Colonial Complicities: Catholic Missionaries, Chinese Elite and Non-kin Support for Chinese Children in Semarang During the 1930s

This article focuses on practices of non-kin support for Chinese children by Catholic missionaries in the orphanage of Kebon Dalem in Semarang in the Dutch East Indies during the 1930s. Catholic missionaries considered this city a kingpin in their efforts to convert the Chinese of the Dutch East Indies to Catholicism. The orphanage operated on the basis of a mostly tacit partnership between these missionaries and the local Chinese elite, that is only partially revealed by the missionaries. The care arrangements for underprivileged Chinese children at Kebon Dalem disclose colonial complicities that challenge current conceptual approaches of missionary non-kin support for children interpreted as strategies to ‘save’ children from their parents, kin, community and culture. In the case of Kebon Dalem, Catholic missionaries collaborated with Chinese partners who valued European standards of child-rearing and education and financially supported the project, which reveals a sense of communal responsibility for underprivileged Chinese children. Catholic missionaries regarded these children as ‘cultural circuit breakers’ that would facilitate instituting Western, Christian principles. To the local Chinese elite, uncared-for children potentially tarnished their already challenged claim to self-rule. By taking co-responsibility for the orphanage of Kebon Dalem, they apparently aimed to demonstrate capable leadership of their community as much as they honoured Chinese charitable traditions. Their support enabled European Catholic missionaries to seek out underprivileged Chinese children for missionary care arrangements, not separated from but in the heart of the religiously plural and tolerant Chinese community of Semarang.Deze bijdrage draait om de praktijken van zorg die katholieke missionarissen gedurende de jaren 1930 verleenden aan Chinese kinderen met wie zij niet verwant waren. Het onderzoek spitst zich toe op het weeshuis van Kebon Dalem in Semarang in Nederlands-Indië. Voor de missionarissen vormde deze stad het centrum van hun bekeringspogingen van de Chinese minderheid in Nederlands-Indië. Het weeshuis functioneerde op basis van een bondgenootschap tussen deze missionarissen en de lokale Chinese elite. De zorg voor kansarme kinderen in Kebon Dalem laat onvermoede vormen van samenwerking tussen beide partijen zien, waarover de missionarissen publiekelijk niet geheel open waren. De zorgpraktijken waarvoor deze samenwerking de basis legde, kunnen als koloniaal