Souw Beng Kong

Souw Beng Kong, 1st Kapitein der Chinezen (; c. 1580–1644), called Bencon in older Dutch sources, was an ally of the Dutch East India Company and the first Kapitein der Chinezen of Batavia, capital of colonial Indonesia. This was the most senior Chinese position in the colonial civil bureaucracy with legal and political jurisdiction over the local Chinese community in the colony.

Life

Jan Pieterszoon Coen, Souw's patron and Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.

Souw Beng Kong was born in Tong'an, Fujian around 1580, during the Ming Dynasty.

This system formed part of the Dutch colonial system of ‘Indirect Rule’.

Kapitein Souw Beng Kong died in 1644. It is located in Mangga Dua Selatan, Central Jakarta, in what was then the outskirts of the old colonial capital. After decades of abandonment and neglect, the tomb was restored between 2006 and 2008 by a group led by MATAKIN (Supreme Council for the Confucian Religion in Indonesia) and Trisakti University.