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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY SERIES
Gregor Benton
Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series
Series Editors
Akira Iriye
Harvard University
Cambridge, USA
Rana Mitter
Department of History
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK
This distinguished series seeks to develop scholarship on the transnational
connections of societies and peoples in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies; provide a forum in which work on transnational history from dif-
ferent periods, subjects, and regions of the world can be brought together
in fruitful connection; and explore the theoretical and methodological
links between transnational and other related approaches such as compara-
tive history and world history.
Editorial board:
Thomas Bender, University Professor of the Humanities, Professor of
History, and Director of the International Center for Advanced Studies,
New York University
Jane Carruthers, Professor of History, University of South Africa
Mariano Plotkin, Professor, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero,
Buenos Aires, and member of the National Council of Scientific and
Technological Research, Argentina
Pierre-Yves Saunier, Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, France
Ian Tyrrell, Professor of History, University of New South Wales
Gregor Benton
Chinese Indentured
Labour in the Dutch
East Indies,
1880–1942
Tin, Tobacco, Timber, and the Penal Sanction
Gregor Benton
Cardiff, UK
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect
to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Praise for Chinese Indentured Labour in the Dutch
East Indies, 1880–1942
“Gregor Benton has written a most impressive work, a highly original contribution
to the study of the Chinese labour diaspora. His pioneering study of Chinese ‘coo-
lies’ (Huagong) and their descendants in the late-colonial Dutch East Indies builds
on Chinese, Dutch, and other sources, and offers a convincing blend of fine
description and careful analysis.”
—Marcel van der Linden, International Institute
of Social History, The Netherlands
“This book is much more than a beautifully written social history of Chinese
indentured labour in the Dutch East Indies in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies. It is a thoughtful, rigorous, and comparative analysis of how and why
Chinese differed from Indian and Javanese indenture. Based on sources in several
languages, this fascinating study has much contemporary relevance and makes an
invaluable contribution to Chinese diaspora studies, indenture studies, and the
interdisciplinary field of migration studies.”
—Min Zhou, Distinguished Professor, University
of California, Los Angeles, USA
“Finally, a pioneering study of Chinese labour migration and a cohesive narrative
of colonial indenture in comparative perspective. Painstakingly researched and
using an impressive array of Chinese, English, and Dutch sources, this study pro-
vides a fresh look at the complex multi-layered phenomenon of unfree labour. This
is a book that captures the horrors of this dehumanising form of labour diaspora
so well that we see it for what it really was—indenture slavery.”
—Edmund Terence Gomez, Professor Emeritus
of Political Economy, University of Malaya
Acknowledgements
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This cartoon, published in a Chinese magazine at the time, depicts the imagined
life and death (by suicide) of an indentured Chinese labourer. Leaving home for
the Nanyang, he aims to return with wealth and in glory. He digs tin under the hot
sun; loses his job when the market collapses; is forced to roam the streets as a beg-
gar; and comes to a sorry end
Acknowledgements xi
The author at the recently renovated Fude Taoist temple (Fuk Det Che),
established at Pangkal Pinang on Bangka in the Huagong years
xvi Acknowledgements
Chinese words are given where appropriate in the Hanyu Pinyin transcrip-
tion, except for names and terms given in another transcription in the
original source and in the case of personal and place names better known
in other spellings—for example, Sun Yat-sen and Hong Kong, which are
left in their more familiar form. Indonesian and Malay words are generally
given in the spelling adopted in Malaysia and Indonesia in 1972, except in
direct quotations from sources that use other transcriptions, including the
Van Ophuijsen system used to write Indonesian words between 1901 and
1947. Chinese, Indonesian, Indian, and other loan-words from non-
European languages that have become embedded and nativised (usually in
modified spelling) in European languages (for example, laukeh and kongsi)
are given in Roman font, whereas non-embedded words imported into
the study in their original form and spelling (like xinke and laoke) are given
in italics.
xvii
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Setting 13
5 Recruitment169
Appendix A345
Appendix B507
References 571
Index603
xix
List of Tables
xxi
China and Southeast Asia
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
This book has two aims, complementary and of equal weight. One is to
tell the story of Chinese labour migration to Sumatra in the Netherlands
East Indies in the late-colonial period. The other is to contribute to the
study of colonial indenture in comparative perspective, in particular in
Asia and the Atlantic world, by looking at Chinese indenture in the light
of Indian and Javanese indenture. Indenture studies are a relatively new
addition to the field of migration studies, but more and more have begun
appearing, both descriptive and theoretical, starting in the late twentieth
century. Dutch scholars writing about the East Indies have contributed
richly to this work. They are, in most cases, specialists in Indonesian stud-
ies, including many who work with sources in Indonesian. This study, in
contrast, is written by a specialist in Chinese studies and uses sources in
Chinese as well as in Dutch and other languages. Its main focus is on the
Chinese labour diaspora and only marginally on Javanese migration to
Sumatra.
Under Dutch rule in the Indonesian Archipelago, indenture was
realised in the form of the penal sanction. It was a Dutch-inflected strain
of the Nanyang or Southeast Asian variant of the Asian form of an imag-
ined archetype of colonial indenture. Colonial labour indenture happened
mainly in the tropics and sub-tropics—in South Asia, Southeast Asia, the
New World, Africa, Australia, and Oceania. A migrant contracted, in the-
ory freely, to work for an employer in exchange for a loan, usually to cover
the cost of his or her ticket overseas. The resulting debt, which bound the
migrant for a fixed or indeterminate term, grew as a result of interest
charges and other costs. Indenture is one among several forms of unfree
labour in which the labourer is bound by debt, by contract or informally,
to a particular employer. The debt was hard to repay and the cause of a
lengthy, sometimes unending, period of servitude. Despite the appearance
of choice, indenture entailed a strong element of coercion—not just pov-
erty but brute force. It differed from slavery in that indentured labourers
had rights that could, in principle, be adjudicated in law, and they were
supposed to be in thrall for a set time rather than a lifetime. Even so,
indenture had much in common with slavery—it was dehumanising,
unfree, life-cheapening, life-shortening, often violent, sometimes intermi-
nable. Seen by many as slavery under another name, indentured paraslav-
ery is an appropriate coinage for it.1
The East Indies was a main destination in Southeast Asia of Chinese
indentured labour, alongside British Malaya and the Straits Settlements,
Thailand, and French Indochina. In China, the labourers were known as
Huagong,2 and as “coolies” to their foreign employers. Chinese migrants
were the biggest minority in the East Indies from outside the archipelago.
They arrived even before the Dutch and remained indentured for longer
than any comparable group. Today, Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese, including
Huagong descendants, are the world’s largest ethnic-Chinese population
and 20 percent of the world’s overseas Chinese.3
Despite their worldwide spread, in scholarship labour indenture and
the plantation economy were for a long time best known in their “Atlantic”
form. Brij Lal dates the “first real advance towards a new indenture histo-
riography” (after some anthropological accounts mainly in the 1960s and
Hugh Tinker’s seminal A New System of Slavery in 1974) to the confer-
ence on “Colonialism and Identity” held in Trinidad in 1975 and addressed
by V. S. Naipaul. Lal also notes the later opening of a literary and autobio-
graphical dimension in “coolie” writing that “seeks to understand migra-
tion and indenture across the globe as a transcultural process in
non-essentialist ways through poetry, art and prose, both conventional
1
Kuhn 2008, 116.
2
The term is explained in Chap. 2.
3
Citing the estimate of Taiwan’s Overseas Community Affairs Council for 2014.
1 INTRODUCTION 3
4
Lal 2021, 10-12.
5
MacDonald 2008, 109.
6
Lindsey and Pausacker, eds, 2005.
7
Even the work on Bangka by Heidhues, rich and authoritative, generally lacks references
to Chinese-language sources (Heidhues 2003, 13-14).
4 G. BENTON
8
Benton 2013.
9
For China, see Chapter 3; for the Indian case, Bates and Carter 2021, 53.
10
Claveyrolas 2018; Lal 2021, 4.
11
Susanto 2014, 105-106. See also Andayani and Jupriono 2019.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
12
Houben (1999, 8) notes the lack of “temporal and spatial differentiations” in studies.
6 G. BENTON
13
De Kat Angelino 1931, 305, said that emigration followed by agricultural or labour
colonisation “has been too insignificant to bring the solution of this big problem in that
direction much nearer.”
1 INTRODUCTION 7
era.14 In Sumatra and on the tin islands, the story of the Huagong is today
celebrated more than in the past, including in local museums. A colourful
plaster statue of a Huagong miner stands, somewhat isolated and forlorn,
on an out-of-town roundabout on the road to Manggar in Belitung.
Politically, however, Chinese ethnicity and a China tie remain potentially
dangerous in Indonesia,15 where the conditions are still not ripe for a full
exploration of the Huagong episode.
Several recent studies combine to suggest a theoretical framework that
can help to explain the special features of indenture and their refusal to
conform to a single pattern. Where previous analyses have treated depen-
dency and the integration of rural societies into the global market and the
transformations wrought in them by global capitalism as a homogenising
process, the new approaches suggest a more decentralised view of the
mobilisation of marginalised peasants to migrate abroad. They draw atten-
tion to the precolonial and indigenous roots of labour migration and the
numerous ways in which indentured labour was organised and recruited,
both across and within different ethnic and national groups. Where much
previous scholarship understood labour diaspora as a one-way passage into
other histories and geographies, the new studies stress the mutual and
interdependent constitution of migrants and sending states in “diaspora
time.” This produced, in China, an “ever more fragmented and more net-
worked” homeland.16
Kerry Ward’s study on the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde
Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC) focuses on the VOC’s nodes and net-
works, which amalgamated over time into a web of empire. Ward rejects a
simple binary opposition of metropole to periphery, thus chiming with the
methods and spirit of the radical style of writing history from below and
focusing on the active role played by “colonial subjects” in the colonial
project. This approach, as Tonio Andrade points out in a review, is espe-
cially relevant to the history of the Chinese networks of traders, labourers,
and seafarers that sailed the routes of the VOC and both contested and
helped sustain them. Far from controlling the web of Chinese networks,
the Dutch heavily depended on it and were secretly, silently, and subtly
undermined by it.17 However, Ward does not deny the role played by net-
works in helping the imperial apparatus of the VOC manage its affairs and
14
Kitamura 2007.
15
Zhou 2019, 217.
16
Chan 2018, 12, cited in Jany 2021, 51.
17
Tonio Andrade, in Reviews 2009.
8 G. BENTON
assert its primacy. Her study can therefore be read, beyond networks, as a
history of the VOC’s imperial rise through “conquest and forced migra-
tion” and its creation of an entire range of primary “structures of
governance.”18
China and other countries consigned by the actions of European states
to a periphery or semi-periphery of the world economy retained their own
independent network structures and managed their own peripheries. What
looked from a European point of view to be a periphery was a centre from
another angle. The networks emanating from “peripheralised” centres
were able in many instances to restrict the extent to which the VOC took
over and monopolised regional trade. Because of their resilience and the
political and economic challenges they presented to globalising capitalism,
the VOC had no choice but to compromise and negotiate with them, or
even in some cases to give in. A good example of a clash of Dutch and
Chinese centres from which the former came out worst is the short war on
Taiwan in 1661-1662, when a colony founded by the VOC in 1624 was
ousted by the Ming-loyalist Zheng Chenggong (known to the Dutch as
Koxinga).19 Ward’s approach is particularly helpful for understanding the
part played in the East Indies economy by Chinese, whose relations with
colonial powers differed from those of the two other main streams of
migrant labour, Indian and Javanese.
Ulbe Bosma makes a related argument for the decentering of labour
history in island Southeast Asia. His study on its incorporation into the
global capitalist economy looks at Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Why did a once prosperous region become a periphery engaged primarily
in the export of cheap labour? Unhappy with dependency theory and
world-systems explanations, which divide the world into an early-
industrialising core and a periphery and semi-periphery reduced by the
core to commodity exporters of tropical crops, Bosma argues the need to
differentiate between countries and parts of countries and to explore their
historical specificities. This is because peripheralisation is complex and
path-dependent rather than homogenising, unilinear, and unidimensional.
Bosma also distinguishes between different groups of migrant workers in
a single region: Chinese, for example, were all along more likely to be
recruited along patron-client ties and more likely because of the greater
18
Diogo Ramada Curtu, in Reviews 2009.
19
Ward 2009, 62, citing Andrade 2006.
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tietysti melkein aina jossakin määrin konnamaisesti. Sofia Ivanovna
oli »orpolapsi», ilman omaisia lapsuudesta asti, jonkun
hämäräperäisen diakonin tytär, joka oli kasvanut hyväntekijänsä,
kasvattajansa ja kiduttajansa, erään ylhäisen eukon, kenraali
Vorohovin lesken rikkaassa talossa. En tunne yksityiskohtia, mutta
olen kuullut vain sen, että tämä hiljainen, hyväluontoinen ja säyseä
kasvatti kerran otettiin irti silmukasta, jonka hän oli laittanut
säilytyshuoneen naulaan, — niin vaikeata hänen oli kestää tuon
näennäisesti ei ollenkaan ilkeän, mutta joutilaisuudessaan
sietämättömän tyhmän ja itsepäisen eukon omapäisyyttä ja alituisia
soimauksia. Fjodor Pavlovitš kosi, hänestä hankittiin tietoja ja hänet
ajettiin tiehensä. Silloinpa hän taas, aivan niinkuin ensimmäisenkin
kerran naidessaan, esitti orvolle karkaamista. On hyvin luultavaa,
että tyttö ei millään ehdolla olisi mennyt hänelle, jos olisi aikanaan
saanut hänestä yksityiskohtaisempia tietoja. Mutta asia tapahtui
toisessa läänissä, ja mitäpä saattoi kuudentoista vuoden ikäinen
tyttö ymmärtää muuta, kuin että oli parempi mennä vaikkapa jokeen
kuin jäädä hyväntekijättärensä luo. Ja niin tyttö raukka vaihtoi
hyväntekijättären hyväntekijään. Fjodor Pavlovitš ei tällä kertaa
saanut penniäkään, sillä kenraalinleski suuttui, ei antanut mitään ja
lisäksi vielä kirosi heidät molemmat. Mutta tällä kertaa hän ei ollut
laskenutkaan mitään saavansa, häntä viehätti vain viattoman tytön
huomattava kauneus ja ennen kaikkea tämän viattomat kasvot, jotka
olivat vaikuttaneet häneen, irstailijaan, siihen saakka vain epäkainon
naisellisen kauneuden paheelliseen rakastajaan. »Nuo viattomat
sulosilmät viilsivät silloin sydäntäni kuin partaveitsi», kertoili hän
sittemmin nauraa hihittäen iljettävällä tavallaan. Muuten saattoi
tämäkin irstaalle miehelle olla jonkinmoista intohimon tyydyttämistä.
Koska Fjodor Pavlovitš ei ollut saanut puolisonsa mukana mitään
omaisuutta, niin hän ei liioin kursaillut vaimonsa kohtelussa, vaan
käyttäen hyväkseen sitä, että vaimo hänen edessään tavallaan oli
»syyllinen» ja että hän oli melkein »hirttosilmukasta pelastanut»
tytön, sekä käyttäen sitäpaitsi hyväkseen vaimonsa ilmiömäistä
nöyryyttä ja lempeyttä hän polki jalkojensa alle kaikkein
tavallisimmankin avioelämän vaatiman säädyllisyyden. Taloon tuli
vaimon kotona ollessa pahamaineisia naisia, ja siellä pantiin toimeen
hurjasteluja. Kuvaavana piirteenä mainitsen, että palvelija Grigori,
synkkä, typerä ja itsepäinen lavertelija, joka oli vihannut entistä
rouvaa Adelaida Ivanovnaa, tällä kertaa asettui uuden rouvan
puolelle, puolusti häntä ja riiteli hänen puolestaan Fjodor Pavlovitšin
kanssa miltei palvelijalle sopimattomalla tavalla, vieläpä kerran
väkivoimin hajoitti juomingin ja koko siihen kerääntyneen
kevytkenkäisten naisten joukon. Myöhemmin onneton, jo
lapsuudesta asti säikähtynyt nuori nainen sai eräänlaisen
hermotaudin, jota enimmän tavataan rahvaan keskuudessa
maalaiseukoilla, minkä taudin vuoksi noita sairaita naisia nimitetään
riivatuiksi. Tämän taudin ja sen aiheuttamien hirveitten hysteeristen
kohtausten vaikutuksesta sairas ajoittain menetti järkensäkin.
Kuitenkin hän synnytti Fjodor Pavlovitšille kaksi poikaa, Ivanin ja
Aleksein, edellisen avioliittonsa ensimmäisenä vuonna ja
jälkimmäisen kolme vuotta myöhemmin. Kun hän kuoli, oli poikanen
Aleksei neljännellä ikävuodellaan, ja niin omituista kuin se onkin,
poika, tiedän sen, muisti sitten äitinsä koko elämänsä ajan, joskin
tietysti kuin unessa. Äidin kuoltua kävi molemmille pojille miltei
täsmälleen samoin kuin oli käynyt ensimmäiselle, Mitjalle: isä heidät
kokonaan unohti ja hylkäsi, ja hekin joutuivat samaisen Grigorin
huostaan ja hänen luoksensa pirttiin. Sieltä heidät löysi vanha,
typerä kenraalinleski heidän äitinsä hyväntekijä ja kasvattaja. Hän oli
yhä elossa eikä koko aikaan, kahdeksaan vuoteen, voinut unhottaa
kärsimäänsä loukkausta. »Sofiansa», elosta ja olosta hänellä oli mitä
tarkimmat tiedot, ja kuultuaan, miten sairas Sofia oli ja miten
inhoittavat olot tätä ympäröivät hän lausui kerran, kahdesti tai
kolmasti eläteilleen: »Se on oikein hänelle, sen on Jumala lähettänyt
hänelle kiittämättömyyden tähden.»
4.
Sanoin jo, että hän oli hyvin pöhöttynyt. Hänen kasvoissaan oli
siihen aikaan jotakin sellaista, mikä räikeästi todisti hänen koko
eletyn elämänsä laadusta ja olemuksesta. Paitsi pitkiä ja lihaisia
pusseja hänen pienten, ikuisesti julkeitten, epäluuloisten ja ivallisten
silmiensä alla, paitsi monia syviä ryppyjä hänen pienillä, mutta
lihavilla kasvoillaan, riippui hänen terävän leukansa alla vielä iso
aataminpala, lihainen ja pitkulainen kuin kukkaro, mikä teki hänet
iljettävän hekumallisen näköiseksi. Kuvitelkaa tähän lisäksi lihallinen
pitkä suu ja tursistuneet huulet, joiden alta näkyivät melkein
mädäntyneitten hampaitten mustat tyngät. Sylki pärskyi hänen
suustaan joka kerta, kun hän alkoi puhua. Muuten hän itsekin
mielellään laski leikkiä kasvoistaan, vaikka luultavasti oli niihin
tyytyväinen. Erityisesti hän osoitti nenäänsä, joka ei ollut kovin iso,
mutta hyvin hieno, ja kaareva: »Aito roomalainen», sanoi hän,
»yhdessä aataminpalan kanssa todellinen roomalaisen patriisin
fysionomia rappeutumisen aikakaudelta.» Siitä hän näytti ylpeilevän.
5.
Luostarinvanhimmat