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Javanese-Surinamese Foodways

Community

⚠ A JAVANESE COMMUNITY IN SOUTH AMERICA, WHICH EXISTS NOWHERE ELSE AT THIS SCALE. Around 33,000 people were brought from Java between 1890 and 1939 as indentured labour for the Dutch plantations, and their descendants are roughly a seventh of Suriname. The food is JAVANESE REMADE, not Indonesian imported: SAOTO — the clear chicken soup with beansprouts, fried potato, egg, fried onion and sambal, Suriname’s own form of soto; BAMI and NASI goreng, sold from the WARUNG on every corner and eaten by everyone; SATÉ with peanut sauce; TELO (cassava with salt fish); PETJEL; DAWET; and the sambals. ⚠ SEPARATED FROM JAVA FOR A CENTURY, the cuisine drifted — and Javanese-Surinamese food in the Netherlands is now a further generation on again.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Javanese Surinamese community documented

Languages: Javanese, Dutch, Sranan Tongo

What is recorded

  • Approximately 33,000 people were brought from Java to Suriname as indentured labour between 1890 and 1939; their descendants constitute roughly a seventh of the population, a Javanese community without parallel in the Americas at this scale. Surinamese saoto, bami and nasi are recorded as Javanese-Surinamese foods that diverged from Javanese practice over a century of separation, not as imported Indonesian cuisine. documented
  • Javanese indenture to Suriname: around 33,000 people from Java — the origin of the only Javanese community in the Americas at this scale. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • originates from Javanese Cuisine documented

    ⚠ Javanese indenture 1890-1939. Recorded as Surinamese food of Javanese origin that drifted for a century apart from Java — not as Indonesian food abroad.

  • related to Javanese Surinamese Foodways documented

    The same community; this row is its foodways layer inside the Surinamese national system.

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.