ABSTRACT
The territory of present-day Indonesia has known, for approximately the last 1000 years, communities of Chinese immigrants, the oldest of which are presumed to be those of Java which preceded the establishment of such immigrant communities in other parts of Southeast Asia by a considerable period of time. Although never achieving large-scale demographic Significance like in Malaysia and Singapore, these Chinese communities have been of considerable importance in urban society. By inter-marriage of the almost exclusively male Chinese immigrants with local women and a steady trickle of new immigrants, in the course of centuries the so-called Peranakan communities, the commu-nities of local born Chinese, were established.2 Links with China, especially since the mid-seventeenth century, were very weak, as the policy of the Manchu discouraged emigration and prohibited emigrants and their descendants from re-entering China. While retaining some Chinese customs, the majority of these Peranakan Chinese was not able to speak or write Chinese. Assimilation of a non-
negligible proportion of this community into the indigenous societies certainly occurred, but new immigration as well as the segregationist policy of the colonial authorities ensured its survival as a relatively distinct group.
