The Chinese War (1740–1743)

In October 1740 the Chinese population within the walls of Batavia was killed over several days by VOC troops and townspeople; estimates run to about ten thousand dead, and most of the city's Chinese population did not survive. It followed unrest outside the walls caused by the collapse of sugar prices and the discharge of mill workers, together with a government plan to ship some of them to Ceylon — a plan that circulated as a rumour that they would be thrown into the sea.

Governor-General Adriaan Valckenier was subsequently arrested and tried by his own government over these events, and died in custody in 1751. That trial is one of the few instances in which the highest VOC official was called to account, and it is recorded here because its existence shows the events were regarded as excessive even by the measure of their own time and institution.

Survivors and those outside the walls joined armed bands and moved east along the coast, and in 1741 allied with Mataram forces under Pakubuwana II against the VOC. That alliance was later abandoned by Pakubuwana II, who turned to the VOC as the situation changed, and the reversal split support within his own court.

From that split grew the succession wars that ran until 1755 and ended in the Treaty of Giyanti. The events of 1740 in Batavia are therefore not a self-contained urban episode: they are the beginning of a sequence ending in the division of Mataram into two courts, and the connection is seldom made when the two are taught apart.