The Eurasians

The community of Eurasians in Singapore is descended from Europeans who intermarried with local Asians. The ethnicities within the community span the length and breadth of Europe, although Eurasian migrants to Singapore in the 19th century came largely from colonies already in Asia, such as British Malaya; Chittagong and Goa in India; the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina.

Currently, the community boasts family names which come from various European nations. For example, the Armenian (Galistan, Dragon and Avakian families), the British (Caine, Hogan, Reeves, Fenley, Hale, Shirlaw and Smith families), the Danish (Lange, Olsen, Rasmussen and Jensen families), the Dutch (Marbeck, Van Cuylenberg, De Bakker, Westenra, Ten Haken, Feenstra, Gronloh and Vanderstraaten families), the French (Longue, Poulier and Cherbonnier families), the German (Oehlers, Keller, Kaiser and Roelcke families), the Italian (Marini, De Luca, Esposito, Angelucci and Scarpa families), Portuguese (Carvalho, Conceicao, De Almeida, De Silva, De Souza, Lazaroo, Monteiro, Oliveiro, Pereira, Pestana, Rodrigues and Theseira families), the Spanish (Castellano, Fernandez, Lopez, Zuniga and Hernandez families) and the Swedish (Holmberg, Johansson and Lindblom families) nations.

The Portuguese & Spanish

The first Europeans to land in Asia were the Portuguese, followed by the Spanish. The Portuguese descendants, who are of mixed Portuguese and Chinese/Indian/Malay descent, are collectively known as the Gente Kristang.

This group is characterised by having its own distinctive dialect of Portuguese, the Kristang language, although it is now only spoken by a few, older members of the Eurasian community.

The Dutch

In 1602, a Dutch trading company called the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC (literally “United East Indies Company” but better known in English as the Dutch East India Company) was created to conduct trade in the area east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan. In establishing their numerous trade stations spanning across Asia, the Dutch created independent settler societies in each of their colonies, where Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) became the administrative centre and rendezvous point for the company’s Asian shipping traffic.

Between 1602 and 1795, the VOC fitted out some 4,700 ships which carried almost a million Europeans to the Far East. Almost 70 percent of the one million of the passengers never actually returned to Europe, making Asia their new home. These early seafarers were not only made up of Dutch, but also included British, Germans, French Huguenots, Italians, Scandinavians and other Europeans who were employed by the VOC. In time, many were assimilated into Dutch colonies situated throughout Asia (though primarily in modern Indonesia) where they were stationed and became part of the respective communities.

Intermarriages between VOC employees and locals were encouraged, which lead to the creation of communities of Dutch descendants. Today, there are only four surviving coherent and large communities who are descended from those early intermarriages. They are the Coloureds from South Africa, Dutch Burghers from Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), Dutch Indos from Indonesia, Anglo-Burmese and Dutch Eurasians from Malacca, Malaysia.

Dutch descendants in Malaysia and Singapore are primarily made up of Dutch Eurasians originating from Malacca, Ceylon Dutch Burghers originating from Sri Lanka, as well as early Dutch settlers originating from Indonesia and India.

Language

English is generally spoken as a first language by Eurasians, whilst amongst the elder generation who are of Portuguese descent, the Portuguese creole known as Cristão or Papia Kristang – the Kristang language – is still spoken by some people.

Religion

The Eurasian community in Singapore is overwhelmingly Christian, most being Roman Catholics who celebrate Christian feast days such as Christmas, Easter and Corpus Christi.