Questions

Chinese, including Hokkien and Teochew (Chaozhou) natives who had settled in Vietnam, became involved in the Tay Son rebellion in the late eighteenth century. This rebellion forms one of the two events discussed here. In 1774, the Trinh lord of northern Vietnam ordered his troops, stationed at the recently captured capital of the Quang Nam regime in central Vietnam, to advance southward.Footnote ³ For the northern regime, it was a great chance to ‘unify’ the southern regime, by using the excuse of putting down a rebellion.

During the advance, the Vietnamese general, Hoang Ngu Phuc, encountered a group of armed men led by a Qing Teochew merchant named Jiting (Tap Dinh). The group was unexpectedly formidable, according to the Vietnamese records:

General Hoang's army had to fight hard, ultimately winning due to the advantage of their cavalry. The results of this key battle changed the course of the civil war in Vietnam. The rebel leader Nguyen Nhac surrendered to the northern lord, while his partner, another Chinese leader, turned away to stand at the side of the southern lord, Nguyen Phuc Thuan.

Jiting was also known as Li Aji. He was a native of Teochew, the main Hokkien-speaking region. His partner, Li Cai (Ly Tai, or Li Azhi), was also a Hokkien native who had moved to Hoi An (Faifo) in Quang Nam during the Qianlong reign (1736–96) to earn a living, leading another force to stir up the situation. Jiting had migrated to Quy Nhơn before 1759, married a local woman, and connected to a group of immigrant Chinese.Footnote ⁵ Jiting played a major role in instigating domestic conflict in Vietnamese national politics by assisting the Tay Son rebel army to go against the southern lord, capturing and taking Lord Phuc Duong and his army to Hoi An, before the northern invasion.Footnote ⁶ Jiting himself was defeated by General Hoang's forces, escaped back to China, but was in turn captured by the Qing court. Although Jiting failed to manipulate politics further, this overseas Chinese leader had played an influential role in Quang Nam's affairs. Li Cai, through his continuing alliance with the Tay Son army, had an even greater impact on Vietnamese ‘national’ politics. In this sense, the diasporic Chinese/Hokkiens played a special part in this period of Vietnamese history. The question is: which adaptations resulted in their special status in Vietnam, compared to their situations in other host societies, especially in Batavia and Manila?

The Hokkiens in all three regions had emigrated from the same places in South China as Jiting and his soldiers: mostly from southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong provinces, from the same macroregion defined by William Skinner.Footnote ⁷ But if we look for a corresponding military leader in the Dutch East Indies or the Philippines, two other places where the Hokkiens settled in large numbers, it is hard to find such a figure.Footnote ⁸ Rather, the influential Hokkien leaders in the Dutch East Indies acted as agents, and enjoyed great economic and political privilege, instead of broad military influence. In the Philippines, wealthy community leaders such as Eng Kang (Joan Bautista de Vera) did not side with the Hokkiens rebelling against the Spanish authorities, although he played a double game to try to utilise the conflict for his own purposes.Footnote ⁹ Who, then, in the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines, could be considered equal in position to Jiting in Quang Nam?

Coming from the same region in southern Fujian, Jan Con (Gonthay), a compatriot and fellow trader, but not as powerful as Jiting, served the Dutch East India Company (VOC) loyally until his death. He was in charge of the construction of Batavia city for the Dutch in 1630s, but he died in debt, which shocked the VOC. Jan Con was also sent to Bantam (Banten), the Company's enemy, one that fought with the VOC for years, to seek peaceful negotiations.Footnote ¹⁰ Jan Con was not unique in this regard; other Chinese leaders in the Dutch East Indies played similar roles.Footnote ¹¹ As to the Philippines, as we will see, only the Hokkiens Pan Hewu and Juan de San (Eng Kang's adopted son) may be viewed as such kinds of heroic figures.

Thus, our quandary is evident. There is no doubt that Jiting and the ‘Ten Great Elders’ in southern Vietnam, Si-pánjang and Jan Con in Java, and Eng Kang and Pan Hewu in northern Philippines were leaders of great ability, but why did they play such different roles and follow such different paths? They were successful merchants and refugees, and, by and large, politicians. They were not the only overseas Chinese who played such roles, but were certainly the most famous in those three regions. What, then, were the factors that resulted in their varied fates, for instance, whereby they dealt with the controlling powers in a variety of patterns, or cooperated as agents? Did the differences between a more continental monarchic Vietnamese state, a more insular Dutch East Indies, and a non-agent colonial system in the Philippines, shape the local political ecologies as well as the Hokkiens themselves, who were restricted by but also affected the agenda? Indeed, the Hokkiens caused trouble as well as cooperated with the dominant powers in all three regions; however, the different adaptations that led to the various outcomes have been less discussed.

Earlier scholarship has indicated that the activities of overseas Chinese differed from country to country, and we know that the composition of Chinese sojourners and settlers also varied from region to region.Footnote ¹² But in what ways did their adaptations work and how? An examination of their different experiences will contribute to an understanding of how these historical diasporic communities adapted in different contexts and regions.Footnote ¹³

This article briefly examines the status and activities of those I will term ‘cooperators’ and ‘challengers’ to the status quo by analysing Hokkien communities in three early modern host societies of Southeast Asia. In contrast to the law-abiding civilians in Hoi An and Batavia, the Hokkiens in Manila acted more as restive sojourners. This phenomenon implies a potential difficulty in the Philippines.

There were, to be sure, Hokkiens who were involved in armed conflict in Quang Nam, and perpetrators of violence in the Dutch East Indies, both regions where the Hokkiens not only enjoyed a certain dominance in commerce, but were also involved in political or even military affairs. They were, however, not seen as so broadly cooperative and participatory in Philippine affairs before the late eighteenth century, especially in the diasporic centre of Manila. Hokkiens in the Philippines forged a particular diasporic path that was neither a full involvement nor participation in an agent system, as in the Dutch East Indies before the late eighteenth century, where many Hokkiens served as community leaders and councillors. Beyond the two groups, were three broad categories: merchant, armed individual, and pirate, any of which could roughly include cooperators and challengers. These categories sometimes overlapped.

By merchants, I mean those who manipulated the transregional intra-Asian bulk shipping trade or sojourners who preferred to develop their businesses in host societies where most of their activities were sanctioned; by armed individuals, I mean those who identified as rebels or soldiers, or who chose to resist the dominant regime, or as aliens, sent to fight; by pirates, I mean armed individuals who were active at sea, conducting raids, and searching for gain. Based on the fact that similar kinds of groups participated in distinctive forms of rebellion or cooperation, I further argue that the different activities and status outcomes of the heterogeneous Chinese under the same labels of merchants, armed individuals, or pirates, were directed or highly affected by the monarchic agenda in Quang Nam, or the colonial agendas in the Dutch East Indies and Philippines. Indeed, both cooperation and rebellion were dependent on the ruling agenda, but the Hokkien responses also reshaped local politics in turn. Problems between Hokkiens and local Southeast Asians, and ruling powers, only existed to the extent that the Hokkiens did not fit in with the local agenda, or when they could not adapt to the dominant power. Taking these factors into consideration is useful when reviewing the effectiveness of their immigrant adaptations.

Quang Nam

From the second half of the seventeenth to the first half of the eighteenth century, during the Trinh–Nguyen War (1627–73), Vietnamese history was marked by a continuing North–South split, and southern expansion. This split supplied opportunities for Hokkiens to engage in both trade and conflict for their own benefit. The Hokkiens sought both gain and shelter in Quang Nam, which helped the rise of the port of Hoi An. The internal political situation in Vietnam suited them and facilitated their activities. Both the northern and southern Vietnamese regimes engaged in overseas trading for profit, but the southern regime encouraged trade to a greater degree.Footnote ¹⁴ Against a background of competition with the north, and the need to resist northern pressure, the Nguyen lords encouraged overseas trading in general and, at the same time, expanded the trade further south. Their economic agenda — fiscal strengthening and southern expansion — provided a base for the Hokkiens.Footnote ¹⁵ Hokkiens settled down in their new space and were taxed. At the same time, the state tried using them to develop new sources of revenue.

The North–South split provided commercial opportunities for these foreign merchants. The Nguyen rulers did all they could to recruit Hokkien merchants, who gradually moved south after facing restrictions in Tonkin (Hanoi). Zhang Xie, a Hokkien literatus, described the special situation in South Vietnam.Footnote ¹⁶ The Jesuit, Chanseaume, also reported from Macau that Tonkin and Cochinchina competed with each other over commodity taxes, but that officials would collaborate with lords to take the expensive commodities without paying, so that only common and cheap goods were left on the market.Footnote ¹⁷

The Chinese were so successful in Quang Nam that the Dutch had to consider avoiding competition with them. When the Dutch learnt that the Japanese government forbade its ships from sailing to northern Vietnam, they decided to invest in Tonkin.Footnote ¹⁸ The Dutch were aware that because the Chinese and the Japanese were still trading in Quang Nam, they ‘could get hardly any profits’, ‘only encounter difficulties again, nothing more’.Footnote ¹⁹ Their establishment of trade relations with Quang Nam and Tonkin ‘was partly in quest of Chinese goods’.Footnote ²⁰

Political rivalries between the North and South provided mechanisms for large numbers of Hokkien merchants to adapt and secure their greatest gains in the south. In the late sixteenth century, they moved southward to sell their commodities, if they could not earn enough profits in Hue.

For example, in 1577, a ship belonging to the Hokkien merchant Chen Binsong, reached Hue, but found that there was an oversupply of trade commodities there. Hence, Chen decided to hire small boats on the spot in Jiaozhi (Giao Chỉ), northern Vietnam, to transfer his goods to Quang Nam, then under the control of Nguyen rulers. Chen's boats were attacked by Japanese pirates on their way. Together with their crews they were hijacked to Satsuma, southwestern Japan.Footnote ²¹ Despite such risks, the Hokkien merchants never stopped moving to Quang Nam, and there they came to dominate commerce over the next one-and-a-half centuries, especially in Hoi An. In this context, it was the rise of Hoi An, and the southern expansion of the Vietnamese state, that shaped the economic ecology of Quang Nam.

The Hokkien settlers contributed much to the rise of Hoi An as a port. This accorded with the goals of its Nguyen lords. The prominent Hokkien merchants and their leaders, such as ‘Ten Great Elders’ and ‘six surnames’, helped to maintain an orderly community.Footnote ²² Charles Wheeler has discussed the purpose of the Nguyen regime in opening the port, but we also need to notice that Hoi An's rise was first out of political and military considerations. Economic benefits were secondary.

Missionary Buddhists among the merchants, and the Minh Huong (refugees from the Ming dynasty) also served the southern expansion.Footnote ²³ Li Qingxin's study of the Minh Huong shows how the diasporic Chinese in Vietnam after the seventeenth century conducted their business, thereby making the economy prosper.Footnote ²⁴ Other studies have also demonstrated the contributions of the Chinese to Vietnam's southward expansion, including showing how Hokkien merchants actively competed with Cantonese merchants in the southern borderlands.Footnote ²⁵

The reigning Nguyen lords tolerated these Hokkiens, and utilised them for financial support. In addition, they also came to rely on some Hokkiens for basic diplomacy with foreign trading powers, for example, helping to restore relations with the VOC in 1651.Footnote ²⁶ In addition, some Chinese merchants were generous when the regime met with difficulties. When the Nguyen faced rebellion in the eighteenth century, ‘a Qing merchant named Xi assisted [us] by his hundreds of millions of properties, boosting the military morale’.Footnote ²⁷ Last but not least, the demand for artillery stimulated overseas trade, hence, the lords allowed the opening of the port of Hoi An in order to trade with Portuguese arms dealers in South China.

Getting enough artillery was crucial to the survival of the Nguyen regime given the Trinh army's superior infantry, and the demand for artillery was another key reason that the Nguyen lords needed knowledgeable and experienced Hokkiens as intermediaries. The power of artillery was demonstrated in the first half of the seventeenth century in northeast China, when Ming troops utilised their advanced artillery to resist Manchu cavalry, and killed Aisin Gioro Nurhaci in 1626.Footnote ²⁸ The Nguyen lords might not have learnt this lesson right away, but they must have been aware of the usefulness of the technology involved, and would not have ignored such a potent weapon.Footnote ²⁹ Using modern artillery to improve military capability became increasingly universal during this period. In 1627, the Nguyen army used artillery to inflict heavy losses against the Trinh, and it was this superiority that allowed an armed force which was only one-fourth the size of the Trinh army to achieve a balance against its northern opponent and survive.Footnote ³⁰

The Nguyen lords had reasons and, at the same time, European models to draw upon in strengthening the regime, although there were technical access issues as well. Since the Tokugawa Shogunate forbade Japanese Red-Seal Ships (Shuin-sen) from carrying firearms for export, and the Qing government also strictly controlled the technology after taking over China, the Nguyen lords could only rely on the Portuguese in Macau, considering the lords’ very bad relations with the Dutch, who had even allied with the Trinh regime against them.Footnote ³¹

This maritime route was partly influenced by the Hokkien merchants, especially after Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) took control of South China Sea routes in the mid-seventeenth century. Most of the Nguyen's 1,200 cannons were built between 1650 and 1660, the heyday of Zheng's power.Footnote ³² Hence, the lords could not refuse Hokkien help. In addition, some Zheng supporters also promoted Vietnam as an offshore base for the Sino–Japanese trade.Footnote ³³

The adaptation worked in this way: at first it was just individual Chinese merchants who brought silk to Vietnam for their ‘international trade’, but such exchanges year after year finally encouraged a group of them to settle down to ease this interchange. A French observation in 1615 reveals some details:

After the Japanese stopped visiting Hoi An, Hokkien merchants eventually took over and restored the symbolic Japanese Covered Bridge (Chua Cau/Lai Vien Kieu). They built a shrine inside to worship the god, ‘Emperor of the North’, while preserving the Japanese architectural style at the same time.Footnote ³⁵ This example not only indicated the good relations between the Japanese and Chinese merchants, but also a crucial adaptation of the Hokkiens in the host society: they accepted local authority, and local Chinese elders and administrators cooperated with the Nguyen regime.Footnote ³⁶ In this process, they also changed the character of this host community.

The Nguyen lords not only used the Chinese merchants to achieve their political agenda, but needed Chinese armies as well, in particular for southern expansion, as mentioned. The Nguyen were successful in their continued assimilation of former Cham-ruled lands, but also more effective exploitation of the southern territories.Footnote ³⁷

When Chen Shangchuan (Tran Thuong Xuyen), the Southern Ming commander-in-chief of Gaozhou, Leizhou and Lianzhou, failed to resist the Manchu army, and fled with 3,000 soldiers to Quang Nam, with his vice-commander Chen Anping (Tran An Binh), the Nguyen lord found a good opportunity to use a Chinese military force to exploit the south, as well as to resist the Khmer inhabitants of the Cambodian region.Footnote ³⁸ Hence, Chinese mercenaries were asked to settle in the Khmer sphere of influence, which the Vietnamese called Nam Ky, literally meaning ‘Southern Border’. Vietnamese documents record this process in a different way: the cultivation of the land by diasporic Chinese.Footnote ³⁹

These Chinese were settled in isolated villages along the southern border to exploit the uncultivated lands there. Afterwards they were considered representatives of the orthodox Ming dynasty. During the era of southward expansion, as a high-ranking official of Gia Dinh City described it in the early 1800s, ‘Hoa people (indigenised Chinese Vietnamese, including the Minh Huong), the diasporic Chinese, and the Khmers lived mixed with each other.’ They had businesses in many towns in southern Vietnam (in the southernmost coastal towns such as Kampot, even Malay sojourners joined in).Footnote ⁴⁰ In any case, all these groups were prompted to settle down in certain regions after conquest, in what were called Minh Huong villages. From the perspective of the Nguyen regime, the establishment of these Chinese villages was an accommodating adaptation. From the perspective of the diaspora, it was also a selective adaptation, to involve themselves in Vietnam's national politics, and not just a matter of forcible registration and localisation.Footnote ⁴¹

The third type of Hokkien or Chinese in these areas, the pirate, is a more ambivalent figure; nonetheless, status as ‘pirate’ shows even more strongly how political agenda influenced selective adaptation.Footnote ⁴² Such individuals could switch back and forth between multiple roles and identities, as they wished or as the situation demanded. They could be merchants, soldiers, pirates, and so on. For instance, Jiting was largely a pirate, but he had been a sojourner first, and then a mercenary leader, as was Li Cai. Their activities show how the Hokkiens were involved in Vietnamese domestic conflicts.

In early 1776, the Qianlong Emperor of China indicated with his red brush that Jiting so and so should ‘be executed immediately’ for the crime of ‘robbing and killing people overseas’, ‘causing trouble in the barbarian area [that is, Quang Nam]’, and ‘accepting an illegal official position’. He did so after reading the memorial that recorded Jiting's last confession in prison.Footnote ⁴³ The Tay Son rebellion supplied a stage for Jiting to show his abilities, and the potential power of the overseas Chinese.Footnote ⁴⁴ Having surveyed why and how the Hokkiens went to Quang Nam, and how and why they became involved in the Trinh–Nguyen power struggles, and in the southern expansion, it is time to return to how and why they engaged in another brutal Vietnamese domestic conflict mentioned earlier — the Tay Son Uprising.Footnote ⁴⁵

Various Hokkien-speaking groups were utilised by the local powers in this civil war. During the Tay Son years, many overseas Chinese supported the Nguyen lords, which helped restrain their opponents. These Chinese, mostly ‘pirates’, were lower-class migrants, as is revealed in the Qing interrogation records. That is, except for Li Cai's band, and the Heyi army. He Xiwen led his band, along with Liang Wenying, Zhou Yuanquan, Zhang Baguan, and some other pirates, to serve the Quang Nam regime in 1786, as auxiliary forces in its navy. According to the Vietnamese official history: ‘[He Xiwen] manages and leads the Chinese soldiers, follows their expedition, and has many battle achievements.’Footnote ⁴⁶

Despite this, most of the lower-class pirates joined the Tay Son side, no doubt due to their similar economic status and social background. For example, when Nguyen Nhac decided to make use of Lord Phuc Duong, Jiting and Li Cai led the mercenaries in pursuit of Phuc Duong, and forced him to return with them to Hoi An.Footnote ⁴⁷ Dian H. Murray has studied late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century pirate activity along the South China coast, and concludes that it was the Tay Son regime that supplied them with a warm bed to breed.Footnote ⁴⁸ As a result most of the pirates were connected to Tay Son power, and so developed their organisation, strongholds, and weapons.Footnote ⁴⁹

These Chinese pirates who supported the Tay Son power, and other Hokkiens who helped the Nguyen lords, stirred up Vietnamese domestic politics with their military forces. After general Tong Phuoc Hiep died, Li Cai felt that it was unsafe to remain on the Quang Nam side because the Eastern Mountain High General, Do Thanh Nhon, did not like him, and therefore prevented the Nguyen lord from making use of him. Bullied and humiliated by Do's Eastern Mountain force, and partly trying to avoid the pitiful fate of Jiting, Li Cai rebelled again in 1776: ‘[He] added members of the Chinese community to his army and mobilised them, to produce an army that was over 8,000 … [he] even recruited and captured some Minh Huong and some Tỉnh Thua people and other rascally villains.’Footnote ⁵⁰ Li Cai's additional troops were, without doubt, mostly Teochew, Cantonese and Hokkien, and they defeated Do's Quang Nam force, who ‘lost innumerable soldiers’. Then Li Cai advanced his army, and finally forced the Nguyen lord to abdicate and turn over the crown to Nguyen Phuc Duong.Footnote ⁵¹

This internal conflict severely damaged the Quang Nam regime. Its reliable Eastern Mountain Army suffered heavy losses, and this gave the Tay Son army the chance to attack.Footnote ⁵² Since the Hokkiens had so strongly supported the Quang Nam regime, the Tay Son army massacred the Chinese when it captured the last Nguyen stronghold of Gia Dinh in 1776.Footnote ⁵³

In short, the third type of Hokkien, the pirates, played a crucial role in Vietnamese history, especially during the years of the Tay Son Uprising. Some merchants also supplied capital to sustain the pirates.Footnote ⁵⁴ Thus, the pirates possessed some of the same characteristics as the merchant and armed groups, but the latter group performed differently.

Compared to the professional merchants, the ‘pirates’ played more obvious roles during abnormal periods, and most of them had a much lower economic status than the ‘merchants’; compared to escaped soldiers, they were also not ‘professional’ and behaved more like bandits. They involved themselves so deeply in Vietnamese domestic issues that they came to be seen not as aliens, but as local residents. Unlike the ‘merchants’ and armed groups, most of the pirates did not meet happy ends. In any case, it is crucial to reflect on what factors shaped the respective activities of these three varied ‘groups’.

The Dutch East Indies

In Quang Nam the Hokkien community played multiple roles. Those in the archipelagic Malay world showed much the same variety of roles. Before the Dutch colonised the Indonesian islands, all three categories of Hokkiens had played some role in that world: as merchants, armed individuals, and pirates. All had engaged in military settlement and trading. The structural sequence of these three types in society, however, represents a social ecology different from that of Quang Nam, a differential adaptation, one might say.

The merchant also had another function; a good example shows how merchants connected Quang Nam and the Dutch East Indies. On 6 September 1661, a relatively large Quinam (Quang Nam) junk ship reached Castle Zeelandia in southern Taiwan. The superiors on board reported that before the ship had left Quang Nam, a junk belonging to a Chinese kapitan of Batavia, Bingam, had arrived safely, bringing a letter from the governors-general of the VOC to the Nguyen lord. Since there were no gifts accompanying the letter, the (court) translator had not dared hand it over to the king.

When another Chinese junk with a Dutch pilot on board from Batavia, en route to Zeelandia, was damaged in a storm close to Quang Nam, and sought help from the Nguyen lord, the interpreters at last showed the original letter, which they had kept hidden, to the king. The king was ‘mightily pleased’ and ordered the junk to be repaired. He asked the Dutch pilot to inform the Dutch governor-general that he could henceforth freely send one or two ships to Quang Nam.Footnote ⁵⁵ As stated earlier, the relationship between Quang Nam and the VOC was quite bad, hence the overseas Chinese acted as middlemen, especially after relations were cut off in 1641.Footnote ⁵⁶

Merchants, of course, remained the major Hokkien category, gathering in host societies such as Semarang, Gresik and Surabaya.Footnote ⁵⁷ The Malay world was dotted with vigorous commercial sites before the Dutch came in 1596, and seized Batavia (Jakarta) in 1619. By then the Hokkiens had already established their status and developed local networks.

What we will see also elsewhere in the Malay Archipelago reminds us of the existence of more complex local societies, and a local political ecology with regard to the Hokkiens. In some cases Chinese seized places by force, or negotiated with the local chiefs to control harbours, or both sides used each other for mutual gain. By the end of the sixteenth century, Chinese trading centres appeared at Surabaya, Turban, Gresik, Bantam, and other places, not only in Java, but also in Sumatra and Western Borneo. These Chinese mostly came from Fujian and Guangdong.Footnote ⁵⁸ When the Dutch entered Java, they found these ports were famous for their Chinese communities.Footnote ⁵⁹

The selective adaptation to commerce of the Chinese in the archipelago took place well before Dutch colonisation. As Anthony Reid indicates, ‘the Chinese in Bantam were willing to do any kind of work to make money, but when they “turned Javanese” by adopting Islam, cutting their hair and changing their dress, they were “every whit as proud and as loftie as the Javans”.’Footnote ⁶⁰ The source Reid quotes was an observation from 1606, which reflects the time when the Chinese were powerful.Footnote ⁶¹ As can be seen over the next three centuries, many Hokkiens adapted to another local way of doing things, the Dutch style and rules, exactly as had their predecessors to other systems.

These groups of Hokkien merchants also further confirmed the central position of Java in regional trade, and together with the natives they confirmed their own superior position in several central commercial centres.Footnote ⁶² The economic structure then was quite different from after Batavia rose in the seventeenth century, when merchants would move to the new colonial centre.

The Ming Dynasty records in the sixteenth century show that the ‘Chinese merchants are also coming and going without cease’ at these commercial centres in Java.Footnote ⁶³ This economic structure did not change too much under Dutch colonisation. Leo Suryadinata has pointed out that the Dutch authorities used the Chinese both as contract labourers, and as intermediate traders, putting them in a position that served their political agenda, running the colonial economy and handling the natives.Footnote ⁶⁴ The Hokkiens were at the centre of the archipelago's economy: their key role in providing finance and credit in Java and maritime Southeast Asia has been demonstrated.Footnote ⁶⁵

The case of the Hokkiens in Bantam shows how local political agenda and Hokkien adaptation matched perfectly. Bantam was the centre of commerce, as well as the main opponent of Batavia in the early seventeenth century. Its trade was controlled by four Chinese entrusted by the local chief. At the end of the sixteenth century, the Hokkien population of Bantam reached 3,000–4,000.Footnote ⁶⁶ Considering that the total population of Batavia was only 9,406 (3,679 of whom were Chinese) in 1699, the Bantam figures are astonishing.Footnote ⁶⁷ The Chinese gathered in ‘Chinese Street’, surrounded by a hard fence and moat, and their houses were the most beautiful stone structures in Bantam.Footnote ⁶⁸

Why the Bantam Sultan used Chinese to manage trading issues is a fascinating question. One reason may have been that the old kapitan, Lim Lacco, was a Chinese Muslim. But generally speaking the reason must be that those Chinese had the ability to keep the market prosperous, and thus create the wealth which the local chiefs required. It is also a question of local politics: in the Sultanate of Mataram, the king personally chose Chinese to manage the ports because they were members of an external social group. In this arrangement, he would be little influenced by the traditional complicated social structure of an agricultural state with respect to tax issues.

Hokkiens in the Malay world were never lacking in experience of military settlement and agriculture. Although they cooperated with the Dutch, it was by no means merely a matter of obedience. Before the coming of the Western colonialists, Chinese mercenaries and pirates had controlled some sites, either with a small military force, or through negotiation with local chiefs, showing the same sort of political and military capacities as their successors in Quang Nam several centuries later.

Early Mongol and Chinese raids had a deep influence on Javanese history, and even altering the regional political structure, introducing perhaps as much change as the arrival of the Dutch later on.Footnote ⁶⁹ Evidence of other forms of cultivation or plantation agriculture, advanced by the armed individuals, not just in western Borneo but also in the Riau archipelago, have also been found, including where the Hokkiens replaced Teochew gambier-producers.Footnote ⁷⁰

Unrest in eastern Java occurred occasionally even under Dutch rule, continuing into the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, in most of the Dutch East Indies, for much of the time, the overseas Chinese maintained their peace. In terms of VOC policy, warfare and cooperation with landed rulers were just two sides of the same coin.Footnote ⁷¹

In terms of the special agent system, the Dutch and the Hokkiens worked together in peace. The special adaptation of the Hokkiens, mainly as merchants, and as quasi-politicians, was obviously attractive to the incoming colonial power in the Indies. This system was formed through negotiations between the VOC and local leaders. Once the Dutch decided to extend their rule to the whole of the East Indies, they needed to develop a less expensive way to deal with the multiple ethnicities throughout the vast archipelago. Nearly two-thirds of the land was controlled directly by the Company, while another third was comprised of protectorates (including the four most famous sultanates: Jogjakarta, Solo, Cirebon, and Bantam). The latter were forced to supply fixed amounts of specified crops as a form of tax.

In the directly controlled lands, it was not necessary to follow the Sultans’ way of appointing Hokkiens to manage commercial issues, but considering that the Hokkiens controlled the shipping and trading routes connecting Java and China, acquiring them as agents was a good choice.Footnote ⁷² Hence, the positions of kapitan and lieutenant were instituted to handle the Chinese communities. This system, originating in a Portuguese arrangement for choosing the representatives of a Chinese enclave, also led the Dutch and Chinese to mutual reliance, as ‘others’.

The Hokkien adaptation to local systems brought prosperity and an economic boom; however, with the development of the colonial plantation economy, the regional divide between cities and rural areas intensified. In 1740, the ‘Batavia Massacre’ occurred. Declining sugar prices and rumours that the Dutch were planning to deport the poor pushed many Hokkiens to rebel. The Dutch purged them in response. The authorities encouraged the Chinese to report on each other, and some Chinese did cooperate: for example, one Liu Chu ‘informed the government of what was going on among his countrymen’.Footnote ⁷³ High-status Chinese advisers had warned the Dutch of the impending uprising, but the head of the VOC's military, Bartholomeus Visscher, just ignored them. A Hokkien leader in Batavia, Kapitan Ni Hoekong, was stuck at home because of the riots and could do nothing. After the massacre, he was even accused of neglecting his duty of managing the Chinese. This Chinese revolt appears to be more class-based, and does not reflect the general living conditions of the Hokkiens throughout the East Indies at the time.

The leader of this unrest, Si-pánjang, was not recognised as the Hokkiens’ principal representative. When a Chinese-Javanese coalition besieged Semarang, the Hokkiens inside the city walls did not support them.Footnote ⁷⁴ Also, most of the rebels moved to East Java without changing the political structure of Batavia. Although this Javanese-Chinese-Dutch War changed politics in Java greatly, it did not change the colonial political structure, or challenge Dutch power. Some Dutch historians such as Johannes T. Vermeulen argue that the war did impact eighteenth-century Dutch colonialism; Leonard Blussé, by contrast, shows that it indirectly led to the expansion of Batavia, and confirmed a structure of dichotomy between the Chinese and other natives, which lasted into the twentieth century.Footnote ⁷⁵

If the rebellious case of Vietnam was abnormal in the context of Mongol expansion, and it was accidental that Chinese soldiers ended up being left behind, by contrast, the following cases in the Malay Archipelago involved active seizure by pirates and armed individuals. The Majapahit Empire attacked Srivijaya (Palembang) in 1377 due to a ‘rebellion’, and ended the Srivijaya kingdom, bringing chaos to the latter state, without fully occupying and controlling it. However, this situation offered opportunity to a Chinese fugitive named Liang Daoming. The Ming shi sums up what happened: ‘emigre Chinese (huaren liuyu zhe) often rose up and occupied it (Palembang)’.Footnote ⁷⁶ According to a Ming record, Palembang was permanently occupied by a group of armed diasporic Chinese; there are many other similar records about Chinese armed individuals and pirates operating in Java and Sumatra before the first Dutch arrived in the late sixteenth century.

Having failed to get a foothold on the Chinese coast, the VOC had to move to Dayuan (Tayouan) in southwest Taiwan.Footnote ⁷⁷ In the south, they needed to create another counter-fort to resist Bantam, which was controlled by the local chief at first, and finally chose Batavia.Footnote ⁷⁸ The Dutch preferred to clear out most of the Hokkien fighters, and utilised some allied pirates, and most of the merchants to that end. As Philip Kuhn summarises, in the case of those Chinese settlements, ‘self-governing, armed territorial regimes set up by outlaws or political refugees’ disappeared because the colonial power eliminated them; although, by contrast, ‘middlemen in commerce’ survived and flourished.Footnote ⁷⁹

As for the merchants, they attracted Chinese commercial leaders into joining their side to develop the new fort and set it up as a base to resist Bantam. Inpo, Bencon, and Jan Con were the most famous leaders who joined the Dutch side, and contributed a lot to transregional commerce and colonial construction. Earlier Chinese maritime challengers such as the descendants of the Zheng He fleet were also incorporated into this colonial system; they enjoyed and supported this maritime order, as shown by the famous seventeenth-century kelenteng Ancol on Java's north coast.Footnote ⁸⁰

In short, the Dutch shaped a new maritime order in the archipelago, and only its maritime supporters (but not the challengers) survived, while the Batavia authorities per se also needed to rely on these supporters. Thus the Chinese in the Dutch East Indies were granted more freedom of action, especially in commerce; however, the Dutch also imposed many restrictions, especially in terms of curbing Chinese influence on the natives.Footnote ⁸¹ The overall political agenda and ecology influenced the evolution and adaptations of the Hokkiens over centuries; their adaptations would affect the local and colonial political agendas in turn.

The Philippines

On the northeastern edge of the Malay Archipelago, the commerce of the Philippine Islands was prosperous due to the appearance of large numbers of Hokkien merchants there in the sixteenth century, along with the Spanish maritime networks. Places like Luzon and Moluccas developed a relatively thriving commercial association with the Hokkiens. Luzon was depicted by a Ming Chinese scholar-official as a place where

Since they did not have any political or economic conflicts with the local people, they were treated quite well. Even in Hemaoli in central Philippines, according to the Chinese official record, ‘when Chinese people go to their country, the natives do not dare to bully and humiliate them, and trade there is the fairest’.Footnote ⁸³ In the southern Philippines, the Sultanate of Sulu, Muslims also welcomed them, although somehow they forced them to keep on trading: ‘When the ships want to go back, the natives will detain several [Chinese] as ‘hostages’, expecting [their Chinese partners] will come back again.’Footnote ⁸⁴

The Hokkiens lived in Chinese enclaves called ‘Parián’, where they developed their businesses. It took several decades to stabilise the prosperous trade between the Spaniards and the Hokkiens.Footnote ⁸⁵ The Spanish authorities in Manila needed both the silver from South America and the commodities made in China to operate their newly established colony, while the Hokkien merchants were attracted by the galleon trade's silver, and joined the exchange by crossing the sea in great numbers.Footnote ⁸⁶ Although there were complaints of the discontented, the Manila authorities and the Hokkiens developed a mutually dependent economic relationship in terms of daily utilities, food supply and currency exchange.Footnote ⁸⁷ This status quo enabled the Parián to regenerate when they were destroyed.

Cooperation could lead to harmony as well as to conflict and tragedy. It could work relatively well under an agent system such as that established in the Dutch East Indies, or under a non-agent system such as that found in Quang Nam. Or, it could work relatively badly under the kind of non-agent system existing in the Philippines under the Spanish. The diasporic ecology was highly influenced by the agenda of the dominant power. What is known about the history of other incoming groups/careers proves that. Compared to the kapitan agent system in the Dutch East Indies, the ‘agency’ of merchants in daily life in the Philippines seems to have been very superficial and unstable.

After the Pan Hewu (1567–1622) rebellion in 1593, and the case of Zhang Yi searching for the golden mountain at Cavite in the name of the Ming court in 1603, the Spaniards, very few in number in the Phillipines, feared Chinese rebellion and suspected that the Hokkien merchants would assist the Ming government in a takeover. Mutual distrust and a lack of communication channels brought disaster.Footnote ⁸⁸

Since the Hokkiens in Manila had no chance to develop community defence in their settlements, which were located outside the city walls, violent killings seemed inevitable. They recurred in different shapes.Footnote ⁸⁹ This political ecology, then, together with the reality of short-term trade and the role of the Hokkiens in everyday commerce, in turn, influenced certain selective adaptations by the community.

We may also review how armed individuals contributed to such selective adaptations in the Philippines. In the case of Pan Hewu, the killings were the result of growing mutual mistrust and suspicion. Pan, a Hokkien sojourner from Jinjiang County, led labourers to assassinate Governor Dasmariñas and kill his soldiers.Footnote ⁹⁰

The incident began when Chinese labourers were forced to make an expedition to the Moluccas, the Spice Islands. In the 1580s, Governor Vera thought that the Filipino natives were too foolish and lacked the strength to manipulate the galleys, so he tried, instead, to recruit 300 Chinese jack-tars (at two pesos per month, supplied by the treasury), in exchange for waiving their tribute taxes. Interestingly, Governor Vera also regarded the Chinese in general as lacking in sailing skills and thought them just as weak as the natives:

The shortage of skilled sailors and labour was never resolved. Despite his reluctance, in the 1590s, Dasmariñas ordered officials to recruit 250 Chinese sailors. Hence Alonso Sauyo, the governor of the Sangleys (as the Spanish called the Chinese), had to call in the Chinese leaders to discuss the plan.Footnote ⁹² The final decision was that the Spanish would recruit one in every ten Chinese. The Chinese boycotted the order. The shops were closed and food supplies stopped. Given the situation, the Chinese in the Philippines chose to passively resist, at first.

The Governor then claimed that the Chinese were planning to rebel and arrested 50 people, sending them to work as jack-tars. He ordered that another 200 people had to be provided to reach the original goal of 250. The Chinese then pooled 20,000 pesos to recruit 200 volunteers to participate in the expedition. Dasmariñas divided these 250 people into five teams and assigned five Chinese Catholics to lead them. He also gave the leaders slingshots and catans (Japanese swords), asking the teams to practice on a regular basis.Footnote ⁹³ Eventually, Dasmariñas forcibly recruited another 150 Chinese.Footnote ⁹⁴

The Hokkien sailors were over-exploited, maltreated, and forced to man the galley day and night. It was then that tragedy occurred. They had received almost no pay, and resentment grew. Adding the stipend issued by the treasury to the 20,000 pesos for recruiting, each volunteer would in theory receive 80 pesos. However, most of the 20,000 pesos for recruiting were taken by the Chinese team leaders. Little of it was paid to the sailors. They had suffered too much. Pan told them it would be better to fight to the death rather than ‘die for treason, or hanging or stabbing, or wait to die’. As a result, they plotted and rebelled, killing the governor and the other Spaniards one night, and taking over the galley off the coast of Luzon 24 leagues from Manila. Only two Spaniards, Juan de Cuellar (the governor's secretary), and Franciscan Father Montilla, survived by remaining in their cabins amidships.Footnote ⁹⁵

The rebels then seized items of value (jewels, money, etc.) and set out to sail back to China. Instead, the galley was conveyed by the winds and ocean currents to Quang Nam, where all valuable items were confiscated by the lord. Although the Ming court was sympathetic, and tried to help Luis Pérez Dasmariñas, son of the governor, to take revenge and capture the rebels, its efforts were limited. The Ministry of War replied, ‘Slay the criminals, and enormously reward the envoys.’Footnote ⁹⁶ The Fujian Governor-General also ‘sent ships to recruit Chinese who had lived in Luzon for a long time’.Footnote ⁹⁷

This case reinforced the Spanish government's mistrust of the Chinese. According to a Ming literatus, ‘from that time on, there has been enmity [between the Chinese and their hosts]; [the Spaniards] feared each day [that the Sangleys] would rebel, and hence they enslaved us further’.Footnote ⁹⁸ Unfortunately, the Spanish–Hokkien enmity that this literatus envisioned provided a context for no less than five outbreaks of violence between 1603 and 1762.

In short, the ‘armed individuals’ were not necessarily rebels, as was the case in Quang Nam. They could also be competitors, as in the Dutch East Indies. In the Philippines, especially in Manila, by contrast, the armed individuals in question were just rebels, and revolts and violent killings were endemic. Compared to the other regions, some mechanism must have been missing in the Philippines. The rebel could be cooperator as well as challenger; so could the pirate, the maritime supporter or the challenger.

As a colonial power with gunpowder and an armada, the Spanish also needed to face pirates, who generally played the role of maritime challengers in the Philippines. Initially, the Ming court had noticed the establishment of connections between the Hokkiens and the Spaniards, but they were not too concerned since those informants saved by Governor Legazpi had confirmed a friendly image of Spaniards.Footnote ⁹⁹

Prosperity generated by increased commerce attracted more Hokkien immigrants to settle in Manila, something which became a problem for the Spaniards. In 1574, Lin Feng (Limahong), a Teochew pirate, heard that Manila was a new and relatively unprotected settlement.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Seizing the opportunity to capture Manila, Lin Feng led nearly one hundred ships and around 4,000 companions in an attack on the city. They killed the Spanish commander Martín de Goiti in a surprise raid at the beginning of the battle, but were later defeated by Spanish reinforcements. The Spanish fear of allowing any further Chinese settlement appeared after this.Footnote ¹⁰¹

After Lin Feng's attempted conquest, the Spaniards became very suspicious of the Chinese diaspora. ‘It seems that in the kingdom of China this corsair, Limahon, has done much damage,’ writes Governor Francisco de Sande.Footnote ¹⁰² In 1603, the Spaniards suppressed the so-called Sangley Rebellion, killing many Chinese in Manila when they found out that some of them were trying to take over the Philippines.

Because of the disproportionate numbers of Chinese casualties, the merchants referred to this event as the Massacre of 1603.Footnote ¹⁰³ To eliminate the Chinese living in the Philippines, the Spaniards worked with the native Filipinos and the Japanese community from the Paco district of Manila. These groups competed economically with the Hokkien merchants, and thus had an interest in aiding the Spaniards. Interestingly enough, the merchants in question were not associated with the Chinese government, or any piracy, but the Spaniards still believed that they should not be underestimated as potential threats. In the end, the perception of a threat resulting from a series of unrelated incidents, and the Spaniards’ reaction in expelling the Hokkien merchants, changed the trading status quo between Fujian and the Philippines.

In short, the selective adaptation that the Hokkiens evolved in Manila, whereby they were involved in the supply of everyday items such as woollens, bells, perfumes, iron, tin, and coloured cotton cloths, and currency exchange in a concentrated market, was not that successful. The Chinese were easily suspected, and were viewed as an aggressive and intractable group. As a result of Spanish political agenda they were also more likely to be categorised as mercenaries or even pirates, despite the evidence of their relative weakness. ‘Rebellion’, then, was a major theme with regard to the diasporic Hokkien community, showing again that the local political ecology was highly influenced or driven by the agenda of the dominant power.