Dutch-Indonesian Community

Last month, I read a journal titled “The Eurasian Minority in Indonesia”, written by Justus M. van Der Kroef, first published in American Sociological Review. It’s a 10 page academic journal, would probably bore most of people, but a hidden gem for sociology and eurasian enthusiast. The article was well written and described the life of eurasian minority up to year 1949.

The author described that one problem of indische was the lack of data. There was no precise data regarding the population of eurasians. In 1854, 9,000 of 18,000 european in java possessed “charateristic skin color”, and 5,600 without this charateristic also considered as eurasians. Legally, the european considered the eurasian as european.

Things would further complicated as eurasians married with indigenous indonesians and their descendants classified as native. In 1941, it was estimated the number of eurasians was 300,000, and by 1940, there 8-9 millions of Indonesians with european ancestors.

Even before dutch arrived, there was eurasian portugese that came from Bengal, India. There were also spanish filipino. These eurasians laters captured by dutch as slave, merchants because they were considered better compared to native Indonesians.

In 1617, Whites were forbidden to marry native indonesians, or they risk themselves being banned from society, and later, this is extended to eurasian. In the 19th century, discrimination to Eurasian sharpens. The european status must be “proved”, and eurasians mostly works as clerks, or low officials.

Educational facilities for eurasians were low, and few were received any training in europe. Eurasians were still living as second class, and often subject of ridicule to the dutch due speaking “broken dutch”. They adopted distinguished culture, mixture of native and european. They were part of native, but not fully native, they were more similar to european, but treated as second class citizen despite their legality being “european”. Many also lived as paupers, in kampung.

By the 19th century, the structure of eurasian community was shown more clearly.

The top one were eurasians who gained wealth due successfulness of being entrepreuner. Very few were elites in government and military, but often result of symphaty of their superior.
In the middle class were majority eurasians who worked as petty officials, clerks, subalterns, and only few managed to get beyond elementary schools. In most cases were European in name only.
In the lowest group was the paupers, the Indonesianized group. They were people handy in craft, living in kampung, and also part of organized crime.

The last two groups hade social jealousy toward the full-blood european. The dutch government themselves often show racial discrimination. These Indos were particulay ridiculed because of their broken dutch, yet didn’t provide proper language education. The social structure made them forever inferior to the pure elite europeans.

By the 20th century, the polarity grew greater. The european in East indie became more “european” and distinguished eurasian not as part of their society. number of europan immigrants and abudance of eurasians made a fierce competition toward jobs in officials and enterprises. The Indo themselves now also must compete with trained Indonesians (as result of Ethic Politic, education was also provided for native Indonesians).

In 1919, the Indos joined hand, forming Indo Europeesch Verbond. It was made to promote emancipation toward Indo minorities and unification of europe and Indos. It was largely unsucessfull despite being largest part of parliement in Volksraad (People’s Council). At first, the europeans supported the idea, but europanization made them distinguish themselves from eurasians.

The social discrinmations also reached the children. The chidrens at first were told as “Indian Children”, they spoke with same manner, same accent, but later the anti-thesis between europan and eurasians also penetrated the world of children.

The article is longer than this post, so I recommend you to read it yourself.

Download link (Mediafire)