Slave trade a scar on Batavia's history

Slave trade a scar on Batavia's history

By Ida Indawati Khouw

Three hundred years ago, the measure of a man's wealth was not
merely by his property or jewels, but also by the number of
slaves he owned. The 72nd article in our series on Old Batavia
looks at the slave trade in the Dutch colony, when people were
handled and sold like cattle in the market.

JAKARTA(JP): Slaves were a luxury commodity, and only the
richest citizens of Batavia could afford them. But those who
could, would display their wealth by having hundreds of slaves.

Although Batavia was known as "the queen of the East" for its
beauty, a more fitting name would have been the "city of slaves".

The city's population was dominated by slaves. Detailed
records were kept of the slave population in Batavia. A 1673
statistic showed that there were 13,278 slaves in Batavia out of
a total population of 32,068; and in 1815 it was 14,249 out of
47,217 people. In her monograph Slaves in Batavia: Insights from
a Slave Register in Antony Reid's Slavery, Bondage and Dependency
in Southeast Asia, historian Susan Abeyasekere wrote that the
slave population might have been even larger as population census
before the 20th century was questionable.

The slaves were often tricked or kidnapped by dealers and
chieftains from areas such as Sulawesi and Bali, Abeyasekere
wrote. They endured horrendous conditions on cramped ships before
arriving in Batavia to be sold at market. Those who could not be
sold were auctioned.

The Dutch extended the slave trade to other areas of the
settlement but Batavia remained its center.

Old drawings often show slaves holding parasols for their
masters or performing other menial tasks. The slaves are nearly
always depicted as having black skin and wide eyes, the males
bare-chested and with a piece of cloth wrapped around their
heads. They appeared physically different from the indigenous
people of the city.

The Dutch did indeed prefer to bring in slaves from outside
Java, and for good reason.

"As there was no free labor available locally, and since the
Sundanese and Javanese were regarded as hostile, the Dutch
preferred to bring in slaves from outside Java to serve as
menials," Abeyasekere wrote.

"It was also more advantageous because slaves from distant
places and of diverse origins were unlikely to unite or conspire
against their masters."

Slaves from Sulawesi were the highest in number, followed by
those from Bali, Batavia, the Lesser Sundas (Manggarai, Bima,
Dompo, Ende, Sumba, Sumbawa and Timor) as well as Cirebon, Ambon,
Padang, Nias and Ternate.

When Batavia was being developed, slaves were used for heavy
labor, but by the early 19th century, slaves were rarely used for
heavy work. Even in estates around Batavia, they were mostly used
as domestic servants.

Specialized

It might surprise many today that some families owned more
than 100 slaves, each with specialized tasks.

For example, a tea maker would not do the cooking or ironing.
In Governor-General Reynier de Klerk's home, which is now the
National Archives in Central Jakarta, his slaves, Ariantje,
Juliana and Lesarda were the lace makers; Camoening and Estrea
were the chignon makers; Flora did the ironing; and Patjar was
the socks maker. There was even a slave whose sole task was to
prepare the chili condiment.

Besides doing daily housekeeping chores, some of them were
trained as musicians to entertain guests during parties.

Slave musicians were the height of fashion and European ladies
liked to hire them to accompany them on leisurely boat rides
along the canals of Batavia.

But most slaves had a hard life, and their mortality rate was
high. Their discontent sometimes led to revolt, the very thing
the Dutch feared.

"Gangs of slaves sometimes created unrest in Batavia," said
V.I. van de Wall in his paper Slaves in a House of a Governor
General.

Some slaves ran away from their masters, the most famous being
the Balinese, Surapati, who founded his own kingdom in East Java
in the late 17th century.

Every wealthy home also had cells for the incarceration of
slaves who were defiant or who had tried to escape.

There were also problems among the slaves themselves, with
suspicion and rivalry coloring their relationships. Some slave
masters attempted to overcome this predicament by using slaves
from the same region, but it was no guarantee of peace, van de
Wall wrote.

The most beautiful of the female slaves often became victims
of sexual abuse.

"Balinese and Makassarese men were not favored as slaves as
they were likely to escape or run amok, but their womenfolk were
apparently regarded by the Europeans and Chinese as desirable
concubines," Susan said.

Van de Wall said there were also cases of love affairs between
European women and their male slaves.

"The law which required female slaves to be freed if they bore
their master's child served to reduce the number of female slaves
and also slave children born in Batavia," Abeyasekere said.

Slaves were auctioned when their masters died, but the
fortunate were freed if it was willed by the master.

The need for slaves declined by the middle of the 19th century
as cheap labor became available on Batavia's outskirts. The ugly
chapter in Batavia's history effectively ended in 1859 when the
Dutch enacted a law abolishing the practice.