng. In that year VOC records show Cardeel remarried, this time by Christian rite, with an Anna Stratingh. The last reference to Cardeel in VOC records is in 1706, when he was a supplier of charcoal to the company.

Cardeel’s history in Java represents the Dutch freelancer or entrepreneur who adjusted himself to meet the demands of his employer. European men, like Chinese men, lifted themselves out of circles their origins seemed to dictate and became part of Indonesian histories.

BANDA: MONOPOLY WITHOUT KINGS

 Ten small islands forming the Banda group lie remote in the Banda Sea, but they were the object of sailors on account of the nutmeg trees   which   grew   only   on   the   islands   of   Lontor,   Neira,   Ai,   Run,   and Rosengain. When the Dutch first visited the Banda islands, they estimated a total indigenous population of around fifteen thousand and fifteen hundred traders from Java and Melaka. Monarchy had not evolved in this mini-archipelago. The Dutch borrowed from international traders the term orang kaya (rich people) for the heads of leading families, who had become rich through the nutmeg trade. Dutch agents acting for the VOC established a trading post on Neira. To survive the intense competition for the nutmeg trade, they fortified it. Nassau Castle, built in 1609, was the first Dutch fort in Indonesia.

Banda was unable to control foreign traders as it lacked a central authority and its ships were adapted for trade, not naval warfare. VOC policymakers determined to seize control of nutmeg production and limit the   number   of   trees   in   order   to   keep   prices   high.   After   ten   years   of warfare, Jan Pieterszoon Coen injected a new fleet into the eastern archipelago made up of European soldiers and Javanese and Japanese mercenaries. They again attacked Banda villages, expelled foreign traders, exiled Banda’s leading families, and this time enslaved surviving commoners. The VOC then leased nutmeg groves to Dutch men who imported their work force from Java, Irian, Tanimbar, Bali, south Sulawesi, and Butung. Ambonese foremen supervised the plantation laborers.

The Dutch monopoly on production of nutmeg and mace, which continued until 1824, brought about the complete transformation of Banda. Multiethnic slave labor raised a single crop; inhabitants became dependent on Dutch suppliers for all outside goods; new ruling classes of Dutch     and   Ambonese     controlled   workers’   lives.  Eventually   Banda slipped into insignificance in the colonial economy because its plantation crop was geared to pre-industrial uses.

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POLYGA MY AND POLITICS: FEMALE PAWNS AND TOO M ANY SONS

The Koran requires a written contract of marriage and dowry for a wife, sets the number of wives at four, prescribes equality of status between the wives and their equal treatment by the common husband. Islam does not limit a man in the number of slave girls he may have in his household. The Koran describes attendance by many virgins as a man’s reward in paradise. Indonesia’s Muslim kings reproduced this vision by maintaining households filled with women. European travelers record huge numbers of women in the households of seventeenth-century archipelago kings: three thousand women in the palace of Sultan Iskandar Muda   of   Aceh,   twelve   hundred   in   the   Banten   palace,   four   hundred owned by a king of Tidore, ten thousand in the palace of Amangkurat I of Mataram.

Java’s kings exhibited no obedience to Islamic regulation where equality of wives was at issue. Principal wives were ranked as queens and officialway for a more favored newcomer. Javanese terms for women below the rank of consort express the degrees of their servility.  Priyantun-dalem were women residing at court who were married by the king during their pregnancy and divorced after birth, so that the child was legitimate and the number of legal wives at any one time never exceeded four. Lelangen dalem translates as “royal playthings”; they were palace women such as dancers whom the king did not marry, but any children they had by the king were recognized and raised by him.  Lembu peteng, which means “dark cows,” was the term applied to girls whom the king sampled on tours. Children born from such brief encounters were neither recognized nor raised as royal.

The inner part of the palace was a city of women. In addition to wives and concubines, personal attendants and female officers were in charge of preparing and tasting the king’s food and carrying his regalia. Four thousand women in Amangkurat I’s palace were textile workers. Aceh’s sultans had boys castrated and employed as palace eunuchs to guard their households of women. In Java’s palaces women armed with pikes and muskets guarded   the   household   and   protected   the   king   against   assassination. When he ventured in public they formed a human wall around him. Guards often became temporary wives.

 Royal polygamy was a mechanism by which a king acquired allies. He took into his household women who were daughters of all classes of men: princes, nobles, army commanders, vanquished princes, village heads, religious teachers, artisans. The daughters born from the king’s liaisons could be distributed to other men. Princesses were married to vassals of royal   descent   and   to   military   commanders;   girls   born   to   commoner mothers were bestowed on village heads or Chinese merchants. Men receiving a wife from the king could boast of enjoying royal favor.

There was always a web of tangled relationships in court and country-side. Men summoned to court to pay homage were in the presence of the many women reserved for the king. Women used their powers to secure the king’s attention, to detach him from other women and their kin, to form cliques of supporters. They competed to further the fortunes of their sons and relatives.

An immediate consequence of royal polygamy was to create many claimants to the throne among sons and brothers of the king. Polygamy introduced a multigenerational dimension to the royal family, for a ruler who lived to old age could be surrounded by sons who were themselves already fathers and even grandfathers, as well as sons who were still infants. A king’s adult sons might be very close in age, born within weeks of each other to different mothers. Succession did not automatically pass from father to oldest son, but to the son who could demonstrate highest status through his mother. Where a king had no son by a queen, the highest   status   claimant   could   be   a   brother,   uncle,   or   nephew.   Adult   men passed over for succession by a boy were likely leaders of revolt.

Men whose origins were a mystery readily claimed a royal for a father. Babad literature contains episodes of young men appearing at court to lay claim on the king. Their unruly behavior and their inability to conform to the norms for men raised by abandoned women were held as proofs of royal paternity.

In scholarly literature on power, Java’s royals are presented as preoccupied with inner quietude and spiritual power. The reality was that half-brothers could never accept the elevation of one of their number as king.

For eighty years, royals raised armies to compete for the throne of Mataram. They recruited Bugis, Balinese, and Dutch mercenaries to shore up their throne or attack a rival. Java’s kings were rarely able to win loyalty or affection from their subjects, so they were exposed to challenge from siblings. Royal polygamy weakened Mataram and created conditions in which the Dutch became the rulers of Java.

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RIJKLOF VAN GOENS: DUTCH MAN, ASIAN CAREER

Rijklof   van   Goens   experienced   Mataram’s   long   1629   siege   on Batavia as a ten-year-old, having left Holland for Java with his parents the year before. Orphaned early, he was raised in the household of a VOC official in India and prepared for his own career within the company. He gained a wide knowledge of Asia’s palaces through his many postings, his fluency in Asian languages, and his family ties. He survived three wives, all of them women born to Dutch fathers and Asian mothers and raised in Asia. After his ninth year, van Goens spent only twelve months in Europe. He ended his working career in Batavia as the VOC’s governor-general in the years 1678 to 1681.

Van Goens was curious about Asian societies and sensitive to the nuances around him. He responded to the beauty of Java’s landscape, but this appreciation did not soften his assessment of sultanates as difficult places for Dutch men to work. He judged Javanese men as swift to take offense and unpredictable partners in business. He sided with those VOC officials in Java who were urging on the company’s directors a policy of acquisition of land and direct control of agriculture and labor, instead of relying on the goodwill of Indonesian rulers to obtain trade goods. Despite living fifty-two of his sixty-three years in Asia, van Goens was a product of a seventeenth-century Dutch culture that rejected kings, reserved reverence for God, and introduced the handshake as the appropriate mode of courtesy between men who perceived themselves as equals. This background shaped the narrative van Goens wrote for the VOC in 1655.