The capital city was once about to be moved to Surabaya, mainly for health and defense matters. Yet the project was aborted due to insufficient funds.
President Joko Widodo decided to move the country’s capital to East Kalimantan. However, it turned out that a similar project had been proposed during colonial times. In the past, the General Governor of the Dutch East Indies, Herman Willem Daendels wanted to move the capital from Batavia to Surabaya.
According to Achmad Sunjayadi, a historian from the University of Indonesia, the two aspects that intrigued Daendels to move the center of the government were health and defense issues. Batavia used to be known as the “Koningin van den Oost “(Queen of the East), but later on, the city became notorious and known as the “cemetery of Europeans” , due to the high number of cases of malaria and cholera. The death of the General Governor of the Dutch East Indies Jan Pieterszoon Coen proved the severeness of the conditions in Batavia. Meanwhile, according to an historian from Airlangga University in Surabaya, Purnawan Basundoro, Surabaya was also a coastal city with some higher areas than Batavia, making it healthier.
Besides that, Daendels realized that Batavia could never be qualified to be a defense force base in Java. The old, delapidated palace could be easily demolished from the sea. The local climate would have killed the garrison before the enemy even reached the shore. As threats from the British werr coming, Daendels thought of organizing a better base for military operations in Surabaya.
His predecessor, General governor Van Overstraten had developed a plan to move the center of the government to a more rural area in Central Java, where the Javanese kings were expected to contribute in a long-term joint force.
Therefore to support his plan, Daendels built a weapon factory (Artillerie Constructie Winkel), a military hospital, and Lodewijk Fortress. The fortress is a military fortress located on Mengare Island in the north of Gresik (a regency in East Java). The name was taken from the Dutch King Lodewijk (Louis) Napoleon, brother of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Meanwhile, Artillerie Constructie Winkel was the first weapon factory in Indonesia.
The Military Hospital built by Daendels, also known as Simpang Hospital, was the largest hospital. It was located not far to the east of the official residence of the governor of East Java. Unfortunately, the Military Hospital was torn down in the 1970s then rebuilt as Delta Plaza Mall.
Aside from building military infrastructures, Daendels also expanded the official residential area of the Governor of the Northeast Coast of Java. He found the official residence too small to be occupied by the ruler of a capital city.
Basundoro continued, Daendels failed to complete his plan due to funding difficulties. France and the Netherlands prioritized their funds for the war against Great Britain. Therefore, moving the entire Batavian settlement with warehouses and ships of valuables was an arduous task. Eventually, Daendels decided to move the housing to a higher area of Batavia, Weltevreden.
Previously in the year 1800 , General Governor Van Overstraten had already moved the offices to Weltevreden. Daendels then expanded the Weltevreden area (now Lapangan Banteng, Jakarta) and built office buildings. This was how the capital city gradually transformed from a port city to a garrison city, as written by Leonard Blusse in “Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women, and The Dutch in Voc Batavia”.
When Daendels retreated to France on June 30, 1811, his successor, Jan Willem Janssens, had been present in Batavia since May 16, 1811. Considering that the unstable situation in France was affecting the situation in Batavia, Janssens lost interest in the idea of moving the capital city.
by Nur Janti
