Adresboek van Bandoeng

 

Adresboek van Bandoeng
Cover page of May 1941 edition

Adresboek van Bandoeng

Originally published by HOLLAND-INDIA HANDELSVERENIGING May 1941

This first and only  publication of the Adresboek van Bandoeng (Bandung Address Book) took place on the eve of the Pacific War, which brought to an end European dominance in Asia. It is an historically interesting publication because it provides a sociological snapshot of a very Dutch colonial city of a quarter of a million inhabitants.

The book lists inhabitants along with their professional titles and for widows also their maiden names (see page 1) . Although this civic society was racially stratified, this is not evident from the content of this book beyond noting that in some streets, the ratio of European to Asian (Indonesian, Japanese, Arabic  or Chinese names) varies from that of other streets.

Example of adress book entries
Page 1 of Bandoeng adres Boek

Another feature of the book is the variety of street name designations – some typically Dutch (straat, weg, laan)-whereas others have Indonesian descriptions (Jalang, Gang). Lastly is to be noted the frequent reference to a paviljoen (abbreviated as pav). These were small cottages or house extensions that provided rental accommodation at the same address. The book contains as well a large number of advertisements, as see on the accompanying page 1

The listing presented here is a digitised transcription which differs  from the original in three ways.  The advertisements have been left out.  The original, manually prepared document, contained a sorting error resulting in a substantial list of names being misplaced. The attached version was sorted electronically. A third difference arises because of the peculiarities of Dutch spelling, with its use of the IJ combination, arguably an alternative for a Y. In the original words containing that letter combination appeared near the end of the book rather than behind the names starting with H.

Click on the link below

Bandoeng Adres Boek2

 

An alternative sorting, by street and house number, can be provided by contacting the web master:  email to boude@boudewynvanoort.com.

The original compiler of the document (Nederlandsche Handel maatschappij) used  somewhat erratic naming conventions for the streets, sometimes spelling out the word “Klein” and sometimes abbreviating as “Kl”. I have used the list of street names on the last pages of the publication, “Bandoeng, Beeld van een Stad” ( Asia Maior 1996) as a standard. Indonesian street names moreover all tend to start with the description jalan (or jln) . Bandoeng also had a number of addresses starting with the word gang (or gng)This descriptor has been moved behind the name to provide a more consistent sorting and to avoid the imposition of confusion when the nature of the street ( avenue, str, jalan etc) is not known.

A facsimile copy of the source of this information can be provided as a PDF. The quality will reflect the short comings of the available source material.

 

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