This process [i.e. assimilation] would also have had its way with the Chinese in Indonesia had there not been those obstructive factors which the Chinese themselves knowingly or unknowingly have helped to create.
During the colonial period the Chinese were markedly superior to the mass of Indonesians in both legal status and economic power, and almost all interethnic contact found the Chinese in a higher position than the Indonesians. In those relationships the Chinese supercilious awareness of their favorable situation was only too often painfully evident.
☆pp.13
Although the culture of the locally-rooted Chinese was often heavily influenced by the cultures of various Indonesian ethnic groups (particularly, as has been seen, in the case of the peranakan Chinese), this did not mean that they were assimilated to the indigenous societies. No doubt there were some, over the centuries, who became so; the conditions which favored such a development have suggested by The Siauw Giap. For example, he has found cases in which peranakan Chinese in Makasar who were converted to Islam had disappeared through amalgamation with the local population; others in rural areas of Java who ‘had entirely merged with the natives’; and others who achieved distinction in the service of local rulers in times before the latter came under Dutch influence or control. But the existence in the early 20th century of so large a group of Chinese who had acculturated considerable but still formed a separate Chinese society indicates that assimilation into indigenous society had been the exception rather than the rule. Skinner noted that in Java ‘there are thousands of Chinese who trace back their descent in Indonesia for as many as twelve generations’, a situation which he contrasted with that Thailand where most Chinese had merged with the Thai population by the fourth generation.
It is one thing to point to the persistence of a separate Chinese society over many generations in Indonesia; it is another to suggest, as Muaja did, that their failure to assimilate was due to ‘those obstructive factors which the Chinese themselves knowingly or unknowingly have helped to create.’ It is true that in the 20th century certain processes were in motion within the Chinese communities which inhibited assimilation, but the chief obstacle in earlier times was the fact of colonial rule and the policies adopted by the Dutch. As the Dutch extended their power, their prestige rose and that of indigenous elites declined; attracted to indigenous society, in areas such as Java, where acculturation among the Chinese was greatest, and, it might have been thought, assimilation therefore most likely, class and ethnic group tended to coincide, with the Chinese forming a commercial middle class between the largely Dutch ruling class and the indigenous lower strata. This plural society, as Furnivall called it, was in time entrenched in law so that the whole population was divided into three distinct groups; the Europeans, Foreign Orientals and Natives. These groups had different legal rights and privileges, and, generally speaking, the Chinese as Foreign Orientals were in a more favorable position than the indigenous population. Assimilation to the latter would therefore have meant a drop in social status and the loss if sine privileges in law. Even if the desire to assimilate were there, Dutch policies (particularly in the 19th century) made it increasingly required to live in specified urban ghettos was intensified, and they were now also required to obtain passes if they wanted to travel out of them. In one case, at least, Chinese who had so completely assimilated to the Sundanese population of a village in Cirebon residency that ‘the only thing which recalled their Chinese origin was their queue’ were forcibly removed into a Chinese quarter and made to identify themselves as Chinese. This example illustrates the general point that the Dutch colonial administration actively discouraged the crossing of ethnic boundaries. The Chinese were expected to dress as such (including the wearing of the queue)and it was a criminal offence ‘to present oneself in public disguised in another dress than that of one’s nationality…except in masked or fancy processions’. Unlike Thailand, there were no institutionalized procedures by which a Chinese might leave the Chinese group and become a member of the indigenous population. This is not to say that such a thing never occurred; there must have been cases where it happened without the knowledge if the authorities, and there was apparently one case in which the colonial administration even acquiesced in the assimilation of peranakan Chinese in Madura to Native status. In general, however, Dutch policies probably played the central role in ensuring that a stable peranakan society was formed from the descendants of Chinese immigrants and that the latter were not absorbed by the indigenous population.