Still for their own interests, the Dutch colonial government actually viewed the Java world, which might be represented by the Java Sea region, as a medium for benefiting colonial integration. The Dutch recognized the Java Sea as the Mediterranean Sea of Indonesia (Indie‥’s Middellandsche Zee) (Boissevain, 1909).57 In fact the regions around the Java Sea are also recognized as the heart of Indonesia. Many kinds of marketable commodities are abundantly produced by this region (Lapian, 1991). 58 This explains why most important ports in the Indonesian archipelago are located on the Java Sea shores, such as Jakarta, Surabaya, Semarang, Palembang,
Makassar, and Banjarmasin (Sulistiyono, 2003). 59 These ports have been the centers of shipping and trade networks embracing all regions in the Indonesian archipelago as well as parts of the global shipping network. During the Dutch colonial period, Batavia was projected to be the most powerful port city in the Indonesian archipelago to compete with a new British Malay maritime world, as Malacca had been previously to Majapahit or Srivijaya to Mataram and Singasari. Based on the above explanation, it is understandable, therefore, that the Dutch for their own interests interpreted the relationship between Java and the Outer Islands as a centralistic relationship, i.e. a relationship between the center and the periphery. This kind of Dutch perception was possibly influenced by the way the inland kingdom of Mataram viewed foreigners.