TRACING ROOTS 

LET'S EXPLORE BOYANESE HERITAGE

Our research delves into the the migration patterns and the historical background of the Boyanese Community by using the Pondok Peranakan Gelam Club as a case study to showcase the erosion of their culture through their assimilation with the Malay community here in Singapore. The Malay community in Singapore has been largely presented as a homogeneous group without taking into account the nuances within the community. It is through the exploration and the tracing of the Boyanese cultural origins do we want to flesh out the differences within Malay identity. Focusing on the club’s history and its function, we intend to track the cultural identity of the Boyanese throughout their period of migration, their eventual assimilation into the Malay community and its effects on their ethnic identity.

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(Above) Boyanse Community in the 1910s

Photo Courtesy of the National Archives of Singapore 

ABOUT US

Migration. Exploration. Learning 

Nice to meet you! After months of hard work, we are thrilled to invite you to explore our documentation project. We are a group of History students from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Leiden University in the Netherlands. We embarked on this project as part of the class Comparative History of Global Migration (HH3009). Upon exploring different topics of interest we had collectively decided to research on the Boyanese community in Singapore. The following site is a documentation of our findings. We hope you find the site engaging and educational.

Team Members: 

Adriaan den Hartog - Leiden University, History (Year 3)  

Ellie Yeo - Nanyang Technological University, History (Year 3)

Natalie Tow -   Nanyang Technological University, History (Year 2)

Sharanjeet Kaur -  Nanyang Technological University, History (Year 3)