Outside the Borders of the Transvaal Neighborhood

Long before the annexations, Leiden and its inhabitants already reached beyond their borders. In between the train tracks and the Galgewater, lies a stroke of land that was called Kampong Makassar about 150 years ago (fig. 1). Back then, there was a farmstead on the land with the same name (fig. 2). How come this piece of land in Leiden had an Indonesian name? Kampong Makassar shows the invisible borders of the Transvaal neighborhood that stretched far beyond Leiden, all via one person.Source: Gerrit J. Telkamp, 2011, ‘Kampong Makassar: een koloniale vernoeming in het toenmalige Oegstgeest’, Over Oegstgeest 23 (2).

This person is Carel Frederik Wilhelm Wiggers van Kerchem, who was born in Hoorn and became rich in Batavia (now Jakarta). He was the former president of De Javasche Bank (DJB), the main bank in the Dutch Indies, from 1863 to 1868.In this position, in combination with his own merchant bank and maritime insurance company, Wiggers van Kerchem got rich very quickly: in a short amount of time he earned a total 644,678.23 guilders, which is the equivalent of almost 7.4 million euros! After acquiring great wealth, Wiggers van Kerchem returned to the Netherlands and called the farmstead (which was then in Oegstgeest) Kampong Makassar. He thereby named this Dutch piece of land after the estate he owned in Batavia (fig. 3). When reading the advertisement about the sale of a house on the estate from 1867 (fig. 4) – perhaps his own house? – you get the impression of the kind of colonial wealth he had acquired: ten rooms, a billiard room, twenty horses and a coconut plant!

Wiggers van Kerchem himself did not live on the Dutch Kampong Makassar along the Galgewater. When he returned to the Netherlands he settled in the grand white city villa on the Witte Singel on Noordeinde 1. But his purchase of the estate on Oegstgeest grounds was a smart investment: Wiggers van Kerchem pawned it to the farmer Cornelis Mechelse, who used the land to produce vegetables for the Nieuwenhuizen cannery on the Morsweg.If you want to know more about the Niewenhuizen factory, then read this story.

In that manner, the colonial money that was earned by Wiggers van Kerchem at the expense of Javan people, ended up as carrots and beans in the Transvaal neighborhood in Leiden. After the vegetables were cultivated and sold to Nieuwenhuizen, they were preserved in cans and distributed throughout the world. The products by Nieuwenhuizen were not only sold in the Netherlands but also in Singapore and… in the Dutch Indies! The old Kampong Makassar farm and the journey of its beans all the way to Java, highlight the traces of colonialism in the neighborhood, that reach far beyond the borders of our map all the way to the other side of the world.

In the meantime, history took a turn: the Kampong Makassar estate in Batavia/Jakarta was used by the Japanese during the Second World War as a concentration camp for women and children. The name of the farmstead in Oegstgeest/Leiden recalled some bad memories in the minds of some. Kampong Makassar at the Galgewater disappeared some time ago: in the beginning of the ‘80s it was completely destroyed in a fire. Now there is a flat on the land, just as there is a flat where the Nieuwenhuizen factory once stood.

Other borders in the neighborhood show traces of colonialism as well, sometimes even literally. Look closely at the tracks that traverse the neighborhood. Do you want to know about its ties to the Dutch colonial past? Then read the longread down below!