Crossing Borders: Train Tracks in the Dutch Indies and in the Transvaal Neighborhood in Leiden

The Transvaal neighborhood in Leiden does not only have a local history, but a colonial history as well. This is revealed by the history of the train tracks between Leiden and Woerden. These tracks, running through the Transvaal neighborhood, were brought about with the knowledge and skill, and partly the money, coming from the Dutch Indies. The three initiators of the train tracks shared their pasts in the Dutch Indies, and for that we have to cross the borders of the Transvaal neighborhood and take a look at a map of the train tracks between Semarang and Vorstenlanden (fig. 1).

Essential to building train tracks in the 19th century, was gaining practical experience. Not many Dutch people had the chance to gain such experience. In that respect, the engineer of the train tracks between Leiden and Woerden, Jan Philip de Bordes, found himself in an exceptional position, as he had been the head engineer of the first steam train tracks in Java. Guus Veenendaal, De spoorwegen in Nederlands-Indië (Zwolle 2020), 35. In 1863, De Bordes had begun this challenging project, and in 1872 he completed the train tracks.

De Bordes could not have built these tracks without the second initiator and political mediator for the tracks between Leiden and Woerden: Baron L.A.J.W. Sloet (fig. 2). In 1861, Sloet had become Governor General in the Dutch Indies, and a year later he gave permission, despite negative advice from the Netherlands, to build the train tracks in the Dutch Indies. De Bordes was then appointed as head engineer of the tracks and left for the Dutch Indies by train in 1863. A year later, Governor General Sloet put the first spade into the ground of the tracks.

Wiggers van Kerchem, the landlord of Kampong Makassar, was the third concessionaire of the tracks between Leiden and Woerden, and he too was active in the Dutch Indies at the same time. In 1863, he was appointed as head of the Javan Bank. He probably helped realize these train tracks financially. In the beginning of the concession of the Leiden-Woerden tracks, Wiggers van Kerchem withdrew from the affair, so his role in building these tracks was significantly smaller than that of De Bordes and Sloet. Nevertheless, as we know, he was to be responsible for a whole different colonial part of the neighborhood.

For De Bordes and Sloet, the construction of the tracks between Semarang and Vorstenlanden in the Dutch Indies (fig. 1) could be considered practice for the technical and political roles they would later play in building the tracks through the Transvaal neighborhood. The train tracks between Leiden and Woerden would probably not have been there without those tracks on the other side of the world.