Out in the Midday Sun Read online

  These public works were evidence of the improved administration of the British, although how the system functioned effectively with such a small establishment is surprising. It appears that in 1879 there were only three European residents of Sungei Ujong, and only two – James and Emily Innes – lived in the Langat district of Selangor. At the evening service held in Klang, the European population who formed the congregation totalled seven men and two women. In Perak Europeans and Eurasians together numbered eighty-two, and the 1881 census showed only thirty-two Europeans in all Malacca. It was a measure of Perak’s advance towards civilization, in Emily’s eyes, that by 1880, in addition to the arrival of ‘that delightful sign’ of progress, the telegraph, there were several new European residents. She remembered the barrage of curiosity at her own arrival at Klang in 1876 – ‘Chinese, Indians and Malays – running together to look at me, as if I were a wild animal’ – while the Malay policeman explained ‘that I was the first English “em” [lady] ever seen in the country’.35 A bridge of mutual acceptance and trust had to be built; meanwhile, the possibility of a ‘native outbreak’ was ever present, haunting the dreams of isolated Europeans.

  Outside the Straits Settlements, the pioneer immigrant of the Victorian age had to make do with primitive transport. Much use was made of river craft; the roads were simple tracks with wooden bridges. It was one of Emily Innes’s complaints that there was no regular communication at all between Langat and the outside world, and in the event of an emergency there was no European within a day’s journey.36 Upcountry, change was slow to come and transport remained primitive even in the First World War; there were only one-horse carts or bicycles available to the District Officer of Jelebu in 1913–14.37 The river estuaries of the Straits’ seaboard were difficult to navigate, as countless steamer captains were to testify over the years.

  The eastern shoreline of the peninsula was a very beautiful coast where, according to Hugh Clifford, ‘The waves dance and glimmer, and shine in the sunlight, the long stretch of sand is yellow as a buttercup.’38 In contrast, large reaches of the west coast from Johore to Kedah were lined with mangrove swamp or mangi-mangi, ‘a belt miles in breadth, dense, impenetrable’. At low water the mango trees, ‘from forty to fifty feet high … of dark, dull green … are seen standing close packed along the shallow and muddy shores on cradles … of their own roots five or six feet high … [They form] huge breeding grounds for alligators and mosquitoes, and usually for malarial fevers.’39 Selangor typified the West Malayan pattern: a belt of low-lying swamp and dense jungle behind, with high jungle-covered hills in the far distance, a vast area of unexplored, beast-haunted country. Living in this ulu, Emily Innes learned that ‘The diseases most common to Englishmen in the tropics are [malarial] fever, cholera, and sunstroke, any one of which may carry off a man in a few hours.’ The last was alleged to have killed the Resident in Sungei Ujong, Captain Murray, and the first two were a particular scourge on rubber estates, where workers lived in close proximity.40 Public health was an unknown concept in these early days. Isabella Bird was horrified by the sight of Selangor village, for instance: ‘a most wretched place’. ‘Slime was everywhere, oozing, bubbling, smelling, putrid in the sun, all glimmering, shining and iridescent, breeding fever and horrible life.’41 In fact, for middle-class Europeans life here was as risky as it was for the poor in early Victorian England. But at least the British government allowed the Inneses a water-boat ‘to fetch us our drinking water, so that we never drank the water of the swamp … the primary cause of a terrible epidemic of cholera.’42

  Those living upcountry faced daily hazards which can only be hinted at here: venomous mosquitoes that ‘rose up at sunset in their thousands from the swamp … thirsting for our blood’, bites from fiendish ants, scorpions, all manner of snakes, spiders, centipedes and lizards. ‘Carpenter beetles buzzed into our soup, locusts whirred into our tumblers, hornets entangled themselves in our hair.’ The river banks were home to loathsome reptile life, the jungles to man-eating tigers who ‘came moaning around the house [at Langat] about once a week generally, but sometimes for several nights together … Other growls and roars we heard sometimes, probably those of black panthers and leopards.’43 Tinned food usually formed the staple diet, but there was also the monotony of turtle soup, stewed turtle, curried turtle, and turtle cutlet ad nauseam.44 Otherwise fresh food was limited to local river fish, skinny fowl, the occasional piece of fresh pork butchered for a Chinese holiday, and whatever fruit was grown locally. Bananas, limes, pomegranates, custard apples and mangosteens were sometimes available, with a few vegetables, such as sweet potatoes, caladium, tapioca, a kind of spinach, Indian corn, and brinjal or aubergine. It was particularly galling for those upcountry to be held to ransom by Singapore food suppliers. ‘Redress – from a jungle – is unattainable,’ Emily bitingly observed as she sent home to a co-operative store in England for ‘groceries, tinned meats, drinkables etc.’45 British import agencies could be remarkably efficient. On a visit to a tin mine near Larut, Isabella Bird was surprised to be presented by her Chinese host with Huntley & Palmer’s coconut biscuits. In view of their official duty to provide hospitality, senior government servants had access to special supplies. At the Residency at Kuala Kangsar, Hugh Low offered, his guests ‘fresh beef, fresh game, mutton and venison, preserved pâtés de foie gras and other luxuries from Crosse and Blackwell’s’, not to mention ‘iced champagne [which] made it difficult to believe we were in the heart of a Malay jungle’.46 And in 1890 the old doctor at Taiping treated Charles Bowen of the Straits’ Civil Service to ‘15 courses and 6 different kinds of wine’ at Sunday tiffin.47

  However, no matter how underdeveloped they might be, there were times when the Malay States engulfed Europeans with their magic. Isabella Bird penned eulogies about the beauties of the Malayan dawn and the ‘sumptuously-coloured sunsets’. She waxed eloquent over Perak’s lotus lakes and the glory of the Pass of Bukit Berapit as ‘the apes were hooting their morning hymns, and the forests rang with the joyous trills and songs of birds. “All Thy works praise Thee, Oh Lord!”’ Even the densest jungle had an awesome attraction:

  The loveliness was intoxicating. The trees were lofty and magnificent … the glorious tropical sunshine streamed in on gaudy blossoms … and on pure white orchids, and canary-coloured clusters borne by lianas; on sunbirds, iridescent and gorgeous in the sunlight; and on butterflies, some all golden, others amber and black, and amber and blue, some with velvety bands of violet and green … 48

  Her words of wonder were echoed thirty-five years later by a new recruit to the Kelantan service. Touched by the magnificence of the scenery, Alan Morkill sensed the presence of his Creator in the primordial grandeur of the rainforests.49 But young officers tracking down pirates along the west coast were faced with an implacable terrain which turned their task into a nightmare; and on survey work in untamed Perak the young Frank Swettenham and his four companions resorted to elephant transport to negotiate land which European pioneers would never cross again in his time in Malaya:

  It had been raining at intervals all day, and the track … was a succession of holes … full of water … After an hour’s progress it became darker than I have ever known it before, and darkness in dense jungle feels at least doubly dark … we were sitting back to back, on some wet grass, in an open pannier, with no covering of any kind, and to make us thoroughly miserable, it began to pour with rain – buckets of tropical rain – and never ceased till late the next morning … Floundering through mud and water, tumbling over fallen trees, and tearing through briars and thorns, all in pitch darkness … in constant fear of being carried off by tigers … We crossed three considerable rivers in flood. We saw nothing, but we … heard him [the elephant] ploughing through the water, and held on for our lives as he crawled up the opposite bank … I feel it is impossible and absurd to attempt to describe … the misery we endured.50

  As for Emily Innes, the prospect of a second posting to Langat in 1881 filled h
er with dismay: ‘So now we were once more back in our butcherless, bakerless, tailorless, cobblerless, doctorless, bookless, milkless, postless, and altogether comfortless jungle.’51

  Compared with those who struggled with conditions in the Malayan interior, the life was easy for the Europeans in the Straits Settlements. By 1880 Singapore, the most cosmopolitan of Eastern cities, was home to fifty-four language groups and dialects. ‘How I wish I could convey an idea, however faint, of this huge, mingled, coloured, busy, Oriental population,’ Isabella Bird wrote to her sister. ‘The native streets monopolise the picturesqueness of Singapore with their bizarre crowds.’ She was to enthuse similarly about Penang. ‘The sight of the Asiatics who have crowded into Georgetown [the capital] is a wonderful one, Chinese, Burmese, Javanese, Arabs, Malays, Sikhs, Madrassees, Klings, Chuliahs, and still they come in junks and steamers and strange Arabian craft.’ Isabella had listed the Chinese ahead of the other races because by 1879 they were ‘commercially the most important of the immigrant races as they have long been numerically and industrially’: there were nearly 20,000 Chinese in Malacca, 45,000 in Penang and 86,000 in Singapore – ‘enough to give Singapore the air of a Chinese town with a foreign settlement!52 Far from being a homogeneous community, the Chinese belonged to different groups reflecting their origins and occupations. Domestics and unskilled labourers were invariably Hailams or Hainanese. The Hokkiens were masterly traders, especially in rice and ‘Straits produce’ – tin ore, aromatic woods, wax, shell and nipa palm products – through which they also developed a hold on shipping. The Teochews specialized in cash crops, such as gambier and pepper. The Cantonese were both labourers and artisans – tailors, launderers, engineers, goldsmiths. And last but not least there were the Babas or Straits Chinese, descendants of earlier waves of migrants from China who had settled in Malacca, Riau or Penang before in many cases choosing to move to Singapore once the British had taken over in 1819. They were well integrated in the Malay world, having learned to speak the language and intermarried with the locals; often better educated than other Chinese groups, many Babas could also speak some English and were familiar with European culture.

  While the majority arriving from China were poor coolies or hawkers, a few triumphed over poverty and adversity to become extremely rich. The most famous local towkay or capitalist of the Victorian age was a Canton migrant who settled in Singapore in 1830 and diversified from shops and businesses into speculative ventures. Hoo Ah Kay was better known as ‘Mr Whampoa, C.M.G., a Chinaman of great wealth and enlightened public spirit who is one of the foremost men in the colony’.53 He rose to higher political office than any other Chinese resident of Singapore, and, imitating the most successful Europeans, built himself a magnificent mansion and gardens in Serangoon Road. Long before his death in 1880 he was regarded ‘almost as much an Englishman as he is a Chinaman’.54 Some of the minorities also did well. In Penang one of the oldest communities were the Indians, mostly Tamils and Chettiahs, the latter being moneylenders whose activities expanded into banking. There were some 15,000 Indians living on the island in 1879, though they were reinforced in the next twenty years by the arrival of Jaffna Tamils from Ceylon. An Arab merchant and banker, Noureddin, was ‘the millionaire of Pinang and is said to own landed property here to the extent of £400,000’, Isabella Bird reported.55 The Armenians were another small but significant commercial group, headed by the Sarkie brothers, who owned the Crag Hotel on Penang Hill and built the Eastern and Oriental Hotel in Penang’s Georgetown and the Raffles Hotel in Singapore in the 1880s.

  The division of economic functions between the various racial groups is said to explain the comparative peace and harmony that prevailed in the Straits Settlements. But, however numerous and visible the Asian peoples, it was the English who held the reins of power. Even a junior officer in the Straits’ Civil Service quickly became aware of the authority he exercised:

  It seems a little new to me that whenever one goes in or out, up the streets or anywhere, the sentries or police always present arms, besides the enormous power one has of ordering police or Government servants to do anything one wants and, as long as on duty, travelling on Government steamers or Government horses.56

  How much greater, therefore, was the deference enjoyed by the Governor. He was the fount of colonial power, ruling in the Straits Settlements with the help of an Executive and a Legislative Council. In the ‘Native States’, the Residents personified British authority with the Governor’s approval. The function of the Resident, according to the terms of the Pangkor Engagement which Governor Andrew Clarke had presided over in 1874, was to offer British protection and to advise the Malay rulers on political matters, justice and finance – indeed, on everything except the sensitive issues of religion and custom. The system, which had first been introduced in Perak, Selangor and Sungei Ujong, was extended to include the other small states lying between Johore and Selangor, which joined together in stages to become the Negri Sembilan (the ‘Nine States’) in 1895. Meanwhile, through the good offices of Hugh Clifford, Pahang, the largest but poorest of the States, came under the British sphere of influence in 1888. Although the ‘taming of Pahang’ was interrupted by local resistance – referred to as the Pahang War – by 1895 British administration was successfully established on the east coast of the peninsula.

  The details of this political process do not concern us here; but the outcome in 1896 marked the penultimate stage of the unification of ‘British Malaya’ when the four ‘Protected’ states of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang were joined together as the Federated Malay States (FMS). While each state retained its own Sultan as constitutional head, and had its own Resident and Advisor, the new federation was effectively centralized under a Resident-General in Kuala Lumpur and the overall authority of the Governor of the Straits Settlements, wearing a second hat as the High Commissioner of the PMS. ‘In many respects, the Straits Settlements and the federated states were a unified British colony, although the sovereignty of the states remained a legal fact.’57 To oil the wheels of the new structure and reconcile the Malay chiefs to their loss of real power and dignity, they were paid monthly political allowances by the colonial government. The establishment of State Councils also guaranteed a system of consultation between the chiefs and British officials. In the longer term education was targeted to ensure the future participation of the Malay aristocracy in the administrative branch of the Civil Service.

  The joint celebration of symbolic events also played a part in the coming together of the two worlds, East and West. In response to the new constitutional arrangements a lavish official conference or Durbar of the Malay rulers was convened in 1897 at Kuala Kangsar, capital of Perak. This gathering of Malaya’s grandees came just a month after Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, which has been a tremendous affair all through the Straits Settlements; the Chinese especially have shown their loyalty’, gloated a colonial civil servant, ‘in spending heaps of money on processions, arches, fireworks etc’.58 As a Singapore resident pointed out, ‘One had got so used to the fact that Queen Victoria ruled. No one out here could remember any other ruler …’ This explains the experience of a bemused Emily Innes. ‘Malay men sometimes called on me. Their first question usually was, “How is Queen Victoria? Are you any relation of hers? And have you heard from her lately?”’59 Emily was reporting this in the aftermath of the Queen’s elevation as Empress of India, which raised her status in many peoples’ eyes to a position ‘fixed and unalterable, a necessity without which the Empire could not live’.60 In 1887 her Golden Jubilee had been celebrated by the people of the Protected States and the Straits Settlements in what was considered an appropriate way:

  On Monday the festivities began and did begin with a vengeance; the first day they consumed nearly drs. 300 worth of champagne alone not to mention whiskies and sodas and 2,000 or 3,000 pounds weight of ice. The sports were very good …

  On the second day we had a grand breakfast at which old D[enison, the
District Officer] made the finest and most loyal speech I have ever heard in my life, in the afternoon we had aquatic sports and a dinner in the evening. And the next two days were spent in finishing up the sports.61

  Now, however, with the convergence of two major royal events in 1897, the celebration of the Queen’s sixty years as sovereign and the first Durbar following the inauguration of the Federated Malay States alongside the Crown Colony of the Straits Settlements, the achievements of the Victorian age seemed to have reached a unifying climax.62

  While the hybrid colony developed in the long years of the Pax Britannica, the British grew in confidence, feeling secure in their position in the Far East, despite the colonial aspirations of France and Germany. The political classes were satisfied that British intervention in Malaya was necessary and constructive, though a few administrators had the foresight and empathy to envisage a degree of partnership. It was said of Hugh Low, Resident in Perak, that ‘He obviously attempts to train and educate these men [the rajas] in the principles and practice of good government, so that they shall be able to rule firmly and justly.’63 He was acting in the spirit of Queen Victoria’s portentous instruction to Disraeli in 1875 to bring on the people of these states to the stage where they could govern themselves. But the popular view was voiced by Frederick Weld (Governor in 1880–7) when he famously declared, ‘I doubt if Asiatics will ever learn to govern themselves; it is contrary to the genius of their race, of their history, of their religious system, that they should. Their desire is a mild, just and firm despotism: that we can give them.’64 Indeed, the British believed that ‘The Malays highly appreciate the manner in which law is administered, under English rule, and the security they enjoy in their persons and property … It is possible that they prefer being equitably taxed by us … to being plundered by native princes. Or, as another administrator put it, in terms that reflected the spirit of that age, ‘It is just the Irish tenantry all over again but the difference is that they would sooner come to us with their grievances than their own Rajas … One generally finds about twenty Malays waiting round the house in the morning who have all different yarns.’66