Peranakan Essay

The Peranakans are descendants of Chinese traders who settled in Southeast Asia and married local women, as early as the 14th century. There are a distinct group with the advantage of knowing some English and Malay, and they were Chinese by social identity but shares with the Malays the language and similarities in lifestyle. In the 19th century, a lot of Peranakan traders relocated to Singapore (Peranakan Museum, n.d.).
Raffles’ founding of Singapore in 1819 have meant great and liberal commerce activities as well as immigration for well-educated and connected Peranakan traders who moved from another Malay world port-city to Singapore due to declining hubs in the Malay world. Also, as these Peranakan traders look back from 1919, the Peranakan culture and identity has also been expanded as they excelled in bridging cultural and commercial borders and there is undisputable cross-cultural

They became the compradors or 'go-betweens' for the Europeans and the Malays, which facilitated European-Straits trade (Kwa, 2009) . Chinese-Straits commerce are also facilitated through the Peranakan traders as the Chinese has a habit of networking with fellow-Chinese and forming mutual aid associations, as the Peranakans were Chinese by social identity. The Peranakans therefore are able to bridge cultural and commercial boundaries due to their distinct identities. The free trade system gradually evolved into a system of agency houses that were highly dependent on the Peranakan middlemen, where it initially facilitated the purchase and sale of goods of others in return of a set rate of commission but gradually evolved to trading on their own accounts and provision of other services like banking, shipping, freighting and insurance (Drabble, 1981) . This allowed the Peranakan trades to earn more