Batavia, the city of beautiful canals

By Ida Indawati Khouw

Canals played an important role in the old city of Batavia. In the course of time, the canals have been lost. This 61st article on old and protected buildings in Jakarta traces their history again.

JAKARTA (JP): Downtown Kota, where the walled city of Batavia was situated, used to be just as wonderful as Venice. It was an immaculate city with canals of pristine water which flowed around it.

The good old days are certainly difficult to even imagine nowadays, especially when you are familiar with the area.

Kota has transformed into a modern-day trade center, probably the largest in Indonesia. The romantic picture that old publications paint about Kota has long been history. The area is now dirty, polluted, crippled by day-long traffic jams and surrounded by slum areas.

So just how beautiful was Kota when it was young?

Read some journals of travelers to Batavia during the first 100 years of its establishment. They extolled the virtue of the city which then enjoyed the honor of being known as the Koningin van het Oosten (the Princess of the East).

Historian Leonard Blusse quoted a comment from Jean-Baptiste Tavernier about the city having "la plus belle eau et la meilleure qui soit au monde" (the cleanest and best water in the world).

Dutch writer Francois Valentijn who enjoyed its beauty describes the place as even "more beautiful" than cities in the Netherlands.

"The city is built on swamps and it is misty in the morning, but when the sun rises and the wind blows, the mist will disappear. At around 10 a.m. after the air has cleared there appears a big blue mountain in the background, for which reason people describe the city as located at the foot of the mountain," he says.

Even though the city was quite hot for the Europeans, it was still a comfortable place for them. "The heat is not disturbing because the wind is always blowing," Valentijn says.

To avoid the heat the residents chose to travel by boat through the canals. They hired boats from Chinese people for two stuivers (10 cents).

The favorite hour for sightseeing by boat was around 5 p.m. Others hung around on benches along the canals while enjoying their cigars or wine.

Old Batavia was built following the pattern of cities in the Netherlands as obvious from the construction of the canals.

After gaining power here in 1619, the Dutch trading company Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) started to build a fortress on the east and west of the Ciliwung river, which was also called Kali Besar (big river).

The fortress, located at the eastern part of the estuary of the Ciliwung, was then called castle and was continuously broadened and finally became the walled city of Batavia.

The first canal was Kasteelgracht (Castle Canal), which encircled the castle. It served to protect the fortress. The canal was further extended to the city's south and connected with the Ciliwung river, the main river of the city, from which water was channeled.

Dozens of canals were built later, dividing the city into a cubicle form. Names were given to each inland waterway but it later caused difficulties in their identification because several names were given to one canal when it was actually the same waterway.

"For instance, the northern part of what was called Kaaimansgracht (parallel to Jl. Pos Kota at present) was named Bandaanesegracht (Banda Canal) as it was the settlement of people from Banda (in Maluku). When the canal passed an area of Indian people from Malabar it was then called Malabaarsegracht, (Malabar Canal)" said Daruroh Sadadi in his mini thesis Kanal-Kanal di Batavia Abad ke 17 dan 18, Sebuah Pendahuluan (Canals in Batavia in the 17th and 18th Century, an Introduction)

The canals' 'identity' was taken from names of animals like Tijgersgracht and Rhinocerosegracht; from human settlements like Chinesegracht, Javaansegracht and Maleisegracht; from the names of cities in the Netherlands like Amsterdamsegracht and Groenegracht and others.

High-ranking officials at that time also named the canals after themselves.

But most of the canals are no longer there. Some were reclaimed for development projects while others were turned into streets.

The function of the canals varied, such as for protection, drainage, transportation and a place for washing and bathing. Some served as a toilet.

Various sources say that the overall development of the city lasted until 1650.

Valentijn says that there was 16 canals within the city; the main canal was Tijgersgracht (Tiger canal) located parallel to Ciliwung (was also called Grote Rivier - Great River or Kali Besar). Several others were built to connect the Tijgersgracht with the Ciliwung.

Located between the present Jl. Pos Kota and Kota railway station, at the eastern part of Stadhuis (the City Hall, the present Jakarta Museum of History), the 750-meter Tiger Canal was praised by many as the most beautiful spot in the city.

It had a "real European neighborhood" according to F. de Haan while Valentijn describes the canal with four stone bridges as having "a special Indies environment" with beautiful trees along it, and being "more beautiful than those in the Netherlands."

Valentijn documented the houses built along Tijgersgracht as consisting of 151 big Dutch houses, 82 small ones, 36 Chinese houses and seven Dutch houses in which resided Chinese people.

Becoming unhealthy

But Batavians could only enjoy the beauty and the comfort of the city within the first 100 years of its existence, because in the 1730s the city started to become unhealthy.

Many causes were behind this, which caused many of the residents to leave, including the eruption of Salak Mountain (in Bogor, West Java) in 1699 which caused sedimentation, and a poor development concept in Ommelanden (the hinterland area in the southern part of Batavia).

Blusse in his book Strange Company, Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women and the Dutch in VOC Batavia says that the fast development of sugar plantations in Ommelanden, which lacked clear planning, had made an impact on the ecology of Batavia.

This poor condition was also brought about by the Batavians' bad habit of using the canal as a toilet. At that time the residents had the habit of containing their feces in buckets before the contents were thrown away into the canals by their servants.

It was popularly called folhas, nonas, horas, meaning "flower of nine p.m." related to a decree which forbade people from emptying their faecal matter into the canals before 9 p.m.

People living along the canal were then also bothered by the mosquitoes which found the waterways and surrounding trees an ideal breeding place.

Thus, the canals lost their beauty. The canals became the source of disaster for the city after they produced the so called "evil steam", causing the death of thousands of Batavians in 1733, and earning it the name "city of graves".

The sedimentation in the waterways, which sometimes caused them to dry up during the dry season, resulted in a very bad odor. De Haan notes that to fight against the smell in the home, scents were burned and jasmine was strewn everywhere which together gave a somewhat Chinese scent.

Even in the bed, flowers were scattered, mixed with fragrant pandanus leaves, "so you sleep in the midst of perfumes, a luxury scarcely to be expected or even conceived in Europe," de Haan says.

The problem became the city authority's headache. Then they brought in mud diggers from Cirebon, West Java. "But in the end the work was never finished, and only resulted in the death of the workers," says Blusse.

In 1707, the mud problem was partially solved by constructing wind mills but the mud volume continued to increase such that settlers along the canals were obligated to finance the dredging project every June and July.

Mosquitoes were breeding further and diseases like malaria, typhus and dysentery were endemic, causing a high mortality rate at the only two hospitals at that time.

"One in four patients died at the hospital located inside the walled city, while the hospital outside the wall recorded that one in 12 of its patients died," Blusse says.

Canals had also become a "tomb". In the 1740s it was a widespread practice to dump dead horses into the waterway, even an 1809 order read: "when animal remains or human corpse was grounded in front of someone's house the occupant had to push it again into the water".

In 1750 Batavians moved to southern areas with the wealthy ones choosing to live and build Weltevreden -- the new city located at the present Central Jakarta area.

Governor General Herman Willem Daendels then demolished the city and buried the canals in 1809. Building materials from the old city were then used to build Weltevreden.

Only in the early 20th century was the coastal area of Batavia rebuilt as a modern trading city.