On Wednesday, March 06, 2024, the Department of History of the Faculty of Cultural Sciences UGM held a seminar series on the history of Chinese people in Indonesia. The seminar entitled “The Role of Chinese in Indonesian History” was held in the Multimedia Room, 2nd Floor, Margono Building, Faculty of Arts UGM from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm. This seminar was very interesting because the speakers who attended to present their research results came from China. Meanwhile, Dr. Farabi Fakih, M.Phil. from the Department of History UGM served as moderator.
The first speaker in the seminar was Guanmian Xu, an Assistant Professor from the Department of History, University of Peking. His research titled “Capitalism to Genocide: Batavia’s Sugar Frontier, 1700-1740” which explains the emergence of Chinese capitalism in the sugar industry and its relation to the Chinese genocide in Batavia in the 18th century. Xu, who used a global-history perspective in his research, revealed that the thick issues of racism, violence, and cross-cultural misunderstanding were factors that influenced the ethnic cleansing.
Meanwhile, Ma Guanglu who is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the School of International Relations, Xiamen University presented the results of his research entitled “Bung Karno’s Body and Chinese Doctors”. In his presentation, he explained about diplomacy in the medical field between China and Indonesia that occurred in 1962 until the fall of Sukarno’s government in 1965. Ma’s presentation quite clearly shows the political position of President Sukarno at that time towards the Chinese government.
