"Having practically completed their ignoble deeds, the temporary British authorities next began to selfishly conspire a physical removal of the Malacca Portuguese Community from Malacca to Penang; all their efforts failed. Led by the Irmaoes di Igreja, the community collectively opposed the move and frustrated the attempted forced removal.
The East India Company issued orders in 1805 that the fortress should be destroyed, the town evacuated, and the population removed to Penang. By 1807, the fortifications had been demolished, but the 15,000 inhabitants of the town, despite efforts to persuade them to move to Penang in 1808 did not do so."
Bernard Sta Maria
My People, My Country (1982), pp. 83-84
Because it is our name.
Because we feel strongly for it.
Because it is the same as 'casados'
which encodes a history
that few outside of us know:
that there appears to often have been little consent
in between those who came as conquerors, and those who called Melaka their home.
It is within the little things,
the names that mean something,
that history can be revived.
That the true order of things can be shown.
If 'casados' is ironic,
then what lies below
'Kristang'?
What stories haven't been told?
The earliest known documentation of our language is from 1864.
And per Alan Baxter's work,
an embryonic version seems to have existed from 1829, in pamphlets used to promote
Christianity in Melaka.
But why did we even need those?
So
if I may be so bold:
maybe we were called Kristang
because before 1795, and the first coming of the British,
something new had already taken hold.
Not the light of a divinity, new or old;
but maybe a more humanitarian persuasion, a way of making ourselves whole
without any authority.
A body neutrality.
A strange, sun-soaked Malayan cosmopolitanism questioning everything.
Maybe that's why they wanted Melaka empty,
for they rarely destroyed
anything they could already control.
And so in calling us Kristang
they made sure---
like many others around the world---
none of us would
question what we were told.
None of us would know the way home.
None of us would ever learn
how the story really goes.