The View Of Batavia Chinese Famliy Life From The End Of Eighteenth To The Mid-nienteeth Century

After capturing Jakarta in West Java in 1619,the Dutch East India Company (VOC) renamed the city as Batavia(or Bar City,now Jakarta,the capital of Indonesia) and regarded it as the foundation in the Southeast Asia.At the end of the eighteenth century,Overseas Chinese in Batavia set up their own semi-autonomous agency-State Bar court.State Bar court dealt with their civil affairs on their own accord.At the same time,the traces of the Chinese activities were also kept in documents,which were compiled and published with the name of Gong An Bu,because of the historical value which recorded the situation of Chinese people's social life in Batavia from 1787 to 1940.The main source of this article is Gong An Bu,part of which(Series 1-7) have been published recent years.However,they have not yet been widely used till now. With the help of Gong An Bu,I would like to discuss the family life of overseas Chinese from 1787 to 1851,and analyze how Chinese made their money and how they managed their household income.Moreover,how women played their roles in managing the household income will also be discussed.Then the original appearance of the city of Chinese life will be re-shown to some extent.In this paper,I suppose:During this period,apart from a minority of privileges could pursue great economic benefits by means of privilege tax,most of Chinese in Bar City were in Lower economic situation.The Chinese in Bar City was very hard-working;they operated the civilian industries covering all aspects of the social life.From the late eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century,a lot of law cases were related to the marriage between indigenous people and Chinese family.This kind of marriage was quite common during this period.Chinese(especially Chinese men) married with local people while also discriminated them.The richer Chinese could have a number of concubines, but they were also sued in court by their legitimate wives frequently because these Chinese wives felt disposable because of petting concubine wives.The structure of Chinese family in Bar City was very unstable,domestic violence and strife,divorce and the uneven distribution of property could be seen everywhere in the cases.These cases are a vivid reflection of the Chinese family life in Bar City.