Javanese in Malaysia: farmers and labourers of Johor and Selangor

Javanese in Malaysia: farmers and labourers of Johor and Selangor

On a Friday, in a village in Johor, the drums of a kuda kepang (a traditional dance of riders on woven horses) begin, and the children run toward the sound. The dance came from Java, and the village has kept it for generations.

The story

Java, the most crowded island of the Indonesian archipelago, sent a steady flow of people to Malaya from the late 1800s onwards. Historians count the Javanese as the third largest labour migration to Malaya, after the Chinese and the Indian movements. The flow of Javanese, and of people from nearby islands and Sumatra, continued strongly into the early 1900s.

Many were hired to work on rubber estates. Others came as smallholders: rubber was attractive to Malays and to Javanese migrants because small farmers with 5 to 10 acres could grow it. Johor and Selangor became two of the main areas where they settled.

The first generation tended to live together by place of origin and keep their own identity for a time. Their children and grandchildren were different. They spoke Malay, shared Islam and the same way of life, and thought of Malaya as home. Most of them started to call themselves Malay. The writers of Economic History Malaysia note that the Javanese, like other people from the archipelago, were close to the Malays in language, culture and religion, so the line between them blurred within a generation or two.

So the Javanese story is a quiet one. It is not a story about people who stayed apart, but about families who became part of a shared Malay community while keeping some of Java's customs.

Today, Javanese heritage is carried in many places in Malaysia, in the family name, the cooking pot and the festival.

Where you can still see it today

• Kuda kepang (horse dance), still performed in Javanese-descended villages of Johor and Selangor.
• Javanese words in Malay: Malay says "terima kasih"; Javanese says "matur nuwun" (thank you), still heard in some homes.
• Food: tempeh (fermented soybean cake) and soto (spiced soup), common in homes of Javanese descent.
• Family trees that carry a Javanese grandparent's name, kept by many Malay families.

What DNA can tell, and what it cannot

A genetic study of four Malay sub-groups found that Melayu Jawa are genetically close to people in Indonesia, which fits the story. A region estimate may point to Java and the Indonesian islands, and so may a mother line or father line.

But the Malay and Javanese worlds are neighbours, and a DNA result may look much the same. DNA cannot say whether a family is Javanese or Malay. It does not decide race, religion or bumiputera status.