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Jakarta

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Jakarta

The archival record for this subject is limited to a single source: a 1924 translation of private letters by Reynier Bernardus Hoynck van Papendrecht, who served with the Dutch East India Company at Batavia (the historical name for Jakarta) between 1778 and 1780. The letters offer a first-hand account of the city’s physical character, its lethal climate for Europeans, the social hierarchies of Company service, and the financial distress of the VOC in its final decades. [1]

Physical Character and Climate

Reynier Bernardus arrived at Batavia in June 1778 and immediately contrasted its architectural grandeur with its deadly environment. He described it as “the best built city in the world,” with wide streets and quays planted with canary-trees in perfect alignment, a citadel he called a masterpiece, and surrounding avenues, plantations, and fields that surpassed anything in Europe. [1, p. 13] Yet the climate proved fatal to newcomers. He had already been ill “to the point of dying” twice within weeks of arrival, and noted that one was “rarely without fever.” Of the thirty-two soldiers who had sailed with him, only four were alive six weeks after landing. [1, p. 13] He later summarised the situation bluntly: “Batavia is a regular cemetery of Europeans.” [1, p. 17] The mortality extended to enslaved people as well; of those brought from Macassar, Timor, Ternate, and the West Coast of Sumatra, two out of three died before acclimatisation. [1, p. 17]

Administrative and Social Life

The city was the seat of the VOC’s highest authority, yet its officers occupied a paradoxical social position. Reynier Bernardus observed that European officers were “completely excluded from good society,” while a halberdier in the general’s escort earned more and commanded greater respect than a lieutenant. [1, p. 13] The garrison was composed almost entirely of non-European troops—Balinese, Bugis, Macassarese, Malays, Amboinese, and Javanese among others—whom he judged “a hundred times better” than European soldiers. [1, p. 13]

Luxury was conspicuous. Houses were furnished regardless of cost, and women of the Company’s elite displayed jewellery of such abundance that “one woman with her fineries on wears more jewelry than twenty duchesses at Court.” [1, p. 13] The Chinese community was described as “swarming in Batavia,” and Reynier Bernardus noted the complex etiquette required to navigate the city’s multi-ethnic social landscape. [1, p. 13]

Economic Decline

By 1780, the Company’s financial position was visibly deteriorating. Paper money was in circulation at Batavia, ships from Bengal and the Coromandel Coast were returning in ballast, and the Malacca Council had to lend to the Company at two per cent per month. [1, p. 19] Corruption was endemic: the two Administrator posts at Onrust island, which controlled the richest warehouses and homeward-bound cargo, yielded an estimated hundred sacks of smuggled goods annually, each sack bringing a profit of one thousand ecus (an old French coin worth three livres), with a recognised bribe of ten sacks paid to the water-fiscal. [1, p. 14] Reynier Bernardus himself remained unemployed for four years despite his connections, noting that twenty under-merchants and merchants were out of work while the sons-in-law of “Honourables” were placed in lucrative berths. [1, p. 15]

Research and Documentation

The letters were first drawn to scholarly attention through Sir W. E. Maxwell’s article on Raja Haji’s war with the Dutch, published in the JMBRAS (Journal No. 22), which relied on Netscher’s Twee Belegeringen. Maxwell had expressed the wish to see the war’s records supplemented by local traditions, and P. C. Hoynck van Papendrecht argued that private letters written shortly after the events constituted stronger evidence than traditions passed through four or five generations. [1, p. 9, n. 3] The 1924 publication fulfilled a promise made as early as 1896 or 1897, and the editor explicitly asked Society members to ascertain whether Reynier Bernardus’s grave still existed at Malacca, indicating that even the physical trace of this figure had become uncertain by 1923. [1, pp. 9]

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. P.C. Hoynck van Papendrecht (1924). Some old private letters from the Cape, Batavia and Malacca, 1778–1788. {Comp} P.C. Hoynck van Papendrecht JMBRAS 2(1): 9–24. Read on JSTOR