Changing Javanese Perceptions of the Chinese Communities in Central Java, 1755-1825

On September 23, 1825, during the opening months of the Java War (1825-30), a small cavalry squadron commanded by Radfen A yu Yudakusuma, a daughter of the first Sultan of Yogyakarta, swooped down on the vital trading post of Ngawi on the Sala rive r. It was home to a sizeable Chinese population, consisting mainly of rice brokers, petty traders, and coolies, which had been temporarily swollen by the in flux of refugees from the surrounding co u ntrysid e .* 1 Th e y had barricaded them selves into the houses of the prominent, Chinese merchants with their heavy teak shutters and doors. Unfortunately, these precautions, effective in normal times against the depredations of roving groups of kdcu (robbers, brigands) infesting the eastern outlying provinces of the Central Javanese courts, proved of little avail against the heavy axes and razor-sharp pikes of Radn A yu Yudakusuma's war band. Indifferent to the pitiful cries of the women and children, Ngawi's entire Chinese community was put to the sword, the mutilated bodies being left to lie where they fell, in blood-smeared doorways, streets, and houses.2 Shocking in its ruthlessness, the massacre of Ngawi was by no means unique in these terrible, ear ly months of the Java War. Throughout Central Java and along the entire length of the Sala rive r, these scenes were repeated as isolated Chinese communities were at tacked and the petrified survivors fled for their lives to the comparative safety of