Eurasian (mixed ancestry)

Eurasian

Yul Brynner[1][2] Keanu Reeves Richard Nikolaus Eijiro von Coudenhove-Kalergi Ben Kingsley Rahul Gandhi Norah Jones Enrique Iglesias Vladimir Lenin[3][4] Eddie Van Halen
Total population
Official population numbers are unknown; United States: 1,623,234 (2010)[5] England and Wales: 341,727 (2011)[6]
Regions with significant populations
United States,[7]  United Kingdom,[5]  Malaysia,[8]  Hong Kong,[9]  Singapore[10]

The word Eurasian refers to people of mixed Asian and European ancestry. It was originally coined in nineteenth-century British India to refer to Anglo-Indians of mixed British and Indian descent, but has since been expanded to include those whose Asian parentage derive from East and Southeast Asia.^[11] The term has seen some use in anthropological literature from the 1960s.^[12] The term Eurasian may also be extended to those with Central Asian heritage.

Specific groups

Southeast Asia

Xanana Gusmão, first President of East Timor.

European colonization of vast swathes of Southeast Asia led to the burgeoning of Eurasian populations, particularly in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam. The majority of Eurasians in Southeast Asia formed a separate community from the indigenous peoples and the European colonizers, and together with the Chinese served as middlemen between the two. Post-colonial Eurasians can be found in practically every country in Southeast Asia, most especially in Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Cambodia

In the last official census in French Indochina in 1946, there were 45,000 Europeans in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. One-fifth were Eurasian.^[13]

Jean-François Izzi, a French banker of Italian origin, was the father of the Queen Mother of Cambodia, Norodom Monineath.^[14] The son of Norodom Monineath is the reigning King of Cambodia Norodom Sihamoni.

Indonesia

Group of Eurasian girls in Indonesia around 1925-1930

The Eurasian community from Indonesia developed over a period of 400 years, it began with a mostly Portuguese Indonesian ancestry and ended with a dominant Dutch-Indonesian ancestry after the arrival of the Dutch East India Company in Indonesia in 1603 and near continuous Dutch rule until the Japanese occupation of Indonesia in World War II.

Malaysia

There are over twenty-nine thousand Eurasians living in Malaysia, the vast majority of whom are of Portuguese descent.^[15]

In East Malaysia, the exact number of Eurasians are unknown. Recent DNA studies by Stanford found that 7.8% of samples from Kota Kinabalu have European chromosomes.^[16]

Philippines

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  President Manuel L. Quezon

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  Edu Manzano

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  Augusto Ayala

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  Jaime Fabregas

Eurasians are collectively called Mestizos in the Philippines. The vast majority are descendants of Spanish and American settlers who intermarried with people of indigenous Filipino and/or Chinese descent. Aside from the more common Spanish and American mestizos, there are also Eurasians in the Philippines who have ancestries from various European countries or Australia. Significant intermarriage between Filipinos and European Americans has occurred since the United States colonial period up to the present day, as the US had numerous people stationed there at military bases.

Most Eurasians of Spanish descent own business conglomerates in the real estate, agriculture, and utilities sector, whereas Eurasians of White American descent are largely in the entertainment industry as actors and actresses.

The actual number of Eurasians in the Philippines cannot be ascertained due to lack of surveys, although Spanish censuses record that as much as one third of the inhabitants of the island of Luzon possess varying degrees of Spanish admixture.^[17] Likewise, a small-sample Stanford University study of Y-chromosomal DNA showed that 3.6% of the Philippine population are wholly or partly of West European descent.

Singapore

Vietnam

In the last official census in French Indochina in 1946, there were 45,000 Europeans in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. One-fifth were Eurasian.^[13]

Much of the business conducted with foreign men in Southeast Asia was done by the local women, who served engaged in both sexual and mercantile intercourse with foreign male traders. A Portuguese and Malay speaking Vietnamese woman who lived in Macao for an extensive period of time was the person who interpreted for the first diplomatic meeting between Cochin-China and a Dutch delegation, she served as an interpreter for three decades in the Cochin-China court with an old woman who had been married to three husbands, one Vietnamese and two Portuguese.^[18][19][20] The cosmopolitan exchange was facilitated by the marriage of Vietnamese women to Portuguese merchants. Those Vietnamese woman were married to Portuguese men and lived in Macao which was how they became fluent in Malay and Portuguese.^[21]

Alexander Hamilton said that "The Tonquiners used to be very desirous of having a brood of Europeans in their country, for which reason the greatest nobles thought it no shame or disgrace to marry their daughters to English and Dutch seamen, for the time they were to stay in Tonquin, and often presented their sons-in-law pretty handsomely at their departure, especially if they left their wives with child; but adultery was dangerous to the husband, for they are well versed in the art of poisoning."^[22]

East Asia

Taiwan

During the Siege of Fort Zeelandia in which Chinese Ming loyalist forces commanded by Koxinga besieged and defeated the Dutch East India Company and conquered Taiwan, the Chinese took Dutch women and children prisoner. Koxinga took Hambroek's teenage daughter as a concubine,^[23][24][25] and Dutch women were sold to Chinese soldiers to become their wives.In 1684 some of these Dutch wives were still captives of the Chinese.^[26]

Some Dutch physical looks like auburn and red hair among people in regions of south Taiwan are a consequence of this episode of Dutch women becoming concubines to the Chinese commanders.^[27]

Hong Kong

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  Robert Hotung

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  Bruce Lee

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  Nancy Kwan

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  Stanley Ho

In 19th century Hong Kong, Eurasian or "half-caste" children were often stigmatised as symbols of 'moral degradation' and 'racial impurity' by both European and Chinese communities.^[28] According to Chiu:

"To the European community, such children were the ‘tangible evidence of moral irregularity’, while to the Chinese community they embodied the shame and ‘evil’ of their marginalised mothers. Stewart has commented that, ‘The word “barbarian” on the lip of a Greek contained but an iota of the contempt which the Chinese entertain for such persons’."^[28]

In the 1890s Ernst Johann Eitel, a German missionary, controversially claimed that most "half-caste" people in Hong Kong were descended exclusively from Europeans having relationships with outcast groups such as the Tanka people. Carl Smith's study in the 1960s on "protected women" (the kept mistresses of foreigners) to an extent supports Eitel's theory. The Tanka were marginalised in Chinese society which consisted of the majority Puntis (Cantonese-speaking people). Custom precluded their intermarriage with the Cantonese and Hakka-speaking populations and they had limited opportunities of settlement on land. Consequently the Tanka did not experience the same social pressures when dealing with Europeans. Eitel's theory, however, was criticised by Henry J. Lethbridge writing in the 1970s as a "myth" propagated by xenophobic Cantonese to account for the establishment of the Hong Kong Eurasian community.^{[29][30][31][32]}

Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew (1845–1917) and Katharine Caroline Bushnell (1856–1946) wrote extensively about the position of women in the British Empire. Published in 1907, Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers, which examined the exploitation of Chinese women in Hong Kong under colonial rule, discussed the Tanka inhabitants of Hong Kong and their position in the prostitution industry, catering towards foreign sailors. The Tanka did not marry with the Chinese, being descendants of the natives, they were restricted to the waterways. They supplied their women as prostitutes to British sailors and assisted the British in their military actions around Hong Kong.^[33] The Tanka in Hong Kong were considered as "outcasts".^[34] Tanka women were ostracized from the Cantonese community, and were nicknamed "salt water girls" (ham shui mui) for their services as prostitutes to foreigners in Hong Kong.^[35][36]

Notable examples of Eurasian people from Hong Kong include Nancy Kwan, once a Hollywood sex symbol, born to a Cantonese father and English and Scottish mother, Bruce Lee, the martial artist icon born to a Cantonese father and a Eurasian mother, and Macao-born actress Isabella Leong, born to a Portuguese-English father and a Chinese mother. The number of people who identified as "Mixed with one Chinese parent" according to the 2001 Hong Kong Census was 16,587, which had risen to 24,649 in 2011.^[9]

Japan

Amerasian Japanese in Okinawa and Japan are mostly the result of European American soldiers and Japanese women. Including, an estimated Japanese 50,000 women who migrated from Japan to the United States during 1946-1965, as war brides of most white American soldiers.^[37] Many Latin Americans in Japan (known in their own cultures as dekasegi) are mixed, including Brazilians of Portuguese, Italian, German, Spaniard, Polish and Ukrainian descent. In Mexico and Argentina, for example, those mixed between nikkei and non-nikkei are called mestizos de japonés, while in Brazil both mestiço de japonês and ainoko are common terms.

Korea

U.S. military personnel married 6423 Korean women as war brides during and immediately after the Korean War. The average number of Korean women marrying US military personnel each year was about 1500 per year in the 1960s and 2300 per year in the 1970s.^[38] Since the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, nearly 100,000 Korean women have immigrated to the United States as the wives of American soldiers. Based on extensive oral interviews and archival research, Beyond the Shadow of the Camptowns tells the stories of these women, from their presumed association with U.S. military camptowns and prostitution to their struggles within the intercultural families they create in the United States.^[39]

Macau

The early Macanese ethnic group was formed from Portuguese men with Malay, Japanese, Indian women.^[40] The Portuguese encouraged Chinese migration to Macau, and most Macanese in Macau were formed from between Portuguese and Chinese. In 1810, the total population of Macau was about 4033, of which 1172 were white men, 1830 were white women, 425 male slaves, and 606 female slaves. In 1830, the population increased to 4480 and the breakdown was 1,202 white men, 2149 white women, 350 male slaves and 779 female slaves. There is reason to speculate that large numbers of white women were involved in some forms of prostitution which would probably explain the abnormality in the ratio between men and women among the white population.^[41] Majority of the early Chinese-Portuguese intermarriages were between Portuguese men and Chinese women of Tanka origin, who were considered the lowest class of Chinese had relations with Portuguese settlers and sailors,^[42][43] while a minority were Cantonese men and Portuguese women. Macanese men and women also married with the Portuguese and Chinese, as a result some Macanese became indistinguishable from the Chinese or Portuguese population. Because the majority of the population who migrated to Macau were Cantonese, Macau became a culturally Cantonese-speaking society, other ethnic groups became fluent in Cantonese. Most Macanese had paternal Portuguese heritage until 1974.^[42] It was in 1980s that Macanese and Portuguese women began to marry men who defined themselves ethnically as Chinese,^[44] which resulted in many Macanese with Cantonese paternal ancestry.

After the handover of Macau to China in 1999 many Macanese migrated to other countries. Of the Portuguese and Macanese women who stayed in Macau married with local Cantonese men, resulting in more Macanese with Cantonese paternal heritage. There are between 25,000-46,000 Macanese; 5,000-8,000 of whom live in Macau, while most live in Latin America (most particularly Brazil), America, and Portugal. Unlike the Macanese of Macau who are strictly of Chinese and Portuguese heritage, many Macanese living abroad are not entirely of Portuguese and Chinese ancestry; many Macanese men and women intermarried with the local population of America and Latin America etc. and have only partial Macanese heritage.

South Asia

India

The first use of the term 'Anglo-Indian' was to describe all British people living in India, regardless of whether they had Indian ancestors or not. This usage changed to describe people who were of the very specific lineage descending from the British on the male side and women from the Indian side.^[45] People of mixed British and Indian descent were previously referred to as simply 'Eurasians' but are now more commonly referred to as 'Anglo-Indians'.^[11] During the British East India Company's rule in India in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, it was initially fairly common for British officers and soldiers to take local Indian wives and have Eurasian children. Interracial marriages between European men and Indian women were very common during colonial times. The scholar Michael Fisher estimates that one in three European men in colonial India had Indian wives. The Europeans (mostly Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, Irish, Scottish, and English) were stationed in India in their youth, and looked for relationships with local women.^[46][47] The most famous of such interracial liaisons was between the Hyderabadi noblewoman Khair-un-Nissa and the Scottish resident James Achilles Kirkpatrick. In addition to intermarriage, inter-ethnic prostitution in India existed. Generally, Muslim women did not marry European men because the men were not of the Islamic faith. By the mid-nineteenth century, there were around 40,000 British soldiers but fewer than 2000 British officials present in India.^[48] As British women began arriving to British India in large numbers around the early-to-mid-nineteenth century, mostly as family members of British officers and soldiers, intermarriage with Indians became less frequent among the British in India. After the events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, such intermarriage was considered undesirable by both cultures.^[49] The colonial government passed several anti-miscegenation laws.^[50][51] As a result, Eurasians became more marginal to both the British and Indian populations in India. Over generations, Anglo-Indians intermarried with other Anglo-Indians to form a community that developed a culture of its own. They created distinctive Anglo-Indian, dress, speech and religion. They established a school system focused on English language and culture, and formed social clubs and associations to run functions, such as regular dances, at holidays such as Christmas and Easter.^[45] Over time, the British colonial government recruited Anglo-Indians into the Customs and Excise, Post and Telegraphs, Forestry Department, the Railways and teaching professions, but they were employed in many other fields as well. A number of factors fostered a strong sense of community among Anglo-Indians. Their English-language school system, their Anglocentric culture, and their Christian beliefs helped bind them together.^[52] Today, an estimated 300,000-1 million Anglo-Indians live in India.^[53]

Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan actress Jacqueline Fernandez

Due to prolonged colonial contact with Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain, Sri Lanka has had a long history of intermarriage between locals and colonists. Originally these people were known as Mestiços, literally "mixed people" in Portuguese; today they are collectively classified as Burghers. The Sri Lankan Civil War has prompted numerous Burghers to flee the island. Most have settled in Europe, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand.

Portuguese Burghers are usually descended from a Sri Lankan mother and a Portuguese father, or a Sri Lankan mother of Portuguese descent and a Sri Lankan father (the former is more common). This configuration is also the case with the Dutch Burghers. When the Portuguese arrived on the island in 1505, they were accompanied by African slaves. Kaffirs are a mix of African, Portuguese colonist and Sri Lankan. The free mixing between the various groups of people was encouraged by the colonials. Soon the Mestiços or the "Mixed People" began speaking a creole known as the Ceylonese-Portuguese Creole. It was based on Portuguese, Sinhalese and Tamil.

The Burgher population numbers 40,000 in Sri Lanka and thousands more worldwide, concentrated mostly in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Phenotypically Burghers can have skin ranging from light to darker, depending on their ancestors, even within the same family. Burghers with dark to light brown skin usually are of Portuguese Burghers or Kaffir ancestry; they may also have European facial features common to the Mediterranean basin (see Mediterraneans). They have a distinct look compared to native Sri Lankans. Most light-skinned Burghers are of Dutch or British descent. Most Burghers are Roman Catholic in religion.

The long and rich colonial past of Sri Lanka left lasting impressions on the cultures and the languages of the island. Both Sinhalaese and Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) Tamil contain numerous words from Portuguese, Dutch and English.

Central Asia

Uyghur girl in Turpan, Xinjiang, China - she's a natural blond with Epicanthus

Uyghur musicians in Yarkand, China

Genetic origins of the Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Tajiks from across Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Most of Kyrgyzstan has overwhelmingly (~2/3) East Asian [i.e. Mongol] ancestry. Most of Tajikistan generally has European, Central Asian [i.e. Iranian], and Middle Eastern [i.e. Arab] ancestry, respectively, with minimal East Asian genetic admixture. Generally, Western Uzbekistan (i.e. Karakalpakstan) has ~1/2 - 2/3 East Asian ancestry, remainder is Central Asian and European. The rest of Uzbekistan (i.e. from Bukhara to Fergana) is 1/4 - 1/2 East Asian and is more or less evenly divided between European, Mideastern, and East Asian; with minimal Central Asian ancestry.

Historically, Central Asia has been a crossroad between West and East Eurasian people leading to the current high population genetic admixture and diversity.^[54] Early physical analyses have unanimously concluded that the Scythians, even those in the east (e.g. the Pazyryk region), possessed predominantly "Europioid" features, although mixed 'Euro-mongoloid" phenotypes also occur, depending on site and period. Based on craniofacial data, the Scythians were believed to be of mixed Euro-Mongoloid origin.^[55]

King Ladislaus IV of Hungary. Ladislaus' mother was the daughter of a Cuman chief.

Anthropologist SA Pletnev studied a group of burials of Kipchaks in the Volga region and found them to have Caucasoid features with some admixture of Mongoloid traits, with physical characteristics such as flat face and distinctly protruding nose.^[56] They were nomadic people that, together with the Cumans, ruled areas stretching from Kazakhstan, Caucasus, eastern Europe. Like the Kipchaks, the Cumans invaders of Europe were also of mixed anthropological origins. Excavation at Hungary Csengele, were far from genetic homogeneity showing both Mongoloid and European traits. Five of the six skeletons that were complete enough for anthropometric analysis and they appeared Asian rather than European (Horváth 1978, 2001)"^[57]

The Hunnic invaders of Europe were also of mixed origins. Hungarian archaeologist István Bóna argues that most of Europeans Huns were of Caucasoid and that less than 20–25% were of Mongoloid stock.^[58] Turanid was most common among the Hun, According to the Hungarian anhtropologist Pál Lipták (1955) the Turanid type is a Caucasoid type with significant Mongoloid admixture, arising from the mixture of the Andronovo type of Europoid features and the Oriental (Mongoloid).^[59]

The Eurasian Avars were group of sixth-century nomadic warriors that came from Northern Central Asia who ruled in what is today Central Europe. Anthropological research has revealed few skeletons with Mongoloid-type features, although there was continuing cultural influence from the Eurasian nomadic steppe. The early Avar anthropological material was said to be almost exclusively Europoid in the seventh century according to Pál Lipták, while grave-goods indicated Middle and Central Asian parallels.^[60] However, cemeteries dated for the eighth century contained Mongoloid elements among others. He analysed population of the Danube-Tisza midland region in the Avar period and found that approximately 80% of them showed Europoid characteristics.^[60] Mongoloid and Euro-Mongoloid types compose about one-third of the total population of the Avar graves of the eighth century with the late Avar Period showing more hybridization resulting in higher frequencies of Europo-Mongolids.^[61] Initially, the Avars and their subjects lived separately, except for Slavic and Germanic women who were married to Avar men. Eventually, the Germanic and Slavic peoples were included in the Avaric social order and culture, which itself was Persian-Byzantine in fashion.^[62]

Russia's Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu. His father was Tuvan, while his mother was Russian.

The Seljuk empire which ruled from Central Asia, Middle East to modern Turkey, their descendants are the Iranian Turkmen and Afghan Turkmen and are mixture of Mongoloid/Caucasoid.

Many Eurasian ethnic groups arose during the Mongol invasion of Europe. Partial Mongol descendants of Central Asians and Circassians such as the Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Nogais also created many Eurasian ethnic groups under the empires they created (Timurid dynasty, Mughal Empire, Kazakh Khanate, and Nogai Horde) and ruled vast lands stretching from Russia, the Caucasus, Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia. Other Eurasian ethnicities developed by the colonial occupation of Asian regions by European states and private corporations that started with the great wave of European naval expansion and exploration in the sixteenth century and continues to the present. The main European colonial powers were Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth century, followed by the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France from the seventeenth century onwards. They colonized throughout South Asia, and into Indonesia and the Philippines.

The term 'Eurasian' was first coined in British India in 1844 by the Marquess of Hastings. The term was originally used to refer to those who are now known as Anglo-Indians, people of mixed British and Indian descent.^[63]

Caucasus

The Nogais who live in Southern Russia/North Caucasus are a mixture of Mongoloid and Caucasoid and also have high frequencies mongoloid paternal y-dna. Some North Caucasus ethnic groups also contain low to moderate frequencies of Mongolian paternal DNA such as Haplogroup C-M217 (Y-DNA).^[64][65]

Europe

European colonization have led to the rise of Eurasian communities in Europe, most prominently in the Netherlands, Spain, and United Kingdom, where significant numbers of Indonesian, Filipino, and Indo-Pakistani Eurasians live.

Netherlands

Dutch Eurasians of part Indonesian descent, also called Indos or Indo-Europeans, have largely assimilated in the Netherlands after arriving in the Netherlands following the end of World War II until 1965, their diaspora a result of Indonesia gaining its independence from Dutch colonial rule. Statistics show high inter marriage rates with native Dutch (50-80%). With over 500,000 persons, they are the largest ethnic minority in the Netherlands. So-called Indo rockers such as the Tielman Brothers introduced their blend of rock and roll music to Dutch audiences, whereas others gained fame as singers and TV presenters, such as Rob de Nijs and Sandra Reemer. There are also famous Indo soccer players such as Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Robin van Persie. Well-known politicians, such as Christian democrat Hans van den Broek and politician Geert Wilders, are also of Indo descent.

Spain

Spanish Eurasians, called Mestizos, most of whom are of partial Filipino ancestry, make up a small but important minority in Spain. Numbering about 115,000, they consist of early migrants to Spain after the loss of the Philippines to the United States in 1898.

Well known Spanish Eurasians include actress and socialite Isabel Preysler and her son Enrique Iglesias, as well as former Prime Minister Marcelo Azcarraga Palmero.

United Kingdom

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  Michael Chopra

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  Iain Duncan Smith

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  Sebastian Coe

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  Marc Elliott

Interracial marriage was fairly common in Britain since the seventeenth century, when the British East India Company began bringing over thousands of Indian scholars, lascars and workers (mostly Bengali and/or Muslim) to Britain. Most married and cohabited with local white British women and girls, due to the absence of Indian women in Britain at the time. This later became an issue, as a magistrate of the London Tower Hamlets area in 1817 expressed disgust at how the local British women and girls in the area were marrying and cohabiting with foreign South Asian lascars. Nevertheless, there were no legal restrictions against 'mixed' marriages in Britain, unlike the restrictions in India.^[66][67][68] This led to “mixed race” Eurasian (Anglo-Indian) children in Britain, which challenged the British elite efforts to "define them using simple dichotomies of British versus Indian, ruler versus ruled." By the mid-nineteenth century, there were more than 40,000 Indian seamen, diplomats, scholars, soldiers, officials, tourists, businessmen and students arriving in Britain,^[46] and by the time World War I began, there were 51,616 Indian lascar seamen residing in Britain.^[69] In addition, the British officers and soldiers who had Indian wives and Eurasian children in British India often brought them to Britain in the nineteenth century.^[70]

Following World War I, there were more women than men in Britain,^[71] and there were increasing numbers of seamen arriving from abroad, mostly from the Indian subcontinent, in addition to smaller numbers from Yemen, Malaysia and China. This led to increased intermarriage and cohabitation with local white females. Some residents grew concerned about miscegenation and there were several race riots at the time.^[72] In the 1920s to 1940s, several writers raised concerns about an increasing 'mixed-breed' population, born mainly from Muslim Asian (mostly South Asian in addition to Arab and Malaysian) fathers and local white mothers, occasionally out of wedlock. They denounced white girls who mixed with Muslim Asian men as 'shameless' and called for a ban on the breeding of 'half-caste' children. Such attempts at imposing anti-miscegenation laws were unsuccessful.^[73] As South Asian women began arriving in Britain in large numbers from the 1970s, mostly as family members, intermarriage rates have decreased in the British Asian community, although the size of the community has increased. As of 2006, there are 246,400 'British Mixed-Race' people of European and South Asian descent. There is also a small Eurasian community in Liverpool. The first Chinese settlers were mainly Cantonese from south China some were also from Shanghai. The figures of Chinese for 1921 are 2157 men and 262 women. Many Chinese men married British women while others remained single, possibly supporting a wife and family back home in China. During the second world war (1939-1945) another wave of Chinese seamen from Shanghai and of Cantonese origin married British women. Records show that about some 300 of these men had married British women and supported families.^[74]

The Americas

Argentina

Today, there are an estimated of 180,000 Asian-Argentines, with 120,000 of Chinese descent,^[75] 32,000 of Japanese descent, 25,000 of Korean descent.^[76]

Brazil

Brazilian television personality Sabrina Sato is half Japanese (maternal side)

Common estimates generally include about 25–35% of Japanese Brazilians as multiracial, being generally over 50–60% among the yonsei, or fourth-generation outside Japan. In Brazil, home to the largest Japanese community overseas, miscegenation is celebrated, and it promoted racial integration and mixing over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, nevertheless as a way of dealing with and assimilating its non-white population, submitted to white elites, with no dangers of uprisings that would put its status quo in risk. While culture shock was strong for the first and second generations of Japanese Brazilians, and the living conditions in the fazendas (plantation farms) after the slavery crisis were sometimes worse than in Asia, Brazil stimulated immigration as means of substitution for the lost workforce, and any qualms about the non-whiteness of the Japanese were quickly forgotten. After Japan became one of the world's most developed and rich nations, the Japanese in Brazil and their culture as well gained an image of progress, instead of the old bad perception of a people which would not be assimilated or integrated as its culture and race were deemed as diametrically opposed to the Brazilian ones.

In the censuses, self-reported amarelos (literally "yellows" i.e. Mongolics, people racially Asian) include about 2,100,000 people, or around 1% of the Brazilian population. A greater number of persons may have Japanese and less commonly Chinese and Korean ancestry, but identify as white (Brazilian society has no one drop rule), pardo (i.e. brown-skinned multiracial or assimilated Amerindian, pardo stands for a Brazilian darker than white and lighter than black, but not necessarily implying a white-black admixture) or Afro-Brazilian. When it comes to religion, self-reported Asian Brazilians are only less Irreligious than whites, and a little more Catholic than Amerindians. They are the least group when it comes to traditional churches of Christianity, and also the least group in percent of Protestants, and Evangelicals or Pentecostals as well. Asian Brazilians have the highest income per capita according to the 2010 census.

Cuba

120,000 Cantonese 'coolies' (all males) entered Cuba under contract for 80 years. Most of these men did not marry, but Hung Hui (1975:80) cites there was a frequency of sexual activity between black women and these Asian immigrants. According to Osberg (1965:69) the free Chinese practice of buying slave women and then freeing them expressly for marriage was utilized at length. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Chinese men (Cantonese) engaged in sexual activity with black Cuban women, and from such relations many children were born. (For a British Caribbean model of Chinese cultural retention through procreation with black women, see Patterson, 322-31).^[77]

In the 1920s an additional 30,000 Cantonese and small groups of Japanese also arrived; both immigrations were exclusively male, and there was rapid intermarriage with white, black, and mulato populations.^[78][79] CIA World Factbook. Cuba. 2008. May 15, 2008. claimed 114,240 Chinese-Cuban coolies with only 300 pure Chinese.^[80]

In the study of genetic origin, admixture, and asymmetry in maternal and paternal human lineages in Cuba. Thirty-five Y-chromosome SNPs were typed in the 132 male individuals of the Cuban sample. The study does not include any people with some Chinese ancestry. All the samples were white Cubans and black Cubans. Two out of 132 male sample belong to East Asian Haplogroup O2 which is found in significant frequencies among Cantonese people is found in 1.5% of Cuban population.^[81]

Costa Rica

The Chinese originated from the Cantonese male migrants. Pure Chinese make up only 1% of the Costa Rican population but according to Jacqueline M. Newman close to 10% of Costa Ricans are of Chinese descent or married to a Chinese.^[82] Most Chinese immigrants since then have been Cantonese, but in the last decades of the twentieth century, a number of immigrants have also come from Taiwan. Many men came alone to work and married Costa Rican women and speak Cantonese. However the majority of the descendants of the first Chinese immigrants no longer speak Cantonese and feel themselves to be Costa Ricans.^[83] They married Tican women (who are a blend of Europeans, Caztizos, Mestizos, Indian, black).^[84] A Tican is also a white person with a small portion of nonwhite blood like caztizos. The census In 1989 shows about 98% of Costa Ricans were either white, castizos, mestizos, with 80% being white or caztizos.

Peru

About 100,000 Cantonese coolies (almost all males) in 1849 to 1874 migrated to Peru and intermarried with Peruvian women of mestizo, European, Ameridian, European/mestizo, African and mulatto origin. Many Peruvian Chinese and Peruvian Japanese today are of Spanish, Italian, African and Ameridian. Estimates for Chinese-Peruvian is about 1.3-1.6 millions. Asian Peruvians are estimated to be 3% of the population, but one source places the number of citizens with some Chinese ancestry at 4.2 million, which equates to 15% of the country's total population.

United States

• 

  Merle Oberon

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  Jawed Karim

According to the United States Census Bureau, concerning multi-racial families in 1990:^[85]

In the United States, census data indicate that the number of children in interracial families grew from less than one half million in 1970 to about two million in 1990. In 1990, for interracial families with one white American partner, the other parent...was Asian American for 45 percent...

According to James P. Allen and Eugene Turner from California State University, Northridge, by some calculations, the largest part-European bi-racial population is European/Native American and Alaskan Native, at 7,015,017; followed by European/African at 737,492; then European/Asian at 727,197; and finally European/Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander at 125,628.^[86]

The U.S. Census has categorized Eurasian responses in the "Some other race" section as belonging to the Asian category.^[87] The Eurasian responses the US Census officially recognizes are Indo-European, Amerasian, and Eurasian.^[87] Starting with the 2000 Census, people have been allowed to mark more than one "race" on the U.S. census, and many have identified as both Asian and European. Defining Eurasians as those who were marked as both "white" and "Asian" in the census, there were 868,395 Eurasians in the United States in 2000 and 1,623,234 in 2010.^[7]

Accusations of support for miscegenation were commonly made by slavery defenders against abolitionists before the US Civil War. After the War, similar charges were used by white segregationists against advocates of equal rights for African Americans. They were said to be secretly plotting the destruction of the white race through miscegenation. In the 1950s, segregationists alleged a Communist plot funded by the Soviet Union with that goal. In 1957, segregationists cite the anti-semitic hoax A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century as evidence for these claims.

From the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the Chinese who migrated to the United States were almost entirely of Cantonese origin. Anti-miscegenation laws in many states prohibited Chinese men from marrying white women.^[88] In the mid-1850s, 70 to 150 Chinese were living in New York City, and 11 of them married Irish women. In 1906 the New York Times (August 6) reported that 300 white women (Irish American) were married to Chinese men in New York, with many more cohabited. In 1900, based on Liang research, of the 120,000 men in more than 20 Chinese communities in the United States, he estimated that one out of every 20 Chinese men (Cantonese) was married to white women.^[89] Interracial marriage for Chinese women with white men increases as more Chinese women migrated with equivalent number to Chinese men. In the 1960s census showed 3500 Chinese men married to White women and 2900 Chinese women married to White men.^[90]

Twenty-five percent of married Asian American women have Caucasian spouses, but 45% of cohabitating Asian American women are with Caucasian American men. Of cohabiting Asian men, slightly over 37% of Asian men have white female partners and over 10% married to white women.^[91] Asian American women and Asian American men live with a white partner, 40% and 27%, respectively (Le, 2006b). In 2008, of new marriages including an Asian man, 80% were to an Asian spouse and 14% to a white spouse; of new marriages involving an Asian woman, 61% were to an Asian spouse and 31% to a white spouse.^[92]

Hawaii

The majority of early Hawaiian Chinese were Cantonese-speaking migrants from Guangdong, with a small number of Hakka speakers. If all people with Chinese ancestry in Hawaii (including the Sino-Hawaiians) are included, they form about one-third of Hawaii's entire population. Many thousands of them married women of Hawaiian, Hawaiian/European and European origin. A large percentage of the Chinese men married Hawaiian and Hawaiian European women. While a minority married white women in Hawaii were with Portuguese women. The 12,592 Asiatic Hawaiians enumerated in 1930 were the result of Chinese men intermarrying with Hawaiian and part Hawaiian European. Most Asiatic Hawaiians men also married Hawaiians and European women (and vice versa). On the census some Chinese with little native blood would be classified as Chinese not an Asiatic Hawaiians due to dilution of native blood. Intermarriage started to decline in the 1920s.^[93][94][95] Portuguese and other Caucasian women married Chinese men.^[96][97] These unions between Chinese men and Portuguese women resulted in children of mixed Chinese Portuguese parentage, called Chinese-Portuguese. For two years to June 30, 1933, 38 of these children were born, they were classified as pure Chinese because their fathers were Chinese.^[98] A large amount of mingling took place between Chinese and Portuguese, Chinese men married Portuguese, Spanish, Hawaiian, Caucasian-Hawaiian, etc.^{[99][100][101][102]} Only one Chinese man was recorded marrying an American woman.^[103][104] Chinese men in Hawaii also married Puerto Rican, Portuguese, Japanese, Greek, and half-white women.^[105][106]

Australia

Most of the early Australian Chinese population consisted of Cantonese-speaking migrants from Guangzhou and Taishan as well as some from Fujian. They migrated to Australia during the gold rush period of the 1850s. Marriage records show that between the 1850s and the start of the twentieth century, there were about 2000 legal marriages between white women and migrant Chinese men in Australia’s eastern colonies, probably with similar numbers involved in de facto relationships of various kinds.^[107]

The rate of intermarriage declined as stories of the viciousness of Chinese men towards white women spread, mixed with increasing opposition to intermarriage. Rallies against Chinese men taking white women as wives became widespread as many white Australian men saw the intermarriage and cohabitation of Chinese men with white women as a threat to the white race. In late 1878, there were 181 marriages between women of European descent and Chinese men as well as 171 such couples cohabiting without matrimony, resulting in the birth of 586 children of Sino-European descent.^[108] Such a rate of intermarriage between Chinese Australians and white Australians was to continue until the 1930s.

Notes

External links

• AngloIndians.com - Anglo-Indian resources & matrimony
• Malaysian Dutch Descendants Project
• Maleisie.be article on Malaysian Dutch Descendants
• Eurasians: A Resource Guide