Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia

Guo-Quan Seng's Strangers in the Family offers a gendered history of settler Chinese community formation in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period, focusing on women's moral agency and inter-ethnic patterns of intimate encounters.

Format: Unspecified
Length: 270 pages
Publication date: 15 November 2023
Publisher: Cornell University Press

In Strangers in the Family, Guo-Quan Seng offers a comprehensive and gendered account of the formation of the settler Chinese community in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial era (1816-1942). At the core of this narrative lies the process of creolization, whereby patrilineal Confucian marital and familial norms were adapted to the colonial legal, moral, and sexual conditions of urban Java.

By shifting the focus from male-centered narratives of Overseas Chinese communities, Strangers in the Family presents a unique perspective on community formation, centering on the experiences of women who were subordinate to, and alienated from, the full Chinese selfhood. The book explores the history of community formation from the perspectives of native concubines, mothers, creole Chinese daughters, wives, and matriarchs, as well as the first generation of colonial-educated feminists. Seng showcases the moral agency of these women as they navigated, manipulated, and debated men in positions of authority over their rights in marriage formation and dissolution.

In conversation with critical studies of colonial Eurasian intimacies, this book delves into Asian-centered inter-ethnic patterns of intimate encounters. It demonstrates how contestations over women's place in marriage and society played a crucial role in shaping a Chinese racial identity in colonial Indonesia. Through a rich and detailed analysis, Strangers in the Family provides valuable insights into the complex dynamics of gender, race, and colonialism in early modern Southeast Asia.

Dimension: 229 x 152 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501772511