Intermarriage and colonial identity

There has been little coverage of intermarriage among Asian communities in colonial Malaya and Singapore. Tamara Loos's study on ‘international marriages’, while concentrating on Asian–Asian liaisons, broadly looks at the dynamics of such marriages throughout colonial South and Southeast Asia. Elsewhere, there is abundant literature on colonial Canadian, Caribbean and contemporary Internet-related intermarriage, which includes discussions of gendered, racialised and stereotypical representations in colonial intermarriage.Footnote ⁵ It is often argued that the position of women in these situations is governed by their ethnic status; Kim Dertien, for example, analyses the position of the ‘weaker’ Canadian Aboriginal woman, coming from an ‘inferior’ racial background in comparison with her white husband or partner. As the weaker party, the Canadian Aboriginal woman uses the relationship to improve her own status.Footnote ⁶ However, Sylvia van Kirk delves into the social dynamics of what she refers to as ‘marrying in’ and ‘marrying out’, looking at kinship structures of both cohabiting parties.Footnote ⁷ Van Kirk's approach will be applied to this study. The issue of sexual politics is an important one and will be broached in sections where the empirical evidence allows such evaluation. It is also worth noting the work of Ronald Hyam and especially Laura Ann Stoler who expose the underbelly of sexual liaisons and practices and their interplay with colonial elites and their attitudes towards subservient communities in British colonial strongholds. Neither Hyam nor Stoler covers interaction between different colonialised Asian communities, however.Footnote ⁸

For colonial Malaya and Singapore, research by Lai Ah Eng, Tan Beng Hui and James Warren on the role of prostitution is a key to understanding the social makeup and gender roles.Footnote ⁹ Tan Beng Hui's research is particularly helpful because it supports my research findings and shows the many similarities between welfare entities (such as orphanages) in both colonial Chinese-based circles and churches.

Significance of intermarriage

One premise of this paper is that intermarriage was extraordinary in the context of the colonial framework of society and labour structured along broad racial categories. In this study, intermarriage will refer to heterosexual relationships between individuals of different racial and linguistic backgrounds.Footnote ¹⁰ The case studies will not focus on the issue of class because, on the whole, socio-economic and intra-ethnic differences were often ignored by colonial authorities despite internal differentiations.Footnote ¹¹

Indeed, the broad racial categories masked the discussion of class-based inequities. This continues in Malaysia, where, as Judith Nagata observes

Yet intra-ethnic exploitation was not unknown and acknowledged as a problem even in the 1920s and 1930s, as alluded to in several articles in the contemporary non-European press.Footnote ¹³

Paul Brass and Francis Robinson assert that fundamental differences did exist between the various colonised Asian communities: their work on India amongst the Hindus and Muslims questions the extent to which colonial ‘divide and rule’ initiatives were culpable for creating or perpetuating social divisions. However, this is highly questionable in terms of the Christian congregations in Singapore and Malaya.Footnote ¹⁴ While these congregations experienced segregation at various social, economic and political levels in their everyday lives, largely implemented by the colonial government, within the milieu of the various churches there appears to be little evidence of outright conflict between the ethnic groups.Footnote ¹⁵ This was especially evident in the case of the Tamil congregations who shared the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul (Singapore) with its much larger China-born (Teochew) congregation prior to 1888.

One aspect of intermarriage which needs addressing at this point relates to the ‘rose coloured’ contemporary view which equates interracial liaisons as a final step in the assimilation process.Footnote ¹⁶ There is evidence to show that the early intermarriages often adapted themselves to accommodate racial and economic divergence. The racial outsider was assimilated into the dominant racial grouping, thus negating the idea that intermarriage facilitates cross-cultural exchange. This fluidity is more akin to the adaptive model noted by van Kirk in Aboriginal and European settler unions in Canada. She notes how most of these early unions saw the European settlers adopting the cultural practices of the Canadian Aboriginal communities.Footnote ¹⁷ This practice should not be confused with the existing fluidity of ethnicity as observed by Nagata, where situational ‘switching’ of ethnic identity is common among the various Malaysian Muslim population — Malay, Indonesian, Indian or Arab, for instance — identifying differently ‘according to the exigencies of the situation, without in any way changing their cultural behaviours or formal institutional affiliations’.Footnote ¹⁸ The colonial Canadian scenario is more representative of relationships in colonial Singapore and Malaya, taking into account the British colonial penchant to artificially compartmentalise racial groups. On the pretence of racial ‘differences’, colonial authorities were able to divide communities along racial, class and gender lines — primarily to negate the likelihood of colonialised communities challenging the colonial hegemony.

Consequently, the subject of racism was seldom far from the surface of colonialised communities. This is particularly true of multiracial or multicultural societies that advance racial tolerance as part of their official ideology. Promoting racial tolerance does not suggest the promotion of racial indifference — in fact, on the contrary, multiculturalism and multiracialism under colonialism encouraged a heightened racial consciousness even while it insisted on tolerance.Footnote ¹⁹

It is also important to note that a variety of gender and kinship ties played a part in the formation of a social web within the Christian communities of colonial Malaya and Singapore. The structures and ensuing expectations were brought about by both traditional and colonial influences. For example, the relationships within Indian Christian communities were not necessarily a direct product of British colonialism, but modified and adjusted to fit a workable social, economic and political mould within a colonial context.Footnote ²⁰ I strongly believe Christianity had a limited effect on the overall outlook of these communities. Christian beliefs and individual Church practices were often incorporated or subjugated to the stronger influences of secular colonial society. I therefore argue that religiosity played a considerably smaller role in influencing the outlook of the average Asian Christian than secular influences. These secular influences vary from colonial social, political and economic relationships to more local elements such as linguistic, class or caste-related issues and gender relations. These influences played an arguably larger role to that of Christianity, although the latter's influence cannot be dismissed completely. While this article argues that the various Churches played a pivotal role in creating a platform which enabled interracial liaisons, there is no evidence to show that such liaisons were a result of direct indoctrination or compulsion, however.

In the contemporary Netherlands, Kalmijn and van Tubergen found four determinants for a propensity towards intermarriage. First, the children of migrants, who are therefore second-generation migrants and more integrated into Dutch society than their parents are more likely to intermarry. Second, it is common among those arriving in the new country at a younger age. Third, there is a higher propensity for intermarriage among persons with a higher level of education and, finally, also when the group-specific sex ratio is uneven.Footnote ²¹ These conditions, though contemporary, were similar to those that prevailed over a century ago within Asian communities in Malaya and Singapore.

According to Kalmijn, intermarriage decreases cultural distinctions, especially since the offspring of such unions are less likely to identify with a single group and instead illustrate the shifting boundaries in society, showing the potential for sociocultural change. Another important aspect relates to ‘opportunities’. Kalmijn shows how intercultural contact progresses only when opportunities for such contact are provided.Footnote ²² In a similar vein, Xin Meng and Robert G. Gregory view intermarriage as part of a pragmatic need to find a partner, in this case, outside one's ethnic, class or social grouping.Footnote ²³ This is particularly so, they argue, among immigrants who face strong competition for potential partners from a limited pool within their own group. The issue of pragmatism resurfaces yet again in Zhenchao Qian and Daniel Lichter, who contend that minorities and immigrants do not intentionally assimilate, but do so as a result of pragmatic decisions aimed to successfully adapt, which in turn gives rise to changes in behaviour.Footnote ²⁴

The disproportionately high male population of late-nineteenth-century Singapore and Malaya, especially among new immigrants, forced many to seek partners outside their communities. Immigrants who happened to be affiliated with the various Roman Catholic and Methodist churches had the added advantage of access to establishments such as church-based orphanages, which facilitated interracial contact.

Race, culture and the divisions within Asian communities

The population of colonial Malaya and Singapore was dominated by primarily three racial groupings: Malays, Chinese and Indians. The vast majority of the migrants arrived as cheap labour for the tin and rubber industries. A middle-class, English language-proficient Straits Chinese and Indian migrant community also existed in vastly smaller numbers.Footnote ²⁵

The ordinary Malays, categorised by the colonial government as indigenous to the peninsula, were accorded limited privileges. A policy of deliberate preference for the sons of the Malay elites was instituted, however, while middle-class Chinese and Indians were excluded from high administrative and political positions regardless of their qualifications.Footnote ²⁶ One of the primary aims was to create communal differences between all native and newly arrived Asian immigrant communities.Footnote ²⁷ The British were also keen to impress on all the importance of their continued presence. And as Ania Loomba notes, it was beneficial to capitalist production that a race/ethnicity-conscious labour force was never able to unite for mutual benefit.Footnote ²⁸

Colonial exclusivity and the Asian communities

‘Divide and rule’ implied the superiority of one race over another and laid the foundation for ambivalence or even animosity between competing communities. Such conceptions of ‘race’ were based on the growing popularity of Social Darwinism and associated racial theories throughout Europe and the United States at the time. This encouraged local communities to remain separate, greatly stunting political growth in the colonies and further entrenching the authority of colonial governments.Footnote ²⁹

By 1871 the British administration had introduced a system of ‘racialising’ communities, and segregating them into categories separated by origin, language and other characteristics.Footnote ³⁰ (Ironically, this practice continues in modern postcolonial Malaysia and Singapore.) From the 1871 population census, the categories of Europeans, Malays, Chinese and Indians were introduced. ‘Racial’ distinctiveness between communities became an ideological foundation of colonial society. These classifications were also used for the classification of labour and even for the planning of residential areas. Aiyer cogently argues that the very concept of the nation-state and the ideology of ‘multiracialism’ in modern Singapore (and Malaysia) had its origins in the colonial era.Footnote ³¹

One of the more popular of these theories involved the concepts of Eugenics, loosely based on Charles Darwin's ideas on ‘natural selection’. Convenient for the purposes of the colonial government, Eugenicist ideas reinforced the perception of Asian ‘cultural’ inferiority in comparison with ‘European’, and repeatedly blamed local populations for their own poor standing. Such concepts were conveyed through the education system, colonial relationships and popular literature.Footnote ³²

A justification for British political hegemony thus developed on the basis of their political elite's perceived superiority — as compared with other ‘inferior’ races. It was seen as the duty of the superior race to lead inferior races out of their ‘darkness of savagery towards the light of civilisation’.Footnote ³³ Rather more simplistically, ‘white’ was likened to light, righteousness, goodness and hence civilisation. On the other hand, ‘black’ was equated with darkness, evil, savagery and primitiveness.Footnote ³⁴

By the first decade of the twentieth century, acceptance of such discourse was already prevalent in some Asian Christian communities.Footnote ³⁵ Apart from this simplistic black/white, good/evil symbolism, other developments, particularly technological ones, played a role in the formulation of British perceptions. Daniel Headrick argues that the real triumph of European ‘civilisation’ was technological.Footnote ³⁶ These same sentiments were echoed by a Singapore-based Methodist pastor in March 1926, when he argued how ‘the inventions of steamships, the locomotive engine, the manumission of slaves, and the recent invention of electricity, telegraph, telephone and the wireless telegraph’Footnote ³⁷ showed the ‘advanced’ nature of Western society. Therefore many an imperialist advocate equated technological resilience with superior intellectual capabilities,Footnote ³⁸ and it was this narrow view of civilisation, advancement, superiority or progress that was inculcated over time within populations of colonial Malaya and Singapore.

Ironically, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries such ideas even began seeping into mainland Chinese nationalist circles. But here, according to Peter Perdue, Social Darwinism and its ensuing racial categorisation contributed to a rise in racialised sentiments that were used to reinforce Chinese anti-Manchu resentment prevalent at the time.Footnote ³⁹

It is clear how the role of race became influential in colonial outposts such as Malaya and Singapore, especially in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It has been consistently claimed that this preoccupation with ‘race’ did not exist prior to the nineteenth century; even though different migrant communities existed and intermingled, they did so without preconceived notions of superiority or inferiority. According to Abraham, considerable harmony existed between the different groups and this was upset with the arrival of British. In a similar vein, Charles Hirschman also claims that ‘racial divisions’ between groups did not exist while Wang Gungwu states that a multicultural or multiethnic-type society was an integral part of the ‘local reality’ in the region prior to British colonialism.Footnote ⁴⁰

Indeed, intermarriage among Chinese, Malays and Indians was commonplace centuries prior to British colonialism. The Peranakan (‘Baba’ or Straits Chinese) communities of the Malay archipelago came about from early alliances between Chinese traders and Malay women. This new hybrid community adopted many aspects of both Malay and Chinese culture. In a similar vein, the ‘Jawi Pekan’ communities developed as a result of interaction between Indian traders and Malay women.Footnote ⁴¹

The Roman Catholic Church in Malaya and Singapore

Christianity came to the Malay Archipelago with the Portuguese conquest of Melaka in 1511. Vasco da Gama's discovery of a sea route to the East via the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 opened opportunities for commercial and religious conquests. Christianity had little long-term effect on the local populations, however, and most certainly did not take root or had little appeal for the Malays. Consequently, Christianity in Melaka remained within the confines of its small community of Luso-Malay (henceforth Melaka EurasianFootnote ⁴²) descendants and did not spread beyond these parameters. It was only after British interests began infiltrating the archipelago several centuries later that a new wave of Christian evangelisation began, and then only with the recent non-Muslim immigrant arrivals.

On 7 November 1781, Bishop Condé and Father Arnaud Garnault headed south into the Malay state of Kedah where they found a tiny colony of refugee Roman Catholics from Siam.Footnote ⁴³ Along with another small band of Melaka Eurasian Roman Catholics, who were at the time serving under the East Indian Company and Francis Light, the priests decided to establish a parish stronghold. The Sultan of Kedah, a Muslim, was approached and permission was given to build a chapel.Footnote ⁴⁴ A large attap house was built for the 80-strong congregation and a port at Kuala Kedah was placed at the disposal of this new Catholic mission. By 1784 the jurisdiction of the vicarate apostolic of Siam was extended to include the Malay state of Kedah.

In the wake of the British occupation of the island in 1786, Father Garnault who had recently taken over responsibilities from Bishop Condé, moved his parish to Penang. The following year Garnault was officially ordained bishop of ‘Metellopolis [sic] and vicar apostolic of Siam’ in Pondicherry, India. Between 1788 and 1791, the plan for the building of a Roman Catholic Church in Penang, the Assumption Church, was underway and seen through to fruition by Father Michel Rectenwald. Rectenwald was given charge of the approximately 850 Catholics scattered along the peninsula coast from Mergui to Kedah.Footnote ⁴⁵

By this time the Roman Catholic Church was the largest Christian denomination in the Malay Peninsula. This was also facilitated by the dominance of its educational arm. In 1852 the order of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (Fratres Scholarum Christianarum; FSC) and the Dames de Saint-Muar (Sisters of the Holy Infant Jesus) began setting up schools in Singapore and Penang. The reason for their arrival was twofold: a Protestant-based school system already existed, and this was done to counter its growing influence; second, the Roman Catholic Church hoped to use its school system to strengthen evangelisation.Footnote ⁴⁶

In addition to this, the efforts of the Roman Catholic Church were not totally confined to the realms of British influence and protection. There was a strong pioneering element evident among some of the priests within the French-based Mission Étrangères de Paris (MEP). The MEP had established themselves in the state of Kedah as early as 1781, approximately seven years before the establishment of British sovereignty in Penang.

No other Christian denomination committed as much resources to the archipelago as did the Roman Catholic Church. Most Protestant missionaries of the day were sent to China instead.Footnote ⁴⁷

The Methodist Church

The Methodist Church in Malaya was founded on the initiative of the Methodist Episcopal Church of America in the 1880s. This Church had been active in India since the 1850s. A local Chinese and Indian Methodist congregation was established within a year of the church's founding.Footnote ⁴⁸ Methodist Church groups were already working in Singapore before 1885. A Methodist missionary, Charles Phillip, ran the ‘Christian Institute’ situated in Middle Road. By February 1885, on Phillip's request, a group of missionaries was sent from India under the guidance of Rev. James Thorburn, his wife Julia Battie and Rev. William Oldham.Footnote ⁴⁹ Within days a series of public meetings was held at the local town hall, with the intention of canvassing for prospective religious conversions. By the early 1890s a small parish was established.Footnote ⁵⁰

Church-based orphanages and homes

Some Church-based establishments played a significant role in facilitating intermarriages. Most missions and their schools ran orphanages or homes for the young. Although these establishments were not very large, demand for places was strong.Footnote ⁵¹ The numbers varied from institution to institution and were heavily reliant on the total population of the city or town. There were also other significant community-based non-Christian organisations such as the Po Lueng Kuk in Singapore (Office for the Preservation of Virtue), which was established in 1878 for the Chinese community.Footnote ⁵²

The growth of the new migrant communities in the colonies increased the pressure for related social services. In 1900 at a Roman Catholic convent in Taiping, there were nine children under the charge of resident nuns.Footnote ⁵³ At the Methodist ‘Miss C. Nind Deaconess Home’ in Singapore, the number stood at 72 in 1905.Footnote ⁵⁴ At the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ), Penang, there were up to 400 children in its orphanage between the 1940s and 1950s.Footnote ⁵⁵ These orphanages were generally non-gender or race specific. Most of their male and female charges tended to be infants. It was extremely unlikely for the convents to accept older boys into their fold.Footnote ⁵⁶ Most appeared to accept both boys and girls, although most orphanages catered to them separately. For example, in Singapore, girls were taken care of by the sisters of the CHIJ, Town Convent, while the boys were taken by the brothers of St. Joseph's Institution, across the road. In Penang, girls were taken in by the CHIJ, while boys were taken in by the brothers of St. Xavier's Institution or by the orphanage situated at the Church of St. Francis Xavier itself.

The main reason for a child being left to an orphanage was poverty. Numerous examples of family units, broken up by the death of a father, mother or both, were also commonplace. One 1899 account tells of a recently widowed mother, leaving her young daughter at an orphanage, only to die four days later herself. In 1900, a small girl was left at a Taiping convent by her homeless mother, who died several months later. Another account tells of an illegitimate boy, brought to the convent by his mother, who died six months later.Footnote ⁵⁷ Two sisters were put into the Penang CHIJ convent orphanage on the death of their father in 1919, when their mother went to work as a ‘baby amah’ for a European family. The two girls would be visited by their mother every month.Footnote ⁵⁸ Not all circumstances were negative. One account told of how a former barber, having left his four children at an orphanage, promised to take them back when he was financially able to do so.Footnote ⁵⁹

There were also several accounts of older girls, usually in their late teens to early twenties, being ‘rescued’ from prostitution. Taking into account the powers bestowed on governmental authorities of the time, the concept of ‘rescue’ is contentious, however. Colonial legislation, such as the ‘Womens and Girls Protection Ordinance’ (1887), allowed colonial authorities to place all female ‘prostitutes’ under the age of 16 years in a refuge.Footnote ⁶⁰ It has been claimed that a considerable proportion of ‘orphans’ were often former prostitutes or sex workers. Access to one convent's archival records (CHIJ, Town Convent, Singapore) was denied to the researcher on the basis that many of the girls were originally of ‘disreputable’ backgrounds, and that the release of such information could embarrass their descendants. Philippa Levine claims that such laws resulted in the exacerbation of existing inequalities — intensifying women's marginalisation.Footnote ⁶¹ Colonial authorities merged gender and race, utilising them as key pointers for policing sexuality. Consequently, non-white women in the colonies were easily assimilable with prostitution based simply on their race.Footnote ⁶² According to a 1901 account, for instance, a young Ipoh-based Malayali female prostitute actually requested a police inspector to send her ‘to some convent’. Given the powers bestowed by the ‘Womens and Girls Protection Ordinance’, however, it is more likely that the young woman in question did not have much of a choice.Footnote ⁶³

In any case, few women arrived in Malaya and Singapore as sex workers. In the absence of statistics for all other communities, figures pertaining to Chinese sex workers could give an accurate indication of the circumstances of the day. It was estimated that only 20 per cent of the Chinese sex workers had actually been prostitutes in China. The majority were forced into the profession, having been sold by their destitute parents (some with the impression that their child might get better opportunities), or abandoned because of family breakups.Footnote ⁶⁴ Brothel owners preyed on the precarious position of these young girls and women.Footnote ⁶⁵

In keeping with the authoritarian nature of colonial society, orphanages often took strong liberties with regards to ‘sanitising’ or ‘protecting’ girls from their own ‘inappropriate’ backgrounds. One interviewee told of how his mother and aunt, whose only surviving parent having died, had all their accompanying documentation burnt in 1915. This, unfortunately, included valuable land title deeds. The Taiping-based nuns, at the time, explained that it was necessary to help prevent the possibility of their reversion to Hinduism, especially if any living relative realising the children had valuable property would consider taking them back into the family fold, and consequently reconverting the children back to Hinduism.Footnote ⁶⁶ This appeared to be a common practice among orphanages in the region. Critical studies of Church-based orphanages operating in Western Australia at the time found a policy of cutting ‘children off from their previous life, in order to make it “easier” for them to adjust’ very common.Footnote ⁶⁷ No personal possessions were allowed — even toothbrushes and underclothes had to be shared with other children. Discipline was severe and corporal punishment (along with physical abuse) was common.Footnote ⁶⁸ Life was extremely spartan and hard. An orphan's day began just before six in the morning, beginning with compulsory attendance at prayers. This was followed by a combination of chores, school and mass lasting until a quarter to four in the afternoon. Then it was back to chores, then bedtime. This regimen continued six days a week. The children were not allowed outside the convent and the gates were locked at night.Footnote ⁶⁹ In the nineteenth century, education was not a priority for orphans. Similarly, many Singapore-based charges were educated to varying degrees; as observed from Church marriage records, many female orphans could barely sign their names while others could not.

This strict environment was exacerbated by the heavy financial demands involved in the running of an orphanage: maintenance was difficult, especially for an organisation with no regular sources of income.Footnote ⁷⁰ By the turn of the century, many orphanages, particularly those being run under the auspices of the various Roman Catholic orders, began to feel the pressure of a growing demand for their services. Many of these orphanages also ran ‘boarding schools’. Boarders paid for the privilege of living at the school. This was usually a relatively expensive exercise, open mainly to the affluent and the ‘middle-classes’;Footnote ⁷¹ in effect, the paying boarders subsidised the costs of running the orphanage.Footnote ⁷²

Orphanages also acted as hospitals for sick and unwanted children. The sheer number of sick and dying infants left to the care of convent nuns is indicated by their dominance in the registers of local Christian cemeteries. A close study of local cemetery burial records gives an interesting glimpse into this area. For example, between 30 June and 5 July 1911, at least 40 per cent (estimate: two to four a day) of all burials at the prominent Bidadari (Roman Catholic section) cemetery in Singapore were of ‘convent’ or orphanage-based children. These children ranged between the ages of one week and nine months.Footnote ⁷³ The high death rate should not be viewed in a suspicious light: infant mortality was extremely high at the time under the auspices of the colonial regime and elsewhere. Infant deaths numbered around 348.5 per 1,000 births in 1901, 232.2 in 1921, 191.3 in 1931 and 142.6 in 1940.Footnote ⁷⁴ This was undoubtedly augmented by medical shortcomings at the time, the lack of funding and exacerbated by prevailing religious-based nursing traditions. Many French-based orders often placed a greater emphasis on theology than simple pragmatism with regards to health care; religious objectives and the ‘salvation of the soul’ were seen as more important than the health of the body.Footnote ⁷⁵ Therefore the preparation of the sick for deliverance into the next world was of utmost concern. This predicament was not enhanced by the Roman Catholic Church's zealous push for conversions. It was only towards the end of the nineteenth century that a closer scrutiny of Church statistics showed how most baptisms were conducted on dying persons!Footnote ⁷⁶ Also, all incoming children and infants were baptised immediately, sometimes by a priest, otherwise by an authorised nun.

In keeping with the prevailing ideas of domestic female responsibilities,Footnote ⁷⁷ the orphanages, particularly those of the Roman Catholic convents, encouraged many of their young charges, on reaching the age of 15 years or so, to get married. The male suitor was often a local Church member, who upon recommendation by his parish priest, visited the convent and chose a wife, with the permission of the resident nuns. These orphanages provided ‘opportunities’ for male–female contact and inadvertently acted as a platform for marriages, some of which were interracial.Footnote ⁷⁸

Marrying in or marrying out

When describing marriage dynamics in Aboriginal and white settler unions in Canada, Sylvia van Kirk emphasised how early marriages often followed Aboriginal marital practice.Footnote ⁷⁹ These early unions between both parties were more inclined to follow Aboriginal custom rather than that of the white settlers, but with time and the growth and onslaught of European settler control of traditional Aboriginal lands, settler authority and custom were pushed much more to the fore.Footnote ⁸⁰

While ‘convent girl’ marriages did not possess similar dynamics, it clearly shows the influence and power in a union. More power emanates from the party with more (real or perceived) economic, social or political potential. Many of these ‘convent girls’ were isolated in several ways. They had been either wilfully or reluctantly abandoned, abducted, sold or orphaned.Footnote ⁸¹ In addition, during their time in domestic confinement, they would have had little external contact outside the orphanage's four walls.

A bachelor searching for a bride would only get access to the convent on the approval of his parish priest. One could safely assume approval would only be given to men from a stable background and possessing the means to support a wife, and in time, a family. While many of these bachelors were often themselves socially isolated from their family and kin networks in their countries of origin, their position as men in a very patriarchal colonial environment would squarely place them in a position of power over that of an isolated ‘convent girl’. Under these circumstances, the convent girl would be marrying into a relationship with the man and not vice versa. She would be expected to fit into the man's expectations and needs.

Van Kirk's scenario of ‘marrying out’ by some white settler men as a means of ‘going native’Footnote ⁸² did not really apply in the colonial Malayan and Singaporean urban-based Church environment. While the white settler in Canada found himself within a strong, pre-existing Aboriginal culture, no such environment existed in this case, since both parties were either first- or second-generation migrants. To illustrate this point, I will describe one such relationship in some detail.

Miss Maria Anna Blanco was born in 1860 in Singapore. Her mother, whose name was not recorded, was from the Celebes Islands (present-day Sulawesi, Indonesia) in the Dutch East Indies. Her father, Pedro Blanco, was a ‘ships captain’ who worked with a Singapore-based shipping firm and may also have been the vice-regal consul to the Royal Spanish embassy. Pedro Blanco lived in what is still referred to as ‘Blanco Court’ along Singapore's North Bridge Road, although the residence itself has long been demolished. Pedro Blanco had a Spanish wife, Anna Theresa, but illegitimately fathered a daughter, Maria Anna. The relationship between Maria Anna's Asian mother and Pedro Blanco is unclear, but it has been assumed that she might have been under his employ as a domestic servant. Maria Anna's birth in 1860 must have been controversial because Pedro Blanco and his wife Anna Theresa claimed to have adopted the infant as an orphan of unknown Chinese parentage from Shanghai. This information is contained in Maria Anna's baptismal certificate from the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd in Singapore. This is clearly a fabrication on the part of the Blancos, to avoid embarrassment.

When Maria Anna was between 13 to 16 years old, her biological mother died. Pedro Blanco, on the pretext of returning to Spain permanently, then left the young Maria Anna at the CHIJ Town Convent orphanage, telling the nuns that Maria Anna was not his daughter but that of a ‘friend’. Some time later, at the age of 16 years, Maria Anna Blanco was chosen as a bride by 25-year-old John Gou (Goh) Ah Seng. They were married at the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul on the 2 October 1876. John Goh Ah Seng was a first-generation migrant from Swatow in southern China. Like most Chinese migrants, he did not have a close family network in Singapore and was therefore very reliant on the Teochew-speaking network that existed at the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, located a short distance away from the orphanage.

John Goh was not a rich man, coming from a mercantile family dealing with earthenware and pottery. In Singapore, however, Goh was acquainted with persons associated with an up-and-coming business venture in the 1870s. The venture was headed by a fellow Teochew parishioner, Jacobe Low Khiok Chiang (1843–1911), who had started up a large import–export and retail business, Kiam Hoa Heng, in Bangkok in 1872. In 1883 a sister company, Buan Hoa Seng, was set up in Singapore with John Goh as its general manager. Both businesses were extremely successful, with the founders of Kiam Hoa Heng sponsoring many large-scale Catholic Church and school construction projects in Singapore, Bangkok and even in Swalei, China from the 1890s to 1910.

John Goh and Maria Anna had around six children and they lived in Oxley Rise, Singapore, near present-day Orchard Road. Maria Anna died in 1911, aged 51.Footnote ⁸³

Aspects of what van Kirk calls ‘marrying-in’ can be observed through ‘convent girl’ Maria Anna Blanco's life. Maria Anna was abandoned by her father, one assumes she had no family in Singapore, but married into a stable relationship with a 25-year-old Teochew male, with a promising background. After her death in 1911 and 35 years of marriage to John Goh, Maria Anna Blanco became simply ‘Marian’ with no reference to a family surname in her death register. Despite her non-Chinese background, her ethnicity is listed as a ‘Teochew’. Another interesting point is how she gained an extra five years to her age by the time of her death. She was born in 1860, but was listed as 55 years old in 1911, despite only being 51. The age difference between Maria Anna and her husband was approximately 9 or 10 years. This may have been deemed too wide; hence Maria Anna may have felt compelled to accommodate her husband's age difference by adding several years to her own.

Over the years Maria Anna tried to ‘blend’ into her new-found family. Having no family of her own, she literally took on her husband's ethnicity and even shadowed him in age. While this may be relatively common practice especially in strongly patriarchal societies where women are expected to play second fiddle, supporting the initiative of her male partner, this researcher speculates that the circumstances of her background and of marrying ‘into’ John Goh's life and social networks meant she would have done much more than the average wife would have at the time.

Kalmijn and van Tubergen's list of delineators that determine one's propensity towards intermarriage can be seen in John Goh's background. Goh was young, probably educated and hence literate (he signed his marriage certificate in legible Chinese script)Footnote ⁸⁴ and lived in a society with a very low group-specific sex ratio. Kalmijn's assertion that second-generation migrants are more likely to intermarry is the only point that contradicts John Goh's status as a first-generation migrant.Footnote ⁸⁵ In another study Kalmijn points out how intermarriage decreases cultural distinctions.Footnote ⁸⁶ I would like to challenge this point with the case study again. When there are significant differences in cultural distinctions (e.g. racial difference), the family will be forced, whether they like it or not, to address the issue of ‘identity’, to varying degrees. In the case of John Goh and Maria Anna Blanco, there would have been a degree of physical difference between their offspring and the rest of the ‘normal’ Teochew community. However, the degree of difference was relatively minor, with most of Maria and John's children looking Teochew and/or Chinese. On the same point, Maria's own weak link to her ‘murky’ cultural or racial background made it easy for her to assume the racial and cultural identity of her husband, although she did not look Teochew herself.

Apart from the strong patriarchal bent of both Teochew and colonial society, government authorities began ‘racialising’ communities from the 1870s, for the first time creating racial distinctiveness between communities. In the following decades this distinctiveness became an ideological foundation of colonial society and helped promote concepts of superiority and inferiority, not only between European and Asian communities, but among Asian communities themselves.Footnote ⁸⁷

Maria and John would have lived through these developments, from the 1870s — when there appear to be little negative racial connotations — and into the early twentieth century, when Anna Maria Blanco's non-Chinese, ‘foreign’ heritage and especially her Celebes Malay (‘lazy native’) background would have been deemed a negative trait.

Inter- and intraracial marriages: Interplay of race and gender

New immigrants seeking a spouse had either to take time away from employment and travel back home — an expensive exercise — or find an appropriate and willing female partner locally.Footnote ⁸⁸ This second option was made more difficult by the low ratio of women to men, a problem not overcome till the 1930s: in 1823 the ratio of women to men was 1:8, by 1850 the ratio was 1:12 and in 1860 1:15.Footnote ⁸⁹ Several sources also observe how a heavy gender imbalance within early Chinese and Indian communities ‘affected family life’ and often created ‘unhealthy social effects’,Footnote ⁹⁰ a reference to the homosexuality that was quite prevalent in the early colonial social environment.Footnote ⁹¹ In the clamour to form ‘respectable’ and ‘acceptable’ social liaisons, competition for prospective wives in the colonies was therefore extremely keen. One answer lay in the local orphanage or girls' home.

These homes and orphanages were not usually race-specific. In the case of the Roman Catholic communities, on the request of a young man (with a letter from his parish priest), it was up to the resident nun to introduce him to suitably aged young women (popularly referred to as ‘convent girls’)Footnote ⁹² from the orphanage. Under these circumstances, it is interesting to note that some young men were adventurous enough to choose girls of a different ethnic background from themselves. According to Tan Beng Hui's study on colonial responses to prostitution, many male (in this case, Chinese) clientele ‘knew no racial or class barrier’. It therefore can safely be assumed that many young men were well acquainted, at least on a sexual level, with concepts of the ‘plural’ society.Footnote ⁹³ The choices of these young men would have also relied strongly on the issue of what researchers regard as ‘opportunities’Footnote ⁹⁴ and ‘pragmatism’.Footnote ⁹⁵

Interracial marriages are extremely difficult to spot from the sparse information provided in late nineteenth-century church records. It is difficult to determine the ethnicity of many of these ‘convent girls’. Most of these girls were commonly referred to by only their first (baptismal) name, and therefore ethnically unidentifiable. Although relatively rare, I found several identifiable cases among the Roman Catholic China-born Teochew congregation of the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul (Singapore), which is a good indication that these marriages were not frowned upon or discouraged by the Church. Several marriages between Chinese Teochew males and Eurasian, Indian and Melaka Eurasian girls have been noted.Footnote ⁹⁶

This was also a common practice among ‘high-caste’ male Protestant converts in India. Many of these ‘high-caste’ Indian converts were individuals who were isolated from their mainly Hindu caste grouping as a result of their conversion. Many married outside of their caste circles, often being paired off with girls from the local mission orphanage.Footnote ⁹⁷ Similar non-church organisations, such as the Chinese clan-based Po Lueng Kuk in Singapore operated under similar circumstances to that of its church-based counterparts.Footnote ⁹⁸ Young women were also given the option of joining the missionary organisation or order, if they were seen as suitable. There were numerous examples of such young women staying on as teachers, missionaries, or school or church helpers.Footnote ⁹⁹

Creation of an ‘imagined’ community?

As the existence of centuries-old Peranakan communities shows, the creation of hybrid communities was not new in the region. Benedict Anderson, in his pivotal work on nationalism, Imagined Communities, examines how the modern nation and community are socially constructed; that is, they are imagined by the people who warrant themselves as part of the group.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Taking into account the way in which the various Roman Catholic and Methodist Churches inadvertently created new multiethnic community platforms; did these institutions create a new ‘imagined community’?

I will contend if any ‘imagined community’ was created, it was only done so among the English-speaking middle classes, specific to the various Church denominations. Linguistic and racial separation was the norm with most Christian denominations prior to the Second World War.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Churches were even segregated along intra-ethnic lines; for example, the St. Peter and Paul's Church in Queen Street, Singapore was deemed to be for the Teochew-Chinese community, while the Sacred Heart Church in Tank Road, a few kilometres away, was designated for the Cantonese-Chinese community. In light of Anderson's claim that national consciousness is fostered as a result of communication often conveyed ‘via print and paper’, it is important to note that a majority of these early parishioners would have been illiterate. Consequently, there was little literary basis on which a wider consciousness could develop.Footnote ¹⁰²

Among the multiethnic, English-educated and English-speaking ‘middle classes’ of the various Asian communities, however, there existed platforms for creating new cross-cultural community spaces. Much of the English language-based colonial education system was profoundly reliant on missionary bodies, private organisations and philanthropists. Non-government Christian schools presided over half the school-going population in Singapore in 1919.Footnote ¹⁰³ By the early 1940s, this figure had jumped to 64 per cent.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Not surprisingly, it is these same institutions that concurrently ran the multiethnic orphanages. Many of these schools accepted children on the basis of religion and not ethnicity and the primary means of communication was the English language, therefore overcoming language barriers. In fact school ‘prefects’ were used in the 1930s to implement Education Department language policy. An interviewee described how prefects were expected to report students who spoke any language other than English during school hours.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

If rivalries did exist, they existed between the different Christian groups, especially between the Roman Catholics and Protestants. Consequently, interaction was frowned upon, by Protestant and most Roman Catholic clergy alike.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ To illustrate this point, between 1891 to 1906 and 1923 to 1950, Indian Roman Catholic conversions of Protestants in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor were extremely low, with only four recorded cases (three Methodists and one Anglican). In comparison, there were three converts from Islam.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ In Singapore, the numbers were higher, with 10 conversions from Protestantism between 1884 and 1895.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ There was therefore no concept of community on a cross-Christian platform, with boundaries delineated by which denomination one belonged to.

Intermarriages in the early twentieth century

Accounts of interracial marriages remained relatively rare till the second or third decade of the twentieth century. Not all cases involved ‘convent girls’. For the purposes of this study, the researcher chose to use some Indian–Christian parishes to highlight the dynamics of intermarriages through the early part of the twentieth century. It is interesting to note that within Indian–Christian parishes, early interracial couples were exclusively from the urban middle-class populations, and not their poorer working-class counterparts. While capitalism in British Malaya and Singapore may have inadvertently de-emphasised cultural lines by creating new commonalities of wealth, the use of the English language and general adoption of Western cultural mores, within the much poorer, oppressed and captive environment of the rubber plantation labourer, racial, cultural and even caste stereotyping and discrimination were intensified, often to the benefit of capitalist production.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Among the Indians, the enclosed environment of rubber plantation/estate life was by far more politically confined than for those who lived in the urban areas. The plantation economy acted as a ‘total institution’: church records therefore show no examples of intermarriage among rubber estate populations.Footnote ¹¹⁰

In cities and towns, race and culture played an increasingly secondary role, however. New parameters of the urban middle-classes were based on the use of the English language and recognition of occupational and economic status. Intermarriages involving Indian partners were apparent in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, initially with Melaka Eurasians and, to a lesser extent, with Chinese.Footnote ¹¹¹ By the late 1930s and especially after the Second World War, intermarriages between Indians and members of the numerically larger Chinese community began to overtake those with the smaller Melaka Eurasian community. In Singapore, all recorded Roman Catholic Indian (male) to Chinese (female) intermarriages took place after 1937,Footnote ¹¹² with seven instances taking place over a 10-year-period. There were 14 intermarriages between Indians and Eurasian or Melaka Eurasians between 1908 and 1948. Intermarriage with Malays was limited. There were also two marriages between local Indian Christians and converted Christian Malays.Footnote ¹¹³ The limited number of Indian Christian and Malay marriages was probably due to the religious exclusivity of both Christianity and Islam, which discouraged intermarriage, unless one party converted to the other's faith.

Prevailing race relations in the Straits Settlements and the Malay States also dictated certain features of interracial gender relationships. Dynamics in race relations determined, to a strong degree, the level of gender and racial mix. For example, in Singapore, where the mercantile Chinese community were perceived to be the dominant (and therefore superior) of the non-European communities, it is not surprising to note that Indian–Chinese couples predominantly comprised male Indian to female Chinese. Only one couple was Chinese male to Indian female. This was in keeping with the colonial-inspired Asian racial hierarchies of the day; Chinese on top, Indians second, and Malays last. This racial hierarchy was interwoven with the patriarchal dominance of male over female. It was therefore not desirable for a ‘superior’ Chinese/‘superior’ male to marry down to an ‘inferior’ Indian/‘inferior’ female, but it was suitable for an ‘inferior’ Indian but ‘superior’ male to couple with a ‘superior’ Chinese but ‘inferior’ female — an equal match. Under such circumstances an Indian male and Chinese female couple was a relatively ‘acceptable’ interracial match.Footnote ¹¹⁴

The relationship with the Eurasian and Melaka Eurasian communities was on much more equal terms. However, racial power structures were also in play here. Most of these marriages were with the Melakan Eurasian communities. Although they referred to themselves as ‘Portuguese’, most, if not all, were predominantly racially Malay with varying mixtures of Chinese, Indian, Portuguese, Dutch and possibly British — but importantly most looked racially Malay or at least very ‘Asian’. Even within these ‘Eurasian’ communities, there was a racial divide between the ‘dark’ and ‘light’ Eurasians.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The ‘darker’ Eurasians were looked down upon by their ‘lighter’ counterparts, which was again in keeping with the existing racial hierarchies. It was therefore relatively uncommon to find Eurasians of the ‘lighter’ variety intermarrying with Indians, whereas a match between a ‘dark’ Melaka Eurasian and an Indian was socially palatable. The ratio of male to female was more equal between these two groups; eight Eurasian females to six Indian males.Footnote ¹¹⁶ There appeared to be no intermarriages between Europeans and Chinese or Indians, officiated by local Chinese or Indian parishes during this period. If such unions did exist they were usually between European males to Asian females and never vice versa. These unions were solemnised at European-based churches such as Singapore's Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Good Shepherd.

In Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, the ratio tips in favour of the Chinese and Eurasian communities. All Chinese–Indian marriages were Indian males to Chinese females and all Eurasian–Indian marriages involved Indian males with Eurasian females, which indicated a negative racial standing for the Indian community.Footnote ¹¹⁷

Another important feature was the remote occurrence of intramarriages between the various Indian subethnic groups. There were fewer examples of Malayali and Tamil, or Indian–Tamil and Ceylonese–Tamil marriages than there were interracial ones. This illustrated the strong rivalries and petty differences that existed between these groups.