Yet due to their power and influence, many Kapitans were also focal points of resistance against European colonial rule. For instance, in the aftermath of Batavia's Chinese Massacre of 1740, the city's Chinese headman, Kapitein Nie Hoe Kong, became an important player in the so-called Chinese War, or 'Perang Cina', between the Dutch East India Company and a Chinese-Javanese alliance. Over a century later, the Kapiteins of the kongsi republics in Borneo led their people in the so-called Kongsi Wars against Dutch colonial incursions from the late nineteenth until the early twentieth century.