Dutch Batavia: Exposing the Hierarchy of the Dutch Colonial City

Abstract

The built environment was an important determinant of social behavior, particularly segregation, in the colonial city of Batavia. Built in 1619 to establish a Dutch administrative and cultural headquarters in Southeast Asia for the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Batavia evinced the general principles of seventeenth-century Dutch planning back in the Netherlands, including a layout that imposed order on the city’s diverse population. But Batavia accomplished this order even more stringently, structuring it to secure Dutch domination. To further reinforce this control, VOC administrators were eager for Dutch citizens to express a cohesive Dutch identity. Despite this desire, Dutch Batavians developed ostentatious displays of rank through costume and behavior, which provoked a series of sumptuary codes. This preoccupation with rank among the Dutch populace signaled the same hierarchy within the social fabric of Batavia that was encoded in the very form of this planned city.