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‘The Turbulent But Commercially Valuable Chinese’ A Comparison of French and British Colonial Policies Towards the Chinese in Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

K. Vtviane Frings
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Extract

All over Southeast Asia, the perception that the European colonizers had of the Chinese was characterized by a fundamental ambiguity. On the one hand, the Chinese were recognized to be very useful, and even indispensable to the economic development/exploitation of the colonial territories, as they were hard-working labourers, possessed needed entrepreneurial, commercial and technical skills and had already established trade contacts with the indigenous populations. But, on the other hand, the Chinese were perceived as a potential political threat because of their strong communal organization and solidarity, their secret societies and their frequent clan fights.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 48 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1995

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References

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41 Hoeffel, , De la condition juridique, 62–63Google Scholar. This policy erected barriers between the Chinese and the Cambodians which previously did not exist, and made it difficult for the Chinese to assimilate into the indigenous society. As a consequence, French policy slowed down the process of assimilation which was under way. In Malaya, on the other hand, the process of assimilation, which was more difficult because of the Islamic religion, was hindered by the large number of the Chinese community rather than by the British government methods.

42 Art. 5; Bulletin Administratif du Cambodge (B.A.C.), 1891, 362.Google ScholarTsai Maw-Kuey, writing on Vietnam, affirmed that the Chinese who spoke another dialect were included in the Hakka congregations (Maw-Kuey, Tsai, La Chinois au Sud-Vietnam, Ph.D. thesis, University of Paris, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, 1968, 34)Google Scholar.

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76 Forest, , Le Cambodge et la colonisation française, 469Google Scholar. These duties were rated at 8 and 4 piastres in 1924 (De Galembert, J., Les Administrations et les services publiques indochinois (Hanoi 1924) 785)Google Scholar.

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83 The railways ran between the mining districts and the coast and, according to Sadka, the Chinese were the people most frequently in the courts and their disputes involved the largest sums (Sadka, , The Protected Malay States, 298–299)Google Scholar.

84 Ibidem, 299, referring to the Appendixes to the Annual Report of Perak for 1895.

85 For example, in 1894, in Upper Pcrak, a 93%-Malay district, the revenue was $ 4,432 and the expenditure $ 25,655 (Ibidem, 299).

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