What's special about June 22, 1527?<\/p>\n
By K. Basri<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Jakartans celebrate the city's anniversary today
\nas they have done for decades.<\/p>\n
Authorities, businessmen and residents spend billions of
\nrupiah every year for the event. The activities include a special
\nfair, a series of exhibitions and a variety of competition.<\/p>\n
As part of the festive mood, neon signs and colorful banners
\nadorn many major roads in the city.<\/p>\n
It seems that everybody in this city has agreed to accept June
\n22 as the authentic birthday of this city, now home to some 10
\nmillion population. But why June 22? It seems that not many know
\nthe history behind the date.<\/p>\n
A few groups, in particular historians, have objected to the
\nchosen date of June 22, 1527, which has been declared by the
\nauthorities as the early history of Jakarta.<\/p>\n
The controversy arises due to uncertainty, mainly due to the
\nfew extant records on the founding of the city.<\/p>\n
Even historians themselves cannot agree on an exact date.<\/p>\n
Indonesian and Dutch historians still are sharply divided.
\nIndonesian nationalists like to dwell on the long antecedents of
\nthe present city, tracing it back through Muslim and Hindu
\nJavanese kingdoms until prehistoric times. The Dutch, writing
\nabout "their" Batavia, start with the conquest by Dutch East
\nIndia Company forces and the building of a Dutch fort in 1619.<\/p>\n
The difference of viewpoint is easy to understand, said Susan
\nAbeyasekere, author of Jakarta A History.<\/p>\n
Indonesians are naturally eager to see the capital of their
\nindependent republic as the direct descendant of great centers
\nfrom pre-colonial times, making Batavia just a brief aberration
\nof foreign domination amid centuries of Indonesian control, she
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
"To the Dutch, however, the previously existing towns near the
\nsite of Batavia were historically irrelevant: not only was the
\nlast of those Indonesian ports wiped off the map forever by Dutch
\narms, but moreover Batavia was a completely new species of city,
\nhaving nothing in common with Indonesian towns which might have
\nhappened to pre-exist there. Batavia to the Dutch was a European
\ncreation, built by them out of nothing from entirely new
\nmaterials."<\/p>\n
According to official data, the date was dubbed as the of
\nvictory day of the combined Moslem troops from the Sultanate of
\nDemak in eastern Java and of nearby Banten, led by commander
\nFatahillah.<\/p>\n
After conquering the Sundanese-Hindu Pajajaran army,
\nFatahillah and his troops also defeated the Portuguese fleet at
\nthe Sunda Kalapa Bay.<\/p>\n
Fatahillah, also known as Fadhillah Khan or to the
\nPortugueseas Tagaril or Falatehan, then turned Sunda Kalapa into
\na vassal state of Banten and named the port Jayakarta, which
\nmeans the perfect victory -- the origin of the present name of
\nJakarta.<\/p>\n
According to historian Prof. Soekanto, the event happened on
\nJune 22, 1527.<\/p>\n
But the historical foundations of this hypothesis have been
\ndoubted by some parties.<\/p>\n
Professor Slamet Muljana of the University of Indonesia said
\nthe town received its new name from its third Moslem ruler,
\nPrince Jayawikarta of Wijayakarta.<\/p>\n
While the year has been well acknowledged by most historians
\ndue to the valid documents available both in Indonesia's and
\nEuropean archives, the date is still doubted.<\/p>\n
A special research team set up few years ago to trace down the
\nbackground of choosing June 22 learned later that it was based on
\n"unscientific" reasons.<\/p>\n
The team found that the date was chosen based on the tradition
\nat that time that the attack of Fatahillah and troops should be
\ncarried out after the harvest season (April - May) and during the
\nwaning of the moonlight when the earth was totally dark.<\/p>\n
Of course, many historians are not satisfied with the
\nfindings.<\/p>\n
The dearth of historical documents is filled with a legend,
\nsaid Adolf Heuken SJ, an author and observer of Jakarta's
\nhistory, in his article in the June edition of Intisari magazine.<\/p>\n
"Should people of this 20th century satisfy with a myth or
\nthey want a truth?," he wrote. "Jakarta, which is going to
\ncelebrate its 470th anniversary, should have a scientific and
\nrealistic history."<\/p>\n
Based on its history, this capital is a young city compared to
\nBeijing (about 300 BC), Hanoi (7th century) or Kyoto (794), but
\ncompared to other capitals in this region it has a respectable
\nhistory. Bangkok, (1769), Sydney (1788), Singapore (1819) and
\nKuala Lumpur (early 19th century) were all founded later.<\/p>\n
It entered history under different names and for the longest
\npart of its existence was known by yet another name. The oldest
\npart of Jakarta is known as Kota, a Sanskrit word that means
\nfortified place. This area of the old city once was the busy
\nharbor town of Sunda Kalapa that functioned since the 14th
\ncentury as the entrepot for the Kingdom of Sunda (14th - 16th
\ncentury). When Fatahillah troops conquered Sunda Kalapa in 1527,
\nthe place changed its name to Jayakarta. But a century later
\nJayakarta was destroyed by Dutch invaders and Batavia rose in its
\nplace in 1619.<\/p>\n
The town was known by this name for nearly three and a half
\ncenturies until the Japanese occupation (1942-1945), when
\nJakarta was revived.<\/p>",
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