The first study of the archive of the Kong Koan, the only relatively complete archive of a "diaspora" Chinese urban community in Southeast Asia, offering many new insights into Overseas Chinese life between 1780-1965.

The archive of the Kong Koan constitutes the only relatively complete archive of a “diaspora” Chinese urban community in Southeast Asia. The essays in the present volume offer important and new insights into many different aspects of Overseas Chinese life between 1780-1965. The Kong Koan of colonial Batavia was a semi-autonomous organization, in which the local elite of Jakarta’s Chinese community supervised and coordinated its social and religious matters. During its long existence as a semi-official colonial institution, the Kong Koan collected sizeable Chinese archival holdings with demographic data on marriages and funerals, account books of the religious organisations and temples, documents connected with educational institutions, and the meetings of the board itself.

In The Chinese Annals of Batavia, the Kai Ba Lidai Shiji and Other Stories (1610-1795) Leonard Blussé and Nie Dening open up a veritable treasure trove of Chinese archival sources about the autonomous history of Chinese Batavia. The main part of this study is devoted to the annotated translation of a unique historical study of the Chinese community of Batavia (Jakarta) written by an anonymous Chinese author at the end of the 18th century, the Kai Ba Lidai Shiji. This historical document and a selection of other Chinese contemporary sources throw new light on a tragic event in the history of Southeast Asia’s overseas Chinese: the massacre of Batavia’s Chinese community in 1740.

Credit and debt are practical concerns of all times and places. They are also increasingly important topics in economic history and the social sciences, from Marcel Mauss and the anthropology of the gift to the urgent quest for understanding of today's global credit crunch. This volume brings together eight essays on credit and debt in the history of Indonesia, where for centuries debt and debt bondage played central roles in the organization of society, and where efforts to combat 'usury' and free peasants from indebtedness were central to the ethical and nationalist movements of the late colonial period. Topics range from the inscriptions of ninth-century Java to the first global financial crisis in 1930, and from Islamic laws against the charging of interest to the role of Chinese temples and Dutch church charities as credit providers. The history of credit and debt in Indonesia is examined from a wide variety of perspectives - legal, institutional, and cultural as well as economic. Attention is paid to parallels and contrasts with more recent developments, including the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and Indonesia's rise to fame as a pioneer of the current global microfinance revolution.

The Netherlands have a long and proud history in Chinese studies. This volume collects not only articles that trace the historical development of Chinese studies in the Netherlands from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present and beyond, but also studies that deal with Dutch research in specific disciplines within Chinese studies. Chinese studies in the Netherlands originated from the needs of the Dutch colonial administration in the Dutch East Indies, but developed a strong philological emphasis in the first part of the twentieth century, to turn increasingly towards disciplinary research on modern and contemporary China in the last few decades. Contributors include Leonard Blussé, Maghiel van Crevel, Barend ter Haar, Albert Hoffstädt, Wilt Idema, Mark Leenhouts, Oliver Moore, Frank Pieke and Rint Sybesma.

This collection of 13 essays deals with a range of topics concerning Portuguese, Dutch and Chinese merchants, commodities and commerce in maritime Asia in the early modern period from c. 1585-1800. They are based on exhaustive research and careful analysis of diverse sets of archival materials found around the globe. Written by a leading authority on global maritime economic history and the history of European Expansion, each individual essay addresses a topic of fundamental importance to those interested in knowing more about what merchants did (with which resources and under what conditions) and how they did it, what were the commodities that were incorporated into local, regional, intra-regional and global economies, and what was the role and function of early modern maritime trade and commerce in economic development in general and especially in Asia in the early modern era, from c. 1585-1800. A number of them, in particular, relate the individual or collective merchant experience to specific European (Portuguese and Dutch) imperial projects and their contestation amongst themselves and their indigenous neighbours over portions of the period. Collectively, they form an exposition of a utilitarian view of human activity under a wide-ranging different set of circumstances and conditions but with similar patterns of behaviors and responses that are largely independent from ethnic, racial or religious stereotyping. The work therefore should raise new issues and avenues of research concerning these agents and objects in European Expansion, Asian and Global History.

Do Chinese voluntary organizations continue to have a role in modern societies enmeshed in a globalizing world that questions continuation of the nation-state and ethnic identity? This book argues that Chinese voluntary organizations continue to play a significant role in both the established and new Chinese communities in the Diaspora. They are able to do so because of their ability to transform their organizational structure and functions. At the same time, they are able to reinvent their own images to suit their co-ethnic community and the wider polity. The uniqueness of this volume lies in its integration of historical and contemporary approaches to the study of traditional Chinese voluntary organizations in the Diaspora. The chapters explore how the Chinese voluntary organizations continue to fulfil the needs of the Chinese community in different parts of the world, and do this by both localizing and globalizing their functions and roles in the countries where they have established roots. The contributors cover traditional Chinese voluntary organizations from Asia to Australia, North America and Europe examining not only their activities in established Chinese communities such as Singapore and Malaysia, but also in the new emerging Chinese communities in Canada and Eastern Europe. This allows the readers to compare and contrast the voluntary organizations across countries and across time. Readership for this book includes scholars and students of Chinese Studies, Asian Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Diaspora Studies, History, Social Organizations and the general educated Chinese population.

Spanning over a millennium of history, this book seeks to describe and define the evolution of the China–Southeast Asia nexus and the interactions which have shaped their shared pasts. Examining the relationships which have proven integral to connecting Northeast and Southeast Asia with other parts of the world, the contributors of the volume provide a wide-ranging historical context to changing relations in the region today – perhaps one of the most intense re-orderings occurring anywhere in the world. From maritime trading relations and political interactions to overland Chinese expansion and commerce in Southeast Asia, this book reveals rarely explored connections across the China–Southeast Asia interface. In so doing, it transcends existing area studies boundaries to present an invaluable new perspective to the field. A major contribution to the study of Asian economic and cultural interactions, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese history, as well as those engaged with Southeast Asia.

In Strangers in the Family, Guo-Quan Seng provides a gendered history of settler Chinese community formation in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period (1816–1942). At the heart of this story lies the creolization of patrilineal Confucian marital and familial norms to the colonial legal, moral, and sexual conditions of urban Java. Departing from male-centered narratives of Ooverseas Chinese communities, Strangers in the Family tells the history of community- formation from the perspective of women who were subordinate to, and alienated from, full Chinese selfhood. From native concubines and mothers, creole Chinese daughters, and wives and matriarchs, to the first generation of colonial-educated feminists, Seng showcases women's moral agency as they negotiated, manipulated, and debated men in positions of authority over their rights in marriage formation and dissolution. In dialogue with critical studies of colonial Eurasian intimacies, this book explores Asian-centered inter-ethnic patterns of intimate encounters. It shows how contestations over women's place in marriage and in society were formative of a Chinese racial identity in colonial Indonesia.

In The Early Dutch Sinologists Koos Kuiper gives a detailed account of the studies and work of the 24 Dutchmen trained as “interpreters” for the Netherlands Indies before 1900. Most began studying at Leiden University, then went to Amoy to study southern Chinese dialects. Their main functions were translating Dutch law into Chinese, advising the courts on Chinese law and checking Chinese accounts books, later also regulating coolie affairs. Actually their services were not always appreciated and there was not enough work for them; later many pursued other careers in the Indies administration or in scholarship. This study also analyses the three dictionaries they compiled. Based on a wealth of primary sources, it gives a fascinating picture of personal cross-cultural contacts.