Khouw family of Tamboen

The Khouw family of Tamboen (Bahasa Indonesia: 'Keluarga Khouw van Tamboen; Dutch: 'familie Khouw van Tamboen') was a bureaucratic and landowning dynasty, part of the Cabang Atas or the Chinese gentry of colonial Indonesia.[1][2][3]

Kapitein Khouw Yauw Kie and Majoor Khouw Kim An at Candra Naya in 1864-5.

Many members of the family held the rank of Majoor, Kapitein and Luitenant der Chinezen in the colonial government, which gave them significant political and judicial jurisdiction over the colony's Chinese subjects.[2][4][5] As among the colony's largest landlords (Dutch: landheeren; Bahasa Indonesia: tuan tanah), the family also played an important role in the urban, agricultural and economic development of the greater Jakarta area.[1][2][6]

Portrait of Majoor Khouw Kim An's grandsons, Yan and Coen (by Charles Sayers, circa 1937).

The family traces its lineage back to Khouw Tjoen, a successful merchant who had migrated around 1769 from Fujian in China to Tegal on Java's north coast, thence to Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies.[2][3] On his death, he was succeeded by his son, Khouw Tian Sek (died in 1843), who later became the first member of the family to be raised to the honorary, but not substantive, rank of Luitenant der Chinezen.[2][7] In his Twentieth Century Impressions, the British journalist Arnold Wright attributes the family's rise to great wealth to Luitenant Khouw Tian Sek, whose landholdings in then semi-rural Molenvliet suddenly became prime urban property as the colonial capital expanded southwards in the early nineteenth century.[1] The family owned three extravagant Chinese compounds in Molenvliet, of which the only surviving one, Candra Naya, is now a major historic landmark in Jakarta.[3][6] Khouw also began the family's century-long association with the estate (particuliere land) of Tamboen, the most important of the many estates the family acquired around Batavia.[8] The family is also remembered today for their Art Deco country house, landhuis Tamboen (now id:Gedung Juang Tambun).[9]

Khouw's three sons, Khouw Tjeng Tjoan, Khouw Tjeng Kee and Khouw Tjeng Po, were − like their father − also elevated to the honorary rank of Luitenant der Chinezen.[2][3] By the late nineteenth century, the family's accumulation of dynastic land and wealth were among the largest and most significant in Batavia, if not the whole colony.[10]

The three brothers had many wives and children. A number of their children were pre-eminent community leaders in the late colonial era, including: Khouw Yauw Kie (died 1908), the family's first Kapitein der Chinezen and first representative on the Chinese Council; his cousin, Khouw Kim An, the last Majoor der Chinezen of Batavia (1875 - 1945); his brother, Khouw Kim Tjiang, Kapitein der Chinezen of Buitenzorg (now Bogor); and their cousin, the philanthropist O. G. Khouw (1874 - 1927).[2][11][12]