By Professor Clifford Pereira
On the back of an earlier visit to the Eurasian Association in Singapore by our Club-Lusitano president Patrick Antonio Rozario, I decided to make a follow-up visit, prior to the visit to Southeast Asia by Pope Francis. Around 19% of Singapore’s resident population is Christian, of which 37.1% are Catholics and I suspected that Singapore’s early Catholics were from the Luso-Asia communities. I was interested in the interconnections between the former Portuguese possessions of Goa, Malacca (Melaka) and Macau and that of the later British Straits Settlement including Penang and Singapore with Hong Kong.
Of course, Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) was not the first to recognise the strategic location of the Straits of Malacca. The Malays, Indians, Arabs, the Chinese Admiral Zheng He (1371-1433 or 1435), and the Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque (c.1453-1515) had all made a point of trying to control this vital waterway, one of the “Silk routes” between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
The first people of mixed European and Asian blood in Southeast Asia were conceived in the Straits of Malacca, of Portuguese fathers and Southeast Asian mothers, usually Malay, Thai Indi an and Chinese . The Portuguese introduced plants from their American empire such as the Pineapple, Tobacco, Potato, Guava and the essential chilli that characterises the food of the region. The Asians provided, spices and local fruits, combined these elements. This is the origin of the Malay influences in Macanese and Goan cooking. The Portuguese captured Malacca in 1511, and were entrenched in Ayutthaya in Thailand by 1520.
A century later the Portuguese were ousted by the Dutch who took over Malacca in 1641 and Cochin in South India in 1663 maintaining a strategic position on the Spice Route. Dutch rule was also marked by the lack of European women and there was further mixing, but the Portuguese influence was so pervasive that officials at the Dutch eastern capital of Batavia complained that that their children were learning Portuguese creole form their domestic staff, rather then Dutch. In Thailand Portuguese became the official language of international diplomacy into the eighteenth century. The Portuguese language had become a lingua-franca throughout maritime Asia, adding Portuguese words to all of the local languages. A distinct Sino-Portuguese style of architecture developed in the Straits of Malacca of characterised by narrow, deep shop houses with their curved window frames. The designs were based on earlier buildings in Portugal, but the construction was by Asian masons usually from Southern China.
Legal European trade with China was through the Southern port of Guangzhou and was based on a trading season. Out of this season the Portuguese and Macanese profited from accommodating Europeans in Macau and this added a non-Portuguese European component to cosmopolitan Macau. However, the descendants of European-Asian unions were always called Mestiço by the Portuguese and Mestiezen the Dutch. Initially the East India Company had no interest in imposing Christianity or for the provision of education for their trading posts in India. In the seventeenth century the Catholic church continued to provide missions and mission schools especially in places like Bombay, Bengal and Madras. But in the eighteenth century the East India Company opened-up to Italian Carmelite and French Capuchin missions that served both the local Catholics and those soldiers and servants of the East India.
Meanwhile, not to be outdone by the Dutch, the English East India Company established a presence on the Southeast coast of Sumatra at Bencoolen (today’s Benkulu) in 1685, and built Fort Malborough in 1714. Originally a presidency (like Bombay or Madras), Bencoolen was downgraded to a residency answering to the Bengal Presidency at Calcutta.
In 1765 the young Englishmen Francis Light (1740-1794) embarked for “the Indies”, where he secured command of a vessel belonging to the Madras company of Jourdain, Sullivan & De Souza trading in the Gulf of Siam. The East India servants Francis Jourdain and Sullivan were important players in the politics of Eastern India and the Sullivans were of Catholic Irish origin, De Souza is described as “Portuguese”. At the time the island of Phuket was known in Malay as Ujong Salang and corrupted to “Junk Ceylon” by the British. It was a centre of commerce, chiefly in tin, and run by Chinese and “Mestiços” (of Portuguese and Malay, Thai or Chinese origins) within the realm of the Sultan of Kedah. In 1772 Francis Light, assisted by the Mestiço translator Mr. de Mello entered into negotiations with the Sultan to open trade with Britain. When the island was attacked in 1778 the Mestiço community fled to Kuala Kedah with two French missionaries. The community set-up their first Catholic church at Kuala Kedah in 1782 in a house gifted by the Sultan. Light himself, married a Mestiço woman. His eldest son, William Light (1786-1839) who was born in Kuala Kedah went on to become the founder of Adelaide.
Francis Light took an interest in the island that the Malays called Pulau Pinang (Penang) and suggested it as a base for the East India Company. In 1786 he leased Penang Island from the local Sultan on behalf of the East India Company who called it Prince of Wales Island. Light arranged for the French priests and the Mestiços of Kuala Kedah to arrive at Penang on the Feast of Assumption, 15th August 1786. The first wave of Mestiços from Malacca arrived at Penang shortly afterwards, and in 1805 Raffles was sent to Penang as Assistant Secretary to the East India Governor Philip Dundas. On an important point, Raffles had been married in 1805 in London to Olivia Devenish, a widow who was born and previously married in Madras. Olivia’s father was an Irish Catholic and her mother was Circassian. She was educated in Ireland. Like, her husband she learnt to speak Malay in Penang. When she died in Java in 1814 Raffles was devasted and returned to London. In 1811 second wave of Mestiços from Phuket arrived at Penang under the leadership of Fr. John Pasqui as refugees. Percival Shepherdson at the Eurasian Association Museum in Singapore informed that these Mestiço Catholics were known in Malay as “Seranis”, a term derived from the Arabic “Nasrani” which is the Koranic term for a Christian since Jesus came from the town of Nazareth. The Penang village established by these refugees was therefore called Kampong Serani and the Church of the Immaculate Conception in George Town is located at the heart of Kampong Serani.
In 1817 Raffles realised the potential of a British trading base at the entrance to the Straits of Malacca. He was sent to this “most wretched place” as a lieutenant-governor. It was in this rank that Raffles signed the Treaty of Singapore in 1819 when there were 150 people on the island. Records show that there were 12 Catholics of Malacca-Portuguese origin at Singapore in 1821. A further treaty with the Sultan of Johore led to the entire island coming under British rule in 1824. At the start the largest ethnic groups were the Malays, followed by the Chinese, Bugis and Indians. These communities accounted for 99% of the population. The remaining one percent were composed of 74 Europeans, some Malacca Portuguese, Armenians and Arabs. Britain ceded Bencoolen in Sumatra to the Netherlands in the same year. The aim was to shift the garrison of Africans (yes Africans!) and Indians from Bencoolan to Penang and Singapore. Among those resettled in Singapore were some Anglo-Indian families. These two communities gradually merged. Officially Singapore, Malacca, Dinding (Pangkor Island and Lumut Town) and Penang Island became the Straits Settlements territories of the East India Company in 1826.
In 1836 there were 425 “Native Christians” and 117 “Indo-Britons” in Singapore. The term “Native Christians” was applied by the British and Dutch for the Catholics of Portuguese descent in India and Southeast Asia who were previously termed Mestiço.
“Indo-Britons” were people of Indian and British descent from India who are now known as Anglo- Indians. Article 366(2) of the Indian Constitution recognises Anglo-Indians as people of “European” ancestry on the male line. Considering that from the seventeenth to mid nineteenth century few British women arrived in Asia, in reality the so-called Anglo-Indian is more often of Irish, Welsh and Scots origin on the paternal side and Luso-Asian on the maternal side. Most though not all Anglo- Indians are also Catholic.
In 1849 the government combined the Indo-Britons and Native Christians under the term “Singapore’s Eurasian”. The term Eurasian was used the 1881 and 1891 census for the Straits Settlements. In reality the two communities had already started mixing, but the Portuguese element was estimated at around 80% and according to author John Byrne, this percentage has remained roughly the same to this day. At the same time the hybrid Sino-Portuguese shop houses spread throughout the Straits Settlements by the Peranakan (Chinese-Malay) commercial community and can still be seen in Phuket, Penang, and even at Medan in Sumatra. It is this style that became synonymous with Singapore, as the new British emporium attracted people of all races to the port.
We can draw many parallels with other Luso-Asian communities in the Indo-Pacific world at the time. The downward turn in Portugal’s imperial aspirations started with the Iberian Union (1580-1640) and ended with the loss of Brazil in 1822. The Luso-Asians of Solor and Flores were abandoned by Portugal when they were literally sold to the Dutch in 1851. The Portuguese colonies in Asia became more distant and relying on British shipping. In fact, the 1891 census, for Singapore, Penang and Malacca returned no Portuguese among the Europeans. The Portuguese culture in the Straits of Malacca was maintained by the Luso-Asians.
The Luso-Asians felt forgotten and left to their own devises, especially in Timor. They drew on their primary strengths; Catholic religion and education, local family and business networks and a natural sense of navigating between disparate ethnic groups as well as between the colonial rulers and the colonised. Britain as the last European imperial power, led the steam revolution that enabled trade to blossom. The Macanese were drawn to Hong Kong and Shanghai, the Mestiços of Southeast Asia flocked to Singapore and Penang, the Goans went to Bombay (Mumbai) and Mangalore (Mangaluru). Those who could, migrated. First the men, then as Catholic churches and schools were built the families followed.
The Macanese in Hong Kong became the ‘Hong Kong Portuguese’. Those Goans who later migrated to Zanzibar and British East Africa were officially known as “Portuguese Indians” and like the Macanese in Hong Kong, they initially held Portuguese passports. Usually outnumbering the British, who the majority of Luso-Asians worked for as clerks in banks, shipping companies and the government. All of these Luso-Asians emulated the British colonial cultural scene with dances, theatre and sports. They created their own clubs and associations. Despite the different ethnonyms the Club-Lusitano is therefore culturally connected to the Eurasian Associations in Singapore and at Penang and the “Institutes” in far off Kenya.
Our Portuguese surnames are an important identifier and sense of Lusitanian heritage for our community and I was delighted to hear from Percival Shepherdson of Francisco Evaristo Pereira (b. 1833) who came to Singapore in the 1850’s from Malacca as a barrister and was granted his own coat of arms in 1865 after he was called to the English bar. I don’t know if we are related, but as Luso-Asians we know our names are indicative of a collective historical memory.
From the start Macau and Singapore were connected in the form of the Portuguese doctor and revolutionary José D’Almeida Carvalho e Silva. In an article for the Lusitano Bulletin (6 February 2023) by Anthony Correa, we are informed how the trading firm of D’Almeida & Co. and the man himself came to be the prime benefactor of the Singapore Eurasian community. His home was the first place in Singapore where Catholic mass was held.
Of course, the Luso-Asian communities had their own networks which encompassed Portuguese Macau and the two British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore. In a previous Lusitano Bulletin (2 October 2023) Alberto Guterres provided a fascinating family story of Macau-born Henrique Lourenço de Noronha who was Superintendent of the Singapore Printing Press from 1880. The story also mentions the Singapore firm Battenberg & Da Silva. Another Singaporean, Armand Joseph Braga was born in Singapore in 1900 to Joseph Vicente Braga and Bertha Asmus from Macau. Armand Braga did his early schooling in Singapore and then went to St. Joseph’s in Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong. He returned to Singapore in 1935 as the senior municipal commissioner. After the Second World War, Armand Braga became a member of parliament and became Minister of Health in Singapore from 1955 to 1959.
If you visit Singapore I urge you to visit the Eurasian Association, preferably in the day time so that you can visit their fascinating museum to discover our connections and dine at their restaurant. You never know, you may discover your distant cousins in the Straits of Malacca.
