Sia (title)

[2] These title holders and their families constituted the so-called Cabang Atas, the traditional Chinese establishment or gentry of colonial Indonesia.

[6][7] As a class, they dominated the administrative posts of Majoor, Kapitein and Luitenant der Chinezen, or the Chinese officership on a near-hereditary basis.

[2][7] To a significant extent, they also monopolised the colonial government's lucrative revenue farms, which formed the economic backbone of their political influence.

[10] This mirrored the decline in the importance of the Chinese officership as a government institution in the early twentieth century, which presaged its eventual abolition in most of the Dutch East Indies with the exception of the colonial capital, Batavia.

[10] As part of the Cabang Atas, Sias played an important role in the history of Indonesia, particularly in relation to the country's ethnic Chinese community.

The late colonial statesman Kan Hok Hoei Sia (first row, second from left) with other members of the Volksraad . A Sia, Kan was descended from Han Bwee Kong , the first Dutch-appointed Kapitein der Chinese of Surabaya .
An engraving of Oey Tamba Sia (after M. G. de Coudray, 1857)