page_title: Indos in colonial history
section_title: The colonial position of Indos
hierarchical_section_title: Indos in colonial history / The colonial position of Indos
caption_attribution_description: Bahasa Indonesia: Foto. Sekelompok remaja putri Indo di Batavia Nederlands: foto. Portret van een groep Indo-Europese meisjes, Batavia
context_page_description: Indos are a Eurasian people of mixed Indonesian and European descent. The earliest evidence of Eurasian communities in the East Indies coincides with the arrival of Portuguese traders in the 16th century. Eurasian communities, often with distinct, specific names, also appeared following the arrival of Dutch traders in the 17th and 18th century.
  At the start of the 19th century, official colonisation of the East Indies started and the territorial claims of the VOC expanded into a fully fledged colony named the Dutch East Indies. The existing pre-colonial Indo-European communities were considerably complemented with Indos descending from European males settling in the Dutch East Indies. These European settlers, who were government officials, business men, planters and particularly military men without wives, engaged in relations with native women. Their offspring was considered Indo-European and if acknowledged by the father belonged to the European legal class in the colony.
  In 1860, there were fewer than 1,000 European females against over 22,000 European males. It was only by the end of the 19th century that a sizeable number of Dutch women started to arrive in the colony.
context_section_description: Formal colonisation commenced at the dawn of the 19th century when the Netherlands took possession of all VOC assets. Before that time the VOC was in principle just another trading power among many, establishing trading posts and settlements in strategic places around the archipelago. The Dutch gradually extended their small nation's sovereignty over most of the islands in the East Indies. The existing VOC trading posts and the VOC's European and Eurasian settlements were developed into Dutch ruled enclaves, with the VOC's own administration governing both their indigenous and expatriate populations.
  The Dutch East Indies were not the typical settler colony founded through massive emigration from the mother countries (such as the United States or Australia) and hardly involved displacement of the indigenous islanders. Neither was it a plantation colony built on the importation of slaves (such as Haiti or Jamaica), apart from some nutmeg plantations in the island of Banda during the VOC era, or a pure trading post colony (such as Singapore or Macau). It was more of an expansion of the existing chain of VOC trading posts. Instead of mass emigration from the homeland, the sizeable indigenous populations were controlled through effective political manipulation supported by military force. Servitude of the indigenous masses was enabled through a structure of indirect governance, keeping existing indigenous rulers in place and using the Indo Eurasian population as an intermediary buffer. Being one of the smallest nations in the world it was in fact impossible for the Netherlands to even attempt to establish a typical settler colony.
  In 1869, British anthropologist Alfred Russel Wallace described the colonial governing structure in his book "The Malay Archipelago":
  "The mode of government now adopted in Java is to retain the whole series of native rulers, from the village chief up to princes, who, under the name of Regents, are the heads of districts about the size of a small English county. With each Regent is placed a Dutch Resident, or Assistant Resident, who is considered to be his "elder brother," and whose "orders" take the form of "recommendations," which are, however, implicitly obeyed. Along with each Assistant Resident is a Controller, a kind of inspector of all the lower native rulers, who periodically visits every village in the district, examines the proceedings of the native courts, hears complaints against the head-men or other native chiefs, and superintends the Government plantations."
  The need for a sizeable European population to administer the vast region of the East Indies did however initially steer colonial policies to stimulate inter-marriage of European men with native women. Up to the 19th century, Indos often occupied the role of 'Resident', 'Assistant Resident' or 'Controleur'. Colonial legislation allowed for assimilation of the relatively large racially mixed Indo population into the European stratosphere of the colonial hierarchy. The official judicial (and racial) division had three layers where the top layer of Europeans in fact included a majority of Indo Europeans. Subsequently, these Eurasians were not registered as a separate ethnic group, but were included in the European head count, unlike the practice in other colonies such as South Africa which had a strict policy of ‘Apartheid’ (i.e. stringent racial segregation) under which mixed race people were put in the separate legal class of Coloureds.
  While in the VOC era of the previous centuries, religion was the most important colonial touchstone for measuring social and legal status, in the 19th century religion made way for racial criteria. In comparison to the British Indies and overall colonialism worldwide, strictly speaking the Dutch version of colonial policies and legislation did not maintain a so-called colour line. In comparison to Catholic colonial powers there was a lesser degree of missionary zealotry. However, it cannot be maintained that the actual expatriate colonists did not share similarly racist values and beliefs along the
caption: Indo European children in Batavia, between 1925-1935.
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