Eurasian Singaporeans are Singaporeans of mixed European and Asian descent. Their Asian ancestry trace from Colonial India to other colonies while their European ancestry trace back to western Europe primarily, although Eurasian settlers to Singapore in the 19th century came largely from other European colonies. These included British Malaya and British Sarawak, part of the former British Raj India, of the former Portuguese India and Chittagong (today in Bangladesh), the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina. When the European maritime powers colonised Asian countries, such as Colonial India, Ceylon, Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia and Indochina, from the 16th to 20th centuries, they brought into being a new group of commingled ethnicities known historically as Eurasians.