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Profitable partnerships: The Chinese business elite and Dutch lawyers in the making of Semarang
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2021
Abstract
This article examines the collaboration between the law firm of C.W. Baron van Heeckeren from Semarang and the Oei Tiong Ham Concern (OTHC). From the 1880s this Dutch law firm became the centre of a close-knit group of Dutch lawyer-entrepreneurs who through interlocking business directorships developed important sectors of the Javanese economy and the city of Semarang. In doing so Van Heeckeren and his associates teamed up with the Chinese business elite of the port-city. In particular they worked with the foremost Overseas Chinese capitalist, Major Oei Tiong Ham, developing profitable partnerships. The Dutch lawyers acted not only as his legal advisors, but developed his sugar empire as directors-shareholders, held major stakes in his shipping business and coolie trade, and profited from his opium trade. They moreover helped Oei Tiong Ham to acquire real estate and enterprises formerly belonging to powerful Chinese opium farmers and collaborated with him in developing infrastructural and housing projects. This article provides new and revealing details about how the business world of colonial Java worked during the early phase of Dutch economic imperialism and how the Chinese business elite seized the opportunities provided by the Dutch colonial state to advance their business interests.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2021
Footnotes
This article is a revised version of a paper originally prepared for the panel ‘Sites of Ruptures and Connections: Southeast Asia and its Chinese Communities’ at the 2019 AAS Conference in Denver. I would like to thank Guo-Quan Seng and Huei-Ying Kuo for inviting me. Special thanks are due to Phillip Guingona for presenting the paper on my behalf due to my unforeseen absence. I am moreover grateful to Alex Claver, Peter Keppy, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and thoughtful suggestions on the original paper.
References
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4 Koo, Hui-Lan, Hui-Lan Koo [Madame Wellington Koo]: An autobiography, as told to Mary van Renselaer Thayer (New York: Dial, 1943), p. 53Google Scholar; Dick, Oei Tiong Ham, p. 275.
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7 Rush, Opium to Java, pp. 83–107; Peter Post, The Kwee family of Ciledug: Family, status, and modernity in colonial Java (Volendam: LM Publishers, 2018), pp. 61–100.
8 See S. Ravensbergen, ‘Courts of conflict: Criminal law, local elites and legal pluralities in colonial Java’ (PhD diss., University of Leiden, 2018); C. Fasseur, ‘Cornerstone and stumbling block: Racial classification and the late colonial state in Indonesia’, in The late colonial state in Indonesia, ed. Robert Cribb (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1994), pp. 34–6; Patricia Tjiook-Liem, ‘De Rechtspositie der Chinezen in Nederlands-Indië’ (PhD diss., University of Leiden, 2009).
9 De Locomotief, 14 Mar. 1882. Caesar Voûte succeeded J.R. Voûte as state-attorney of Semarang. Undoubtedly there was a family connection between the two, but this has not been established.
10 De Locomotief, 28 Oct. 1882; Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 29 Jan. 1883. A state-attorney was not an official but advised the government on legal procedures. Only Batavia, Semarang and Surabaya had this position, a crucial and powerful one in colonial Java. A state-attorney had close ties with the central government (Departments of Justice and Interior Affairs, as well as the Resident) and as a private lawyer was part of local society and its business community. New Residents commonly followed the state-attorney's advice when appointing Chinese officers.
11 Rush, Opium to Java, pp. 131–2.
12 Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben, De Oude Indische Wereld (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 2003), pp. 211–14.
13 On the importance of sumbangan and tanda hormat (tokens of respect) in inter-elite relations see Rush, Opium to Java, pp. 125–8; Koo, Autobiography, pp. 55–6.
14 Rush, Opium to Java, p. 172. The Indies press covered these cases extensively. Voûte defended numerous Chinese accused of offences such as forgery, theft, opium smuggling, manslaughter, travelling without a pass, etc. See for example, Java Bode, 2 Oct. 1875; De Locomotief, 4 Oct. 1880, 15 Jan. 1881, 15 Oct. 1881; De Standaard, 1 Mar. 1883.
15 De Locomotief, 24 Sept. 1877.
16 De Locomotief, 6 Feb. 1871, 6 Apr. 1875, 17 July 1879, 18 Aug. 1879.
17 Charles Coppel, ‘Liem Thian Joe's unpublished history of Kian Gwan’, in Yoshihara, Oei Tiong Ham Concern, p. 128; Madame Wellington Koo, No feast lasts forever (New York: Quadrangle, 1975), pp. 12–13.
18 De Locomotief, 9 Feb. 1882, 22 Sept. 1882.
19 For the Supreme Court's decision see G.J. Keiser and H.A. van de Poel, eds., Het regt in Nederlandsch-Indië Regtskundig Tijdschrift, vol. 39 (Batavia: H.M. van Dorp & Co, 1882), pp. 369–71.
20 Rush, Opium to Java, p. 172.
21 Ibid., pp. 159–61.
22 One of his first agricultural undertakings was the N.V. Cultuurmaatschappij ‘Soekangmangli’ incorporated in January 1887, capitalised at 200,000 guilders, divided into 200 shares of which Van Heeckeren and J.P. van Ossenbruggen, a senior partner in Voûte's law firm, each took 25. He already co-owned, with H.L. Soesman, Voûte and others, the indigo factory ‘Plosso’ in Kediri residency. De Locomotief, 14 Jan. 1887, 2 June 1887.
23 The director of the tobacco company was F.W. Cordes, and Jan C. Teves, one of the founders of Lindeteves, acted as commissioner. Teves also became a close business partner of Van Heeckeren. Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 16 Dec. 1889.
24 De Locomotief, 27 Jan. 1894, 26 May 1894.
25 D. de Jong Jr., De Spaarbank te Semarang: Gedenkboek 1853–1953 (Semarang: Het Spaarbank, 1953), pp. 25–8; De Locomotief, 19 June 1894. The Savings Bank of Semarang (Spaarbank te Semarang) was founded in 1844 and by the late 19th century mainly held savings accounts of military personnel (rank and file, and officers), orphans, Chinese and Arabs. Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 15 July 1886.
26 De Locomotief, 18 Sept. 1896.
27 Arjo Roersch van der Hoogte, ‘Colonial agro-industrialism: Science, industry and the state in the Dutch Golden Alkaloid age, 1850–1950’ (PhD diss., Utrecht University, 2015), pp. 87–91.
28 The Eigen Hulp advertised daily in local newspapers, sometimes on full pages. See for example, De Locomotief, 15 Apr. 1901.
29 Java Bode, 19 Aug. 1896.
30 Jan Breman, Taming the coolie beast: Plantation society and the colonial order in Southeast Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 59–60.
31 J.N.F.M. à Campo, Engines of empire: Steamshipping and state formation in colonial Indonesia (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002), List 10, pp. 644–7.
32 De Locomotief, 6 Mar. 1903.
33 De Locomotief, 21 May 1898.
34 Soerabaijasch Handelsblad, 1 Dec. 1899.
35 An article in De Locomotief (23 Mar. 1898) detailed the inhuman practices of recruiters working for Eigen Hulp. Similar criticisms were published in an article in Java Bode, 7 Dec. 1897, which ends with the exclamation, ‘Shame on the Europeans who are involved in this despicable business.’
36 Soerabaijasch Handelsblad, 1 Dec. 1899.
37 De Locomotief, 17 Oct. 1892. In 1901 Oei Tiong Ham bought the large cargo-passenger steamer Simongan, which was designed to carry horses from Australia to India. The ship was ideal for transporting sugar to Hong Kong and returning with Chinese deck passengers for Singapore and Java (Dick, Oei Tiong Ham, p. 276). His daughter Angelina Oei Hui Lan recalled: ‘Dogs and horses also played a great part in Papa's life. He took the keenest interest in breeding horses and there were always at least fifty-odd in his stud, all imported from Australia. Every evening after I had fetched him from the office, we spent the last daylight hours together in the immense paddock watching the horses being put through the paces by the native grooms.’ Koo, Autobiography, p. 51.
38 Yoko Hayashi, Agencies and clients: Labour recruitment in Java, 1870s–1950s, CLARA Working Paper, no. 14 (Amsterdam: IIAS/IISG, 2002), pp. 6–7.
39 Ibid., pp. 8–10; De Sumatra Post, 28 June 1906, 22 Jan. 1912.
40 B. van Delden was appointed director, J. Rijk van Alkemade vice-director, and Van Heeckeren, G.F. van Maanen, H. van Marken and A.C. de Wilde commissioners. De Locomotief, 22 Feb. 1898.
41 In the late 1920s Semadmij owned or directed: sugar, tobacco, tea, sisal, coffee, rubber and quinine estates, machinery and construction plants, quinine and iodine factories, hotels, printing houses, furniture and woodworking plants, pharmacies, and oil companies. De Locomotief, 1 Sept. 1948.
42 Tjoa Soe Tjong, ‘One hundred years of the Oei Tiong Ham Concern’, in Yoshihara, Oei Tiong Ham Concern, p. 75.
43 On the numerous failures of the opium farmers in the period 1887–90, see Rush, Opium to Java, pp. 182–90. On the fierce battle between the Be and the Oei families in acquiring the licence for Ho Tjiauw Ing's Semarang opium farm, see Claudine Salmon, ‘A critical view of the opium farmers as reflected in a syair by Boen Sing Hoo (Semarang, 1889)’, Indonesia, special issue (July 1991): 25–51.
44 De Locomotief, 11 Dec. 1891, 20 Feb. 1892.
45 NIHB was to become Kian Gwan Trading Co.'s main bank and sided with the OTHC in its opposition to the colonial government's sugar policies during the early 1930s. Arguably, the personal and business relations between Oei Tiong Ham, M. Plate, C. Voûte and Van Heeckeren during the founding of Oei's sugar empire were instrumental in the bank's role.
46 Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 29 Apr. 1893.
47 De Java Bode, 4 Oct. 1893.
48 Peter Post, ‘Founding an ethnic Chinese business empire in colonial Asia: The strategic alliances of Major Oei Tiong Ham, 1895–1905’, JMBRAS 92, 2, 317 (2019): 29–56.
49 Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 2 Feb. 1895; De Locomotief, 12 Oct. 1895; Soerabaijasch Handelsblad, 14 July 1897; Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 17 May 1905; HNDNI, 28 Jan. 1908. Steve Haryono (Yeo Tjong Yan), Perkawinan Strategis: Hubungan keluarga antara opsir-opsir Tionghoa dan ‘cabang atas’ pada abad ke-19 dan 20 (Rotterdam: privately published, 2017), pp. 110–11.
50 Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 8 Jan. 1894.
51 Ko Djie Soei was owner of a large shop in Magelang that catered mainly for the European population and the upper layer of Chinese society and sold exclusive European beers and wines, canned butter, cigars and other luxury items. He and his brother Ko Djie Soen, lieutenant of Magelang, were guarantors for Oei Tiong Ham's opium farms in Surabaya and Yogyakarta.
52 Claudine Salmon, ‘The Chinese community of Surabaya, from its origins to the 1930s crisis’, Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies 3 (2009): 22–60.
53 One of Oei Tiong Ham's major opium kongsi partners in East Java was The Siok Lian, a wealthy pawnshop owner, whose son The Tik Gwan married Tiong Ham's sister.
54 Soerabaijasch Handelsblad, 23 Jan. 1896.
55 De Locomotief, 3 Aug. 1896.
56 Samarangsch Advertentieblad, 2 July 1896. On the power struggle between the Oei-The family network and the Han family see Post, Strategic alliances, pp. 33–43.
57 The remaining five shares were taken by Van Heeckeren, H. Mathes (junior associate of Van Heeckeren), the Peter & Co. real estate agency, Ko Djie Soei and Tjioe Ping Hie. Soerabaijasch Handelsblad, 3 Mar. 1902.
58 Soerabaijasch Handelsblad, 21 Feb. 1908.
59 One picul is 61.76 kilograms.
60 Dick, Oei Tiong Ham, p. 276; Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 17 May 1905, 17 Apr. 1906. One bahu is 7,096 m2.
61 On the massive market shift of Java's sugar industry to British India, see Roger Knight, Commodities and colonialism: The story of big sugar in Indonesia, 1880–1942 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 38–42.
62 On the widespread anti-Chinese sentiments among the Indo-Europeans see Bosma and Raben, Indische Wereld, pp. 261–2; Alex Claver, Dutch commerce and Chinese merchants in Java: Colonial relationships in trade and finance, 1800–1942 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 191–4.
63 Van Heeckeren appointed and dismissed administrators and the company's secretaries, decided their salaries and benefits, closed consignment contracts or harvest commitments, acquired immovable property or alienated the immovable possessions of the company, was responsible for the reconstruction and technological innovations of the sugar factories, signed the agreements with the colonial authorities regarding the construction of waterworks, harbour and transport facilities, etc. See Roger Wiseman, ‘Three crises: Management in the colonial Java sugar industry, 1880s–1930s’ (PhD diss., University of Adelaide, 2001), p. 58.
64 Knight, Commodities and colonialism, p. 40.
65 See Koloniaal Verslag, 1918, I, Nederlandsch Oost-Indië, Appendix Z.
66 Post, Kwee family, pp. 114–36.
67 Jamie Mackie, ‘Towkays and tycoons: The Chinese in Indonesian economic life in the 1920s and 1980s’, Indonesia, special issue (July 1991): 87.
68 See Post, Strategic alliances, pp. 47–51.
69 Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad, 12 Oct. 1897. This fee was the standard amount for Dutch law firms offering their services to the cabang atas.
70 De Preanger Bode, 16 Mar. 1910.
71 HNDNI, 20 Nov. 1911.
72 Joost Coté, ‘Staging modernity: The Semarang International Colonial Exhibition, 1914’, Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs 40, 1 (2006): 1–44; Post, Kwee family, pp. 155–6.
73 HNDNI, 22 Apr. 1913.
74 Algemeen Handelsblad, 15 Oct. 1913.
75 De Preanger Bode, 9 July 1920.
76 Dick, Oei Tiong Ham, p. 276.
77 Ibid., p. 278.
78 Djie Ting Ham (1897–1949) was born in Kediri; he was the son of Djie Thay Hien, major Cina, and Tan Twan Nio. He went to the Netherlands in July 1916 to study at the Handelshoogeschool (forerunner of Erasmus University), Rotterdam. He became an active member of the Peranakan Chinese student organisation Chung Hwa Hui (CHH), becoming its treasurer in 1920. In June 1923 he obtained his doctoraal and in March 1926 defended his dissertation ‘De Algemeene Banken van Nederlandsch-Indie’ (The General Banks of the Netherlands Indies). Returning to Java, Oei Tjong Swan invited him to join the OTHC head office, Semarang, and he was appointed managing clerk of the Bank Association Oei Tiong Ham. In 1929 he became vice-director of the Algemeene Maatschappij. During the 1930s, because of Oei Tjong Hauw's prolonged stays overseas, Djie Ting Ham was the actual CEO of the OTHC sugar factories, dealing with the Indies government on matters pertaining to the sugar industry. H.P. van den Aardweg, ed., Persoonlijkheden in het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in Woord en Beeld (Amsterdam: Van Holkema & Warendorf N.V., 1938), p. 362.
79 Yap Kie Ling and his brother Yap Kie Tjwan both graduated from the Technical College of Delft in 1925. Kie Ling had majored in electrical engineering and Kie Tjwan in chemistry. In early 1926 both started to work for the Algemeene Maatschappij. Kie Ling started as a 2nd engineer in the Redjo Agoeng factory and Kie Tjwan began as assistant chemist at the Krebet factory which needed a chemist with knowledge of white sugar production. A first-class engineer, Kie Ling was central to the electrification of Redjo Agoeng in 1928, the first sugar factory in Java to be fully electrified. In January 1931 he was promoted to technical advisor, replacing Dutch engineer O.A.D. Emmen. Three years later he also replaced the Dutch chemical advisor Ir. G.E. van Nes. Yap Kie Ling stature within OTHC grew from the mid-1930s; until the late 1950s he was one of the leading figures in the Java sugar industry. Liem Tjwan Ling, ‘Sugar King: Oei Tiong Ham’, in Yoshihara, Oei Tiong Ham, pp. 145–6.
80 Arjen Tasselaar, De Nederlandse koloniale lobby. Ondernemers en de Indische politiek 1914–1940 (Leiden: CNWS Publications no. 82, 1998), pp. 102–4.
81 Tasselaar, Koloniale Lobby, pp. 106–7.
82 Ibid., p. 69.
83 Peter Post, ‘Bringing China to Java: The Oei Tiong Ham Concern and Chen Kung-po during the Nanjing decade’, Journal of Chinese Overseas 15, 1 (2019): 33–61.
84 In A. Sidharta, E. Budihardjo, Suwarno, Th. Stevens et al., Semarang. Beeld van een Stad (Purmerend: Asia Maior, 1995), pp. 19–21, a whole section is devoted to the contributions of Oei Tiong Ham to the development of Semarang.
85 Dick, Oei Tiong Ham, pp. 278–9.
86 A few years later, in 1906, Major Tjong A Fie of Medan employed the Dutchman Dolf Kamerlingh Onnes as superintendent over his estates and as manager of his other businesses. Tjong A Fie was the first Chinese in East Sumatra to employ Europeans for his businesses. There is a great similarity with Oei Tiong Ham here, and there is good reason to believe that Tjong A Fie, Oei Tiong Ham and other Overseas Chinese tycoons discussed these issues. See Buisekool, Chinese commercial elite, pp. 113–29.
87 Koo, Autobiography, pp. 51–3.