Javanese (Suriname)
Javanese are a population group in Suriname of Indonesian descent. The first Javanese came to Suriname from the former Dutch East Indies as contract workers in 1890 .
Contract workers
The influential Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (NHM), which is mainly active in the Dutch East Indies, first tried in 1890 to employ contract workers from the Dutch East Indies on their Mariënburg sugar cane plantation on the left bank of the Lower Commewijne . On August 9, 1890, the first boat with 94 Javanese on board arrived in the port of Paramaribo . The arrival of the urgently needed workers for the plantations was greeted with joy by most of the planters. The contractors from Java made Suriname less dependent on the attitude of the British government, which could stop the import of workers from British India - the so-called Hindustans - at any time .
When the attempt was considered successful, the colonial administration took the recruitment of Javanese into their own hands from 1894.
The contract workers came from villages in Central and East Java . The collection points and ports of departure were in Batavia , Semarang and Tanjung Priok . The recruited workers and possible family members were housed in a depot until departure. Here they were registered, medically examined and the employment contract signed.
The employment contract had a term of five years. After that time, the Javanese could return to Java at the expense of the Dutch government. The minimum wage was 60 cents a day for a man and 40 cents a day for a woman.
The immigrants were recruited to work on the plantations. An exception to this was a group of 77 Javanese who were hired in 1904 specifically to build a railway line. From the First World War , Javanese also worked for the bauxite company Suralco ( Suriname Aluminum Company ), a subsidiary of Alcoa in Moengo .
The picture changed very quickly due to the closure of many plantations from 1930 as a result of the global economic crisis . The Javanese left the plantations and started their own small farms. For this purpose, plots had been issued by the government. These were mostly abandoned plantations that were parceled out.
The immigration of Javanese ended on December 13, 1939. The outbreak of the Second World War prevented the implementation of a large-scale plan to transfer entire villages ( desa’s ) from Java to Suriname.
politics
In 1946, Iding Soemita founded a political party with the main goal of enforcing the right of Javanese to return to Indonesia. This party, Persatuan Indonesia , merged three years later into the Kaum Tani Persatuan Indonesia (KTPI) party, which still exists today (2015) . A second party emerged among the Javanese in Suriname, the Pergerakan Bangsa Indonesia Suriname (PBIS). This group initially had as a program to interfere in the domestic politics of Suriname. However, she ran unsuccessfully in the 1949 parliamentary elections for the States of Suriname . After these lost elections, there was a change of course in party politics, which led to the party withdrawing completely from political life in Suriname. The solidarity with the Republic of Indonesia, which had already been proclaimed at that time, was increasingly emphasized.
Sumatra
In 1953 a large group of around 300 families with around 1200 people, led by Salikin Hardjo , traveled back to Indonesia by ship. Their wish to settle in Java or in Lampung was not approved by the Indonesian government. Instead, they were ordered to settle in Sumatra Barat . Here they founded the village of Tongar, in the Pasaman Barat district, north of the city of Padang . Despite religious differences, they integrated easily into the local Minangkabau community.
Netherlands
In the 1970s, before and after Suriname gained independence on November 25, 1975, around 20,000 to 25,000 Surinamese Javanese moved to the Netherlands. They mainly moved in and around the cities of Groningen , Amsterdam , The Hague , Rotterdam and Zoetermeer .
number
A total of 32,956 Javanese immigrants came to Suriname. Of these, around 26% (8,684 people) traveled back to Indonesia by 1954. In a 1972 census in Suriname 57,688 and in 2004 71,879 Javanese were counted. In addition, around 60,000 people of mixed origin were listed in 2004; of these, too, an unknown number is of (partly) Javanese descent.
At the 8th census in 2012 , 73,975 people said they were of Javanese descent. This corresponds to a share of 13.7% of the total population.
literature
- CFA Bruijning, J. Voorhoeve (main editor): Encyclopedie van Suriname . Elsevier , Amsterdam a. Brussel 1977, ISBN 90-10-01842-3 , pp. 309-313.
- D. van den Bersselaar, H. Ketelaars: De komst van contractarbeiders uit Azie: Hindoestanen en Javanen in Suriname . Leiden 1991, ISBN 90-5292-037-0 .
- R. Hoefte: In place of slavery: a social history of British Indian and Javanese laborers in Suriname . Gainesville 1998, ISBN 0-8130-1625-8 .
- Yvette Kopijn, Hariëtte Mingoen: Silent passers-by . Levensverhalen van Javaans-Surinaamse ouderen in Nederland . KIT Publishers, Amsterdam 2008, ISBN 978-90-6832-688-8 .
