31 March 2010  South Moluccans: Teachers before Soldiers  From:
Being "Dutch" in the Indies: A History of Creolisation and
Empire, 1500–1920, by Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben, tr. by Wendie
Shaffer (National U. Singapore Press, 2008), pp. 173-176:
Migration to other territories within the vast Indonesian
archipelago was also part of a general pattern in the Moluccas.
From the letters of the Neumann family, we gain a unique picture
of an Ambonese family that became widely scattered. The letters
also offer an occasional glimpse of the poorer relatives who
sent their children to study in Batavia in the hope that they
would gain an acceptable job as office clerks. Family members
who emigrated remained in contact with each other, forming a
small colony in the city of Batavia and maintaining their links
with Ambon. Relations with home were maintained, and presumably
this held true for all the Moluccans who left their native
islands and ranged out across the Indonesian archipelago.
According to the 1930 census, about 1