Java tiger genocide
Java tiger genocide is written in Indonesian history. Colonial archives show how the Dutch with the trade company, the East India Company (VOC), deployed 800 hunters to wipe out tigers in Batavia, today’s Jakarta. Carcasses were displayed at City Hall, rewards offered, fear institutionalized. Thanks to the Dutch, a country without tigers.
The Javan tiger once thrived in sugarcane fields, preying on boars and clashing with settlers. In 1659 alone, 14 people were reported killed in Ancol. By the late 1600s, bounties of 10 ringgit (a fee now, but a treasure then) per kill created an economy of extermination. Tigers became targets, not neighbors. As a result, of course, the Java tiger is now extinct.
Anthropologist R. Wessing estimated that tigers killed 2,500 people annually across Java, fueling the push for eradication. By 1940, only 200–300 Javan tigers remained. In 2008, the IUCN officially declared the species extinct.
This genocide was not just human-tiger conflict, but deliberate ecological destruction. It mirrors today’s palm oil destruction, where profit trumps survival. Or what happened in India where the maharajahs tried to copy the British invaders, by killing tens of thousands of Bengal tigers.
Once again, tigers vanish. Once again, people pretend it is inevitable.
The Java tiger genocide article:
Based on Saibumi, Indonesia.
Photo via the internet, credits unknown.
