Concomitant Recital of a Prolonged Reign: Dilation of the Dutch Empire and Enticement

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A B S T R A C T The VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) was both the absolutist and the pacifier as it sought to colonize Sunda Kelapa through the displacement of indigenous population, architecture, and regimen; the VOC was deployed catalyst to the marking of a golden era, roughly spanning the 17th century through which architecture, trade, science, and military boomed, marking Jakarta a resilient harbour to the world's finest trades. Batavia, modern day Jakarta, welded a myriad of names, endorsing its irrefutable paramount; one of which, "Queen of the East", paraphrased an allusion to its urban beauty. Until its last derogatory stages, before the Dutch surrendered to the Japanese, the name Batavia ricocheted across the globe, as reverberation to its resilience, urban beauty, varsity of cultures, and robust trade as the Dutch East India Company. The VOC has, unequivocally, paved the road of prominence for the glorious city of Jakarta, manifesting a discourse of exalt. Analysing the egress and relinquishment of the Dutch Empire and its appurtenant colony, delineating the urban tableau, a prevalent architectural resplendence. The unravelling of holistic fabric through which urban planning, architectonics, politics and sociology interweave, meandering the gradual transition of the Dutch East Indies, yearning subordinate to Jakarta; the unwavering proclaimed prerogative.

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Concomitant Recital of a Prolonged Reign: Dilation of the Dutch Empire and Enticement of Ascendency, Delineating Batavia, Victim and Valedictorian * B.A. SIEPAN KHALIL1, B.A. PAKINAM ZEID 2 1 Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Fine Arts, Girne American 2 Department of Architecture, Faculty of Fine Arts, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt E mail: siepan_rizgar@hotmail.com E mail: pakinam_zeid@hotmail.com A B S T R A C T The VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) was both the absolutist and the pacifier as it sought to colonize Sunda Kelapa through the displacement of indigenous population, architecture, and regimen; the VOC was deployed catalyst to the marking of a golden era, roughly spanning the 17th century through which architecture, trade, science, and military boomed, marking Jakarta a resilient harbour to the world's finest trades. Batavia, modern day Jakarta, welded a myriad of names, endorsing its irrefutable paramount; one of which, "Queen of the East", paraphrased an allusion to its urban beauty. Until its last derogatory stages, before the Dutch surrendered to the Japanese, the name Batavia ricocheted across the globe, as reverberation to its resilience, urban beauty, varsity of cultures, and robust trade as the Dutch East India Company. The VOC has, unequivocally, paved the road of prominence for the glorious city of Jakarta, manifesting a discourse of exalt. Analysing the egress and relinquishment of the Dutch Empire and its appurtenant colony, delineating the urban tableau, a prevalent architectural resplendence. The unravelling of holistic fabric through which urban planning, architectonics, politics and sociology interweave, meandering the gradual transition of the Dutch East Indies, yearning subordinate to Jakarta; the unwavering proclaimed prerogative. CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2019), 3(1), 161-174. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2018.4693 www.ijcua.com Copyright © 2018 Contemporary Urban Affairs. All rights reserved. 1. Forge of an Empire 1.1. Introduction The VOC, Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, acknowledged as the epitome to multi-national companies, was an amass joint company constituted of six different major Dutch companies. The Compagnie was a culmination of Dutch efforts to surpass competing European trading companies thriving in the East Indies, the world’s largest archipelago, encompassing 17.500 islands, one of which is Java, a relatively young island acknowledged for its remarkable fertility due to its geographical constitution. A trade port since the twelfth century, Jayakarta, origin of today’s name Jakarta, lied in central Java and was, therefore, sought by traders from Asia and Europe due to its strategic location, breeding dispute and wage of wars as companies competed for sovereign foothold. The power-shift labyrinth is palpably manifested through each ruling power’s attempt at alluding to its reign in the city’s ever-changing urban morphology, architecture, culture, socioeconomics, and, subsequently, name. Batavia, an allusion to the Dutch republic’s legendary ancestors, was assigned to the colonial city by the VOC Governor-General, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, and has quivered a ricochet in Jakarta’s history as its ruling power, the VOC, laid the foundation to the city’s thriving, prompting a golden age through which the East Indies’ economy soared. This monograph is a historical, urban, architectural, and sociological record of Jakarta’s colonial and post-colonial environs through which the Dutch Compagnie’s influence is discernible, affecting both the Indonesian context and its dwellers. The methods employed in the study are therefore dependent on a thorough reconstruction of the historical events, surveying of the city’s urban morphology, analysing of the sociological inbred hybridity, and conducting of a comparative analysis thereafter which, in turn, denotes a tenacious integration between the colonial past and post-colonial present, rendering both elements inseparable. Figure 1. Structure of the Study (Developed by Author). 1.2. Formation of Batavia Early Jakarta was part of Tarumanagara kingdom in the fourth century; Hinduism and Buddhism domineered the region, granting central Java the name Land of Thousand Temples. Amongst the integral apparatus to Jakarta’s political and social power was Sunda Kelapa’s port which was part of the Srivijaya Empire in the seventh century, a power that consolidated its tenure until the thirteenth century. A univocal trade sovereign first attracted Europeans into the region in the sixteenth century when the Portuguese merchants first ventured forays to the region and, eventually, established concord with the Sunda Kingdom, building their own port in 1522. It wasn’t until 1527 that the city waned in the face of the powerful Banten Sultanate and was named Jayakarta. Figure 2. Borobudar, 9th century Mahayana Buddhist temple located in Central Java, offers a glimpse of ingenuous Indonesian architecture, Indonesia, a Country Study, William H. Frederick. The fifteenth century was marked by the Portuguese efforts to enlighten the Europeans of the world’s broad oceans in hopes of emphasizing an annex to the European market through the cheaply provided spices of the East. It was the venturesome expeditions initiated by the Portuguese, followed by the Spanish that sparked an interest in the Dutch Republic to explore the Indies. The first Dutch expedition to Indonesia, taking place from 1595 to 1597, was instrumental to the viability of the soon to be founded VOC and its lucrative contribution to the Indonesian spice trade. Compagnie van Verre, the first Dutch expedition, raised 290,000 guilders, cobbling four ships: the Mauritius, Amsterdam, Hollandia, and Duyfken. The fleet faced plenty of obstacles, many of which were a direct result of bad leadership skills offered by Cornelis de Houtman, the de facto leader of the expedition. Suffering many losses and earning very few allocation of spices, Compagnie van Verre yielded many of its recruits due to illness or sporadic unfriendliness towards the natives which cost the Dutch wars the armada couldn’t handle.

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