Contemplating the Climate Coloniality: Socio-Environmental Governance in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Port Cities

Cultural heritage in the port cities of Monsoon Asia emerged from centuries of maritime endeavors, climate adaptation, and colonial governance. This study examines Dutch East India Company (VOC) settlements—Batavia (Jakarta), Banten, Makassar, and Melaka—to analyze how multicultural encounters inspire mobility and circulation of environmental knowledge, building technologies, and materials within and beyond the VOC port cities. Moving beyond Eurocentric narratives of colonial urbanism and contemplating the climate coloniality, it foregrounds the intra-Asian knowledge exchange networks that underpinned Dutch socio-environmental governance. It focuses on how Asian diasporas and their local wisdom, particularly the diasporic Chinese, facilitated construction material production—especially brick-and-mortar that is essential for fire prevention in the tropics. Long-lived within Monsoon Asia, the diasporic Chinese are the most experienced migrants who show characteristic adaptations to the climate and environmental conditions. The knowledge circulation network facilitated by the diasporic Chinese and centered from Batavia aided European colonial powers in creating coastal settlements suited to complex environments.

By tracing the mobility of construction materials, labor, and expertise, this paper challenges Eurocentric narratives of colonial urbanism and reframes VOC cities as laboratories of negotiated governance. The Dutch integrate existing local knowledge to build resilient cities against the struggles they encountered in the troubling tropics: extreme heat, humidity and heavy rainfall, etc. They incorporate suitable ventilation, drainage, pavements and other infrastructures, and disaster prevention measurements for flooding, fire hazards or the small yet constant annoyance of leaking roofs. This research highlights the transformative impact of multicultural encounters on environmental resilience, especially how the Dutch adapted and learned from the locals to enhance the versatility of VOC governance, and how these adaptive strategies, facilitated by the diasporic Chinese, form a regional network of environmental knowledge circulation.