The Indo people or Indos (; ) are Eurasian people living in or connected with Indonesia. In its narrowest sense, the term refers to people in the former Dutch East Indies who held European legal status but were of mixed Dutch and indigenous Indonesian descent, as well as their descendants today. In the broadest sense, an Indo is anyone of mixed European and Indonesian descent.
Indos are associated with the colonial culture of the former Dutch East Indies, a Dutch colony that became modern Indonesia after its proclamation of independence shortly after World War II. The term was used to describe people acknowledged to be of mixed Dutch and Indonesian descent, or it was a term used in the Dutch East Indies to apply to Europeans who had partial southeastern Eurafrasian ancestry.J. Errington, Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, 2008, Wiley-Blackwell, p. 138 "Indos–people of Dutch descent who stayed in the new republic Indonesia after it gained independence, or who emigrated to Indonesia after 1949–are called 'Dutch-Indonesians'. Although the majority of the Indos are found in the lowest strata of European society, they do not represent a solid social or economic group." The European ancestry of these people was predominantly Dutch, but also included Portuguese, German, British, French, Belgian and others.
The term "Indo" is first recorded from 1898, as an abbreviation of the Dutch term Indo-Europeaan. Other terms used at various times are 'Dutch Indonesians', 'Eurasians', 'Indo-Europeans', 'Indo-Dutch' and 'Dutch-Indos'.
Overview In the Indonesian language, common synonymous terms are (for males), , ,"Eurasians were referred to by native Indonesians as Sinjo (or Njo for short)". A. Adam, The Vernacular Press and the Emergence of Modern Indonesian Consciousness (1855–1913), Cornell Press, 1995, p. 12 , and Indo means Eurasian: a person with European and Indonesian parentage. Indo is an abbreviation of the term Indo-European which originated in the Dutch East Indies of the 19th century as an informal term to describe the Eurasians. is an abbreviation of the Dutch term . Indische was a term that could be applied to everything connected with the Dutch East Indies. In the Netherlands, the term includes all Dutch nationals who lived in the Dutch East Indies, either Dutch or mixed ancestry. To distinguish between the two, Eurasians are called Indo and native Dutch are called Totok. In the Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia), these families formed "a racially, culturally and socially homogeneous community between the Totoks (European newcomers) and the indigenous population". They were historically Christians and spoke Dutch, Portuguese, English and Indonesian. They were compared to Afrikaners from South Africa, who also share Dutch ancestry and culture, but are not mixed-race.
In the 16th-18th centuries, Eurasians were referred to by a Portuguese term (Dutch: ) or as coloured (Dutch: ). Additionally, a wide range of more contumelious terms, such as liplap, can be found in the literature.Quote: "Liplap: A vulgar and disparaging nickname given in the Dutch East Indies to Eurasians." See: Yule, Henry, Coke Burnell, Arthur Hobson-Jobson: the Anglo-Indian dictionary (Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 1996) p. 518
History of European trade and colonialism in Southeast Asia (16th century – 1949)
Portuguese and Spanish in Southeast Asia (16th century)
Eurasians in the Dutch East Indies were descendants of Europeans who travelled to Asia between the 16th and the 20th century. The earliest Europeans in Southeast Asia were Portuguese and Spanish traders. Portuguese explorers discovered two trade routes to Asia, sailing around the south of Africa or the Americas to create a commercial monopoly. In the early 16th century, the Portuguese established important trade posts in Southeast Asia, which was a diverse collection of many rival kingdoms, sultanates and tribes spread over a huge territory of peninsulas and islands. A main Portuguese stronghold was in the Maluku Islands (the Moluccas), the fabled "Spice Islands".
The Spanish established a dominant presence further north in the Philippines. These historical developments were instrumental in building a foundation for large Eurasian communities in this region.Notable Mestizo communities with Portuguese roots are the Larantuka and Topasses people, a powerful and independent group of Mestizo, who controlled the sandalwood trade and who challenged both the Dutch and Portuguese. Their descendants live on the islands of Flores and Timor to this day. Boxer, C.R., The Topasses of Timor,(Indisch Instituut, Amsterdam, 1947). Old Eurasian families in the Philippines mainly descend from the Spanish. While the oldest Indo families descend from Portuguese traders and explorers,Many Portuguese family names can be found on the islands of Ambon, Flores and East Timor. Although most Portuguese family names were adopted after conversion to the Christian religion, many families can still trace their roots to Portuguese ancestors. Rumphius, G.E. De Ambonse landbeschrijving (Landelijk steunpunt educatie Molukkers, Utrecht, 2002) some family names of old Indo families include Simao, De Fretes, Pereira, Henriques, etc. Pinto da Franca, A. Influencia Portuguesa na Indonesia (In: 'STUDIA N° 33', pp. 161-234, 1971, Lisbon, Portugal) Rebelo, Gabriel Informaçao das cousas de Maluco 1569 (1856 & 1955, Lisboa, Portugal)Boxer, C. R. Portuguese and Spanish Projects for the Conquest of Southeast Asia, 1580–1600 (In: 'Journal of Asian History' Vol. 3, 1969; pp. 118-136)
Dutch and English in Southeast Asia (17th and 18th century)
During the 1620s, Jan Pieterszoon Coen in particular insisted that families and orphans be sent from Holland to populate the colonies. As a result, a number of single women were sent and an orphanage was established in Batavia to raise Dutch orphan girls to become East India brides. Around 1650, the number of mixed marriages, frequent in the early years of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), declined sharply. There was a large number of women from the Netherlands recorded as marrying in the years around 1650. At least half the brides of European men in Batavia came from Europe. Many of these women were widows, already previously married in the Indies, but almost half of them were single women from the Netherlands marrying for the first time. There were still considerable numbers of women sailing eastwards to the Indies at this time. The ships' passenger lists from the 17th century also evidence this. Not until later in the 17th century did the numbers of passengers to Asia drop drastically.
Given the small population of their country, the Dutch had to fill out their recruitment for Asia by looking for overseas emigration candidates in the underprivileged regions of north-western Europe. Originally, most Dutch VOC employees were traders, accountants, sailors and adventurers. In 1622, over half the Batavia garrison of 143 consisted of foreigners (Germans were the majority among them), there were also French, Scots, English, Danes, Flemings, and Walloons (they were half of the VOC overall).Taylor, Jean Gelman. The Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). Megan Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius (2005) p. 7 Europeans living in Batavia also included Norwegians, Italians, Maltese, Poles, Irish, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Swedes.Donald F. Lach, Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, Volume III: A Century of Advance. Book 3: Southeast Asia (1998) p. 1317 The number of Swedes travelling to the East on Dutch ships numbered in the thousands. Many settled in Batavia for long periods. Some of the settlers in the 18th and early 19th centuries were men without wives, and intermarriage occurred with the local inhabitants; others brought their families. The VOC and later the colonial government to a certain extent encouraged this, partly to maintain their control over the region. The existing Indo (or Mestizo) population of Portuguese descent was therefore welcome to integrate.The language of trade was Malay with Portuguese influences. To this day the Indonesian language has a relatively large vocabulary of words with Portuguese roots e.g. Sunday, party, soap, table, flag, and school. An Indo-European society developed in the East Indies.In this time period the word (and country) 'Indonesia' did not exist yet. Neither was the colony of the 'Dutch East Indies' founded yet. Although most of its members became Dutch citizens, their culture was strongly Eurasian in nature, with a focus on both Asian and European heritage. 'European' society in the Indies was dominated by this Indo culture into which non-native born European settlers integrated. The non-native-born (totok) Europeans adopted Indo culture and customs. The Indo lifestyle (e.g. language and dress code) only came under pressure to westernise in the following centuries of formal Dutch colonization. This would change after the formal colonisation by the Dutch in the 19th century.Blusse, Leonard, Strange company: Chinese settlers, Mestizo women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia (Dordrecht-Holland; Riverton, U.S.A., Foris Publications, 1986. xiii, 302p.) no.: 959.82 B659Boxer, C. R., Jan Compagnie in war and peace, 1602–1799: a short history of the Dutch East-India Company (Hong Kong, Heinemann Asia, 1979. 115p.) number: 382.060492 B788Masselman, George, The cradle of colonialism (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1963) no.: 382.09492 MAS
Eurasian men were recruited by the colonial regime as go-betweens in both the civil administration and the military, where their mastery of two languages was useful. Few European women came to the Indies during the Dutch East India Company period to accompany the administrators and soldiers who came from the Netherlands. There is evidence of considerable care by officers of the Dutch East India Company for their illegitimate Eurasian children: boys were sometimes sent to the Netherlands to be educated, and sometimes never returned to Indonesia. Using the evidence of centuries old Portuguese family names many Indos carried matriarchal kinship relations within Eurasian communities, it has been argued by Tjalie Robinson that the origin of the Indo was less of a thin facade laid over a Dutch foundation, but sprang from an ancient mestizo culture going back all the way to the beginning of the European involvement in Asia.Goss, Andrew From Tong-Tong to Tempo Doeloe: Eurasian Memory Work and the Bracketing of Dutch Colonial History, 1957–1961 (Publisher: University of New Orleans, New Orleans, 2000) P.26-27 Online History Faculty Publications UNO
In 1720, Batavia's population consisted of 2,000 Europeans, mainly Dutch merchants (2.2 percent of the total population), 1,100 Eurasians, 11,700 Chinese, 9,000 non-Indonesian Asians of Portuguese culture (mardijkers), 600 Indo-Arab Muslims, 5,600 immigrants from a dozen islands, 3,500 Malays, 27,600 Javanese and Balinese, and 29,000 slaves of varying ethnic origins including Africans.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were new arrivals of Europeans in Malacca who made it their new home and became part of the Malacca Dutch community.Laura Jarnagin, Portuguese and Luso-Asian Legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511–2011, vol. 2: Culture and Identity in the Luso-Asian World: Tenacities & Plasticities (2012) p. 266
Dutch East Indies (1800–1949)
In 1854, over half of the 18,000 Europeans in Java were Eurasians. In the 1890s, there were 62,000 civilian 'Europeans' in the Dutch East Indies, most of them Eurasians, making up less than half of one per cent of the population. Indo influence on the nature of colonial society waned following World War I and the opening of the Suez Canal, when there was a substantial influx of white Dutch families.