The Indies government, following a decree by Governor-General Alexander Willem Frederik Idenburg, would not hire them, and businesses attempted to promote endogamy. Along with this change, the position of men living with a njai became increasingly difficult. Venues exclusive to one racial group were opened, and European, Chinese, and indigenous people rarely intermingled. With the European population now of a considerable size, Indies society began drifting towards a more racially divided one. Owing to an economic boom, the early 20th century saw another surge in immigration from Europe. Those who were not married, however, received no special recognition. Under the new system they established, which pushed for a sharper delineation between Europeans and non-Europeans, a njai marrying a European could be recognized as of a similar stature to Europeans. These newcomers, as with the British before them, were shocked by the intermarriage and keeping of njais. Īfter the British returned the Indies to the Dutch in 1815, a new wave of immigration – including some women – began. However, they were unable to eliminate the keeping of njais, and, indeed, some Englishmen kept a njai of their own. They attempted to force all elements of Indies society to live in accordance with British morals. When the British took control of the Indies in 1812, they were shocked by the practices of concubinage, interracial marriages, and slavery in the Indies.
Instead, it was more common for Dutchmen to take Asian women as their partners, as they could not marry without the company's permission and would not be repatriated if they married a non-Christian. Many men, however, were unable to marry them, as they generally sought persons already in a position of power. The Eurasian daughters of these marriages proved to be popular targets of affections, as marriage to one could help men improve their social position. In the 1650s, Governors-General Carel Reyniersz and Joan Maetsuycker began promoting interracial marriage between Dutchmen and indigenous women, who were thought to be less greedy and less likely to ask their husbands to leave the Indies. There were also concerns that these women were only accepting marriage for personal gain and that they would attempt to draw their husbands back to the Netherlands – and out of the employment of the Dutch East Indies Company. The program, however, had little effect, as the company could not keep up with the demand. To prevent a relapse, Coen began bringing orphans from the Netherlands, termed compagniesdochters, to become wives of company employees. By 1620 the habit had become so prevalent that Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen passed a law forbidding Dutchmen from keeping concubines. Without contact with Dutch women, they began turning to their female slaves (mostly originating from Sulawesi, Bali, and outside the archipelago) for sexual services. The Europeans established small settlements, and in many of them the European residents were all men. History Įuropeans first arrived in the Indonesian archipelago in the 16th century, and in 1602 the Dutch East India Company was established to ensure Dutch domination of the spice trade. Not all njai were necessarily native Indonesian-in Madelon Szekely-Lulofs's 1931 novel Rubber, njai Kiku San is Japanese.
Objectification of the njai was found in terms such as meubel ("furniture") and inventarisstuk ("inventory items"). As the njai could also serve as a translator and language teacher, terms such as boek ("book") and woordenboek ("dictionary") are also noted. The njai were also known as moentji, from the Dutch diminutive mondje, meaning "mouth", and the more negative snaar (" strings") both referred to the njai 's verbal propensities. In the 19th century the term inlandse huishoudster, or simply huishoudster (housekeeper), was common. Ī variety of other terms were used to refer to the njai, with a varying degree of positive and negative connotations. The word, in discussion of the Indies, is sometimes simply translated as "mistress". It is this last definition which is used here, a definition which gained traction in the 17th century when Balinese njais first became common in the colonial capital of Batavia (now Jakarta). The Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia gives three definitions for njai: as a term for referring to a married or unmarried woman, as a term for referring to a woman older than the speaker, and for the concubine of a non-Indonesian. In Sundanese the term nyai refers to "miss" or young woman, while in Betawi dialect, nyai refers to "grandmother" or elderly lady. The term njai, also found in the spellings nyai, njaie, nyaie, nyahi or nyi, comes from a Balinese word meaning sister.