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The Formation of the Modern East Asian Economy
By 1810, the Mestizos numbered 120,000; that is, 4.8% of the total Philippino population, as against only 7,000 China-born. During the next 50 to 60 years, their number more than doubled to 290,000 to account for 5.2% of the entire population, in contrast to the small China-born population of 23,000. Furthermore, this same period from 1740 to 1850 also saw a considerable rise in the social and economic position of these Chinese Mestizos. By 1850 they dominated almost all branches of trade, controlled those industrial sectors important for commerce, and were the chief moneylenders and (after the Catholic Church) the biggest investors in the countryside. In terms of social prestige they fell far below Spaniards (Criollos as well as Spain-born), but were very nearly on a par with the Spanish Mestizos who were far less numerous. Indeed, leading Indio families commonly sought to assimilate to Mestizo society.97

In Java, similar communities of creolized Chinese were firmly established in north coast towns during the eighteenth century. While Chinese communities in Java date from many centuries earlier, the descendants of the early immigrants had mainly become Muslims and eventually assimilated into the indigenous society. The last sizable number of Chinese conversions to Islam occurred among the survivors of the 1740 massacre. Thereafter, non-Muslim Chinese Peranakan communities underwent steady growth and robust development all along the north coast. By the early nineteenth century, the Chinese quarters of the towns of Java were dominated numerically, economically, and socially by the creolized Peranakans. Numbering about 100,000 in 1810, the Peranakans grew to 145,000 in 1860 and to 250,000 by 1900.During the same century, the immigrant Chinese increased from roughly 8,000 to a mere 24,000. Like the Chinese Mestizos in the Philippines, the Peranakan Chinese engaged in a great variety of occupations and social roles, from merchant and rural moneylender to boat maker and porter. No less than the Spanish, the Dutch regarded them as indispensable for their colonial economy. And even more than their Filipino counterparts, they achieved a heavier concentration of wealth. Just 1% of the population of Java, they came to own far more of its wealth and to have a legal status and social standing between that of the indigenes and the Dutch or Dutch Eurasians.

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