Ah just recently I start reading a lot of literature regarding Eurasians/Indische/Indo in East Indie.
As I have wrote in my related articles about eurasian, I was conducting personal research about indische in east indie to satisfy my curiosity. Indeed, most of all my oma’s siblings passed away already. The oldest one is in netherlands, and having memory detoriation due nature of her old age.
Her son (my mother’s cousin) didn’t know much about history of our family, now I’m the only one left to investigate. My sister has plan to study to Netherlands, but it won’t happen anytime soon and I really fear that I will lost my last information resource. A friend told me interesting information though, Churches in europe documented all the marriages in the past, it means people could trace back their origin as 300 years earlier. It’s good and bad news for me, since my family surname (de Wilde) is a very generic family name. Comparable to Li, Tan, Wu, Wang of China, or Smith family.
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.
Seeing how the authors describef the life of common eurasians, it’s almost like my oma said. My great-great grandfather, Christiaans de Wilde was exiled from his dutch family because married a chinese woman, Tan Anggoer.
There was also high probability that Christiaans came from successful family enterprise or even officials, but it was just my prediction because I have zero information about him. My oma was told by his father that Christiaans de Wilde had two other siblings, which her father never met due to the exile. I can’t prove the authencity of this story.
My great grandfather, Gustaaf de Wilde married with his wife, Soetirah, a javanese woman of Kebumen origin in Batavia, 1922. The fact that they married in Batavia shouldn’t be ignored, because that means they were classified as second class citizen because able to live in the capital.
I was used to wonder why my great-grandfather married her wife in 1922, when he was around 43 and her wife was 26.
I saw these marriage age unusual, I remember the elder people married during 15, 17 or 19. But here my grandfather was 43 during his marriage, I thought possibility of Sooetirah being second wife, but I apparently wrong. It’s possible that my great grandfather had the inferiority complex of being eurasian and economic difficulty that made him unable to have decent economic living, thus discourage him to commit a marriage or he just didn’t have interest to marry yet.
This scenario seems more probable, because in my great grandfather’s death certificate, he was typist for official, which suits the description of being second class citizen as described above.
My oma also told me that he was gentle person, taught bible to his children before sleeping, and he was Protestant Christian. This was also an interesting fact because Catholic was religion of european majority. I couldn’t tell whether he was born catholic or converted to protestant later or he was born protestant. Not enough documentation.
Now here comes the intersting question, how do third generations Indo should define themseles?
I referred to my last post of 3rd generations of Indo in Indonsia. Most were reluctant of conforming their identity. It couldn’t be helped, the myth of Eurasians = European was still strong in post independent era. People of dutch and chinese descent were careful. The 1st generation have experienced the discrimination and they warned their children to live and think as Indonesians, cutting off the language heritage, forgetting the history of their ancestors.
History is not to be forgotten. I really encourage the 3rd generation Indo to feel proud of their mixed heritage. If you still have living grandparents who surviving the history of our country, ask them before it’s too late.
You don’t want to have your identity awareness arise after your grandparents pass away.
I also would like to announce a sponsor message to all indo people in Indonesia and worldwide.
Professor Dewulf from University of California has launched a research project about the Indo Diaspora. Please see announcement below. If you would like to respond, you can either send me your information and I’ll gather it all together or contact him directly.
Dank je wel,
BiancaThe Dutch Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley recently started a research project related to literature from and about the
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Hello Calvin,
I’m very interested in the subject of Indos living in Indonesia. Please visit my blog and go to the Introduction from 2005. It will give you a sense of who I am.
I iive in Seattle, Washington, USA. We immigrated from Holland in 1962. I was born in Rotterdam. My father is from Java and mother from Sumatra. My mother’s lineage is Indische several generations.
Facebook Dutch-Indonesian Community has a forum on Books and also Family Stories. I saw your book suggestion. We are learning a lot about how many of us there are all over the world. You are another part of the equation.
Selamat Datang,
Bianca
I visited your blog and reading your history. It’s nice to meet people of similar background, looking forward to hear more of your stories. Thank you for your kind visit.
Calvin