Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T04:27:54.440Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Discipline and delegation: colonial governance in Malayan towns, 1880–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2011

LYNN HOLLEN LEES*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104–6379, USA

Abstract:

British colonial administrators had two strategies for governing towns in Malaya during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They used Sanitary Boards to improve public health and to control populations indirectly, and they relied on police forces for direct forms of discipline. Both strategies reveal the overall weakness of the British colonial regime in that region.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Frank Swettenham, British Malaya, rev. edn (London, 1948), vi.

2 Bayly, C.A., Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830 (London, 1989)Google Scholar.

3 Joyce, P., The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London, 2003), 14Google Scholar.

4 This argument is similar to that of B.S.A. Yeoh in Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore (Kuala Lumpur, 1996), 15, but I have discovered less resistance and more compliance than she did in the case of Singapore.

5 I have chosen to use early twentieth-century, or contemporary, spellings of Malayan place names (e.g. Malacca rather than Melaka) in the text of the article. A few bibliographical citations use late twentieth-century variants.

6 For a history of the Straits Settlements (unified 1826) and the Federated Malay States (formed in 1896 from states indirectly ruled after 1874), see Andaya, B.W. and Andaya, L.Y., A History of Malaysia, 2nd edn (Basingstoke, 2001)Google Scholar; Heussler, R., British Rule in Malaya: The Malayan Civil Service and its Predecessors, 1867–1942 (Westport, 1981)Google Scholar.

7 Nathan, J.E., The Census of British Malaya, 1921 (London, 1922)Google Scholar.

8 Hussin, N., Trade and Society in the Straits of Melaka: Dutch Melaka and English Penang, 1780–1830 (Copenhagen and Singapore, 2007), 262–3Google Scholar; Wong, C.S., A Gallery of Chinese Kapitans (Singapore, 1963)Google Scholar; Yong, C.F., Chinese Leadership and Power in Colonial Singapore (Singapore, 1992)Google Scholar.

9 Trocki, C., Opium and Empire (Ithaca, 1990), 1319Google Scholar; Purcell, V., The Chinese in Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, 1967)Google Scholar; Fong, Mak Lau, The Sociology of Secret Societies: A Study of Chinese Secret Societies in Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, 1981)Google Scholar; Musa, M., Kongsi Gelap Melayu Di Negeri-Negeri Utara Pantai Barat Semenanjung Tanah Melayu 1821–1940-an (Kuala Lumpur, 2003)Google Scholar.

10 Lee, E., The British as Rulers: Governing Multiracial Singapore, 1867–1914 (Singapore, 1991)Google Scholar.

11 In Province Wellesley, Butterworth, Bukit Mertajam and Nibong Tebal housed such offices with an array of civil servants and clerks, while in Perak they were located in Taiping, Grik, Batu Gajah and Batang Padang. See The Singapore and Straits Directory for 1911 (Singapore, 1911), 286–9, 322–41.

12 The vote was given to householders of property having an annual value or more than $150 and to ratepayers of more than $12.50 per year. The overwhelming majority of residents neither paid direct rates nor rented a house. Handbook to British Malaya, 1926, compiled by R.L. German (London, 1926), 51–2; ‘Report to his Excellency Sir John Anderson on the administration of municipal affairs in the Straits Settlements’, Colonial Office (CO) 275/83, The National Archives, London, 2–3. See also Yeoh, Contesting Space, 29–67.

13 Handbook to British Malaya, 1926, 54.

14 The Colonial Directory of the Straits Settlements for 1875 (Singapore, 1875), Section M, 1; Keaghran, T.J., The Singapore Directory for the Stratis Settlement, 1877 (Singapore, 1875), 41–3Google Scholar.

15 Singapore and Straits Directory for 1896 (Singapore, 1896), 173; Singapore and Straits Directory for 1904 (Singapore, 1904), 236–7.

16 Yang, A., The Limited Raj (Berkeley, 1998), 230Google Scholar.

17 Lubis, A.-R. and Nasution, K.S., Raja Bilah and the Mandailings in Perak, 1875–1911, Monograph 35 MBRAS (Kuala Lumpur, 2003)Google Scholar.

18 Blythe, W., The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya: A Historical Study (London, 1969), 41–2Google Scholar; Wong, Chinese Kapitans.

19 Wong, Chinese Kapitans, 83–4; L. Wu, ‘Chinese pioneers of Province Wellesley’, newspaper clipping supplied by Y.W. Kee, Penang, 1999; Tan, K.H., ‘Chinese sugar planting and social mobility in nineteenth-century Province Wellesley’, Malaysia in History, Journal of the Malaysian Historical Society, 24 (1981), 2438Google Scholar.

20 This term was used by R. Robinson in ‘Non-European foundations of European imperialism: sketch for a theory of collaboration’, in R.J. Owen and R.B. Sutcliffe (eds.), Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London, 1972), 117–42.

21 Yeoh, Contesting Space, 32, 48.

22 Annual Report, State of Perak, 1895 (Kuala Kangsar, 1895), 10.

23 ‘Municipal government in the Straits Settlements’, Colonial Office Journal, 4 (1911), 220; quoted by Yeoh, Contesting Space, 82.

24 Walters, D.K., The Municipal Ordinance of the Straits Settlements, Annotated (Singapore, 1937)Google Scholar.

25 Sanitary Board, Sitiawan Perak, Files, 1928–1940, SB Sitiawan; Kinta Sanitary Board North, Minutes 1906–1912, KSBN, Arkib Negara, Malaysia.

26 Handbook to British Malaya, 1926, 54, 165; see also 51–2 for a similar statement on municipalities in the Straits Settlements.

27 Walters, The Municipal Ordinance of the Straits Settlements annotated (Singapore, 1937).

28 Federated Malay States, Chronological Lists of State and Federal Laws, 1877–1932 with Rules (Kuala Lumpur, 1933). See for example the category, ‘Sanitary Boards, 1929’, 514–16.

29 Kinta Sanitary Board North, ‘Minutes, 21 March 1906’, ‘Minutes, 21 April 1906’, ‘Minutes, 19 May 1906’, SBKN 1906, Arkib Negara, Malaysia.

30 Hamlin, C., Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick: Britain, 1800–1854 (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar; Arnold, D., Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies (Manchester, 1988)Google Scholar; Headrick, D.R., The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940 (Oxford, 1988), ch. 5Google Scholar.

31 Foucault, Michel, Sécurité, territoire, population (Paris, 2004), 7, 321–2, 345–6Google Scholar.

32 Brenda Yeoh identifies both of these types of colonial governance in Singapore, but she argues that they succeeded one another in time. After 1910, ‘direct environmental control’ succeeded ‘surveillance’ because of the mass resistance. I find less evidence of mass resistance and more simultaneous use of both strategies. See Yeoh, Contesting Space, 124–5.

33 Ibid., 123.

34 Manderson, L., Sickness and the State: Health and Illness in Colonial Malaya, 1870–1940 (Cambridge, 1996), 108–9Google Scholar.

35 ‘Annual Report of the Straits Settlement for 1896’, in R.L. Jarman (ed.), Annual Reports of the Straits Settlements, 1855–1941, vol. IV (Archive Editions, 1998), 270–1, 279.

36 ‘Malayan Babylon’, Perak Pioneer, 17 July 1911, 4; ‘Capital! Capital!’, Perak Pioneer, 4 Aug. 1911, 4; ‘Local and general’, Perak Pioneer, 7 Mar. 1911, 4.

37 Sitiawan Sanitary Board, ‘Annual Report for 1931’, SB SN 22–1932, Arkib Negara, Malaysia. See also reports from the Taiping Sanitary Board, Perak Pioneer, 1896ff.

38 Kinta Sanitary Board North, ‘Minutes, 19 January 1907’, ‘Minutes, 21 December, 1907’, ‘The Complaints Re Board Notices’, 27 May 1910, Chin Tong and Co., ‘Complaint of filthy drains near their premises’, 12 Jan. 1932, SB Sitiawan 12/32; Hock Lee and Two Others, ‘Complaint against persons hawking fish about the town without license’, SB Sitiawan 228/31, Arkib Negara, Malaysia.

39 Kinta Sanitary Board North, ‘Minutes 21 July 1906’, ‘Minutes 22 October, 1906’, ‘Minutes 20 April 1907’, ‘Special meeting 4 November 1907’, ‘Minutes 16 April 1910’, Arkib Negara, Malaysia.

40 Levine, P., Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York, 2003)Google Scholar.

41 Warren, J.F., Ah Ku and Karayuki-San: Prostitution in Singapore 1870–1940 (Singapore, 2003)Google Scholar; Warren, J.F., Rickshaw Coolie: A People's History of Singapore (1880–1940) (Singapore, 1986)Google Scholar.

42 Caldecott, A., Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of the Federated Malay States for 1931 (Kuala Lumpur, 1932), 7, 64Google Scholar.

43 Annual Report on the SS Police Force and on the State of Crime for the year 1886, CO 273 vol. 148, 93; CO 232 03, 10 Oct. 1887, The National Archives, London; Treacher, W.H., resident general, Annual Report for 1901 of the Federated Malay States (Kuala Lumpur, 1901), 13Google Scholar.

44 Annual Departmental Reports of the Straits Settlements for 1931 (Singapore, 1933), 429, 444.

45 ‘Register of Cases, Magistrate's Criminal Court, Teluk Anson’, 22/9/30 to 30/7/31, P/KH 10/11, Arkib Negara, Kuala Lumpur.

46 C.H. Samson, ‘Annual police report for 1935’, Annual Reports Federated Malay States, 1935, in Wilfred Blythe papers, box 1, file 5, 65, PP MS 31, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Archive; Malayan Police Magazine, 23 (1957), 9–15.

47 Blythe, The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya, and M.L. Wynne, Triad and Tabut: A Survey of the Origin and Difffusion of Chinese and Mohamedan Secret Societies in the Malay Peninsula A.D. 1800–1935 (Singapore, 1941).

48 Ownby, D. and Heidhues, M.S. (eds.), ‘Secret Societies’ Reconsidered: Perspectives on the Social History of Modern South China and Southeast Asia (Armonk, NY, 1993)Google Scholar.

49 ‘Annual Reports of the Federated Malay States’, Blythe papers, box 1, file 3, passim; A.M. Goodman, ‘Note on secret societies’, 1922, Blythe papers, box 9, file 39, 51, PP MS 31, SOAS Archive.

50 E.W. Strutt Cavell, ‘Perak River Secret Society’, Blythe papers, box 9, file 39, 39; A.M. Goodman, Blythe papers, box 6, file 23, 102–3’, and ‘Bain report; testimony from Panjang Leman Bin Omar, 3 August 1932’, 117, box 6, folder 23, Blythe papers, PP MS 31 SOAS Archive; Musa, Kongsi Gelap Melayu.

51 Banishment Inquiry, Bain Report, 13 Aug. 1932, evidence by John Douglas Dalley, superintendent of police, Circle Kuala Kangsar, 4 Aug. 1932, Blythe papers, box 9, file F, 122–3, PP MS 31, SOAS Archive.

52 Lees, L.H., ‘Being British in Malaya, 1890–1940’, Journal of British Studies, 8 (Jan. 2009), 76101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 The question of Malay identity in the region has attracted much scholarly attention. For a recent, wide-ranging assessment, see Milner, A., The Malays (Chichester, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Triantafillou, P., ‘From blood to public office: constituting bureaucratic rulers in colonial Malaya’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 35, 31 (Feb, 2004), 2140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Frank Swettenham, British Malaya, vi.