An eye on history

A new book records the life of Chinese under Dutch colonial rule in Java in the 17th and 18th centuries

Over 40 years ago when Professor Leonard Blussé of Leiden University was a young student he was introduced to a Chinese book chronicling the lives of the Chinese people in Batavia (today's Jakarta) in the 17th and 18th centuries. He found it fascinating and made it his goal to translate it into English. But due to the complexity of the language and the dialects involved, he had to shelve the project.

Then 10 years ago, he met Professor Nie Dening from Xiamen University in Fujian province, and they decided to do the work together. Their book, The Chinese Annals of Batavia, the Kai Ba Lidai Shiji and Other Stories, was recently published by Brill, a long-standing Dutch publishing house. It edits, annotates and translates the original book entitled Kai Ba Lidai Shiji.