page_title: Indo people
section_title: Dutch and English in Southeast Asia (17th and 18th century)
hierarchical_section_title: Indo people / History of European trade and colonialism in Southeast Asia (16th century-1949) / Dutch and English in Southeast Asia (17th and 18th century)
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: De Hollandse kerk of 'Kruiskerk' te Batavia. Op het plein voor de kerk een menigte. Rechtsboven: 200 Cf. Westfries Museum, inv. nr. 15241.08. De prenten uit de Atlas Van Stolk en Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag, inv. nr. 388 A 9 deel II, na p. 200, 1 zijn zwart-wit, de prent uit de Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Atlas van der Hagen, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag Deel 4 ) is ingekleurd. English: The Dutch church or 'Kruiskerk' at Batavia. A crowd of people is depicted on the square before the church. Top right: 200. Cf. Westfries Museum, inv. nr. 15241.08. The prints in the Atlas Van Stolk and Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag, inv. nr. 388 A 9 part II, after p. 200, are in black and white, while the print from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Atlas van der Hagen, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague Part 4) has been coloured in.
context_page_description: 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 colonial culture of the former Dutch East Indies, a Dutch colony in Southeast Asia and a predecessor to 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 Asian ancestry. The European ancestry of these people was predominantly Dutch, but also included Portuguese, British, French, Belgian, German 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.
context_section_description: 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). Europeans living in Batavia also included Norwegians, Italians, Maltese, Poles, Irish, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Swedes. 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. An Indo-European society developed in the East Indies. Although most of its members became Dutch citizens, their culture was strongly Eurasian in nature, with 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 colonisation. This would change after the formal colonisation by the Dutch in the 19th century.
  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.
  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 
caption: Dutch church or 'Kruiskerk' in Batavia c. 1682
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