Indos in colonial history

Indos (short for Indo-Europeans) are a Eurasian people of mixed Indonesian and European descent. The early (pre-colonial) evolution of this hybrid Eurasian community in the East Indies commenced during the arrival of Portuguese traders in the 16th century and continued with the arrival of Dutch (VOC) 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. This increasingly hastened the growing pressure to assimilate Indo culture into dominant Dutch culture.

At the end of the colonial era, a community of about 300,000 Indo-Europeans was registered as Dutch citizens and Indos continued to form the majority of the European legal class. When, in the second half of the 20th century, the independent Republic of Indonesia was established, practically all Europeans, including the Indo-Europeans who by now had adopted a one sided identification with their paternal lineage, emigrated from the country.

There are distinctive historical patterns of evolving social and cultural perspectives on Indo-European society and its culture. Throughout the colonial history of the Dutch East Indies key cultural elements such as language, clothing and lifestyle have a different emphasis in each phase of its evolution. Over time, the Indo mix culture was forced to adopt more and more Dutch trades and customs. To describe the colonial era, it is diligent to differentiate between each distinctive time period in the 19th and 20th century.

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.

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