The Ngo Ho Tjiang Kongsi (; the 'Five Tiger Generals'), sometimes spelled Ngo Houw Tjiang, was a powerful consortium that dominated the opium pacht or tax farm of the Residency of Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in the early to mid-nineteenth century.[1] [2] The pacht was an outsourced tax operation, collecting customs, excise and indirect duties on behalf of the Dutch colonial government.[3]
The five partners of the consortium were the pachters Lauw Ho, Gouw Kang Soei, Luitenant-titulair der Chinezen, Tan Ling, Khouw Siong Bo and Tan Kong Boen. The name of the kongsi refers to the five generals of the 14th-century Chinese classic novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Of all colonial-era pachten, opium was by far the most lucrative; and the five partners of Ngo Ho Tjiang were consequently among the wealthiest and most powerful tycoons of early to mid-nineteenth century Java. Ngo Ho Tjiang had very close ties to the colonial Chinese bureaucracy. One of the partners, Luitenant-titulair Gouw Kang Soei, sat on the Kong Koan ('Chinese Council') of Batavia, while the consortium's administrator, Lim Soe Keng Sia, was a son-in-law of Tan Eng Goan, the 1st Majoor der Chinezen of Batavia and the city's most senior Chinese official.[4]