There are not too many ethnic groups around the world who can point to one specific event in history and say, “There, that’s where my race was born.” Usually, your ethnicity is something you’re aware of but is fuzzy and recedes into history. Not so for the Portuguese Eurasians of Malaysia (later, Singapore).
This year is a Big Deal for us. It was in 1511 that Alfonso de Albuquerque invaded Melaka/Malacca and took the port by force. This was not the first time that the Portuguese tried to take Malacca, but they got thrown out in 1509 when the resident Sultan got wind of their plans. In 1511, a more prepared de Albuquerque and his armada returned to complete the conquest.
Up to the point of Portuguese conquest, Malacca was an important trading port already centuries old. Over one hundred languages were spoken there and goods from as far away as Arabia and China were bought, sold and bartered. The avaricious Portuguese, stumbling across this financial jewel, of course had to have it and, in the process, destroyed it through a time of constant war, atrocities and strife.
So the Portuguese were the first Western colonial power in the region. That lasted for less than 150 years until the Dutch invaded. Whatever else you say about the Portuguese, at least they believed in trying to assimilate with the native populations. (Hence, moi.) Not so the Dutch and, if you’re in any doubt about it, I suggest you talk to a knowledgeable Indonesian about their history under Dutch colonisation. (So much so that Indonesian patriots initially saw the Japanese invaders of WWII as liberators, until reality sadly showed them otherwise.)
Then, after the Dutch, came the British and they managed to screw things up royally, as any impartial political observer of a young Malaysia’s founding precepts will tell you, before retreating almost sixty years ago.
But the Portuguese Eurasians were there, through four colonial conquests (three Western and one Eastern), fleeing north, then south, as oncoming waves of invaders attempted to eradicate “half-breeds” from their patch of taken territory.
While not wanting to actually (yuk!) marry us, it was the British who gave the Eurasians a start on the ladder of middle-class prosperity. Our European blood made us more palatable choices for posts as administrators, lawyers and public servants, a positive discrimination policy that the other races (rightly) resented. By the end of the nineteenth century, we were still Catholic (the Portuguese influence), but now owned our own landed properties and could afford servants of our own.
So where are we now? From my estimates, the Portuguese Eurasian population numbers no more than twenty thousand throughout Malaysia and Singapore. Early this month, there was a giant parade and celebration in Malacca “celebrating” the 500th anniversary of the entry of de Albuquerque and his army of 1,200 men into the port. To my mind, that’s like the offspring of a rape celebrating the day her mother got violated.
But we do that, don’t we? If the natives of Burkina Faso (and I’m using an hypothetical example here) had invaded and committed atrocities on the population of San Francisco back in the 1800s, I doubt that sequence of events would be celebrated with bands and fireworks a few centuries on. All I can do is look on, completely bemused, as it appears that we are prepared to excuse massacre after massacre because a Westerner did it.
It goes further. Everybody tries to claim the “Eurasian” tag now. From the time when, as a teenager, I was described as a “slut” due to my race (all these half-breeds must fornicate at the drop of a hat, doncha know?), now it appears that every would-be model claims to be Eurasian and are lauded over in the press for their “Western features”, “blue eyes”, or whatever. All this, for a race that used to make other parents (Malay, Chinese, Indian) threaten to disown their children if even the whiff of a liaison with an Eurasian came up. Which is why, until very very recently, you get Eurasians only marrying Eurasians or Westerners. To be honest, nobody else wanted us.
So believe me when I say, as a Portuguese Eurasian, looking back on half a millennia of personal history, that I don’t think it’s such a bad thing if we get diluted, genration by generation, and completely die out. The Portuguese themselves have never cared to establish any strong links with their communities scattered around the globe and the only value we seem to have in Asia is our connexion to some Western superiority trope that the continent still hasn’t managed to overthrow.
In a so-called postcolonial world, we are still in thrall to Western fashion and while there are some Western concepts that should be taken up locally (fostering of innovation and creativity, participatory democracy, basic human rights, environmental awareness), that’s not what’s grabbing people by the long and straights. (Fyi, Asians don’t have short and curlies.) The people here seem to be more interested in the skin than the substance, the features rather than the ideas, Caucasianism rather than the categorical imperative.
I call it Caucasianism but there should be a better term for this, the Asian equivalent of Orientalism, where the shallow features of a prevailing culture are used to infer deep (and, therefore, false) truth about that particular culture. In Caucasianism, we somehow conflate such trivia as the lack of epicanthic folds, the unhealthy pale skin, the height, the blue eyes, with sophistication and greater intelligence. This is a colonialist mentality far more pernicious and insidious than any Asia has suffered and we seem to have taken on its mantle eagerly. Asia really needs to grow up.
* I’ll be out of action for the next two weeks. By the time I’m back, QUINTEN’S STORY should be out. Here’s hoping. Have a happy and safe holiday, if you are, and I’ll catch you mid-January.
