Socal Indo Stories

The Indo people (Dutch: Indische Nederlanders, Indonesian: Orang Indo) or Indos are Eurasian people connected with Indonesia. In its narrowest sense, the term refers to people in the former Dutch East Indies who held European legal status but were of mixed Dutch or other European and indigenous Indonesian descent as well as their descendants today.

In the broadest sense, an Indo is anyone of mixed European and Indonesian descent. Indos are associated with colonial culture of the former Dutch East Indies, a Dutch colony in Southeast Asia and a predecessor to modern Indonesia after its proclamation of independence 17 August 1945, the term was used to describe people acknowledged to be of mixed Dutch or other European and Indonesian descent, or it was a term used in the Dutch East Indies to apply to Europeans who had partial Asian ancestry. The European ancestry of these people was predominantly Dutch, but also included Portuguese, German, British, French, Belgian and others.

The term “Indo” is first recorded from 1898, as an abbreviation of the Dutch term Indo-European. Other terms used at various times are ‘Dutch Indonesians’, ‘Eurasians’, ‘Indo-Europeans’, ‘Indo-Dutch’and ‘Dutch-Indos’. Indonesians nowadays use the word Indo too BUT as an abbreviation to Indonesia.