Four Centuries of Malayan
pp. 99-100 · Read in the full issue
The Months New Reading
With Judy Tudor
Four Centuries of Malayan Adventure
No person living in Australia or the South-West Pacific i afford these days to ignore South-East Asia. Whether we e it or not this is the uncomfortable camp into which we ’ being forced.
help you understand the back round better, A History of a, by J. Kennedy, Senior Lec in History at the Malayan ers’ College, is timely. It is rief enough and presented well h not to be beyond the capacity >ple who aspire to be nothing elevated than middle-browed, aya, in the author’s sense, ling with the 15th century, in a lot more country than the al entity we call Malaya to- Sumatra came within its orbit; the Moluccas, Celebes and all had fingers in the pie at is times, having alliances with r another of the separate king that existed in the narrow Malay >ula. more than anything, Malaya’s y was shaped by its geographi >sition and the configuration of nd. Hanging down from the nass of Asia, it separates Indian i from China Sea and formed tural gateway through which s and adventurers from east zest must pass.
Malacca's Importance
m the beginning of the 15th y, the most important element shaping of Malaya was the om of Malacca, founded about by Parameswara, a political ;e from Sumatra. Within a e, Malacca, a former pirate and * settlement, on its river port :acing the Straits of Malacca, •ecome an international market, se silks, gold thread, porcelain ottery were traded for Burmese and rice, Arabian opium and nes, Indian cloth, tapestries and ;e. From Malaya itself, into ntrepot of Malacca came tin angle produce, gold, pepper and spices. :h the goods came merchants— Gujerat, Calcutta and Bengal; China, Formosa and the Philip-
By the time Parameswara was gathered to his fathers, his capital was already a cosmopolitan centre of many languages and many cul tures.
When the Europeans finally found the sea route to India, it was in evitable that they should eventually go further, follow the trail already blazed by the Gujeratis and others, and arrive at Malacca, “the city made for merchandise”.
The Portuguese came first in 1509 and were less than welcome. Se queira, who led the first expedition escaped less two ships and a score of men; two years later he was fol lowed by Albuquerque, who took the town by force and fortified it.
The Portuguese held Malacca to their profit until it was taken from them by the Dutch, allied to the Johore Malays, after a six months seige in 1641.
The British took over from the Dutch in 1795—by agreement, with
what might have been called a “Free Dutch” Government in London where Dutch William V had fled when France invaded Holland in 1794.
Although this was to have been a war-time measure, Malacca was not, in fact, returned to the Dutch until 1818 and they held it only until 1824 when under the Treaty of Lon-
One of more than 600 members of the modern public library in Apia, Western Samoa, con siders a point.
don England got Malacca and the Dutch got Bencoolen, on Sumatara, where the British had been established since 1685.
In the meantime, of course, the English East India Company had entered the picture, first with the settlement at Bencoolen and in 1786 through a treaty with the Sultan of Kedah for a settlement on the off shore island of Penang.
Francis Light, ex-Navy officer and sea captain who had promoted the idea, became Penang’s first Superin tendent—a title that was subsequently changed to Lieutenant Governor.
To Penang, in 1805, ten years after Light’s death in office, came a junior officer—an Assistant Secretary —by name of Thomas Raffles, a young man who was just beginning his career in the East after serving the East India Company’s London office from the age of 14.
Raffles' Period Two years later while on sick leave in Malacca, Raffles occupied his time writing a long report on the desirability of the retention of Malacca. A copy of this he sent to the Governor-General of India, Lord Minto, who was so impressed that when the British, in 1811, took Java from the Dutch to save it falling into the hands of Napoleonic French, Raffles was made Lieutenant- Governor, During the period he “made bold and liberal reforms but involved the Company in heavy expenditure” and when Lord Minto died in 1813, Raf fles was dismissed shortly before Java was returned to the Dutch.
Raffles went to London, for health reasons, and whatever the East India Company may have thought about his extravagances, he was feted by London society and knighted by the King (choosing to be called “Sir Stamford”, although born Thomas.) He was appointed to Bencoolen in 1818, but evidently regarded it something of a punishment station.
Within seven months he had set off to visit the Governor-General of In dia, ostensibly to discuss the future of Bencoolen, but in reality to pro pound a favourite scheme for a new British settlement nearer the southern end of the Malacca Straits, A small fleet was put at Raffles’ disposal and having been forestalled by the Dutch on the island of Bin tang (Rhio), landed on the south coast of Singapore Island at the end of January 1819. It was then in habited by a small Malay community and a few Chinese settlers but Raf
fles signed a preliminary arrangement with the ruler of Johore, who claimed it, on the day after his arrival.
There followed the usual recrimina tions, from the Company and from the Dutch, who cared as little for Raffles as he did for them. It was not until the Treaty of London in 1824 that the matter was resolved as far as the Dutch were concerned, but a great influx of people to Singapore within the first few years of Raffles’ first landing, soon showed the Com pany on which side its bread was buttered.
By 1820 revenues from the port were meeting cost of administration, and trade was soon outstripping that of Penang or Malacca.
Raffles himself worked out plans for administration, law and land tenure—a “mixture of idealism and realism”—and laid out Singapore’s first Botanical Gardens and estab lished a college known as the Singa pore Institution.
The 1824 treaty between Britain and Holland marked the end of an era, in that it set out clearly the two spheres of European influence, and as such they remained until the Pacific War of 1941.
It Wasn't Wasted In 1941, the prospect of a united or independent Malaya still seemed a long way off—it took a war, the post-war “Emergency”, and much re thinking to produce the right climate for that. Malaya had never been directly under British rule, with the exception of the Straits Settlements, of Singapore and Malacca; both the four Federated States and the five Unfederated States had various in dividual and group treaties with Britain and different administrations, in which many forms of Malay poli tical power were preserved. More over, the population was almost equally divided between Chinese and Malays, with a minority Indian group.
History is a continuing process and the 4i centuries that Mr. Kennedy has been able to present here seems to prove nothing more than that everything comes full circle. The European adventurers who pushed out from their homelands in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries and changed the face of the whole world, are now in full retreat. But there is nothing in this book to show that what they accomplished could, by any stretch of imagination, be called a wasted effort. (A HISTORY OP MALAYA. Published by Macmillan. 49/9.)