![]() A Mardijker family | |
Regions with significant populations | |
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Languages | |
Predominantly Betawi • Indonesian • Mardijker Creole (historical) Also Malay • Portuguese | |
Religion | |
Christianity | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Belanda Hitam • Klingalese • Betawi • Indo • African Indonesian • Indian Indonesian • Portuguese Indonesian |
The Mardijker people refer to an ethnic community in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) made up of descendants of freed slaves. They could be found at all major trading posts in the East Indies. They were mostly Christian, of various ethnicities from conquered Portuguese and Spanish territories, and some with European ancestry. They spoke Mardijker Creole, a Portuguese-based creole, which has influenced the modern Indonesian language.
The ancestors of the Mardijkers had been slaves of the Portuguese in India, Africa, and the Malay Peninsula, and were brought to Indonesia by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), especially after the 1641 Dutch conquest of Malacca, whereby Portuguese speakers in the city were taken as captive. Some were also Christian slaves captured by Moro raiders from the Philippines and sold in slave markets in Batavia during the height of the Spanish–Moro conflict and the Sulu Sea piracy. [1] [2] In the Spanish Philippines, they were called "Mardica", as recorded in the Murillo Velarde Map.
The term Mardijker is a Dutch corruption of the Malay word Merdeka, which originates from the Sanskrit Maharddhika meaning "rich, prosperous, and powerful". In the Malay archipelago, this term had acquired the meaning of a freed slave, and now means "independent".
The Mardijkers mostly clung to their Catholic faith and continued to attend Batavia's Portuguese church, although many were eventually baptised by the Dutch Reformed Church. They were legally recognized by the VOC as a separate ethnic group and kept themselves apart from the native Javanese. [3] [4]
During the VOC era, there was already considerable intermarriage with the Indos in pre-colonial history, who were often also of Portuguese descent. During the colonial era, the Mardijkers eventually assimilated completely into the Eurasian Indo community and were no longer registered as a separate ethnic group.
Between the 18th and 19th centuries, the Mardijkers exchanged their Portuguese-based creole for the Betawi language.
A part of Jakarta is called "Kampung Tugu" an area where Mardijker people had been allowed to settle for after their freedom, the neighborhood retains its Portuguese distinctiveness. Historically these people also settled in Old Batavia's Roa Malacca district near Kali Besar; however, little historic buildings remain of what had been the historic quarter.
Common Mardijker family names are De Fretes, Ferrera, De Mello, Gomes, Gonsalvo, Cordero, De Dias, De Costa, Soares, Rodrigo, De Pinto, Perreira, and De Silva. Some Mardijker families also took Dutch names such as Willems, Michiels, Bastiaans, Pieters, Jansz, Fransz, and Davidts.
When the Indonesians fought for independence from the Dutch they used the slogan Merdeka ("freedom"), which has the same root as Mardijker. This word had considerable political significance also in Malaysia and Singapore. The term Mardijkers is also used for the so-called Belanda Hitam, soldiers recruited in the Dutch Gold Coast who served in the Dutch East Indies Army and gained their freedom afterward.
Batavia was the capital of the Dutch East Indies. The area corresponds to present-day Jakarta, Indonesia. Batavia can refer to the city proper or its suburbs and hinterland, the Ommelanden, which included the much larger area of the Residency of Batavia in the present-day Indonesian provinces of Jakarta, Banten and West Java.
Portuguese creoles are creole languages which have Portuguese as their substantial lexifier. The most widely-spoken creoles influenced by Portuguese are Cape Verdean Creole, Guinea-Bissau Creole and Papiamento.
Betawi people, or Batavians, are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the city of Jakarta and its immediate outskirts, as such often described as the native inhabitants of the city. They are the descendants of the people who inhabited Batavia from the 17th century onwards.
The Kristang or Serani are a creole ethnic group of people of predominantly mixed Portuguese and Malaccan descent, with substantial Dutch, British, Jewish, Malay, Chinese and Indian heritage. They are based in Malaysia and to some extent in Singapore. People of this ethnicity have, besides Portuguese, a strong Dutch heritage due to intermarriages, which is common among the Kristang. In addition, due to persecution by the Portuguese Inquisition in the region, a lot of the Jews of Malacca assimilated into the Kristang community. The creole group arose in Malacca between the 16th and 17th centuries, when the city was a port and base of the Portuguese Empire. Some descendants speak a distinctive Kristang language or Malacca Portuguese, a creole based on Portuguese. Today the government classifies them as Portuguese Eurasians.
Mardijker is an extinct Portuguese-based creole of Jakarta. It was the native tongue of the Mardijker people. The language was introduced with the establishment of the Dutch settlement of Batavia ; the Dutch brought in slaves from the colonies they had recently acquired from the Portuguese, and the slaves' Portuguese creole became the lingua franca of the new city. The name is Dutch for "freeman", as the slaves were freed soon after their settlement. The language was replaced by Betawi creole Malay in Batavia by the end of the 18th century, as the Mardijker intermarried and lost their distinct identity. However, around 1670 a group of 150 were moved to what is now the village and suburb of Tugu, where they retained their language, there known as Papiá, until the 1940s.
Petjo, also known as Petjoh, Petjok, Pecok, Petjoek is a Dutch-based creole language that originated among the Indos, people of mixed Dutch and Indonesian ancestry in the former Dutch East Indies. The language has influences from Dutch and then depending on the region Javanese, Malay, Sundanese and Betawi. Its speakers presently live mostly in Indonesia and the Netherlands. The language is expected to become gradually extinct by the end of the 21st century, due to Indos' shift toward Indonesian in Indonesia and Dutch in the Netherlands.
Koja is a district of North Jakarta, Indonesia. It is known as the location of Kampung Tugu, a historic Portuguese-influenced neighborhood in North Jakarta.
Betawi, also known as Betawi Malay, Jakartan Malay, or Batavian Malay is the spoken language of the Betawi people in Jakarta, Indonesia. It is the native language of perhaps 5 million people; a precise number is difficult to determine due to the vague use of the name.
There are 1,340 recognised ethnic groups in Indonesia. The vast majority of those belong to the Austronesian peoples, with a sizeable minority being Melanesians. Indonesia has the world's largest number of Austronesians and Melanesians.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to establish a colonial presence in the Indonesian Archipelago. Their quest to dominate the source of the spices that sustained the lucrative spice trade in the early 16th century, along with missionary efforts by Roman Catholic orders, saw the establishment of trading posts and forts, and left behind a Portuguese cultural element that remains in modern-day Indonesia.
Totok is an Indonesian term of Javanese origin, used in Indonesia to refer to recent migrants of Arab, Chinese or European origins. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was popularised among colonists in Batavia, who initially coined the term to describe the foreign born and new immigrants of "pure blood" – as opposed to people of mixed indigenous and foreign descent, such as the Peranakan Arabs, Chinese or Europeans.
The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies, was a Dutch colony with territory mostly comprising the modern state of Indonesia, which declared independence on 17 August 1945. Following the Indonesian War of Independence, Indonesia and the Netherlands made peace in 1949. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, the Dutch ceded the governorate of Dutch Malacca to Britain, leading to its eventual incorporation into Malacca (state) of modern Malaysia.
Belanda Hitam was an Indonesian language term used to refer to Black soldiers recruited by the Dutch colonial empire for service in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL), the colonial army of the Dutch East Indies. The recruitment of Black soldiers into the KNIL resulted from a combination of factors, including the heavy losses suffered by Dutch forces in the Java War and concerns over the reliability of indigenous KNIL troops. Between 1831 and 1872, over 3,000 West Africans, mostly Akan people, were recruited from the Dutch Gold Coast for KNIL service in the East Indies.
Indo people are a Eurasian people of mixed Asian and European descent. Through the 16th-18th centuries, they were known by the name Mestiço. To this day, they form one of the largest Eurasian communities in the world. The early beginning of this community started with the arrival of Portuguese traders in South East Asia in the 16th century. The second large wave started with the arrival of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) employees in the 17th century and throughout the 18th century. Even though the VOC is often considered a state within a state, formal colonisation by the Dutch only commenced in the 19th century.
The maharlika were the feudal warrior class in ancient Tagalog society in Luzon, the Philippines. They belonged to the lower nobility class similar to the timawa of the Visayan people. In modern Filipino, however, the word has come to refer to aristocrats or to royal nobility, which was actually restricted to the hereditary maginoo class.
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 (VOC) traders in the 17th and 18th century.
The Indo people 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.
Portuguese Indonesians are native Indonesians with Portuguese ancestry or have had adopted Portuguese customs and some practices such as religion.
Kampung Tugu is a historical neighborhood located in the northwestern Jakarta in the island of Java. Kampung Tugu grew from the land granted by the government of the Dutch East Indies to the converted Mardijker people in the 17th century. From this land, a Christian settlement grew and developed its own culture. Kampung Tugu is one of the oldest Christian neighborhoods in the western part of Indonesia. Today, the Christian neighborhood of Kampung Tugu is part of the Administrative Village of Tugu in Koja Subdistrict of North Jakarta, Indonesia.