Out in the Midday Sun Read online

  At the royal palace there was a large bronze gong. Whenever His Highness desired his followers to be assembled for any service such as to accompany him on a hunting expedition, they beat this big gong repeatedly, and soon a crowd of followers would assemble at the royal palace ready to carry out any royal command. This gong when beaten made a loud and deep booming sound … It could be heard for miles around.10

  The township housing the ruler’s home was primitive by standards of European princes: not until the approach of the twentieth century did Sultans hanker for grand palaces. In the 1870s, Abdul Samat, Sultan of Selangor, lived surrounded by pariah dogs in a modest cluster of riverside buildings at Langat, a town disparaged by a colonial official as ‘nothing but a mud-swamp, with one mud-path … between two padi-fields’; while Isabella Bird’s initial and lasting impression of Klang, the first town of the state, was of ‘a most misthriven, decayed, dejected, miserable looking place’.11 Though Selangor was rich in tin ore and gutta-percha, the mechanisms did not exist for the Sultan to exploit his state’s potential. For Malays, status depended on other considerations. Abdul Samat was the owner of three houses ‘in the purest style of Malay architecture … The wood of which they are built is a rich brown red. The roofs are very high and steep, but somewhat curved. The architecture is simple, appropriate and beautiful.’ Luxury was a relative quality in the tropics. Half-shaded windows allowing a constant, gentle breeze and relief from the glare of day were perceived as luxurious refinements. But the richness and harmony of the Dato Bandar’s home in Sungei Ujong were also evident in the ebony chairs, silk drapes and Oudh rugs subtly woven in mixtures of rich but toned-down colours. The beautiful house of the exiled Mentri (ruler) of Larut was ‘built of wood painted green and white, with bold floral designs … shady inner rooms with their carved doorways and portières of red silk, the pillows and cushions of gold embroidery laid over the exquisitely fine matting on the floors’. Wealth was measured, in addition, by the precious gems and jewelled artefacts worn about the person. Abdul Samat’s status was secured by ‘a “godown” [warehouse] containing great treasures … hoards of diamonds and rubies, and priceless damascened krises [daggers] with scabbards of pure gold wrought into marvellous devices and incrusted with precious stones’.12

  Malay notions of power and justice differed fundamentally from European concepts. ‘In the eyes of Malay Justice – which is a very weird thing indeed’, wrote Hugh Clifford – ‘if you cannot punish the right man, it is better to come down heavily on the wrong one, than to allow everybody to get off scot free.’13 To the Englishman in government service, the universal practice of offering bribes smacked of the deliberate perversion of justice, and he also found it difficult to accept the oppressive system of debt-slavery. When British administration was established, slavery was abolished, but not before the barbaric treatment meted out to recaptured slaves had impressed on Europeans that ‘the Malay nature is “treacherous, blood-thirsty and cruel”’. On the other hand, the British use of hanging to dispose of convicted pirates was deplored by the Malays. ‘They say “it is the death of a dog”, and that Allah disapproves of human beings being killed in that manner.’14 The Sultan’s power, too, was a matter of cultural patriarchy rather than force majeure. Abdul Samat was respected as the father of his people and a potentate of ancient lineage; but, as a former pirate leader who had turned to the British for help in an inter-tribal war, his power to control was effectively limited after 1874 by dependency on the British Resident’s advice on all political and financial matters.

  After James Innes was appointed in 1876 to be collector and magistrate at Abdul Samat’s seat of Langat, Emily Innes could not help observing her husband’s relationship with the Sultan and commenting with laconic humour on the conflicting values of their two societies. ‘It was Mr Innes’s duty to see that this old man did not get into mischief, and to warn him that Queen Victoria did not approve of piracy, slavery, pawnbroking, and other little failings to which he was addicted.’ But age had made the Sultan forgetful: he ‘sometimes got into trouble through his benevolent wish of pleasing everybody. He have grants and monopolies of all sorts of things to all sorts of people, and then forgot that he had done so, and gave them over again to others.’ In the confined surroundings of Langat, where the Inneses lived for several years,

  Now and then we came on the old Sultan, seated astride on a carpenter’s bench, or else squatting on the ground, amid a crowd of dirty followers, watching a cockfight … He was usually dressed in nothing but a very scanty little cotton kilt, or a pair of still scantier bathing-drawers, and was at first sight hardly distinguishable from an old Malay peasant; but on seeing us he would skip nimbly off the carpenter’s bench … and come to meet us. He would then make a few condescending remarks, and finally wave us off with his hand in a most dignified manner … Although his appearance was by no means majestic and … he might seem to be a little wanting in oriental calm and dignity … I was present once on the homage-day, when all his subjects, rajas included, came crawling to kiss his hand. None of them dared approach him without grovelling on the ground … and anyone having to cross the room in his presence, crawled sideways on all-fours like a crab … As time went on we grew to have not only a feeling of warm friendship, but even of respect for him. He was invariably kind to us, and I believe to everybody.15

  However, the subordinate class was subject to feudal services and the discretion of the local headman, and faced ‘injustices and unfairness due to discriminations against which the unfortunate peasants seldom could get redress’.16 Despite this, a young education officer, a newcomer in 1887, found the ordinary Malay to be dignified, honest and good humoured, and he strongly resisted simplistic European judgements:

  The storybooks of my childhood always described the Malay as treacherous. This, as I understand the word, I believe he never was. That he would strike at any enemy with the greatest possible secrecy I can well believe; but that it was a characteristic of him to pretend friendship while nursing enmity was not at all in keeping with my experience. Modern critics often describe him as lazy; but this word, too, is ill-chosen. As I knew him the Malay would work well enough in independence about his own affairs … but was, however, almost untouched by greed for gold. His motto appeared to be ‘Enough is as good as a feast’ and he was averse to selling his independence for a wage.17

  Frank Swettenham (who belonged to an age which had no problem with ethnic stereotypes) drew a pen portrait of the typical male rayat:

  short, thick-set, well-built man, with straight black hair, a dark brown complexion, thick nose and lips, and bright intelligent eyes. His disposition is generally kindly, his manners are polite and easy. Never cringing, he is reserved with strangers … He is courageous and trustworthy in the discharge of an undertaking … He is a good talker, speaks in parables, quotes proverbs and wise saws, has a strong sense of humour, and is very fond of a good joke … He is a Muhammadan and a fatalist, but he is also very suspicious. He never drinks intoxicants … is by nature a sportsman … is a skillful fisherman, and thoroughly at home in a boat. Above all things he is conservative to a degree, is proud and fond of his country and his people, venerates his ancient customs and traditions, fears his Rajas, and has a proper respect for constituted authority.’18

  Custom – adat – was ‘the fetish of the Malay, hence their proverb, “Let our children die rather than our customs.”’19Adat governed succession and inheritance, ancient traditions and modes of behaviour; it was bound up inevitably with the Islamic religion. Custom was also the main barrier to the Europeanization of the Malay people, which to Hugh Clifford’s regret was beginning by the 1880s to change the amiable and gentle-mannered Malay, ‘with his love of the dolce far niente’, into a ‘sadly dull, limp, and civilised’ being.20 ‘Malays are never vulgar,’ Emily Innes observed. ‘Vulgarity and snobbishness seem to be growths peculiar to civilization.’ She saw how civilization had introduced Tunku Panglima Raja to the stimulating effect of Ba
ss’s pale ale; and it was teaching the Viceroy of Selangor ‘to forsake the ways of his ancestors, to drink “berendi” [brandy] and to wear a mouthful of white teeth “like a dog”, instead of filing and blackening them according to the good old Malay custom’.21

  In her outstation, Emily was constantly brought face to face with divergent Malay and European conventions. ‘The manners of the English seem abrupt, unpolished, and disagreeably frank to a Malay, who is always slow and dignified’, she acknowledged, ‘and in whose code of politeness it is a first law that people should rather tell each other pleasant falsehoods than unpleasant truths.’ On the other hand, like many Europeans, she was baffled by aspects of Malay culture: by the oriental habit of laughing when conveying bad news; by ‘the Malays’ incorrigible unpunctuality’; by the inertia of he who ‘would like to lie under a banana tree all his life and let the fruit drop into his mouth’; by the fact that ‘It is thought good manners in Malay circles to tell people that they are rich and fat, and to depreciate oneself by alleging that one is poor and thin’; by it being ‘no rudeness if a Malay raja calls on a lady with bare legs, feet, arms and shoulders; but … it is an insult to her if a Malay takes off his cap in her presence’. Hygiene was another unpredictable subject. In a conversation with Tunku Panglima Raja over the respective merits of eating with fingers or forks, Emily confessed, ‘he had rather the best of the argument’: his fingers had never been in anyone’s else’s mouth and could never be mislaid or stolen!’ But, when a certain raja visited her for tea and ‘proceeded to cut his bread-and-butter and his toe-nails alternately with his knife’, she ended ‘by reflecting philosophically that the Malay code of manners is different from ours’.22

  On her various visits in 1879, Isabella Bird was impressed by the kind hospitality of the kampong dwellers. She noted they were passionately fond of pets and of taming birds and animals. She was interested, too, in their mimetic skills and in their linguistic sophistication, their recourse to proverbs and their love of puns. She was aware that ‘In these kampongs the people have music, singing, story-telling, games and religious ceremonies, perhaps the most important of all …’ Even in the outback – the ulu – she caught a glimpse of vigorous customs at work. ‘Buffaloes are sacrificed on religious occasions, and at the births, circumcisions, marriages, and shaving of the heads of the children of the wealthy people.’ Such practices indicated that ‘They have an elaborate civilisation, etiquette, and laws of their own.’23 Here was evidence of

  a rich and varied culture. The peasant or labourer, even though he lives in relative poverty and may have little education, is and feels himself to be a cultured man in the literal sense. He knows the oral traditions and perhaps the written literature of his own community. Its family and religious ceremonies, its festivals, traditional theatre and music enrich the content of his life. The distinctiveness of each community’s culture is … a link with the past and a present possession to be treasured and enjoyed.24

  All the same, it was easy to idealize the lifestyle of the Malay people. In a semi-subsistence economy of agriculture, fishing and animal husbandry, some areas were more advanced than others. In the tamed landscape of Malacca or Selangor, the well-spaced kampong houses were raised above the ground on stilts for protection from wild animals and flooding. Isabella Bird noted that

  Each dwelling is of planed wood or plaited palm leaves, the roof is high and steep, the eaves are deep, and the whole rests on a gridiron platform supported on posts, from five to ten feet high, and approached by a ladder in the poorer houses and a flight of steps in the richer. In the ordinary houses mats are laid here and there over the gridiron, besides the sleeping-mats; and this plan of an open floor … has various advantages. As, for instance, it ensures ventilation, and all the debris can be thrown through it, to be consumed by the fire which is lighted every evening beneath the house to smoke away the mosquitos … Scarcely any kampong is so small as not to have a mosque.25

  It was customary practice for the Malays to feed themselves by growing rice about their homes. Houses were grouped ‘under the shade of coco-palms, jak, durian, breadfruit, mango, nutmeg and other fruit trees. Plantations of bananas are never far off … food is above them and around them.’26 As fishermen, the Malays generally sited the kampongs near rivers, to benefit from the natural life of what Hugh Clifford called ‘the most lavish water-system in the world’.27 In addition, Malaya’s coastal waters brimmed with shark, swordfish, tenggiri, red fish, smelt and shellfish. It was perhaps this natural bounty which gave foreigners the impression that the Malay was easygoing to the point of laziness. But this is a partial picture. The truth in some regions was darker. In East Pahang and the Kemaman district of Trengganu, well into the twentieth century, the fishing people were crammed together in shacks – in contrast to the wide spacing of houses on the west coast – and were bitterly poor. There was a serious lack of self-sufficiency. In Trengganu few of the coastal and river fishermen grew any crops; instead they obtained rice and provisions from Chinese dealers in dried and salted fish. In East Pahang the people relied on rice imported from Kelantan and Patani. Perak drew on additional supplies from Burma.

  As the nineteenth century progressed, the natural predominance of the Malays was counterbalanced by ever increasing numbers of economic immigrants from China.28 Chinese fishermen already had a footing on the coast, but newcomers were attracted by prospects of tin mining in the foothills of the interior. By 1876 the state of Selangor was home to 15,000 Chinese but only 2,000–3,000 Malays; the small state of Sungei Ujong housed 10,000 Chinese to 2,000 Malays. In Perak lawlessness was endemic. During civil strife in 1871–4 some 3,000 men on both sides were massacred in one day’s fighting in Larut in 1872; the main street of attap buildings was destroyed, to be rebuilt in 1874. The Chinese brought their own cultural baggage with them, which differed radically from the Malays’. ‘Lean, smooth-shaven, keen, industrious, self-reliant, sober, mercenary, reliable, mysterious, opium-smoking, gambling, hugging clan ties’, Chinese workers voluntarily endured a harsh camp life, living in communal ‘kongsi’ houses around the mines, where they toiled, quarrelled and conspired together in a struggle for the survival of the fittest.29 The downside to this industrious, thrifty people was their involvement in secret societies and their addiction to gambling, and to the opium-smoking which wasted many to comatose skeletons. The task of calming the warring groups of Malays and Chinese called for tact, patience and restraint on all sides. It was achieved by the use of judicious force by the British authorities and by the introduction in 1877 of a special government agency, the Chinese Protectorate, to deal with problems in co-operation with the headmen in the Chinese communities, who held the title of Kapitan China.

  The impact of the Chinese upon Malaya was decisive. It was through them that urban life developed in much of the peninsula. Alongside their mining villages they set up shops and workshops, and from these beginnings grew the main towns of the ‘protected’ states. By 1880, Taiping, formerly the Malay village of Larut, had become ‘a thriving, increasing place, of over six thousand inhabitants, solely Chinese, with the exception of a small Kling population [from southern India]’ and ‘scarcely any Malays’. It had at that time

  a street about a mile long, with large bazaars and shops making a fine appearance, being much decorated in the Chinese style; halls of meeting for the different tribes, gambling houses, workshops, the Treasury, a substantial dark wood building, large detached barracks for the Sikh police, a powder magazine, a parade ground, a Government storehouse, a large, new jail, neat bungalows for the minor English officials, and on the top of a steep, isolated terraced hill, the British Residency.30

  But the chaos almost overwhelmed Isabella Bird: ‘trains of carts with cinnamon-coloured, humped bullocks … gharries with fiery Sumatra ponies dashing about, crowds of Chinese coolies, busy and half-naked … and all the epitomised stir of a world which toils, and strives, and thirsts for gain’.31 To Emily Innes, on the other hand, a two-day br
eak there made a welcome change and she ‘looked back upon it as one of the few bright gleams in my dreary jungle life … We had some delightful walks and drives in the neighbourhood.’32 However, Taiping was soon to be overtaken by the rising town of Ipoh. Once a Chinese village, lying in a vast semicircle of limestone cliffs, Ipoh was the natural focus of the rich tin deposits of the Kinta valley and during the 1890s became the leading colonial town of Perak. Meanwhile, Kuala Lumpur, which overtook Klang as the capital of Selangor in 1880, was another town created by the enterprise of the Chinese. Beginning as a crude mining village at the muddy confluence of the Klang and Gombak rivers, its development from 1869 was in the hands of Ah Loi, the most prominent man in Selangor and a reformed character since the days when he allegedly purchased the heads of his enemies in the market place.

  He has made long roads for the purpose of connecting the most important of the mines with the town … he has so successfully secured peace and order in his town and district … He employs on his estate – in mines, brick-fields and plantations – over four thousand men. He has the largest tapioca estate in the country and the best machinery. He has introduced the manufacture of bricks, has provided the sick with an asylum, has been loyal to British interests … and has dispensed justice to the complete satisfaction of his countrymen.33

  In 1873 Kuala Lumpur was still a Chinese town with two streets and numerous thatched houses, but in 1883 a visitor observed that a colonial town was emerging: ‘The main road has been improved; neat, inexpensive police stations and good bridges have replaced decayed old ones, whilst several new buildings are in progress.’34