Sex, Time and Place: Queer Histories of London, c.1850 to the Present Paperback – April 19, 2018
by Simon Avery and Katherine M. Graham
Johannes Lodewijk Julian Franciscus Ezerman (1869–1949) was a prominent Dutch Sinologist, colonial civil servant, diplomat, and orientalist whose life bridges specialized academic scholarship, colonial administration in the Dutch East Indies, and early twentieth-century radical and literary networks. Between 1888 and 1892, Ezerman trained as a student interpreter, sharpening his linguistic and cultural expertise under the guidance of renowned Dutch Sinologists such as Gustaaf Schlegel. Building upon this rigorous foundation, he built a distinguished career within the Dutch colonial administration, eventually serving as a high-ranking official and Advisor for Chinese Affairs, known as the Kantoor voor Chineesche Zaken, in the Dutch East Indies. In this capacity, he functioned as a critical administrative mediator between the Dutch colonial government and local Chinese communities in prominent urban centers like Batavia, now Jakarta, and Cirebon. Within orientalist circles, his independent perspectives and unorthodox associations earned him a reputation as a "radical and maverick Orientalist."
Ezerman's scholarly output reflects his deep engagement with Asian history and culture. In 1893, he co-edited the Alphabetical List of the Chinese and Japanese Emperors alongside Gustaaf Schlegel and B.A.J. van Wettum, providing a foundational reference guide that compiled imperial year-titles and reign durations. Later in his career, his administrative and cultural investigations in West Java culminated in the 1920 publication of Beschrijving van den Koan Iem-tempel, "Tiao Kak-Sie", te Cheribon, a detailed historical and cultural monograph documenting the prominent Avalokiteshvara Chinese temple in Cirebon.
Beyond his administrative and scholarly footprint, Ezerman occupies a fascinating intersection in literary and queer history through his association with the Jamaican-American Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay. Connecting through radical left-wing political networks, Ezerman met McKay in New York in August 1919. Ezerman hired McKay to conduct historical and social research at the New York Public Library focusing on Black communities, and subsequently provided crucial financial backing for the publication of McKay's poetry collection, Spring in New Hampshire, while also supporting McKay's subsequent trip to London.
Scholarly analysis of the correspondence between McKay, Ezerman, and Charles Kay Ogden reveals complex personal dynamics that reflect the coded romantic and homosocial patterns of the early twentieth century. Ezerman followed McKay's poetic development with intense scrutiny, displaying a particular fascination with McKay's sexually charged sonnets written in the style of fin-de-siècle decadents. In letters to Ogden, McKay reflected on Ezerman's deeply conflicted psychology, noting that while Ezerman was intensely enthusiastic about his poetry, he simultaneously harbored a sense of shame regarding his own passions, leading him to project sentimentalized ideas onto McKay's more explicit work. Through his unique synthesis of colonial diplomacy, orientalist scholarship, and patronage of queer modernist literature, Ezerman remains a compelling figure of the early twentieth-century transnational landscape.
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Sex, Time and Place: Queer Histories of London, c.1850 to the Present Paperback – April 19, 2018 by Simon Avery and Katherine M. Graham |
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