Onghokham

Onghokham (Chinese: 王福涵; pinyin: Wáng Fúhán; 1 May 1933 – 30 August 2007), formerly spelled as Ong Hok Ham, was an Indonesian historian and public intellectual of Chinese-Indonesian descent. He was an expert in Indonesian history who wrote and published extensively. He was also a hedonist known for his eccentric lifestyle. He was one of Indonesia’s most famous historians. Onghokham was considered one of the leading experts on Indonesian history during the 19th century Dutch colonial rule. His particular area of knowledge centered on events in Java during the period, and he authored a number of works dealing with the subject. A native of Surabaya, East Java which, until the founding of Indonesia in 1945, was a part of the Dutch East Indies, Ong Hok Ham lived in the city of his birth for the first twenty-five years of his life. Ong's family was upper-middle class, but through his maternal grandmother, Han Loen Nio, Ong hailed from the patrician Han family of Lasem, part of the baba bangsawan or the Chinese gentry of colonial Indonesia, and from a long line of Chinese officers who served in the civil bureaucracy in the Dutch East Indies. Ong could, thus, trace his lineage in Java back, through Han Bwee Kong, Kapitein der Chinezen (1727–1778), to Han Siong Kong (1673–1743), a Chinese-born migrant of ancient lineage. Like others from old Peranakan Chinese families, Ong grew up between Chinese, Javanese and Dutch cultures. In 1958, Ong moved to Bandung, West Java, where he received his schooling and began his writing career. He became increasingly well known for the historical and cultural articles he wrote for the Jakarta-based magazine Star Weekly. In 1975, he received his Ph.D. in history from Yale University with the dissertation The Residency of Madiun: Priyayi and Peasant in the Nineteenth Century....