Private Ordering and the Chinese in Nineteenth Century Straits Settlements

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-53
Author(s):  
Cheng Han TAN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Malay Peninsula ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Private Ordering ◽  
British Policy ◽  
English Law ◽  
Colonial Government

AbstractThe Straits Settlements comprised a group of British territories located in the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It initially comprised Penang, Singapore, and Malacca, and was formed in 1826. Unlike Malacca which was a thriving city with a substantial Chinese community, Penang and Singapore were relatively uninhabited when the British arrived, but Chinese immigration to both territories swiftly took place and on a large scale. For much of the nineteenth century, British policy towards the Chinese community in the Straits was one of minimal governance. They were largely left to order their affairs privately and this suited the Chinese, who tended to be aloof from the machinery of government and were also unfamiliar with English law. While there were many positive aspects of such private ordering, some negative features included the manner in which secret societies evolved and the treatment of coolies. It was only when the colonial government introduced strong measures that these negative aspects were ameliorated.

A Study on Changing of Minangkabau Houses from Sumatra to Malay Peninsula

2012 ◽  
Vol 461 ◽  
pp. 565-570
Author(s):  
Teow Ngak Ng ◽  
Hsien Te Lin
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
The State ◽  
Single Pile ◽  
Malay Peninsula ◽  
Field Investigations

Minangkabau house is one of the most particular houses in Southeast Asia. The uplifted rooftop as the shape of buffalo horns, and large-scale single pile house are its main features. From the 17th to 18th century, Minangkabau people in Indonesia migrated massively from the Pagarruyung area of Sumatra to the state of Sembilan on Malay Peninsula. They brought with them the system of a matrilineal society (Adat pepatih), but there was not a complete transplantation of their particular house. This research conducts field investigations on Minangkabau houses in there two areas and analyzes the reasons of the change and major influential factors. The results show how Minangkabau houses transfer from large single pile house into extended small grouped pile houses, which has become another kind of vernacular houses in Malay Peninsula.

scholarly journals Swettenham’s Work Malay Sketches and the Myth of Lazy Malays Issues: Re-Evaluation in Welcoming Industrial Revolution 4.0

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noordin Mohd Noor
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Malay Peninsula ◽  
Kuala Lumpur ◽  
Personal View ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
British Policy ◽  
British Colonial

The industrial revolution that took place in Europe in the early stages caused colonialism in Southeast Asia countries, particularly Britain in Malaya (Tanah Melayu). The English colonization opened up space in literature as some of the colonial officials wrote their autobiographical works or travelogues bearing their experiences witnessed the societies and cultures of the colonies. At the same time there were some English officials from the British East India sentenced to work in Malaya who took the opportunity to record their travel experiences living here with Malay peoples. Swettenham is one of them. But what is not quite good to know is that they recorded negative things about Malays. The statements are not exactly accurate. This is because it is merely a personal view from the colonial perspectives. This paper intends to address the issue of Laziness Malay myth by citing Swettenham’s statements in his travelogue entitled Malay Sketches. Frank Swettenham, (born March 28, 1850,Belper, Derbyshire, Eng.—died June 11, 1946, London), British colonial official in Malaya who was highly influential in shaping British policy and the structure of British administration in the Malay Peninsula. He learned the Malay language and played a major role as British-Malay intermediary in the events surrounding British intervention in the peninsular Malay states in the 1870s. He successfully promoted the development of coffee and tobacco estates in the Malay state and helped boost tin earnings by constructing a railway from Kuala Lumpur. His services help to energize the industrial revolution in England. This conference is a literary privilege that gives scholars the opportunity to give a feed back to this Englishman’s allegations to the Malays.

scholarly journals A Drug on the Market: Opium and the Chinese in Southeast Asia, 1750–1880

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Trocki
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
The Other ◽  
Malay Peninsula ◽  
Opium Trade ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Chinese Migration ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article traces the early stages of Chinese migration to Southeast Asia and examines the relationship between the Chinese pioneers in the region and the opium trade of the British. The article stresses the importance of the “Water Frontier” settlements in the Gulf of Siam and the Malay Peninsula. It suggests that opium changed the relationship between Chinese merchant-capitalists and Chinese laborers in the region and acted as the basis for a longterm partnership between the merchants and the colonial powers with wealthy Chinese merchants acting as opium revenue farmers. In particular, it argues that the peranakan Chinese or locally-born Chinese, particularly those in Singapore and the other Straits Settlements, emerged as the key figures in the opium farming syndicates that grew up in Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-172
Author(s):  
Nurfadzilah Yahaya
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Advisory Board ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Sepoy Mutiny ◽  
Legal Arbitrage

This chapter recounts how the members of the Arab diaspora attempted legal arbitrage under colonial rule. It analyses the members' expansion and modification of Islamic law, while at other times they policed the boundaries of Islamic law even as mere translators. The chapter tells the story of the surprising involvement of the outsider — the Arab diaspora — in aiding colonialists to accumulate legislative power. The pace of change from the mid-nineteenth century onward was brisk, and the Arab diaspora capitalized on it while attempting to navigate uncertainty and risk. This chapter also investigates how Arab diaspora in Southeast Asia were able to influence the shape of law to a great extent. It takes a look on how concessions to Arabs in the Straits Settlements, in the form of the Mohamedan Marriage Ordinance, and their appointments as members of the Mohamedan Advisory Board after the Sepoy Mutiny subsequently tied them more closely to the British colonial government, along with the rest of the Muslim population in the colony.

Authority and Rebellion in Victorian Autobiography

1978 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Krenis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Generational Conflict ◽  
Childhood Experience ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Family ◽  
Father And Son

It has been a literary (if not strictly historical) commonplace that the later nineteenth century was a time of pervasive rebellion of sons against fathers. For example, Butler's The Way of All Flesh and Gosse's Father and Son are texts often cited as indicative of a broader social phenomenon. “As Irish life runs to secret societies,” observed V. S. Pritchett, “so English life seems to run naturally to parricide movements. We are a nation of father haters.” Yet father-hating did not become conspicuous until the Victorian period, when, in contrast to the reputed submissiveness of the eighteenth-century son, a “growing self-consciousness by the son of his role as liberator” surfaced in fictional and biographical writing. Whether such a rebellion actually took place on any large scale is impossible to determine. Few men record such things, and when they do their real feelings tend to remain concealed or not fully understood. The premise of this study, based on selected examples of autobiography, is that the peculiar desperation of many Victorians to buttress eroding forms of traditional patriarchal authority had its first and perhaps most crucial effects within the family itself, intensifying ordinary generational conflict and its usual quota of rebellion, guilt, and neurosis. Amidst the conventional catalogues of accomplishment, there is a striking pattern of childhood experience within the family that incubated some version of future rebellion and profoundly affected the writers' emotional lives.Open warfare between generations is uncommon; most often rebellion instead employs a disguised language and context for its articulation.

Japan and the Development of Taiwan's Fishing Industry

2009 ◽  
pp. 5-22
Author(s):  
Henry T. Chen
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Marine Resources ◽  
Fishing Industry ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Trawl Fishing ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Port Of Kaohsiung

This chapter describes and analyses Japan’s influence on the Taiwanese fishing industry. It attempts to determine why the colonial government opted to turn Taiwan into a principal base of the fishing industry, and the geographic advantages possessed by Taiwan and the port of Kaohsiung in relation to the fishing grounds of Southeast Asia. It discusses the business interests, technical contributions, and fishing methods introduced to Taiwan by Japan, including the development of trawl-fishing as opposed to rafts and small boats. It details the construction of the Takao fishing port and the development of rail and sea routes that enabled fishing exports to reach Japan. In summary, Japan’s expansionist policies, modernised fisheries, and the large-scale exploitation of marine resources in Southeast Asia laid the foundation for an advantageous Taiwanese fishing industry in postwar Asia.

Correspondence between Adolphe Brongniart and Robert Schomburgk: trading natural history collections for honours

2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-336
Author(s):  
PIOTR DASZKIEWICZ ◽  
MICHEL JEGU
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Herbarium Specimens ◽  
British Guiana ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
History Of ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
German Naturalist

ABSTRACT: This paper discusses some correspondence between Robert Schomburgk (1804–1865) and Adolphe Brongniart (1801–1876). Four letters survive, containing information about the history of Schomburgk's collection of fishes and plants from British Guiana, and his herbarium specimens from Dominican Republic and southeast Asia. A study of these letters has enabled us to confirm that Schomburgk supplied the collection of fishes from Guiana now in the Laboratoire d'Ichtyologie, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The letters of the German naturalist are an interesting source of information concerning the practice of sale and exchange of natural history collections in the nineteenth century in return for honours.

Ephemera

2020 ◽  
pp. 168-188
Author(s):  
Catherine Massip
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Short Life ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Major Medium

Among the documents which give access to musical life and its various events, ephemera occupy a special field. The word (ephemeron singular; ephemera plural) covers several kinds of written or printed documents largely scattered but being produced for a short life and not subject to be handled and stored in a permanent way. “Those papers of the day” as defined in eighteenth century were produced on a large scale in the nineteenth century when newspapers became the major medium for publicity. The main purpose of these documents was primarily information and publicity. This chapter argues how ephemera may be read not as mere sidelines to culture but as central documents pertaining to the wide and complex intellectual issues in music.

The Cultivation System (1830–1870) and its private entrepreneurs on colonial Java

2007 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulbe Bosma
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Cane Sugar ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultivation System ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
Plantation Economy ◽  
Private Entrepreneurs ◽  
Colonial Government

AbstractEver since the interregnum from 1811 to 1816 of Lieutenant Governor General Stamford Raffles, British trading interests had been firmly established in colonial Indonesia. The implementation of the Cultivation System in 1830 on Java by the Dutch colonial government was an attempt to bring this potentially rich colony under Dutch economic control, but it is usually considered a departure from the principles of economic liberalism and a phase during which private entrepreneurs were barred from the emerging plantation economy. However, on the basis of census data and immigration records, and with reference to recent literature on the development of the nineteenth-century sugar industry, this article argues that British trading houses present on Java in the early nineteenth century continued to play an important role in the development of the production there of tropical goods, and that the emerging plantation economy attracted a modest influx of technicians and employees from various European nations. This article proposes to consider the Cultivation System and private enterprise not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary in making the cane sugar industry of Java the second largest in the world after that of Cuba.

scholarly journals Overburdening: Two books on the British politics towards Southeast Asia from 1943 to 1965

2012 ◽  
Vol 168 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-117
Author(s):  
Jaap Anten
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
British Politics ◽  
British Policy ◽  
The Vietnam War

Review of: Peter Lowe, Contending with nationalism and communism; British policy towards Southeast Asia, 1945-65. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, xii + 312 pp. [Global conflict and security since 1945.] ISBN 9780230524873. Price: GBP 60.00 (hardback). T.O. Smith, Britain and the origin of the Vietnam War; UK policy in Indo-China, 1943-50. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, xiii + 229 pp. [Global contlict and security since 1945.] ISBN 9780230507050. Price: GBP 60.00 (hardback)

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document