Marriage by the Glove: Marriage of Separated Lovers

Relationships between European immigrant men and native Indonesian women, which led to concubinage, were common during the Dutch colonial era. These relationships were generally short-lived as European men still wished to marry European or Indo-European women of equal status.

This desire drove the men to participate in arranged matches through their family, friend, or acquaintance in the Netherlands. Reggie Baay in Nyai dan Pergundikan di Hindia Belanda (Nyai and Concubinage in the Dutch East Indies) mentions that proxy marriage or the so-called trouwen met handschoenen (marriage by the glove) was a typical phenomenon in the Dutch colonial era which was carried out willingly by both sides.

"In this marriage, the authority of the prospective groom can be delegated to another person through the gloves he sent," Reggie wrote.

As with modern-day arranged marriages, the groom's family or acquaintances would find a European woman willing to marry the man who was living in the Dutch East Indies. If there was a woman who was willing, a marriage with gloves would then be performed. The marriage was carried out with a proxy or a power of attorney because the bachelor was far away from Europe. At that time, an unmarried woman was deemed inappropriate to sail alone to get married in the country where the man lived, and the only solution was for the woman to first change her marriage status.

According to Frederick Spencer Bird in A Sketch of Holland and the Dutch, marriage by proxy was a solution for the bride and groom to get married, because it would take a long time for the man in the Dutch East Indies to return to Europe or his hometown to simply hold a wedding at the stadhuis (city hall) or church. Moreover, the voyage required a large amount of money. 

"Thus, should, for instance, the bride live in Holland, and her intended husband in Netherlands India, it occasionally happens that to save the expense of a long voyage, and the consequence loss of time, it is arranged that the lady shall go out to Batavia or elsewhere to join him; but before sailing, what is called "a Glove marriage" (met de Handschoen trouwen), takes place," Bird wrote.

In terms of the marriage process, after the preparations were complete, the man would send his glove to be worn on the wedding day by a friend or relative as a proxy, with the bride and groom's representatives present. Once the procession was complete, the separated lovers would be considered legally as husband and wife. The woman, who had become a wife, was allowed to sail to meet her husband. In colonial terms, according to Reggie, this was called the arrival of the handschoentje (white bride who had performed marriage with gloves).

However, if either party died before meeting, Bird said the survivor, whether wife or husband, was entitled to claim the deceased party's inheritance, as if they had lived together for years.

The great interest of European men in the colony in marriage with gloves made it quite easy to trace those men, one of whom was Francois Caron. According to Gary P. Leupp in Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543–1900, the VOC official married through a guardian to Constantia Boudaen, a young Dutch woman from a prominent family. 

"Caron had in fact become engaged, while in Holland, to Constantia... They married by proxy soon after his return to Batavia, and Constantia arrived in Batavia in 1645," Leupp wrote.

Women who married by proxy were commonly accompanied by family members, relatives, or confidants from both sides when sailing to meet their husband in the colony. Such was the case for Maartje, the daughter of an Amsterdam hotel owner. Maartje, who got married by proxy, sailed to the Dutch East Indies on Burgemeester den Tex in 1894. On the voyage, she was accompanied by the wife of writer and journalist Jan Fabricius.

Reggie said the story of the arrival of white brides who married gloves was a recurring theme in Indies literature. "The newlywed who set sail alone were often involved in the twists and turns of romance. Many handschoentjes couldn't resist the seduction of the bachelors on the ship," Reggie wrote.

Not only the shipboard love story, the life stories of white brides in the colony also gained a lot of attention. One of the writers that highlighted this was Bas Veth.

Joost Cote in Romancing The Indies: The Literary Construction of Tempo Doeloe, 1880–1930, wrote that Bas Veth focuses on the issue of sexual relations between European immigrant men and Indies (Indo-European) and native women, as well as between young Dutch women and colonial men. "In his depictions, colonial life was permeated by sleazy, sexual and physically dangerous undercurrents," Cote wrote.

The series of colonial vignettes opens with a description of a young European wife, married in the Netherlands by proxy (met de handschoen), arriving in Batavia to be, as Veth sees it, mauled by a crude colonial backwoods male whom she had never met. She later accompanies him to a plantation where she would either be poisoned by the husband’s cast-off nyai (concubine) or contaminated by venereal disease, ‘with which most young men living in sin in the Indies are infected’.

On the other hand, in relation to the concubinage that was rife in the colony during the Dutch colonial era, Reggie mentioned that the arrival of a handschoentje meant that the nyai's duty in assisting a European man was over. "This meant that the concubine (if she had not already been told to leave) had to immediately leave the house and leave the man's life. In addition, all traces of the concubine's existence must be eliminated," Reggie wrote.