The Impossible Colonial Border: Chinese migration and immigration policies in the Netherlands East Indies, 1880-1912 Bastiaan Nugteren Thesis Research Master History: Colonial and Global History Leiden University 21-10-2016 Supervisor: Dr. Alicia Schrikker 0 Table of Contents Introduction 2 Chapter 1: The Chinese Migrations to the Netherlands East Indies from a Global, 7 Regional, and Historiographical Perspective 1.1: Chinese migration and anti-Chinese immigration laws from a global perspective 8 1.2: Transnational and regional histories of the Chinese migration in Southeast-Asia 17 1.3: The Chinese Migration in historiography on the Netherlands East Indies 23 1.4: Terminology and conceptualization 27 1.5: Conclusion 34 Chapter 2: Chinese Migration to Java and Sumatra: labor shortage, public opinion, 36 and immigration policies. 2.1: The Chinese migrations to East-Sumatra and Java 37 2.2: Recruiting Chinese plantation workers: labor migrations and the Deli Planters Society 38 2.3: Fortune seekers and vagrants: anti-Chinese sentiment in the Indies press 47 2.4: Policies for entry, travel and removal 51 2.5: Conclusion 60 Chapter 3: Knowing the Migrant: Identification, Fingerprinting and the Chinese 63 3.1: Information, identification and empire 64 3.2: Discussing dactyloscopy in the Netherlands East Indies 69 3.3: Conclusion 75 Chapter 4: Between Dutch and Chinese: nationalism, nationality and consul representation 77 4.1: Connections between the Chinese State and the overseas Chinese 78 4.2: Delaying the inevitable: consular representation and migrant nationality 83 4.3: The Chinese New Year Riots of 1912 91 4.4: Conclusion 93 Conclusion 95 Bibliography 100 1 Introduction It is the curious reversals of the flow southwards, periodically running evenly, occasionally gushing, sometimes tightly shut, more often dripping like a leaking tap, that provide the rhythm behind the historical interaction of China and Southeast Asia. Beneath that tap we might envisage the pool of water it feeds, which sometimes looks constant or expanding although in reality seepage is occurring from the pool into the surrounding terrain it helps to fertilize. Only when the tap is shut relatively tightly can one observe the seepage draining the pond altogether. (Anthony Reid, 1996)1 Anthony Reid's metaphoric description of the Chinese migration to Southeast-Asia above brilliantly captures the importance of this event in the history of migration and the history of Southeast-Asia. Although he also refers to the earlier migrations of the Chinese to Southeast-Asia which already took place since the tenth century, the Chinese migration in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century are especially important when approached from a global scale. In this period, the world was on the move and millions of people sought fortune and happiness elsewhere. The focus of historian's analyzing this huge spike in migration have however been predominantly on the migrations across the Atlantic Ocean. This Eurocentric approach veils the high numbers of Chinese migrants that decided to emigrate to foreign countries and colonies. Between 1840 and 1940, an impressive amount of 20 million Chinese migrated, with close to 18 million leaving for the colonial states in Southeast-Asia.2 To return to Reid's metaphor: in this period the tap of Chinese migration was certainly gushing. The historiography of the Chinese migration has however been severely fragmented, either through historian's geographical specializations or their choices on temporal delineations, resulting in small-scale localized histories of specific Chinese migrant communities. Histories that hope to capture the Chinese migration in this period on a global scale are scarce. One example stands out. The impressive work Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders by migration historian Adam McKeown attempts to approach the Chinese migration in this period through a focus on the emergence of international agreements and standards in migration control, that according to him are heavily influenced by the mass migration of Chinese and Indians.3 His focus is however also geographically limited, as it only discusses white-settler nations such as the United States, Australia, South-Africa and 1 Quoted from: Anthony Reid, 'Flows and Seepages in the Long-term Chinese Interaction with Southeast Asia', in: Anthony Reid (ed.), Sojourners and Settlers. Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese (Honolulu, 1996/2001) 15. 2 Adam McKeown, 'Chinese emigration in global context, 1850-1940', in: Journal of Global History,Vol.5, No.1 (March 2010), 98 3 Adam McKeown, Melancholy Order. Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (New York 2008) 2 Canada. Even though these states were crucial in developing modern immigration policies, the major destination of Chinese migration, the Southeast-Asian colonies that welcomed 90 percent of all Chinese migration in this period, are almost completely overlooked in his analysis. Furthermore, the estimates by McKeown also show that there is a major difference in time. Where the white-settler nations discussed by him managed to close off their borders for Chinese migrants around the turn of the century, the Southeast-Asian colonies remained open to the Chinese migration. The two peaks in migration statistics can be found in the periods 1880-1914 and 1920-1930 and following the 90 percent mentioned earlier, the majority of them were destined for Southeast-Asia. It therefore seems that this region is diverting from the global path taken by governments that in that period closed off their borders for unwanted migrants. An historical analysis of the Chinese migration to this region is an important contribution to our understanding of both the Chinese migration in total and the global spread of immigration policies discussed by McKeown. Through a focus on the Chinese migration and immigration policies in the Netherlands East Indies, this study hopes to shed light on the nature of the Chinese migration to Southeast-Asia and the attempts of colonial governments to regulate and control the ongoing migration. Because of the major statistical differences in Chinese migrations between McKeown's white-settler nations and the Southeast-Asian colonies, the main research question of this study will therefore be why the Netherlands East Indies - and in a sense the other Southeast-Asian colonies - diverted from the global development of closing borders in face of the Chinese migration. Although there are plenty of historians who discussed the Chinese in Southeast-Asia from a regional perspective, the majority of them tend to deal with the economic success of the elite merchant classes of the Southeast-Asian Chinese. The actual migration itself, as well as the immigration policies of colonial governments that were shaped by the incoming Chinese migrants, have only shortly been discussed by historians. When zooming in on the colonial states in this period, such as the Netherlands East Indies, one automatically approaches the field of colonial history. As with the regional histories on the Southeast-Asian Chinese, these colonial histories tend to be either very localized or are too focused on the internal affairs of the colonial state. Neither is there much attention for the topic of migration, which assumedly is connected to the often inward approaches in colonial histories. This means that there is a gap in the Netherlands East Indies historiography. This gap obscures the importance of the Chinese migration and the immigration policies created by the Dutch. A focus on the Chinese migration to the Netherlands East Indies, especially in this period, explains the functioning of the Dutch colonial state in several ways. It reveals how the Dutch attempted to control their borders, 3 how they internationally negotiated with other states in the region, with China being a major example, and how they governed a non-indigenous population in a pluralist but legally unequal society. As this study hopes to make clear, the presence of the Chinese migrants, who often felt a strong cultural connection with their ancestral homeland, laid bare some of the complex and awkward principles of inequality in the Dutch colonial state. A focus on migration and the colony's borders therefore tells us a lot about the Netherlands East Indies and its internal policies. An overarching question in this research is thus how the immigration of the Chinese and the Dutch reaction to it influenced the Dutch colonial state and is partly answered by specific foci on the immigration policies themselves, the discussions taking place about introducing reliable identification techniques for migrants, and the problems caused by double-nationalities of newly arrived Chinese in the colony. The focus on the Chinese migration and the Dutch immigration policies vis-à-vis the Chinese also functions to place the Netherland East Indies more into its regional context. Immigration affairs often led to diplomatic contact with neighboring colonies or with the Qing Empire itself. As we will see, China became increasingly involved in Dutch policies concerning the Chinese in the colony. But also in securing a steady stream of Chinese labor migrants to work on plantations or in mines on the Outer Islands of the Indies, the Dutch were forced to tap into a European diplomatic network stretching from Batavia, to Singapore and to European settlements and diplomats in China. An analysis of the Chinese migration therefore places the Netherlands East Indies into its regional context, which is still an omission in Dutch historiography on the Indies. As this study will show, the Dutch, as a small European imperial power, could not operate on its own in international affairs. With Chinese migration being a regional and global phenomenon and thereby required international agreements between various states, a focus on this topic can help us widen our perspective on the connections between the Netherlands East Indies and the rest of the world. As mentioned, the historiography on the Chinese migration in this period is geographically divided and severely localized.