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I have a copy of
an old map of Banten dating back to the 1620s when the British and
Dutch, attracted by the port’s riches, battled and struggled to make a
living in a place that was best described in a letter home as ‘ not a
place to recover men that are sick but to kill men that come thither in
health.’ At that time Banten was possibly the most important city in the
region, sitting as it did on the main trade routes that served the Spice
Islands, China and India.
The Dutch had
arrived in the late 16th Century and, rather put off by the
internecine struggling over a regal succession, bombed the place to
smithereens, killing hundreds in an orgy of murder and wanton violence.
For some reason, they were welcomed and allowed to trade and this
encouraged the British to have a go, opening a factory in 1603 and
telling 11 guys that’s it’s really ok, we’ll leave you here for at least
2 years in this ‘stinking stew’ but we’ll come back, honest.
Then, as today,
the heart of the city was the Alun Alun where the ruler would sit down
to meet with the people and solve their problems on the open square. The
Masjid Agung was at the heart of the Alun Alun, constructed in the mid
1500s with its lighthouse style minaret supposedly added by a Chinese
Muslim in 1559. To the south of the square lay the impressive Surosowan
Palace, designed by a Dutchman and later razed by his countrymen.
The English
factory lay to the west of the royal buildings, approximately where the
Chinese temple is today and seaward of the other non-Bantenese quarters,
including the Chinese and the Dutch. A small channel linked the factory
to the main harbour and one thing that the visitor will notice today is
the harbour. It’s gone! The port, where vessels from all areas of the
Orient, Cathay, the isles of the archipelago congregated, has silted up
and the sea front is further to the north than it once was.
It was a tough
time for those early traders. With no Internet or BBC World Service news
of events in distant Europe would take months to reach them. Thieves
plagued them but the swift execution of 6 put a stop to that. The locals
wondered at the large amounts of pepper that the British were buying but
they came to the conclusion that houses in England were so cold that the
condiment was used as insulation. One wonders what they would have made
of the immense profits these hairy, smelly white skinned men were hoping
to make.
Two of the
merchants died within months of being left by the fleet that had
returned home counting their profits on abacus and dreaming of mermaids
and sea monsters as they charted the Cape. The survivors, hanging on in
such salubrious settings, fought to keep some self-discipline. At that
time, Banten was infamous for it’s loose morals so the English
steadfastly followed a daily ritual of mornings and evenings in prayers.
They also dined together and consumed vast quantities of the local
firewater. A sea captain that was to visit in later years considered
himself scandalized by the drunken activities of the shore based
merchants. Many a CEO, visiting his overseas-based operations today, can
no doubt sympathize.
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As if the
climate and liver abuse wasn’t enough, the merchants also had to
put up with the local headhunters. ‘There were some Javanese
women that would cut of their husband’s heads in the night and
sell them…they did linger much around our house,’ reports a
gentleman named Scott who somehow lasted 2 years while many
around him fell. |
How to get here:
I came by car. Take the Jakarta Merak Toll Road
and exit at Serang. Head north and follow the signs to Banten
Lama. For public transport take a mini bus from Serang. You can
reach Serang by bus or train from Jakarta Kota. Avoid Sundays! |
Then there was
rivalry with the Dutch, which often spilled over into violence. Again,
it is not recorded what the locals thought about these foreigners who
traveled so far to beat the living daylights out of each other but as
anyone who has followed the England football team will attest, not much
has changed. And if you ever meet the aforementioned Scott, don’t
mention the word fire. ‘Oh this word fire! Had it been spoken near me in
English, Malay, Javanese or Chinese while I was asleep, I would have
leapt out of bed which I have done when our men on the watch have
whispered the word.’ The poor guy must have been a nervous wreck,
sitting at night in his candle lit wooden compound penning his thoughts
with quill and paper, listening to the noises of the jungle and the
market while arsonists and head hunters lurked in the shadows and his
men, fortified by arrack and bravado fought and died to their hearts
content. The sight of an English ship at Christmas 1604 must have been
the best present he’d ever received.
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Click
here
and
here
for more Images of Banten Lama |
One night his
worst nightmares came true and the place went up in smoke. Scott was
flawless in his attention to detail as he described the retribution on
one of the arsonists. They burned him under the toenails and finger
nails with a hot iron. They tore the nails off. They burned him on the
arms and neck. Iron screws were screwed into his bones then yanked
sharply out. Bones were broken on feet and hands one by one. All the
while the victim said nothing, shed not a tear. Indeed he tried to bite
off his tongue. So they tied him up in irons and poured white ants over
his body to attack the wounds. They then tied him to a post and shot
him. The first bullet hit his arm, the second near his shoulder. The
third finally put him out of his misery and in a sign of European
togetherness the English and Dutch fired into his inert body.
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Despite
such punishments, the English were forever on their guard. The
Javanese were unable to distinguish between them and the Dutch
and so visiting Dutch mariners, treating Banten like an early
Pattaya would fall around the streets getting drunk and
offending Muslim sensibilities then blame the English. The
English hit upon a scheme to illustrate the difference between
the two parties. |
Additional Reading:
The Honourable
Company - John Keay
Nathaniel's Nutmeg - Giles Milton
This article first appeared in Jakarta Kini
magazine |
They decided to
celebrate the anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I. They
festooned their compound in red and white and raised the flag of St
George. They marched up and down, all 14 of them, with solemn pomp and
ceremony under the tropical sun. it wasn’t long before the locals
started asking questions and this was the opening the English were
after. They explained that their country was ruled by a monarch, as was
Banten. The locals were impressed that they should revere their monarch
from afar and it wasn’t long before chanting children were running round
the factory yelling ‘Orang Ingriss bayck, orak Hollanda jahad.’
Today, as you walk
around the remains of Fort Speelwijk, the children are still there but
now they are chanting for money. By 1620 Banten was the centre of a
trading bloc that reached from Masilputnam in India to Makassar except
it wasn’t to last. The English struggled on in Banten but the power was
with the Dutch. Trade was shifted to Batavia and the English kicked out
towards the end of the 17th Century. The fort, opposite the
old English factory was built to reinforce Dutch supremacy. Looking from
the battlements one has to imagine the sea for it is no longer visible.
By the middle of
the 18th Century the Dutch were well in control but the area
was still unhealthy. In 1804 a party of 50 esteemed personages left
Batavia to attend the coronation of a new sultan. No more than 10
survived. The sultan himself was sickly. In 1808 the Dutch destroyed
Surosowan Palace and three years later when Raffles and The English
arrived, Banten was pretty much a backwater.
On my visit there
on a Sunday morning, mini buses brought in pilgrims attracted by the
impressive Mosque while the Palace, Alun Alun and Fort were given over
to young lads playing football before the sun rose too high. It makes a
pleasant enough day trip to clamber over the battlements and imagine its
former glory. The Chinese traders counting their dollars, the Dutch
sailors at play, the English quivering in their compound, the
headhunters digging up freshly buried corpses, the sturdy ships anchored
out a port the land has reclaimed. |
