Indonesia held a seminar entitled "Anatomy of the Tragedy of 1965" on the 18th and 19th of this month. It was the first time in more than 50 years that the Indonesian government supported a public discussion of the anti-China massacre that took place from 1965 to 1966. Scholars generally believe that the Tragedy led by the Indonesian government caused the massacre of more than 500,000 Chinese. Previously, this topic has been a taboo topic in Indonesia.
In fact, in this country of a thousand islands, the former Dutch colony, as early as 276 years ago (the fifth year of the Qianlong Qing Dynasty, 1740 AD), there was a large-scale massacre of Chinese. I would like to send this article to commemorate and mourn!
（1）
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, many Chinese people left their hometowns and came to Java in Southeast Asia to make a living. At that time, Batavia (present-day Jakarta, the capital of India) and the coastal areas, the sugar industry was developed, almost all controlled by the Chinese, and most of the new Chinese were working in Chinese-run sugar cane plantations and sugar mills. Due to the continuous influx of immigrants, the number of Chinese in batavia, according to 1740 statistics, there were already 2,500 households in the city, and the total number of people living outside the city had exceeded 15,000, accounting for more than 17% of the population of the region.
Although the Chinese have been doing business here for centuries before the arrival of Westerners, engaged in handicrafts, sugar pressing, retail and other industries, and have become an important pillar of the local economy. Since Ming and Qing China had no experience with the Thousand Islands in the Southeast Sea, the Chinese had no influence in politics, and after the 17th century, it became a Dutch colony.
Java (Indonesia) under the Dutch East India Company was not stable. At the end of 1720, a large-scale Islamic revolt broke out here. Too large a population also put the local environment to a severe test, where plagues were often rampant, and worse, due to the saturation of the European sugar market, the economic situation of the Dutch East India Company was deteriorating, many farmers went bankrupt, and a large number of unemployed people wandered in society.
Against this background, the Dutch East India Company began to limit the number of Chinese in Batavia and implemented a licensing system for the Chinese. In July 1740, a decision to "kill or erase" was issued, ordering that all suspicious Chinese, whether he held a license or not, should be arrested and searched, and that those without income and occupation should be repatriated to China or exiled to plantation farms and mines in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the Cape of Good Hope, etc.
In the implementation of this policy, Dutch officials took the opportunity to extort a large number of Chinese, and a large number of Chinese were arbitrarily arrested and forcibly transported overseas. The Chinese community was in a state of panic, and gossip spread like a plague, with rumors that the captured Chinese were shackled, tortured and killed, and many were thrown into the sea. As a result, many coolies refused to board the ship, and the number of Chinese coolies gathered near the Gandaliya Sugar Factory exceeded 5,000, and Huang Ban was elected as the leader, preparing for armed self-defense. The situation is on the verge of breaking down.
（2）
On October 7, 1740, hundreds of Chinese coolies seized two strongholds of the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch authorities then mobilized all the troops stationed in Batavia, about 1,800 men, plus militia and 11 battalions of reserve soldiers, and began to suppress it, while imposing a curfew on the Chinese in the city, and even forbidding the Chinese to light the lights at night.
The next day, the Dutch army easily repelled the attack of the poorly equipped Chinese rebels outside the city. The situation in the city became more and more tense, and the smell of gunpowder became stronger and stronger. Due to the curfew, there was not a single Chinese in sight in the city, the doors and windows of Chinese families were closed, and a large crowd gathered on the streets. At this time, rumors spread that the Chinese outside the city were about to attack on a large scale, and that after the destruction of the city, they would kill all the locals, rape their women, and turn men and children into slaves... These rumors, deliberately spread by the Dutch authorities, created intense fear and anger.
The mob gathered more and more in the streets, first in the Chinese ghettos along the East Grand River, where several Chinese shops were burned. The Dutch saw this as a signal of "riots" from the Chinese, and soon large-scale repression and massacres began.
Dutch armed men took the lead in robbing the Chinese, and other Europeans and natives, including sailors, tramps, Seboi (Indian soldiers in the British and French armies), craftsmen, and even slaves, continued to join in. They killed every Chinese they saw, men, women and children, and burned their houses. Batavia was full of blood, and the massacre also left some new place names, such as "Red Creek", "Corpse Swamp", etc. (this incident is also known as the "Red Creek Massacre"); the Indonesian "Ta'aAn State" means the red land - the red land is soaked with Chinese blood.
According to representatives of the Dutch East India Company sent to China in October 1742, the massacre was carried out by Europeans, indigenous peoples, and dark-skinned slaves or former slaves. Almost all of them joined the persecution and killing of the Chinese at the instigation.
（3）
A Dutchman witnessed and recorded the massacre:
"The terrible screams were incessant, the horrors were shocking, and there were raids against the Chinese in every corner of the city, as long as they were Chinese, men, women and children, they were all killed, even pregnant women and nursing mothers were not spared, and they were brutally killed.
Hundreds of captured Chinese were tied in their hands and killed like sheep. A few wealthy Chinese fled to the homes of Dutch and Europeans they knew to seek refuge, but these friends, without mercy, morality and humanity, handed them over to the bloodthirsty pursuers and took their trusted possessions for themselves. In short, all Chinese, whether guilty or innocent, must be exterminated. ”
In a 1741 journal of the Dutch East India Company, the following description is also described:
(The Dutch fired cannons at the Chinese community in an attempt to evict them from the houses,) and the successive blooming shells plunged the Chinese houses into a sea of fire. Unsurprisingly, some Chinese trapped in the fire fled to avoid being burned alive. But oncoming bullets from the besiegers inflicted even more damage, forcing them to retreat. Some Chinese who tried to climb the roof of the mountain to escape for their lives were also doomed, and were shot down by the besiegers. ...... Subsequently, the burning spread to every corner of the city, and the blood of the Chinese stained the canal water red, and corpses were strewn on the streets. There are horrible killings everywhere... Houses that had not been engulfed by the fire were looted. ”
The report shows that the Dutch colonial authorities never managed to stop the genocide in the two weeks after the outbreak, until October 22, 1740. Their purpose was to thoroughly clean up the Chinese living in Batavia!
As many as 10,000 Chinese were reportedly killed in the incident and more than 700 houses were destroyed. Before the massacre, it was rumored that the Chinese had stockpiled a large number of weapons and allied themselves with rioters outside the city, in fact, in the face of the massacre, the Chinese were only lambs. A Kapitan named Lian Fuguang (Kabidan refers to the Chinese leader, equivalent to the village chief and district chief during the Dutch colonial period) was the only Chinese who resisted heroically, and his house was besieged for one night (including two cannons) by Dutch cavalry and the East India Company militia, and it was not until the next day that he laid down his arms with 50 slaves. After Lian Fuguang was arrested, he was first thrown into the castle prison and later exiled to Ambon.
It was two weeks before the Dutch governor ended the crackdown, announced amnesty for all Chinese, and suspended the permit system, but stipulated that the Chinese must live in designated areas outside the city walls. According to statistics, after the amnesty, only 3,431 Chinese remained in Batavia.
According to Dutch historical records, after the incident, the Dutch Parliament debated the matter, fearing that the Chinese Qing Dynasty government would carry out military and economic retaliation against Batavia. However, when the local government of Fujian took the matter to the table, the Qing court held that the slain overseas Chinese were "abandoning their own kings", that the Chinese were "native to the other land, and that they were no different from the people of Fan", that they were "the Chinese species of the other land, sanctified from the outside", that they were slaughtered, and that "things can be hurt, but in fact they are evil and self-inflicted.". So cold and indifferent, it is speechless.
(There must be a motherland behind the Chinese)
(This article refers to the second part of the Indonesian Chinese scholar Mr. Xu Tiantian's "Indonesian Chinese in the Political Whirlpool" (Indonesian Ethnic Studies Society Press, 2003), "Chinese Society from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Century.") Long Li translation. For the original text, see Southeast Asian Studies, No. 4, 2004)