The 'Malay' Community in Pre-war Darwin
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600001148Keywords:
'Malay' community, Darwin, pearling industry, colonial constructionsAbstract
This paper examines the ‘Malay’ community in pre-war Darwin, focusing on those men who were brought to Australia to work in the pearling industry. It considers their status within the community, and questions the degree to which the White Australia policy impinged upon their lives. The term ‘Malay’ in this context does not refer to the ‘Malays’ of present-day Malaysia, but rather to the ambiguous colonial construction which was loosely based on notions of ‘racial’ grouping. Adrian Vickers’ study of South-East Asian ‘Malay’ identity points to its multiple forms: the colonial constructions of the British and the Dutch; the existence of non-Muslim Malays; and the many ethnic groups whose identities cut across the national boundaries which form present-day Malaysia and Indonesia and the southern Philippines. In the Australian context, the works of John Mulvaney and Campbell Macknight have examined Macassan contact with northern Aboriginal groups, particularly in the Gulf of Carpentaria. According to Mulvaney, the term ‘Macassan’ was used to refer to the Bugis and Macassan seafarers who came to Australia from southern Sulawesi. He notes, however, that nineteenth-century Europeans, such as French commander Baudin and Matthew Flinders referred to them as ‘Malays’.
References
I would like to thank Adrian Vickers for his helpful comments and suggestions for this paper. Adrian Vickers, ‘ “Malay Identity”: Modernity, Invented Tradition, and Forms of Knowledge, Rima, 31,1, June 1997, pp 174–76, 203.
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I would like to express my appreciation to Professor James Fox at ANU who is currently helping me to identify the origins of the crew members who were loosely categorised as Koepangers. The majority appear to have come from Sabu Island which is close to Kupang in Timor and located between Roti and Sumba Islands in the eastern region of Indonesia.
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This was demonstrated in the papers of Anna Shnukal and Sarah Yu at the Asians in Australian History Workshop, Griffith University, June 1999.
