Latest / The Rise of Colonialism: How Europe Divided the World — Fexingo History / The Dutch in Batavia: How a Swamp Became a Colonial Capital
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the Dutch in various places — Dejima, Formosa, the Banda Islands. But I think we've never really sat down and talked about the heart of it all, the city that the Dutch built in Asia: Batavia. Luna: Batavia, that's present-day Jakarta, right? Lucas: Exactly. But before the Dutch got there, it was a small Javanese port town called Jayakarta, controlled by the Sultanate of Banten. The Dutch East India Company, the VOC, had a trading post there, but they were constantly at odds with the Bantenese and also with the English, who had a post nearby. Lucas: In 1618, things came to a head. The VOC governor-general, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, was away in the Moluccas, and the Bantenese sultan, backed by the English, besieged the Dutch fort. Coen rushed back with a fleet, burned the English factory, and then — this is the key moment — he completely destroyed Jayakarta and built a new city on its ruins. Luna: So he just razed it and started over? Lucas: Yes. Coen founded Batavia in 1619, and he designed it as a Dutch city in the tropics. He ordered canals dug, a castle built, and walls erected. The layout was a grid, just like Dutch cities at home, with canals like the Herengracht and the Keizersgracht. But the problem was, this was a swampy delta on the Ciliwung River. The canals were stagnant, breeding mosquitoes, and malaria and dysentery were rampant. Lucas: Batavia became known as the 'graveyard of the East.' European mortality rates were horrific. In some years, more than half the Dutch population died. But the VOC didn't care — they just shipped in more people, including enslaved workers, convicts, and soldiers. Luna: Who actually built the city? I mean, the physical labor. Lucas: That's a crucial point. The Dutch didn't build it themselves. Most of the heavy labor was done by enslaved people — from Bali, Sulawesi, India, and even Africa — and by Chinese convicts. Coen, remember, was the same man who orchestrated the genocide of the Banda Islands in 1621 to monopolize nutmeg. He had no qualms about using forced labor. Lucas: The city was divided into quarters. Inside the walls, you had the castle, the town hall, the Dutch Reformed Church, and the homes of VOC officials and merchants. Outside the walls, to the south, was the Chinese quarter, called Glodok. The Chinese were essential as traders, artisans, and tax farmers, but they were also heavily regulated and lived under threat. Luna: The Chinese quarter — that's where the massacre happened in 1740, right? Lucas: Exactly. That's a dark chapter. By 1740, there were maybe 100,000 Chinese in and around Batavia. The VOC was paranoid about their numbers and their wealth. When the company cracked down on Chinese sugar mills and imposed deportations, the Chinese rebelled. The Dutch and their allies, including armed enslaved people and Mardijkers — that's freed slaves, mostly from Portuguese backgrounds — they massacred somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 Chinese. They literally hunted them down in the streets and dumped bodies in the Kali Besar canal. Luna: That's horrifying. And the Mardijkers — who were they exactly? Lucas: The Mardijkers were freed slaves or descendants of freed slaves, often from Portuguese India or the Malay world. They were Christian, spoke Portuguese Creole, and served as a buffer between the Dutch and the enslaved population. They had their own quarter, their own militia, and they were fiercely loyal to the VOC because their status depended on it. Lucas: So Batavia was a deeply stratified society. At the top, the Dutch elite, then the Chinese merchants, then the Mardijkers, then the enslaved Javanese, Balinese, and others. And the city was a hub for the slave trade itself — the VOC ran a major slave market there, selling people from across the archipelago. Luna: And this was the capital of the Dutch empire in Asia? It seems so brutal. Lucas: It was. And it was also incredibly wealthy. Batavia was the center of the spice trade, the coffee trade, the textile trade. But the wealth came at a constant human cost. The city's famous canals, which you see in old paintings, were actually stinking, disease-ridden ditches. The Dutch called them 'grachten,' but they were a far cry from Amsterdam. Lucas: One more thing: the city's unhealthy climate actually shaped Dutch colonial policy. Because so many Europeans died, the Dutch relied heavily on Chinese and Javanese intermediaries. It was a pattern that lasted for centuries. Lucas: You know, talking about Batavia and its canals, and the way the VOC built something so ambitious but also so flawed — it reminds me of how much of this history is about people trying to make something work in a place they didn't fully understand. And that's part of why we keep coming back to these stories. Luna: It really is. And it's also why shows like this need to exist, to dig into the details. Lucas: Absolutely. And if you've been enjoying these deep dives into the VOC, the Spanish in Manila, the Portuguese in Goa — if this is the kind of history you want more of — then you can help keep the show going by supporting us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a simple way to chip in, and it means we can keep doing the research and telling these stories without ads. Luna: Yeah, every little bit helps. And we really appreciate the listeners who do. Lucas: So back to Batavia: by the late 18th century, the VOC was in decline. The city had grown beyond its walls, but the company was corrupt and mismanaged. In 1799, the VOC was dissolved, and Batavia came under direct Dutch state control. The city eventually became Jakarta, but the bones of Batavia — the old town, the castle ruins, the canals — they're still there. Luna: So you can still walk through the old Dutch quarter? Lucas: You can. In Jakarta today, the area called Kota Tua is the old Batavia. You can see the town hall, which is now a museum, and the old port of Sunda Kelapa with its schooners. It's a strange feeling — a Dutch colonial city in the middle of a sprawling Indonesian metropolis. The canals are mostly dry or filled in, but the grid is still there. Lucas: And that's the legacy of Jan Pieterszoon Coen. He wanted a Dutch city in the tropics, and he got one — at an immense cost in lives. But it became the template for European colonial capitals in Asia: a walled enclave, segregated populations, and a brutal economic engine.