Indian Muslim Merchants in Batavia during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Paper Abstract: Batavia was a Dutch colonial port city in Java, and it was a center point in the oceanic trading network of the Dutch East India Company (hereafter VOC) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in terms of its central administration within the whole over maritime Asia. Although the city was fundamentally governed under the authorities of the VOC, from the point of view of number the Dutch population was definitely small, and there were a variety of other ethnic groups such as Indo-Portuguese, Chinese, Indonesian slaves and Indian Muslims. In short, Batavia was a multi-ethnic society in the early modern period.

My paper sheds light on Indian Muslim settlers in Batavia from the following three points: First, the paper gives a demographical survey of Indian Muslims in Batavia, which makes clear the trend of population growth, gender balance and a typical form of family. The second section of the paper is concerned with their own international trade. They were engaged in the maritime trade between Batavia and the Coromandel Coast in the southeastern part of the Indian subcontinent such as the port city of Nagapatinam. Third, the paper investigates the relations between the VOC and the Indian Muslim community in Batavia. Especially it deals with the privileges given by the VOC to the community regarding the self-governance and with other VOC’s favorable treatments such as the establishment of a hospital exclusively for the Indian Muslim in the eighteenth century.