Mixed Race Studies

70 years Moluccans in the Netherlands: the ‘painful problem’ of mixed marriages and relationships

EUROMIX Research Project: Regulation of mixed relationships, intimacy and marriage in Europe
2021-06-11

Betty de Hart, Euromix Principal Investigator; Professor of Transnational Families and Migration Law
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Source: Het Parool, 1951-05-11

Introduction

In May 1951, the local council of the town of Huizen in the Netherlands adopted a local police regulation (Algemene Politie Verordening) prohibiting town girls from hanging out at the gates of the camp where recently arrived Moluccan colonial migrants were housed. The newspaper article in Het Parool reporting on this regulation quoted the town mayor saying that he got ‘nauseous’ by the 15 and 16 year old girls, who sought contact to the ‘Ambonese’.

In light of the various events organised this year to commemorate the 70-year presence of Moluccans in the Netherlands, it seems appropriate to go further into the way these colonial subjects were received, especially in relation to the regulation of mixture. As will be demonstrated, the local regulation in Huizen was not exceptional, but part of a pattern of regulation of mixed relationships and marriages between Moluccans and Dutch nationals, that was framed in terms of ‘racial mixture’…

Read the entire article here.

Another Woolly-Hair Mutation in Man

The Journal of Heredity
Volume 25, Number 9 (September 1934)
pages 337-340

C. Ph. Schokking
Rotterdam, Holland

A Dutch peasant family living near Leiden carries a dominant gene for a type of woolly hair characteristic of the Negro races. This is not to be explained as due to race crossing for two reasons.  In the first place there is no tradition in the family of an infusion of Negro blood and no other evidence of anything but pure Dutch ancestry. Furthermore, hair form behaves in racial crosses not as a simple dominant character but as a “blending” character (in which to or more genes are involved).  Thus simple mendelian inheritance of hair form is not found in Negro-white crosses. Among such hybrids various degrees of curly and wavy hair are observed, and in later generations wooly hare may appear but only where both parents are partly Negro. Thus the occurrence of woolly hair in this family is clear due to mutation rather than race hybridization.

While studying twins in Leiden in 1929 and 1930, I encountered a pair of non-identical twin sisters, one of whom had remarkably curly hair. Since little is known of the inheritance of such genuine woolly hair among Europeans, I followed up the history of this pair. It soon transpired that in the village of Rijnsburg, near Leiden, whence the girls came, many woolly-haired persons were to be found, and that all of these belonged to the same family. After a deal of effort I was able to put together a pedigree chart covering five generations (Figure 3). The founder of the family had already died and no photograph of him was to be had, but an old Rijnsburger, who knew both this man and his father, was able to give me definite information that both of them had woolly hair…

Read the entire article here.