The archive of the Kong Koan constitutes the only relatively complete archive of a "diaspora" Chinese urban community in Southeast Asia. The essays in the present volume offer important and new insights into many different aspects of Overseas Chinese life between 1780-1965.
The Kong Koan of colonial Batavia was a semi-autonomous organization, in which the local elite of Jakarta's Chinese community supervised and coordinated its social and religious matters. During its long existence as a semi-official colonial institution, the Kong Koan collected sizeable Chinese archival holdings with demographic data on marriages and funerals, account books of the religious organisations and temples, documents connected with educational institutions, and the meetings of the board itself.

Leonard Blussé, Doctorate (1986) in History, Leiden University, is currently Professor for the History of Asian-European Relations at Leiden University and Professor of Southeast Asian History at the Nanyang Research School of Xiamen University.
Menghong Chen is writing a doctoral thesis on the history of the Kong Koan of Batavia at Leiden University.