32 Boundaries and Beyond
Nevertheless, wholesalers were not entirely absent from the
transaction chains. For example, the goods collected would be sold to
Chinese merchants in Gresik to be re-exported to China, and, through the
Gujarati merchants, other spices would eventually reach the markets in
the Mediterranean.^114
After the Dutch had established a foothold in Batavia, they depended
on Chinese merchants in Bantam for surrogate participation in the
commercial activities on the Pasisir. Chinese merchants had been able to
penetrate into the indigenous trading world not only by purchasing local
products directly from the farmers, but also by giving local farmers credit
against the produce of their next harvest. They went into the interior,
rented land from indigenous rulers and supervised local farmers in the
production of the required amount of goods. These Chinese merchants
often owned the ships on which they transported the produce to the
trading ports in Southeast Asia or south China. Furthermore, the Dutch
authorities in Batavia or Malacca acquired essential foodstuffs from them.
By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Chinese
trading community had gained increasing prominence on the Pasisir.
Kwee Hui Kian indicates, “[T]he symbiotic relationship between the
indigenous rulers and Chinese migrants enabled the former to intensify
their state formation process and the later to expand their commercial
activities.”^115 The Pasisir also established close trading connections with
the Chinese merchants in Bantam.
Upsurge in the Shipping Trade from the North
The Predominance of Chinese Overseas Trading Networks
Chinese communities were found in such ports on the northeast coast
of Java as Tuban and Gresik not later than the early βifteenth century.
By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Fujian junks had become
the major force in the long-distance trade with Southeast Asia and
large number of migrants from Fujian and Guangdong provinces were
arriving in the Philippines, the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago, Siam and
other places in Southeast Asia. By the early seventeenth century, Chinese
communities were also a force to reckon with in Hirado and Nagasaki in
- Arun Das Gupta, “The Maritime Trade of Indonesia: 1500–1800”, in Southeast
Asia: Colonial History, ed. Paul H. Kratoska, pp. 94–5. Detailed studies on the
Pasisir can be found in Luc Nagtegaal, Riding the Dutch Tiger; and Kwee Hui
Kian, The Political Economy of Java’s Northeast Coast, c. 1740–1800: Elite Synergy
(Leiden: Brill, 2006). - Kwee Hui Kian, The Political Economy of Java’s Northeast Coast, p. 14.
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