A Selection of Papers from the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship

March 2014 l Issue 1

A Selection of Papers from the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship

March 2014 l Issue 1

Published by: National Library Board, SingaporeDesigned by: Graphikate Pte Ltd

All rights reserved. ©National Library Board, Singapore, 2014.

The views of the writers and contributors contained herein do not reflect the views of the Publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the Publisher and copyright owner(s).

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ISSN 2010-3573

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Contents

Educating Malayan Gentlemen: Establishing an Anglicised Elite in Colonial Malaya 7 Adeline Koh

Storm in Shuang Lin Monastery: Overseas Chinese Contribution in the 2nd Sino-Japanese War 16 Chan Chow Wah

Rising Dragon, Crouching Tigers: Foreign Policy Responses of Malaysia & Singapore to a Re-emerging China, 1990–2005 34 Kuik Cheng-Chwee

Conceptualising the Chinese World: Jinan University, Lee Kong Chian, and the Nanyang Connection, 1900–1942 66 Leander Seah

Public Celebrations in Colonial Singapore — With Particular Reference to a Case Study of Celebration and Homicide in 1872 88Erik Holmberg

European Perceptions of Malacca in the Early Modern Period 116 Dr Katrina Gulliver

Chinese Education Across the Empires: Knowledge, Politics, and Networks between Batavia, Singapore, and Nanjing 132 Oiyan Liu

In Touch with My Routes: Becoming a Tourist in Singapore 151 Desmond Wee

Squatters, Colonial Subjects and Model Citizens: Informal Housing in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong after World War II 169 Loh Kah Seng

Malayan Women and Guerrilla Warfare, 1941–89 206 Mahani Musa

About this Book

The Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship (LKCRF) was established in 2005 to position the National Library of Singapore as the first stop for in-depth research and study of Asian collections. Named after the late philanthropist Lee Kong Chian (1893 – 1967), the Fellowship encourages scholarship and research into various aspects of Asian content, namely its culture, heritage and economy, thereby  enriching the strong Asia-centric collections and resources of the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library. Since then, the Fellowship has been awarded to more than 40 scholars, practitioners, and graduate and postgraduate students, encouraging them to engage and publish collection-related research utilising the National Library’s resources and collections.

Chapters on Asia: A Selection of Papers from the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship is a compilation of select works by the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellows. Concise versions of these research papers have been published in BiblioAsia – the flagship  quarterly magazine published by the National Library – since 2007. Longer unabridged versions of these research papers have been selected for publication in Chapters on

Asia. In this inaugural issue, 10 research papers written between 2006 and 2009 are presented. Although, these papers were written some years ago, much of the content is still interesting, engaging and relevant in the areas of study they specialised in.

Note: all information contained in the papers published in Chapters on Asia: A Selection of Papers from the

Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship are correct at the time they were written. No effort has been made to update the papers in order to retain the veracity of the information at the time of research and writing.

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Educating Malayan Gentlemen: Establishing an Anglicised Elite in Colonial MalayaBy Adeline Koh

The early part of the 20th century saw a huge shift in colonial educational policy across the British Empire, with the implementation of a strict limitation on teaching English to native subjects. This was a stark contrast to the previous attitudes on educational policy — particularly in India — whereby English would be taught with the hope of “civilising” the natives. In 19th century British imperial policy, the English language was conceived as an imperative civilising force — a tool for the enlightenment of the “savage barbarians” in the tropical colonies under the British rule. Lord Macaulay’s attitude towards English is characteristic of most European officials’ belief at that time — that the colonial language had a civilising and humanising influence on their subjects:

Another instance may be said to be still before our eyes. Within the last hundred and twenty years, a nation which had previously been in a state as barbarous as that in which our ancestors were before the Crusades has gradually emerged from the ignorance in which it was sunk, and has taken its place among civilized communities. I speak of Russia. There is now in that country a large educated class abounding with persons fit to serve the State in the highest functions, and in nowise inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best circles of Paris and London. There is reason to hope that this vast empire which, in the time of our grandfathers, was probably behind the Punjab, may in the time of our grandchildren, be pressing close on France and Britain in the career of improvement. And how was this change effected? Not by flattering national prejudices; not by feeding the mind of the young Muscovite with the old women’s stories which his rude fathers had believed; not by filling his head with lying legends about St. Nicholas; not by encouraging him to study the great question, whether the world was or not created on the 13th of September; not by calling him “a learned native” when he had mastered all these points of knowledge; but by teaching him those foreign languages in which the greatest mass of information had been laid up, and thus putting all that information within his reach. The languages of western Europe civilised Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have done for the Tartar. . (Macaulay, 1835, para 16)

 In contrast to the 19th century view on English education, 20th century attitudes towards the teaching of English to natives grew more conservative. The growth and consolidation of the British Empire by the early 20th century showed how important “native education” was becoming to colonial governments as an ideological tool. But English education could be both an important implement as well as a highly dangerous one. While it was essential to train a sizeable number of natives across the empire to be conversant in English so that the colonial bureaucracy would be able to find native clerks to work within

1.

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the imperial civil services, it was discovered through the early Indian example in the 19th century that English was also a highly dangerous tool to arm the natives with. The problem with English was that if too many natives spoke it as fluently and became as highly educated as Europeans, they would inevitably challenge European rule, particularly those pertaining to racial exclusions, which prevented them from reaching higher levels of power within the colonial state machinery across the British empire.

The fear of the native who became too arrogant for his colonial masters was thus crystallised in various forms. The colonial administrator Frank Swettenham, who was instrumental in determining the course of educational policy in colonial Malaya, had his materialise in the form of the Indian “babu” — “half-educated”, blundering and ultimately coming across as a comical character with ridiculous political aspirations, which only showed the fallacy of educating natives in English. He wrote:

Misapplied English education has a good deal to answer for, and, if the babu has a soul, it may demand a reckoning from those who gave it a speech in which to make known the impossible aspirations of a class that is as rich in wordy agitation as it is poor in the spirit and physique of a ruling race. Many babus cannot quench revolt. Perhaps the babu is ‘thing [sic] too much’ in India; they could do without him. And yet he and education, combined, make a growing danger that may yet to have to be counted with. (as cited in Stevenson, 1975, p. 76, note 28)

This paper examines the difficult and problematic nature of English education in the colonial Malaya of the early 20th century. Specifically, what is explored is the way in which English was used as a discretionary tool both to civilise and to tame native subjects in order to avoid the frightening problem of a “half-educated” Indian “babu” manifesting among colonised Malayan subjects. The bulk of this interpretation of British educational policy in colonial Malaya stems from an examination of Malayan-centred textbooks produced in Malaya in the 1930s in order to create a more Malayan-centred education distinct from an English education, which had only English and European references at their core.

Through a careful reading of these textbooks, one can begin to discern an outline of ideological formations in Malaya (later the basis of the nationalist imaginings of the people of Malaya). A systematic reading of these Malayan textbooks from the 1930s will show the engineering of an elite English-speaking sensibility across the different “native races”, or non-European races, of Malaya. It is a way in which one can discern the ideological foundations of the Malayan “collaborative elite,” or a native bourgeoisie that served as intermediaries between European colonials and the rest of the labouring colonised masses.

English in Malaya1 — as within all British colonies — served as an instrument of power. Used to separate master from servant, colonial from colonised, it was a language of the elite, a language of the colonial state.

1 It is important to note that colonial education only came under government institutionalisation relatively late in Malaya. The beginnings of educational policy in Malaya can be traced back to the 1870 Woolley Report, or The Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council to Enquire into the State of Education in the Colony. The report was the direct result of the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Malacca and Penang) being transferred to the British Crown in 1867. Prior to that, the Straits Settlements had been ruled as part of British India. This report also preceded the entry of the British into the Malayan hinterland with the Pangkor Engagement of 1874, which marked the beginnings of turning Malaya into a proper British colony with the establishment of a Residential System in what came to be known as the Federated Malay States. As such, Malaya was “fully” colonised only relatively late. Hence, when the British began planning Malayan educational policy they were already well prepared by lessons that they had learnt in British India and various parts of Anglophone Africa. Early 20th century educational policy in Malaya thus indicates the beginnings of a concrete educational policy in the colony, as prior to that government intervention in “native education” was sporadic and scant.

The better-educated spoke English and could rise up through colonial state mechanisms. Hence, the British considered English education in Malaya dangerous because they feared the security of their privileged position in Malaya being threatened by the English education of too many natives. Utilised by the British colonial state as a tool to structure and govern Malaya, English education in the 1920s was specifically reserved only for a distinct elite class, which spanned the “major” races of Malaya — the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians. Only those in this elite class were allowed to learn English, and those who belonged to this select group were usually of aristocratic origin. The English considered it highly dangerous to allow anybody but the native aristocracy to learn English, as this would give the common people delusions of grandeur.

In his annual report on Perak in 1890, Swettenham argued:

The one danger to be guarded against is to teach English indiscriminately. It could not be well taught except in a few schools, and I do not think it is at all advisable to give to the children of an agricultural population an indifferent knowledge of a language that to all but the very few would only unfit them for the duties of life and make them discontented with anything like manual labour. (as cited in Stevenson, 1975, p. 57)

Furthermore, the British felt that educating the “masses” in English would encourage the bulk of the “native” population to revolt against British rule. As an editorial in the Ipoh English language newspaper The Times

of Malaya opined, giving the Malays in particular a higher education “would be to put in ‘their hands an intellectual weapon whereby they might attempt our undoing.’” (as cited in Stevenson, p. 58) This being so, English education was reserved solely for the elite. For the bulk of the rest of the non-Caucasian population, Swettenham felt:

While we teach children to read and write and count in their own language, or in Malay, the ‘lingua franca’ of the Peninsula and the Archipelago, we are safe’, and that ‘Beyond that I should like to see the boys taught useful industries, and the girls weaving, embroidery and mat making.’ (as cited in Stevenson, 1975, p. 58)

English was thus associated with intellect, power and control — and only knowledge of English would allow one to access these three things within the colony. On the other hand, non-Caucasian “vernacular” languages such as Malay, Chinese and Tamil, were institutionally linked with manual labour and low status within the colonial state and society. Hence, within the colonial state, English was institutionalised as a language of the elite — and only the elite were allowed access to it. As English became the language of the colonial state, the administration and the bureaucracy, it also became essential for one to understand it in order to be able to navigate the rules of the society. Not being able to speak English would also mean that one would be powerless against the judicial system and unable to understand how to go about getting a job or starting a business. In this way the British hoped to be able to control the non-Caucasian population, because allowing the latter an English education would give them access to knowledge of the colonial system — and very possibly destabilise the self-accorded privilege that the British enjoyed through colonial state institutions. English, therefore, functioned as a tool of centralised colonial power. Keeping the language of the state out of reach

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of most non-Caucasian people in the colonies meant that it would keep them under control as they would not be able to access information or understand enough to negotiate the system. English education functioned as a method of control over the native elite. French philosopher Louis Althusser termed this as an “ideological state apparatus” — one of the key methods utilised by the state to ensure that power relations were maintained, and that they would reproduce themselves through the manufacture and normalisation of ideology. Prompting these elite natives to speak and think a certain way would help the colonial state to maintain its control over Malayan society. This was done through the normalisation of a certain way of thinking; by making these elite Malayan subjects believe that things operated in accordance with the laws of the colonial state, in order to engender an Anglophile sensibility compliant with British interests. For this purpose, again, English was extremely important.

The foundational writer on European colonialism and nationalism, Frantz Fanon, wrote in Black Skin, White

Masks: “To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.” (c1967, pp. 17–18) Learning how to speak English in a particular way for the Malayan elite would also mean that they would learn to think like the British, to share British values and become more “westernised” and hence, naturally favour the outlook, desires and goals of the European colonials. The textbooks that this study concentrates on show several dynamics very clearly; they were specifically engineered to teach the colonised to recognise themselves in certain ways: Firstly, to recognise themselves as an elite class and masters over the other non-Caucasian natives. Secondly, these textbooks tried to teach them their role as subordinate to the British, to accept the British as benevolent masters and to identify themselves as children vis-à-vis their colonial masters who were trying to uplift and civilise them. Thirdly, they taught the colonised elite to become Victorian English gentlemen by imbibing them with upper-class Victorian distinctions that were endemic to the British public school system, such as notions of being from a “correct” background and the idea of team sports such as cricket, polo and notions of “fair play” and “being a good sport”. Finally, they were to understand the racial divisions in the colony, accept racial stereotypes as truths and understand the importance of these racial stereotypes to good governance and rule.

The rest of this paper focuses on only the first and second points in the survey of these 1930s colonial textbooks: how these textbooks taught students to recognise their elite position in relation to other non-Caucasians, and how their intent was to induce subservience and gratitude towards British authority. Ideological control of the non-Caucasian elite by the colonial state was specifically accomplished through the creation of a “Malayan-centred” education; “Malayan-centred” so that the Malayan elite subjects reading these textbooks would be able to identify with the characters in these textbooks, and would be more easily and completely ideologically convinced. In addition, they would learn to identify with the British interpretation of Malaya, and see themselves through a British lens rather than from that of their own cultures.

In a preface to a textbook for older students (at a form comparable to the Cambridge “O-level” today), the editors of the textbook wrote that this textbook was composed of:

… passages selected from well-known books written for English readers by men of distinction from various spheres, with only such alterations as will avoid special difficulties in the school. The pupil is introduced to books that are to be found in the great libraries of the world. He learns that notable books have been written about Malaya by many authors, and finds that it is within his power to read these books. And it is hoped that the extracts here given will make the pupil wish to read more of the books from which they come — books of adventure stories which will interest him, and of first-hand descriptions of places and things that he himself has seen or would like to see. (Cheeseman & Gillet, as cited in Cheeseman & Joseph, 1932?, pp. v–vi)

The writers of the stories were all European, generally British, who were either colonial administrators or travel writers and they were called “men of distinction” by the editors. Through reading the stories, the Malayan elite children were taught to have great respect for the European point of view, the European way of thinking, and the European way of considering Malaya. They were also taught to consider the European point of view as the authoritative point of view and to respect their masters’ point-of-view.

Additionally, these Malayan-centred textbooks were more effective as a form of ideological control because they would be of greater hegemonic persuasion than those textbooks that were written for English schoolchildren, which useds only European examples. By being “Malayan-centred”, and by focusing on local images such as local flora, fauna, folktales, people, the children would be able to identify more easily with the subjects of these stories, and hence, imbibe the moral values and ways of thinking which the subjects of these stories had.

A textbook for lower-primary students teaches children to read simple English through elementary descriptive passages, such as the following:

Hamid bin Arifin lives in a kampong in Kuala Kangsar. His patch of padi is on the left of his attap house. You can see hens and little chicks running about the house, scratching for bits to eat. Hamid is chopping a log. The chips are flying here and there. Aminah is fetching water from the well. The chickens are running round and round the guava tree catching each other. They are having such fun! (p. 23)

Such local imagery — the attap house, the chickens running around, the guava tree — is effective because it is evocative and easy to identify with. This strong connection between the rhetorical, visual, aural and kinaesthetic imagery in the stories, and the sights and sounds of everyday life encourage the elite Malayan child to interpret the world around him or her in English. This will allow him or her to think about, describe, express and finally, replicate an English-inflected worldview. This Malayan-centred English education will thus cause the colonised subject to “assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.” (Fanon, c1967, pp. 17-18) These textbooks furthered teaching the elite Malayan subjects to recognise themselves in a role that the colonial state had clearly marked out for them — the role of the colonised elite, the intermediaries between the British and the native masses. Elite Malayans were to make sure that their subjects knew of the

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former’s social class, in terms of their being masters over the other poorer, non-aristocratic, non-Caucasian subjects. All the narratives that make up these textbooks portray the protagonists of their stories as bourgeois, middle-class children who live in houses, their lives replete with important fathers, mothers who take them shopping, who “lunch”, and have the requisite racialised amahs, gardeners and caretakers in their service — all the whom are the underclass who labour happily to support the lifestyle of the Westernised, bourgeois, elite child.

In Happy Days, a textbook for Standard I (upper-primary school in contemporary terms), we are led through the life of the privileged child Rosie, her adventures in school and with her friends. Like other children of her class, Rosie has a cook, a gardener, a chauffeur, an amah, all of whom love the child, serving her enthusiastically so long as she is polite to them, but whom the child is taught to take for granted. Notice the dynamics, for example, in the following section.

Saturday is the best day of the week. When Rosie wakes up in the morning, she is happy to think she can spend the whole day at home. She can do just as she likes all day. She can go to the kitchen and watch Cook. Rosie likes to see Cook working. He can do things so quickly and he knows where everything is. When he comes back from the market, he puts what he has bought on the table and begins to prepare the meals. He brings meat, rice, vegetables, lovely red chillies, and many kinds of fruit. Rosie looks to see if he has got her favourite fruit. Now, I am sure you can guess what that is. It is the mangosteen. Amah cuts the shell for her and she enjoys the juicy white part round the seeds inside. Mummy says it is very good for her too. (Happy Days, 1936, pp. 27–28)

In this brief passage we are introduced to several dynamics: Rosie’s day is organised for her pleasure, and the servants in her house are there to provide her with innocent pleasure and amusement. Cook provides a visual, benign feast for Rosie, the exotic imagery of his shopping and ritualistic preparation of the food approximating the same sort of pleasurable entertainment value that we get from a cookery programme nowadays. His shopping, of course, must always be mindful of the adored child; hence he buys her favourite fruit — the mangosteen. After Rosie is sated by the appealing performance of Cook — who is referred to only by a job designation, her Amah further pleases the child by offering the fruit to the child, displaying the former’s knowledge of her place as a servant. Amah too, remains unnamed.

In narratives such as these, therefore, the elite child is taught to assume that she or he should be served by members of the lower order and be patronisingly respectful of them, but that these lower classes should know their place. The elite child is taught to not treat them as equals, their individuality not even acknowledged as they are not referred to by their names. But it is important that they are depicted as happy, enthusiastic and grateful to serve their elite masters, and thankful that their masters bestow on them gratitude for their service. In preparation for Rosie’s birthday, for example, Rosie’s mother buys some material to make her a dress. We are told that: “When they got home, Mummy showed Amah the cloth and the thread. She told her to make Rosie a pretty dress.” (ibid., p. 33). The way the narrative is written demonstrates the master-servant relationship; Amah is told to make a dress, not asked; in other words, she has been given an order. After she has made the dress, Rosie tries it on:

It was so pretty that she ran to Amah to thank her. Amah was glad she had taken so much trouble with it. She likes to do things for Rosie, because Rosie always thanks her very sweetly. She never gives Amah trouble. (ibid., p. 34)

Rosie’s patronising politeness ensures the gratitude and continued enthusiasm of the servant in her role — maintaining manual labour efforts that support the lifestyles of the native elite. If the native elites are taught that they are superior to the rest of the non-Caucasian subjects in the British colony, they also have to be taught to accept their inferiority to the British and Europeans in general as natural. This means that these native elites were specifically taught to regard the British as benevolent rulers who were driven by a mission to civilise; to uplift them from their natural state of savagery and teach them to be “modern”; to industrialise; to have better values and to respect humanity in European terms. They were also taught to identify with European superiority and to valorise the British as the most desirable rulers, especially in relation to their own native rulers. This can be clearly seen in an example taken from a Cambridge “O” level history textbook used in Malaya, on Raffles:

In course of time the whole of the Malay Peninsula, from the British coastal colonies to the borders of Siam, became a British Protectorate. And the methods of this Protectorate have been as efficient and benignant as if Raffles himself had controlled it. Slavery, serfdom, piracy, rapine — all the worst miseries and savageries of that ancient land — have long died out. The deadly kris has lost its edge. Peace, order, justice are everywhere maintained. More than six hundred thousand schools have been established. Over a thousand miles of railway have been built, and between two and three thousand miles of metalled roads. Tin mines have been opened up, and rubber plantations introduced. The material development of Malaya has been one of the economic wonders of the world. But the feature of the Protectorate which Raffles would observe with the deepest pride, were he alive today, is the happiness of the people. More prosperous than they have ever been, safe at last from the old haunting fears, the old perpetual insecurity, tyranny and wars, the Malays are unquestionably happy. Singapore, then, the Queen of British Malaya, is Raffles’ true memorial. He has been forgotten at times in London; he has never been forgotten there. Raffles Quay, Raffles Place, Raffles Museum, Raffles Hotel, Raffles Library, Raffles Institution, Raffles College — everywhere the city cries out his name. And in the centre of Raffles Plain — in front of him the azure roadstead with its crowd of ships from all over the world, behind him the green peninsula with its millions of contented villagers, stands Raffles’ statue, watching for all time over his child. There, if anywhere on earth, his spirit lingers at peace, his dream fulfilled. (Cross, as cited in Cheeseman & Joseph, 1932?, pp. 219–221)

Several things should become very apparent in this passage. First of all, it is posited that the Malays are the original rulers of the land — the land is termed the “Malay” Peninsula rather than the Malayan peninsula. Second, it is subtly and rhetorically argued that British control is unquestionably superior to the former

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Malay control over the land, and that Malays are related to savagery, as “Slavery, serfdom, piracy, rapine” are interminably linked to the poignant imagery of the “deadly kris” — a symbol of Malay power. This “deadly kris” has given way to the glories of European civilisation in accordance with the logic of moving towards what the British consider a higher order of humanity; “Peace, order and justice are everywhere maintained,” a state of affairs considered to be a European preserve. The reader goes through this passage and relates Malay rule with the “deadly kris” — redolent with backward, savage Oriental despotism, and European rule with all the blessings of industry and modernity: “Peace, order and justice are everywhere maintained. More than six hundred thousand schools have been established.” In this passage, it seems that the British have given the people of Malaya education through schools, industry through mines and rubber plantations, and infrastructure through metalled roads, and that for this, the Malay people should be grateful that their own despotic sultans have been replaced by the benign paternalism of British rule: “More prosperous than they have ever been, safe at last from the old haunting fears, the old perpetual insecurity, the Malays are unquestionably happy.”

Therefore, it is to be seen as patently logical that the Malays should accept British rule because of the bless-ings the British have brought to them. The colonised elite children are thus taught that “the Malays are un-questionably happy.” To top it all off, Raffles is posited as the benevolent founder to whom these colonised elite children should be grateful; hence, the city should “cry out his name.” He is portrayed as a god-like, benign figure watching over the city as his ghost rests, and to whom these colonised elite children should pay homage.

The elite child is taught to be grateful to the British and to their rule. The best sorts of natives, according to the colonial administrators, are the ones who know their place, meaning that they would want to be like the British but never challenge them. The editor of The Malay Mail, J.H.M. Robson, wrote in the newspaper on 6 September 1898: “The Malay to be encouraged is the modest man who wants leading forward by the hand, not the sharp, cheeky, half-caste Penang Malay.” (as cited in Stevenson, p. 62) This ideal sort of complaisance is reflected in a short story in one of the textbooks written by one of the colonial educationists, R.O. Winstedt. It is called “Gula”, about a Malay man who was “so sweet he was like sugar”. Gula’s attitude is reflective of what a “real native” should be like. Winstedt’s narrator asks Gula whether modernity has been good for him:

‘Yes, Dato,’ I laughed, ‘but the old order has changed a lot — hasn’t it? The Raja came here today in a motor-car; you came by train. Your grandson talks to me in English. Is the change for the worst?’ ‘The peaceful life brought by the white man is very sweet to a tired old fellow, Tuan; and the young men like the novelties of the day. As you say, my grandsons are clever. They talk English, and earn good wages, and make more money out of a good deal in rubber than my father ever possessed.” (Winstedt, as cited in Cheeseman & Joseph, 1932?, p. 115)

The goals of this paper have been to flesh out key ideas and some of the trends in colonial education in Malaya in the 1930s: the historical role of English education in the colonial state of British Malaya, and the engendering of a specific type of elite sensibility that would cultivate a class of rulers who would be grateful for their privilege, and at the same time, subservient to European rule. This paper deals with two aspects of this sensibility: (1) allowing these elite subjects to recognise their privilege and know the “right

ways to act” in relation to this privilege in their society; (2) ensuring that the elite subjects internalise their inferiority to the white man. The distribution of power that resulted from this construction of an English-speaking-elite sensibility and the organisation of power according to language may go some way towards explaining how a colonial language managed to manifest the power of the colonial masters even long after the demise of the colonial state.

References

Primary Sources

Cheeseman, H. R. & Gillet, E. (1930). Introduction. In H. R. Cheeseman & J. D. Joseph, Nelson’s Malayan readers, Book 6, (pp. v–vi). Singapore: Malaya Publishing House.

Cross, R. W. (1930). Stamford Raffles. In H. R. Cheeseman & J. D. Joseph, Nelson’s Malayan readers, Book 6, (pp. 9–42). Singapore: Malaya Publishing House.

McNeish, K. & Lewis, M. B. (1932). The MPH Malayan primer: Now we can read. Singapore: Malaya Publishing House.

Sisters of the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus. (1936). Happy days supplementary readers, Series 3(1). Singapore: Malaya Publishing House.

Winstedt, R. O. (1930). Gula: A portrait. In H. R. Cheeseman & J. D. Joseph, Nelson’s Malayan reader, Book VI, (pp. 114–19). Singapore: Malaya Publishing House.

Secondary Sources

Althusser, L. (1970). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In B. Brewster. (Trans.), Lenin and philosophy

and other essays, (pp. 127–86). New York: Monthly Review Press.

Fanon, F. (c.1967). Black skin, white masks. (Markmann, C. L. Trans.). New York: Grove Press.

Macaulay, T. B. (1835). Macaulay’s minute on Indian education. Retrieved from http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/rraley/research/english/macaulay.html

Stevenson, R. (1975). Cultivators and administrators: British educational policy towards the Malays 1875–1906. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.

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Storm in Shuang Lin Monastery: Overseas Chinese Contribution in the 2nd Sino-Japanese WarBy Chan Chow Wah

IntrODuCtIOn

“Storm in Shuang Lin” is part of a larger research prospect exploring multiple narratives of World War II in Singapore. Most of the materials from this period were in complex script and dialects. This paper gives an English-educated audience a glimpse of Chinese society and the lives of individuals during that period.

This paper explores:• WorldWarIIandtheeventsthatleadtoit,fromtheperspectivesoftheordinaryChinesein Southeast Asia; • OverseasChinesecontributiontotheSino-JapaneseWar,includingtherecruitmentofvolunteersto serve on the Burma Road; and• ConsequencesforpeoplewhosupportedvolunteersontheBurmaRoadandtheexecutionof Venerable Pu Liang, Abbot of Shuang Lin monastery.

Most literature on the Burma Road focus on events and persons in China and Burma; “Storm in Shuang Lin” complements existing literature by focusing on the recruitment and training of volunteers in Singapore and the consequences for the people who supported them. The story of the execution of Venerable Pu Liang (普亮法师) had so far been transmitted orally among people familiar with Shuang Lin monastery’s history. There has been no published literature on this event, which has remained largely unknown.

This paper marks the transition from oral to written history. The raising of awareness of the China Relief Fund, the Burma Road volunteers and their supporters also address the concerns of Tan Kah Kee (陈嘉庚) that Overseas Chinese contribution in the Sino-Japanese war may be forgotten by later generations.1

OvErvIEW

The paper is divided into three sections; Events, People, and Consequences.

“Events” presents an introduction to the political developments in post-Qing China. This is followed by a discussion of the social dynamics of the Chinese community in pre-World War II colonial Singapore. This global-local background offers a context to understand Overseas Chinese response to the Sino-Japanese War, leading to the recruitment and training of volunteers to serve on the Burma Road.

2.

1 陈嘉庚. (1946). 南侨回忆录.新加坡:陈嘉庚基金会，陈嘉庚国际学会, p. 3.

“People” unfolds events in the lives of two individuals — Wu Hui Min, (volunteer to the Burma Road) and Venerable Pu Liang — and their activities in mid/late 1939. Both individuals were ordinary people living in Singapore who did not know and who had never met each other. Through their respective actions, they crossed paths at Shuang Lin monastery without knowing of the presence of the other.

Their passage through the monastery was the turning point in their lives. Wu Hui Min participated in the Sino-Japanese War and eventually settled in China. After the fall of Singapore, the Japanese executed Venerable Pu Liang for his involvement with volunteers to the Burma Road.

“Consequences” explores the Japanese reaction to Overseas Chinese support for China and reconstructs the arrest and execution of Venerable Pu Liang.

EvEntS

World War II from the Chinese PerspectiveThe Qing Dynasty (满清皇朝) (1644–1911) ended with its last emperor abdicating through an edict in February 1912. However the new government of the Republic of China (中华民国政府) formed by the Kuomintang (国民党) had no real power. The dynasty’s collapse created a power vacuum over which regional powers and political parties wrestled for control of post-Qing China.

Internally, the first president of the Republic of China, Yuan Shi Kai (袁世凯), planned to make himself emperor but the lack of support forced him to abandon the plan on 22 March 1916. Zhang Xun, a Qing loyalist, managed to restore the Qing dynasty for 12 days on 1 July 1917. Regional warlords consolidated their power while the Kuomintang attempted to unite China under its authority.

The Communist Party of China was founded in 1921 and competed with the Kuomintang for ideological control of China, even as the Japanese advanced from the northeast. A common front was created in December 1936 after the Xian incident (西安事件) when Kuomintang leader, Chiang Kai-Shek, was forced to form a united front with the communists against the Japanese.

External imperial powers held concession lands and trade privileges extracted from China since the late Qing period. In 1894, Japan, a relatively latecomer on the imperialism scene, expanded its interest in China with the start of the First Sino-Japanese War. In 1915, Japan made the “21 Demands” involving special rights in northeastern China. Despite public protests, the president of China gave in on 9 May 1915.

On 18 January 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference, Japan successfully claimed Germany’s concession in Shantung, although China was part of the allies. From 1928 to 1937, Japan initiated a series of “incidents” as a pretext for military action in China. Through these “incidents”, Japan set up the puppet state of Manchukuo and a series of buffer zones.

On 7 July 1937, the Japanese claimed a soldier was missing and demanded to search Wanping town. The Chinese refusal created a pretext to initiate the invasion of Beijing. This event became known as the “July 7 incident” (七七事变) or the “Marco Polo Bridge Incident” (卢沟桥事变). The “July 7 incident” marked the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War between China and Japan that ended on 9 September 1945.

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As the Sino-Japanese War developed, the Chinese seaports were either captured or blocked by the Japanese as they attempted to prevent supplies from entering China. In response, the Chinese government developed alternative land supply routes, including the Burma Road. The Burma Road became China’s most important supply route. The Singapore Free Press described it as “China’s new munitions and supplies route”2.

Construction of the Burma Road, between Yunnan in China and Lashio in Burma, began in 1937 with the objective of opening as soon as possible. Any modifications would be done afterwards. Two hundred engineers and more than 160,000 labourers equipped with very basic tools worked up to 12 hours a day to complete the Burma Road. Due to the shortage of equipment, traditional mechanical tools such as wooden water pumps and bamboo baskets were utilised.

The distance between Yunnan and Lashio was 320 miles, but, because of the mountainous terrain, the Burma Road was about 717 miles long, passing through 289 bridges and making 1,959 curves. The last 117 miles between Wanting and Lashio were located in Burma and built by the British. The Burma Road was opened in 1938.

Supplies were sent by sea to Rangoon (Yangon) port, transported by rail to Lashio and through the Burma Road (滇缅公路) to Kunming (昆明) in China. The journey from Kunming to Lashio took about a week and there were six stations along the route to support the drivers.

By the summer of 1939, China’s supplies came via airlift from Hong Kong, railroad through Indo-China, the Soviet supply line through Xinjiang and the Burma Road. The Japanese occupation of Indo-China (September 1940), Guangzhou (1938) and Hong Kong (December 1941) as well as the Japanese–Soviet Neutrality Pact (April 1941) closed off the respective supply routes except the Burma Road, which remained in service. All external supplies had to be sent through it, creating an urgent need for drivers and mechanics. About 3,200 volunteers from Nanyang (Southeast Asia) served on the Burma Road and about 1,000 died during the service.

In July 1940, Britain, under pressure from Japan, agreed to close the Burma Road. When it was reopened on 18 October 1940, the Japanese formed a “Committee for blockade of Burma Road” (滇缅公路封锁委员会) and used airbases in Hanoi, Vietnam3, to launch air raids. The Burma Road was in continuous use until the Japanese conquest of Burma in May 1942.

The Social Landscape of Singapore Before World War IIDuring the Sino-Japanese War, Southeast Asia, with the exception of Thailand, was under colonial rule and the region was known as Nanyang (南洋: South Seas). In colonial Singapore, the Chinese were legally classified as immigrants (citizens of the Republic of China) or local born (British subjects). Social differentiation among the Chinese occurred on the basis of cultural orientation and language — the Britain-oriented group and the China-oriented group.

2 The Singapore Free Press, 1 June 1939, p. 3.3 秦钦峙,汤家麟. (1989). 南侨机工回国抗日史.昆明:云南人民出版社, p. 26.

Among the local-born Chinese, there was a subgroup that oriented itself towards the British. They communicated in English and Malay and many could not speak, read or write in Chinese. Most of them worked for British firms and the colonial government. Their highest academic honour was to win a Queen’s scholarship to study in London.

For this group of Chinese, social mobility across ethnic boundaries occurred through the mechanics of language and education. However, this mobility had its limitations, and barriers existed between Caucasians and Asians. For example, in the Asiatic Petroleum Company, Asian staff were expected to show respect to Caucasian staff. One of the ways Asians showed respect was by allowing Caucasians to enter and leave the lift before Asians. Failure to observe these unwritten rules was a sign of “lacking in respect”4.

Another account mentioned how a European manager told a Chinese diploma holder employed in the City Council: “You Asian fellow, you have no chance to be promoted to a manager. Don’t you ever smell it even though you have the qualification”. The person resigned, joined a Chinese rubber company and later became a successful businessman in the finance industry.

A majority of the Chinese spoke dialects and organised themselves along the lines of their home regions in China through the institution of clan associations. This category included both immigrants and the local born. Each dialect group reconstructed its cultural world and established a social hierarchy among its members. Their cultural world in Singapore was an extension of life in China. Most of them saw Singapore as a place of transit and they aspired to return to China, where home was.

They received Chinese education and would send their children back to China for higher education. Some of the migrants became very successful entrepreneurs but, despite being successful economically and away from China, they were still influenced by traditional Chinese values.

In the traditional social hierarchy, scholars, the literati and officials were at the top of this hierarchy while merchants were at the lowest rung (士农工商). Scholars in traditional China would study for years in the hope of emerging as top scholars in imperial examinations, leading to official careers. There was an inverse relationship between wealth and status.

While it was almost impossible for successful migrants to participate in the imperial examinations due to lack of education and the fact that grooming their children to become scholars would take a long time, the cultural system offered avenues to convert wealth into status. This was achieved through the purchase of official ranks, a product of traditional ideals and the economic reality migrants were acquainted with. This combination of economic achievement and an official rank became a social symbol of success. One example of such success was Low Kim Pong (刘金榜), a wealthy businessman, well-known philanthropist and the founder of Shuang Lin monastery, who bought ranks for himself, his parents and grandparents.

The successful and wealthy elite perceived themselves as a part of the larger community and would embark on social and charity projects. These projects also boosted their social standing.

4 Low, Cheng Jin (Dr). National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Centre. Accession Number 287.

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The Shuang Lin monastery (莲山双林寺) was a product of such social dynamics. Low Kim Pong (刘金榜) founded the monastery in 1898 and invited Venerable Xian Hui (贤慧禅师) to be its first abbot. Low Kim Pong contributed the first donation of $500,0005 and 12 acres of land in Toa Payoh for the construction of Shuang Lin monastery. He was the single largest donor to the monastery.

The monastery was a common space serving the religious, social and cultural needs of the Chinese population. As a major landmark, it was featured in various postcards of the period and attracted many tourists. Schools also organised trips to the monastery.6 Social organisations also used the monastery grounds free-of-charge to organise fund-raising programmes during emergency periods such as floods in China.

The Overseas Chinese and World War IIWhenever a crisis occurred in China, local groups in Nanyang organised relief efforts to support victims. Initially these activities were local or private initiatives based on their home region. As Sino-Japanese relationship deteriorated, the Chinese community began to transcend regional differences to form a united front in support of relief efforts in China.

After the “July 7 incident”, the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce called a meeting to form the Singapore Overseas Chinese Relief Fund Committee7 (马来亚新加坡华侨筹赈祖国伤兵难民大会委员

会) headed by Tan Kah Kee to coordinate relief efforts in Singapore. The British authorities met Tan Kah Kee a day before the meeting to set the conditions and stipulate that the activities must not affect Britain’s position as a neutral country.

In 1938, community leaders proposed a central institution to synchronise relief activities across the Nanyang region. There were about 80 million Chinese in the Nanyang region and the leaders believed relief work would be more effective with regional infrastructure and co-ordination.

A conference was organised on 10 October 1938 at the Nanyang Secondary School (南洋华侨中学). The event was attended by about 170 representatives from the region and is believed to be the first meeting of Chinese leaders in the history of Nanyang. The delegates came from many regions under different colonial authorities (the United Kingdom, the United States of America, France and the Netherlands) as well as governments friendly to Japan (e.g. Thailand).

The Nanyang Federation of China Relief Fund (南洋华侨筹赈祖国难民总会) was founded with Tan Kah Kee as its chairman and was headquartered in Singapore. The regional office was located at the Ee Hoe Hean Club (怡和轩) while representatives set up their local China Relief Fund offices to implement programmes and formed a large network all over Nanyang. The China Relief Fund transformed the Overseas Chinese population into a regional force in support of China.

5 Low, Cheng Jin (Dr). National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Centre. Accession Number 287.6 Liu, Gretchen. (1999). Singapore: a pictorial history 1819–2000. Singapore: Archipelago Press in association with the National Heritage Board, p.145. 7 陈嘉庚. (1946). 南侨回忆录.新加坡:陈嘉庚基金会，陈嘉庚国际学会, p. 58.

The China Relief Fund raised funds by selling paper flowers, cookies and appealing for cash donations. They even brought in a choir (武汉歌唱团) from China to help raise funds. Unofficially, the Chinese population boycotted Japanese goods and businesses.

In Singapore, amusement park owners and businessmen, including hawkers, designated a day when their revenues or profits were donated to the China Relief Fund. Businesses supplied equipment, sponsored events and offered discounts to China Relief Fund purchases. Individuals made monthly and one-off donations, and participated in various fund-raising programmes and events.

The funds were used to purchase medication, medical equipment, clothing, food and military hardware such as planes, tanks, trucks, explosives, weapons and other military requirements.8

The China Relief Fund organised meetings, rallies, fund-raising events and performances to educate the public about the war. The Shuang Lin monastery was a venue for some of these programmes. The organisers would place anti-Japanese flyers and posters, with slogans such as “Down with Japanese Empire”, in the monastery grounds. Organisers had to apply for permission from the abbot (Venerable Pu Liang). The monastery offered its location but was not involved in the programmes or activities.

Drivers and Mechanics from Nanyang (南洋华侨机工)After the fall of Canton (广州) in October 1938, most of the 20,000 tons of arms in Hong Kong were sent to Rangoon (Yangon) in British Burma (Myanmar). Meanwhile, the Nationalist government’s logistic arm, Southwest Transport Company (西南运速公司), was transferred to Singapore. Due to the lack of experienced drivers and mechanics, Song Ziliang (宋子良), director of the Southwest Transport Company, requested that Tan Kah Kee recruit drivers and mechanics to serve on the land routes in Vietnam and Burma. The Chinese government would provide food, accommodation and medical support but not salary.

In response to the request, the China Relief Fund raised funds, donated trucks, recruited and trained volunteer drivers and mechanics. The first recruitment notice was issued on 7 February 1939.9

The notice called for experienced drivers aged between 20 and 40 years, with local driving licences, basic literacy, in good health and with no bad habits. The monthly salary that would be provided was 30 yuan with possible increment for experienced volunteers. The China Relief Fund local offices were in charge of recruitment and sending volunteers to Singapore to form a batch. Upon arriving in Kunming, they were trained at a local institute (潘家湾) for another two months. After training, most of them served on the Burma Road10.

Between February and August 1939, about 3,200 volunteers11 left in nine batches. The majority of them were Chinese men, but there were also Indian and Malay men, and four Chinese women12 (陈娇珍,白雪

娇,朱雪珍,李淑美). These volunteers were known as the Drivers and Mechanics from Nanyang (南侨

机工).

8 秦钦峙,汤家麟. (1989). 南侨机工回国抗日史.昆明:云南人民出版社, p. 51.9 新洲日报, 8 February 1939, p. 9.10 秦钦峙,汤家麟. (1989).南侨机工回国抗日史.昆明:云南人民出版社, p. 4.11陈嘉庚. (1946). 南侨回忆录.新加坡:陈嘉庚基金会，陈嘉庚国际学会, p. 108.12秦钦峙,汤家麟. (1989). 南侨机工回国抗日史.昆明:云南人民出版社, pp. 66–7

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China’s war-time leader, Chiang Kai Shek (蒋介石), stated that these volunteers’ “spontaneous offer of service to the country in the hour of crisis has not only brought material aid to China in the war of independence, but has also demonstrated to the world that the Chinese people everywhere are united by common loyalty13.”

Recruitment of Drivers and Mechanics in SingaporeThe first batch of volunteers who registered at the Ee Hoe Hean Club was interviewed about their work experience. Candidates were accepted if they had a driving licence and were recommended by a corporate guarantor. The first batch consisted of 80 highly skilled volunteers and they left Singapore on 18 February 1939, on the eve of Chinese New Year, led by Pek Cheng Chuan (白清泉).

The increase in responses from potential candidates also came with an increase in applicants who had used borrowed licences to make up the driving license requirement, or who actually had very limited driving skills. Furthermore, feedback from China that extremely good driving skills were necessary to tackle the roads there resulted in the China Relief Fund deciding to test drivers and to establish a driving institute.

Despite the urgency of recruiting drivers and mechanics, the China Relief Fund implemented procedures to safeguard the interests of volunteers’ families. Beginning with the second batch, background checks were conducted on all candidates. Those who were sole breadwinners, only-sons or who had dependants were rejected. The committee advised them that while the country needed them, their family needed them, too. Instead of leaving for China, they could stay in Singapore and continue to participate in the struggle in other ways.

After the background checks, candidates whose driving licences displayed photographs were accepted. The remaining candidates were tested near Outram Road. Initially, the test involved basic driving of an empty truck. Feedback on road conditions resulted in the need to simulate road conditions in China. The candidates from the third or fourth batch onwards were subsequently tested on more difficult terrain at Neo Tiew Road (梁宙路), with loaded trucks to increase driving difficulty.

These who could not drive were recommended for training at the driving institute located in the Shuang Lin monastery. The coordinators included Ng Aik Huan (黄奕欢), Lau Boh Tan and a training committee formed by a group of skilled drivers.

Ng Aik Huan (黄奕欢) remembered the training and testing the candidates at the Shuang Lin monastery and described the training location as a “very big place” that was later acquired by the government for housing development. Low Cheng Jin mentioned that the training was conducted “behind the temple” where the “entry could be made [from] the other side, not necessarily through the temple’s gate”. The back of the temple was an open space with access roads.

On 7 July 1939, Tan Kah Kee issued a notice14 to call for more volunteers and cited recruitment efforts in Singapore. He highlighted the need to recruit 200 semi-skilled drivers who would be trained at a “distant

13The Singapore Free Press, 31 May 1939, p. 2.14 南洋商报, 8 July 1939, p. 7.

location with rough terrain” for about three weeks. He recommended that other China Relief Fund local offices adopt similar strategies to produce more qualified volunteers. The “distinct location with rough terrain” he referred to was probably the land behind the monastery.

The FarewellThe Singapore volunteers and other Nanyang volunteers formed a batch. They stayed at the Tong Ji Hospital (同济医院) and dined at the Great Southern Hotel (南天大酒楼) while preparations were made for their departure. The Great Southern Hotel that sponsored the meals was a luxurious and popular entertainment spot for the wealthy in the 1930s. Later batches of volunteers lived and dined in the Great Southern Hotel.

Despite the stipulation that guarantors be required and background checks conducted, some volunteers still managed to participate without the foreknowledge of their family members. Most of them informed their families while they were waiting for their departure.

On the departure day, China Relief Fund leaders such as Tan Kah Kee and Ng Aik Huan15 gave speeches at the Tong Ji Hospital16, and family members and friends turned up to say goodbye.

The farewell was highly emotional and for many of the 3,200 volunteers and their families, the send-off at the harbour would be their final farewell. They would never see each other again.

The volunteer drivers and mechanics belonged to the working class and many gave up relatively high-paying jobs in Singapore. A newly-married Cantonese mechanic, Wang Jing Zhen (黄景镇), gave up his 200 Straits dollar (叻币) monthly job to volunteer on the Burma Road17. As a volunteer, his monthly salary was nine Straits dollars18 or 30 Chinese yuan.

Their efforts were greatly appreciated by the public. Local organisations and associations organised their own farewell events and the volunteers were invited to concerts and given seats of honour. The local Chinese press covered these events extensively. Privately, friends gave gifts, cash, bought dinners and some even supported the families of volunteers.

The Japanese Invasion of Singapore and Sook Ching (肃清)As Peninsular Malaya fell to the Japanese, the British began preparations for the defence of Singapore. On 7 February 1942, Japan began the invasion of Singapore. By 12 February, the Japanese had captured many strategic areas of Singapore while the British retreated into the “Final Perimeter”, the last defence area surrounding the town area in Singapore. On 15 February, the Japanese secured control of reservoirs. Inside Singapore’s town area, water pipes were damaged during the fighting and water flowed to waste. There was insufficient petrol, food and ammunition. The Allied commander, Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, held a meeting with his commanders during which he decided that surrender was the only option.

15National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Centre, Accession Number 35, Mr. Ng Aik Huan16Most of the batches left from Tongji Hospital. However, other locations were also used, e.g. Batch 4 departed from the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.17 南洋商报, 11 July 1939, p. 6.18Exchange rate based on reported rated in 南洋商报, 17 July 1939, p. 10.

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After the fall of Singapore, Japan’s priority was to bring the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) under its control. The 25th Army was tasked to capture Indonesia while Singapore was to be guarded by the Defence Force.

The Japanese interned the European population, rounded up Allied troops as Prisoners Of War (POWs) and turned their attention to the Chinese population. Lieutenant-Colonel Tsuji wanted the 25th army to eradicate anti-Japanese elements before they left Singapore. He initiated the “Sook Ching” (肃清,大检证) to “clean up all anti-Japanese elements19”. It was to be carried out by the No. 2 Field Kempei Tai Group.

All Chinese males between 18 and 50 years of age were informed to assemble at five assembly points at noon on 21 February 194220. This was communicated through notices, public announcements and by Japanese soldiers. The Japanese soldiers also arrested suspects and ensured that civilians reported to inspection points21.

The targets were “all anti-Japanese elements including the Chinese volunteers who fought so tenaciously against the Japanese, all members of the China Relief Fund, and other anti-Japanese organisations22”. Once identified, the victims were “executed in cold blood23”. The most wanted man was Tan Kah Kee.

One of the assembly points was in Jalan Besar; it was under the charge of the Oishi Unit, headed by Lieutenant Onishi, Chief of Kempei Tai Special Branch24. The implementation was chaotic and Japanese soldiers had no systematic basis of identification of anti-Japanese elements. They would look for tattoos as an association with secret societies and those who had tattoos were detained25. Others were questioned about their occupation, employer and background. People in sensitive occupations were detained26. Interpreters were also present to encourage volunteers to identify themselves, promising safety and even jobs27. Other collaborators asked for information and whereabouts of Tan Kah Kee28.

The anti-Japanese suspects were marched to Victoria School, where their hands and knees were tied, and transported to Changi Beach “just outside the wire of the Changi Prisoner of War camp29”. Upon arrival, they were lined along the beaches and at the signal of a whistle, Japanese soldiers fired their machine guns at them. To ensure that the prisoners were dead, bodies were bayoneted but some victims still managed to survive.

19Shinozaki Mamoru. (1975). Syonan — my story: The Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Singapore: Asia Pacific Press, p. 21.20 Shinozaki Mamoru. (1975). Syonan — my story: The Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Singapore: Asia Pacific Press, p. 20.21Ward, Ian. (1992). The killer they called a god. Singapore: Media Masters, p. 26.22Shinozaki Mamoru. (1975). Syonan — my story: The Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Singapore: Asia Pacific Press, p. 21.23Thompson, Peter (Peter A.). (2005). The battle for Singapore: The true story of the greatest catastrophe of World War Two. London: Portrait, p. 375.24 Shinozaki Mamoru. (1975). Syonan — my story: The Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Singapore: Asia Pacific Press, p. 22.25 Chew, Daniel. (Ed.) and Lim, Irene. (Eds.). (1992). Sook Ching. Singapore: Oral History Dept. pg 10.26 Chew, Daniel. (Ed.) and Lim, Irene. (Eds.). (1992). Sook Ching. Singapore: Oral History Dept. pg 11.27 Ward, Ian. (1992). The killer they called a god. Singapore: Media Masters, p. 33.28 Ward, Ian. (1992). The killer they called a god. Singapore: Media Masters, p. 30.29 Thompson, Peter (Peter A.). (2005). The battle for Singapore: The true story of the greatest catastrophe of World War Two. London: Portrait, p. 375.

Many survivors were helped by Allied POWs who gave them medical attention and food30. Some survivors were smuggled into British hospitals inside the prison camps31.

The operation lasted for two months32. Although the operation was to be carried out in secrecy, it was not difficult for the local population to suspect what had happened. The Syonan Times mentioned “recent arrest of hostile and rebellious Chinese33” and the need to “sweep away these treacherous Chinese elements”. The昭南日报 (a Chinese newspaper) announced on 21 and 22 February 194234 the execution of anti-Japanese elements, including a Chinese Relief Fund member, Yang Zhan Wen (杨赞文). The population in Singapore was also aware of Japanese atrocities in China35. The survivors who had escaped would have had spread news of the massacres among their families and friends although many of the families had hoped or believed their loved ones had been sent away as labourers.

Only the senior Japanese officials knew the extent of the massacre. The Japanese believed Sook Ching claimed 6,00036 lives while the local Chinese estimate is 50,00037. Sook Ching has been described as “one of the worst atrocities of the Pacific theatre38.”

PEOPLE

Venerable Pu Liang39 (普亮法师)Venerable Pu Liang, whose family name was Xiao (萧) , lived in Hui An (惠安) in southern China. He entered monkhood in Xichan Si (西禅寺) , Fuzhou province. In 1912, he arrived in Singapore and lived in Shuang Lin monastery.

In 1917, Venerable Pu Liang became the 10th Abbot of Shuang Lin monastery — a duty he performed for 25 years — and became one of the longest serving abbots in Shuang Lin monastery40. From 1937 till his execution, Venerable Pu Liang served as chairperson of the Chinese Buddhist Association (星洲中华佛教

会) , a Buddhist charity and social association.

Venerable Pu Liang had two disciples assisting him in temple management. They performed the functions of an accountant and a clerk and both assistants were “very devoted41” to Venerable Pu Liang. Low Cheng Jin42, grandson of Low Kim Pong (founder of Shuang Lin monastery), used to visit the monastery. During

30 Low, N. I. (Ngiong Ing). (1995). When Singapore was Syonan-to. Singapore: Times Books International, p. 25.31 Thompson, Peter (Peter A.). (2005). The battle for Singapore: The true story of the greatest catastrophe of World War Two. London: Portrait, p. 374.32 Chew, Daniel. (Ed.) and Lim, Irene. (Eds.). (1992). Sook Ching. Singapore: Oral History Department, p. 19.33 The Syonan Times, 23 Feburary 1942, p. 3.34 昭南日报, 24 Feburary 1942, front page.35 Ward, Ian. (1992). The killer they called a god. Singapore: Media Masters, p. 26.36 Shinozaki Mamoru. (1975). Syonan — my story: The Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Singapore: Asia Pacific Press, p. 24.37 Turnbull, C. M. (Constance Mary). (1989). A history of Singapore, 1819-1988. Singapore: Oxford University Press, p. 190.38 Ward, Ian. (1992). The killer they called a god. Singapore: Media Masters, p. 29.39 Information on Venerable Pu Liang is constructed through Shuang Lin monastery publications, oral history records, Chinese newspapers of the period and accounts of British POW and The Singapore Chinese Buddhist Association archives (新加坡中华佛教会).40 莲山双林寺历史资料汇篇. (1998). 新加坡莲山双林寺.

41 Low, Cheng Jin (Dr). National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Centre. Accession Number 287.42 Low, Cheng Jin (Dr). National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Centre. Accession Number 287.

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school holidays, he and his friends would stay there for a few days. He had various opportunities to interact with the abbot and described him as a “very pleasant and jovial person” who was effective in temple management and had everything in “apple-pie order”. The abbot was able to answer questions “very quickly and very satisfactorily”.

Venerable Pu Liang seemed to be a highly regarded and well-respected person who enjoyed wide support across different sectors of the Chinese community. During the Sino-Japanese war, he was involved in various activities to support the China Relief Fund and to help war victims. A Chinese newspaper described him as “very active in relief work43”.

In 1939, he organised a prayer session for the victims of the “July 7 incident” that was attended by the Chinese community and religious leaders. He also participated frequently in memorial ceremonies held in other institutions. During a monastery festival in April 1939, he worked with students from a Chinese school (华民学校) to sell flowers in support of the China Relief Fund44.

Zhu Jing Cang (朱经沧), a China Relief Fund member, proposed to raise funds at the monastery during the Vesak Day celebrations in 1939. Venerable Pu Liang agreed and offered to donate Vesak Day vegetarian meal contributions to the China Relief Fund. This event was known as “Shuang Lin monastery Vesak Day Vegetarian Meal Fundraising Event” (双林寺释迦佛祖诞辰斋筵助赈会).

Contributions during festive events are the main source of funds for a monastery’s operation and maintenance. Vesak Day commemorates the birth, enlightenment and passing away of the historic Buddha, and is one of the most important days in the Buddhist calendar. For these reasons, Venerable Pu Liang’s donation of Vesak Day contributions represented a significant percentage of monastery funds.

During a speech to announce this event45, Venerable Pu Liang explained that in times of crisis, every citizen, regardless of age, sex or religion, had a duty to serve the country. As an abbot, he had limited resources but he could serve by holding memorial services for war victims. He was also willing to contribute Vesak Day vegetarian meal contributions to the China Relief Fund.

Community leaders were invited to be honorary committee members, and fund-raising meal tickets were sold through various temples and monasteries. As the monastery was outside the city area, the organisers offered a free shuttle service between Rochor Road and the monastery. They even repaired nearby roads for easy passage. An opera troupe (金玉莲剧团) offered to perform for free while a company (松林公司) bought 200 Straits dollars worth of tickets46. At least 4247 corporate supporters sponsored food, equipment and transport.

43 南洋商报, 6 July 1939, p. 9.44 南洋商报星期刊, 16 April 1939, p. 10.45 南洋商报, 2 May 1939, p. 12.46 南洋商报, 17 May 1939, p. 8.47 南洋商报, 30 May 1939, p. 10. 南洋商报, 27 May 1939, p. 10.

The event was held on 28 May 193948 in the monastery and attracted “a few thousand” participants. The preaching hall (法堂) was converted into a memorial hall and Venerable Pu Liang led the prayers for fallen soldiers and war victims while China Relief Fund members made speeches. Outside the hall, stages were set up for musical, magic and other performances. Vegetarian meals were served to all ticket holders. This event raised about 10,000 Straits dollars for the China Relief Fund and was considered an important event covered by major newspapers49. Photos of the event appeared on the front page of a Chinese newspaper50

(星中日报).

Wu Hui Min51 (吴惠民)Wu Hui Min (original name Wu Zhong Biao) was born in 1919 in Hainan, China. His father passed away when he was three years old. In 1934, when he was 15, his family sent him to Singapore to live with his uncle who worked for the Wu clan association (吴氏工会) in Singapore.

While in Singapore, he worked for the Wu association and had the opportunity to read the newspapers (for example, the 南洋商报 and 新洲日报) every day, which updated him on developments in the Sino-Japanese War. He participated in fund-raising activities such as selling flowers and attending rallies as well as in boycotting Japanese goods.

In 1938 he was arrested at a protest march against the Japanese invasion of Guangzhou. The protest march had moved from Chinatown to High Street (水仙门) where flag bearers of the march were arrested. As one was arrested, another participant would take up the flag, resulting in the arrest of more than ten participants. The public sent detainees coffee and bread as a sign of support.

In 1939, Hainan Island fell to the Japanese and Wu Zhong Biao felt a deep sense of loss. He wanted to contribute towards the war effort as he felt that he did not have a home to return to (无家可归), and also that in times of crisis everyone should do whatever he/she could (有钱出钱有力出力).

During this time, Wu Zhong Biao came across a China Relief Fund advertisement calling for volunteers to serve on the Burma Road. He decided to volunteer but met with disapproval from his family, so he changed his name to Wu Hui Min to avoid his family’s detection. He also changed his age on record to 20 in order to meet the age criteria. He followed the instructions in the advertisement and went to register at the Shuang Lin monastery52. He could not recall which part of Shuang Lin monastery he stayed in and he did not meet any monks or anyone from the monastery. He remembered only that it was “a very big place”. All volunteers lived and trained in the driving institute. They started the day with morning exercise followed by military training and driving lessons. A few trainees shared a truck and took turns to drive.

After three weeks of training, Wu Hui Min joined 506 others to form the ninth batch. They stayed at the Great Southern Hotel and left Singapore on 14 August 1939. At 6 am, they gathered at the Tongji Hospital

48 南洋商报, 29 May 1939, p. 7.49 星中日报, 29 May 1939, p. 9. 星洲日报, 29 May 1939, p. 9.南洋商报, 29 May 1939, p. 9.50 星中日报, 29 May 1939. Cover page51 Wu Hui Min (Personal Communication, 16 July 2005).52 联合早报星期刊，22 Aug 1999, p. 11.

28 29

and left for Tanjong Pagar harbour at 10 am. The harbour was already crowded with people who came to send them off. As the vessel Feng Qing (丰庆号) left the harbour at 3 pm, the crowds sang to encourage them and to bid them farewell53.

To volunteers like Wu Hui Min, the Japanese occupation of their home (Hainan) ignited a drive to channel their despair of personal loss towards protecting their larger cultural homeland.

COnSEquEnCES

Sook Ching and Shuang Lin monasteryDuring Sook Ching in early 1942, a group of Japanese soldiers arrived at the Shuang Lin monastery to arrest Venerable Pu Liang. Just before the fall of Singapore, Venerable Pu Liang decided to lock the monastery door for safety as many people had fled into the monastery for refuge from the chaos outside. The door was supposed to have been locked “for about a week54”.

The Japanese soldiers had to force their way in and, upon entering, they immediately arrested Venerable Pu Liang and his two assisting disciples while the others were ordered to squat along the corridors. They proceeded to search the rooms of Venerable Pu Liang, opening up trunks and lockers. Low Cheng Jin, who was present, believed the Japanese were looking for evidence of Venerable Pu Liang’s “anti-Japanese” activities. Ng Aik Huan believed the Japanese found some belongings and marketing materials belonging to the driving institute’s volunteers55.

Venerable Pu Liang, his two disciples and others in the monastery were taken to the Jalan Besar inspection point. Most of the people who reported to Jalan Besar were released about a week later, but these three men did not return. The monastery sent people to search for them but could not find them and no news of them was received. They, like China Relief Fund Leader Ng Aik Huan, concluded that the Japanese had executed them. Although Venerable Pu Liang had participated actively in support of relief work, many other Buddhist/Taoist organisations had held similar events. For example, in July 1939, a seven-day Chinese opera was put up at Tian Fu Gong (天福宫) to raise funds for the China Relief Fund56. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce, whose chairman was Tan Kah Kee, Japan’s most wanted man, managed Tian Fu Gong. However, during the Japanese occupation, temples57 managed by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce were not disturbed58, as in general, Japanese troops were advised not to disturb religious institutions59. The monks from the major Buddhist institutions60 that participated in memorial services and China Relief Fund activities were unharmed. This included Venerable Rui Yu (瑞于师), Abbot of Seng Hong Temple (都城隍庙)

53 林少川. (1994). 陈嘉庚与南侨机工.北京:中国华侨出版社, p. 122.54 Low, Cheng Jin (Dr). National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Centre. Accession Number 287.55 Ng Aik Huan. National Archives of Singapore, Oral History Centre. Accession Number 35.56 南洋商报, 6 July 1939, p. 7.57 The temples included Tian Fu Gong (天福宫), Heng Shan Ting (恒山亭) and Jin Lan Miao (金兰庙)58 波靖南溟:天福宫与福建会馆. (2005). 新加坡福建会馆, p. 70.59 Tsuji, Masanobu. (1988). Singapore 1941–1942: The Japanese version of the Malayan campaign of World War II. H.V. Howe (ed.). (Margaret E. Lake, Trans.). Oxford University Press, p. 306.60 The Buddhist monasteries that were active in China Relief Fund activities and frequently mentioned in the press include: 双林寺,城隍庙, 天福宫,普觉寺,普陀寺,灵山寺,玉壶斋,福海禅院,观音堂,观音阁,龙山寺

who had donated money61, participated in China Relief Fund programmes and was frequently mentioned in the newspapers.

The Burma Road however, was seen as China’s major lifeline and the Japanese attempted to terminate it through diplomatic and military means. The fall of Singapore was perceived as the next step for the Burma Road “to be completely cut off in the near future62”. Perhaps for this reason, Venerable Pu Liang was accused of crossing the line. The Japanese soldiers who went to Shuang Lin monastery probably knew who they wanted and for what “crimes”.

Even though Venerable Pu Liang offered only the physical place, the driving institute was part of the larger network to supply volunteers to the Burma Road. Shuang Lin monastery as a recruitment and training ground for volunteers to the Burma Road had been reported in the press and training was conducted in open space visible to people around the monastery, so it was not difficult for the Japanese to know about it. From the Japanese perspective, “volunteer” meant “guerrilla”63.

That may have explained why the abbot’s rooms and the monastery were searched. In most accounts, the Japanese guards would arrive to inform residents about the inspection but would not search the place. Like most of the victims from the Jalan Besar Inspection Point, Venerable Pu Liang and his two disciples could have been executed at the Changi beach.

Venerable Pu Liang was probably the only Chinese Buddhist religious leader64 executed and he and his two disciples were probably the only Chinese monks executed during the Sook Ching.

After the execution of Venerable Pu Liang, Venerable RuiYu became chairperson of the Chinese Buddhist Association (星洲中华佛教会) . He requested permission from the Japanese authorities to resume the association’s activities65. In 1947, the Singapore Buddhist Association (新加坡中华佛教会) held a memorial service for Venerable Pu Liang. The commemorative banner paid tribute to Venerable Pu Liang’s sacrifice. (卫法捐生，是能无畏

施，证真断感，不入有余依)66

A POW WitnessA British POW, John Hamilton Wadge67, might have witnessed the execution of Venerable Pu Liang. Wadge was 24 years old when he volunteered for service on 4 September 1939, a day after Britain declared war

61 南洋商报, 17 July 1939, p. 10.62 The Shonan Times, 20 February 1942, front page. 63 Tsuji, Masanobu. (1988). Singapore 1941–1942: The Japanese version of the Malayan campaign of World War II. H.V. Howe (ed.). (Margaret E. Lake, Trans.). Oxford University Press, p. xi.64 A list of monasteries and their Abbots was constructed from newspaper reports of China Relief Fund programmes that mention Venerables. The list was checked against respective monasteries, publications and archives to verify if they were executed during the Sook Ching period. 65 Singapore Chinese Buddhist Association (新加坡中华佛教会) archives66 Singapore Buddhist Association Archives67 Information supplied by Janet Hamilton Jacobs, youngest child of John Hamilton Wadge (Personal Communication, Feb 2006).

30 31

on Germany68. He was a corporal, Service Number S/93369, and was part of the Royal Army Service Corps attached to the 53rd Infantry Brigade, part of the 18th Division. He was under the impression that he would serve in the Middle East. However, after the Pearl Harbour attack (7 December 1941, Hawaiian time; 8 December 1941. Japan Standard Time), the infantry brigade was diverted to Singapore. They arrived in Singapore on 13 January 1942 and left for Malaya the following day.

Following the fall of Malaya, the 18th Division retreated to Singapore and was assigned to protect the northern shores of Singapore. On the day of surrender (15 February 1942), the 53rd Infantry Brigade was stationed along Braddell Road. Wadge’s group probably moved southwards along Thompson Road and took shelter in an abandoned house, the former residence of a Michelin employee who had evacuated from Singapore. They were taken as POWs in this house and transferred to the Changi area.

Wadge mentioned witnessing three Chinese monks in robes being executed at the beach.

In October 1942, he was transferred north with the “Q” party and was liberated from an Indo-China camp. He returned to Britain and passed away in 2002.

COnCLuSIOn

In pre-World War II Nanyang, the Chinese population’s cultural reference was China. China defined who they were and shaped their aspirations. To them, World War II was the larger theatre of conflict that merged with the Second Sino-Japanese War when China declared war on Japan on 8 December 1941. The Japanese occupation of Malaya and Singapore became the closing chapter of resistance that began as early as 1915.

The volunteers serving on the Burma Road and their supporters came from all walks of life — ordinary, average persons on the street. Their decisions and actions were propelled by a culturally conditioned worldview. Through their actions, these individuals became the embodiment of global-local forces and their stories enable us to understand how an event influenced and impacted individuals and how their actions shaped the course of the Sino-Japanese War.

Much has changed since the end of World War II. The Chinese in Nanyang became citizens of the countries in Southeast Asia. Singapore has evolved from a Third World country to a First World country. English is the first language in the education system, Mandarin is taught as a second language and the simplified Chinese script is used in the Chinese media.

In enshrining these memories at a specific physical location, the Shuang Lin monastery at Toa Payoh in Singapore stands as a place to remember the passion these volunteers had and whose abbot paid a heavy price during the Sook Ching. It is one of the few “living” institutions69 where we remember our pioneers who have left us with a legacy.

68 Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 Sept 1939.69 Others include Tong Ji Hospital (同济医院), Ee Hoe Club (怡和轩) and Great Southern Hotel (南天大酒楼).

Shuang Lin monastery was gazetted as a National Monument on 17 October 1980 and has embarked on a restoration project that continues to this day. “Storm in Shuang Lin” is written to document the works of ordinary people and sectoral leaders during World War II who have contributed Singapore’s collective memory as a nation.

The paper concludes with a poem Ng Aik Huan narrated when he discussed the motivations of volunteers who went to the Burma Road. He compared a volunteer’s passion to the Song Dynasty’s resistance of Mongol invasion:

过零丁洋

辛苦遭逢起一经，干戈寥落四周星。

山河破碎风飘絮，身世沉浮雨打萍。

惶恐滩头说惶恐，零丁洋里叹零丁。

人生自古谁无死，留取丹心照汗青。70

References

English sources

Allen, L. (1992). Singapore, 1941–42. Ilford: Frank Cass.

Anders, L. (1965). The Ledo Road; General Joseph W. Stilwell’s highway to China. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Brodrick, A. H. (1945). Beyond the Burma road. London, New York: Hutchinson.

Chew, D. & Lim, I. (Eds.). (1992). Sook Ching. Singapore: Oral History Dept.

Chuang, H. T. (1984). Malayan Chinese resistance to Japan 1937–1945: Selected source materials based

on Colonel Chuang Hui-Tsuan’s collection. Singapore: Cultural & Historical Publishing House.

Duus, P., Myers, R. H., & Peattie, M. R. (Eds.) (c1996) .The Japanese wartime empire, 1931–1945. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Elphick, P. (1995). Singapore: The pregnable fortress: A study in deception, discord and desertion. London: Coronet.

70 Editor’s note: a rough translation or this poem is as follows:

Crossing the Solitary Ocean The endurance of hardships began with my studies to be an official, my struggles lasted four decades thence. Our land torn asunder flutters in the wind like catkins, heavy rains pelting duckweed is but a life’s constant. The terror of the sandy banks spoke to my own fear, on the solitary ocean I wept in a lonely prison. Since the beginning of time man has known mortality, only my loyal heart will outlive me in history.

32 33

Farrell, B. P. (c2005). The defence and fall of Singapore 1940–1942. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus.

Kirby, S. W. (1989). The war against Japan (Vol. 2). Dehra Dun, India: Natraj.

Gough, R. (c2000). SOE Singapore: 1941–42. Singapore: Raffles.

History of the Chinese clan associations in Singapore. (1986). Singapore: Singapore News & Publications Ltd.

Latimer, J. (2004). Burma: The forgotten war. London: John Murray.

Lee, G. B. (c1992). Syonan: Singapore under the Japanese 1942–1945. Singapore: Singapore Heritage Society.

Lee, L. T. (Ed.). (1988). Early Chinese immigrant societies: Case studies from North America and British Southeast

Asia. Singapore: Heinemann Asia.

Lee, P. P. (1978). Chinese society in nineteenth century Singapore. Kuala Lumpur: New York: Oxford University Press.

Lee, P. P. (1974). Chinese society in nineteenth and early twentieth century Singapore: A socioeconomic

analysis. [Ithaca, N.Y.]: Cornell University.

Liu, G. (c1996). In granite and chunam: The national monuments of Singapore. Singapore: Landmark Books and Preservation of Monuments Board.

Liu, G. (c1999). Singapore: A pictorial history 1819–2000. Singapore: Archipelago Press in association with the National Heritage Board.

Low, C. J. (n.d). Singapore: Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore.

Low, N. I. (1995). When Singapore was Syonan-to. Singapore: Times Books International.

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Shinozaki, M. (1975). Syonan — my story: The Japanese occupation of Singapore. Singapore: Asia Pacific Press.

The Singapore Free Press

The Syonan Times

See H. P. (n.d.) Singapore: Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore.

Tan, P. Y. (1945). The building of the Burma road. New York, London, Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill.

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Thompson, P. (2005). The battle for Singapore: The true story of the greatest catastrophe of World War Two. London: Portrait.

Tsuji, M. (1988). Singapore 1941–1942: The Japanese version of the Malayan campaign of World War II. Singapore: Oxford University Press. (First published in 1960)

Turnbull, C. M. (1989). A history of Singapore, 1819–1988. Singapore: Oxford University Press.

Ward, I. (1992). The killer they called a god. Singapore: Media Masters.

Xu, Y., Cai, S. (1984).新马华人抗日史料 1937–1945 [Malayan Chinese resistance to Japan 1937–1945]. Singapore: Wen shi chu ban gong si.

Yong, C. F. (1992). Chinese leadership and power in colonial Singapore. Singapore: Times Academic Press.

Chinese sources

陈嘉庚.(1946).南侨回忆录.新嘉坡:陈嘉庚.

中国国家博物馆,中国现代史学会编.(2005).中国民众抗战画史.成都:四川人民出版社.

莲山双林寺编辑组.(2001).莲山双林寺.新加坡:新加坡莲山双林寺.

莲山双林寺历史资料汇篇. (1998). 新加坡莲山双林寺

联合早报

林少川. (1994).陈嘉庚与南侨机工.北京:中国华侨出版社

南洋商报

波靖南溟:天福宫与福建会馆. (2005)新加坡福建会馆

波靖南溟-天福宫与福建会馆编委会.(2005).波靖南溟:天福宫与福建会馆.新加坡:新加坡福建

会馆.

新洲日报

星中日报

昭南日报

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rising Dragon, Crouching tigers: Foreign Policy Responses of Malaysia & Singapore to a Re-emerging China, 1990–2005By Kuik Cheng-Chwee

AbStrACt

This study is a comparative inquiry into smaller states’ reactions to a rising major power within close geographical proximity. By focusing on the cases of Singapore and Malaysia and their “hedging” behaviour in response to a re-emerging China in the post-Cold War era, it seeks to analyse how and why two smaller states in Southeast Asia — which share a range of domestic, diplomatic and strategic variables — have chosen to respond to their giant neighbour in seemingly parallel but subtly distinctive ways. The findings of the study suggest that Malaysia and Singapore share four key areas in common: economically, a pragmatic approach to maximise trade and investment benefits; diplomatically, an engagement policy to integrate the big power into ASEAN-led regional institutions; politically, a dominance-denial position to prevent China from evolving into an unchecked hegemonic power; and strategically, an indirect-balancing stance to prepare for contingencies.

These similarities notwithstanding, Malaysia’s China policy is fundamentally different from that of Singapore’s in one important aspect — the readiness to accommodate and selectively utilise China’s growing power to pursue its own national interests, as shown by Kuala Lumpur’s desire to see Beijing as a partner to push for East Asian regionalism and other common foreign policy goals. Singapore, on the other hand, has rejected this “limited bandwagoning” option because of its geopolitical difficulty and its wariness about the long-term ramifications of a powerful China.

The main argument of the paper is that the two ASEAN states’ China policies are not directly determined by a fear of the power’s aggregate capabilities as claimed by Waltian realism. Rather, they are a function of the individual states’ pathways of regime legitimation through which the ruling elites seek to capitalise on the dynamics of the rising power, for the ultimate goal of consolidating their own political authority at home.

IntrODuCtIOn

China will be a formidable player in the region. No combination of other East Asian economies — Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and ASEAN will be able to balance China. The Russian Federation will not be a major player for at least another 20 years. Therefore the role of America as the balancer is crucial if we are to have elbow room for ourselves.

Lee Kuan Yew, Senior Minister of Singapore, 2001

3.China is conscious that it needs to be seen as a responsible power and has taken pains to cultivate this image. This is comforting to regional countries. Nevertheless, many in the region would feel more assured if East Asia remains in balance as China grows. In fact, maintaining balance is the over-arching strategic objective in East Asia currently, and only with the help of the US can East Asia achieve this.

Goh Chok Tong, Prime Minister of Singapore, 2003

It is high time for us to stop seeing China through the lenses of threat and to fully view China as the enormous opportunity that it is. … In my view, to perceive China as a threat and to fashion our security order around this premise would not only be wrong policy, but it would also be a bad and dangerous one. We need to fundamentally reassess our notions about the so-called Chinese threat.

Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, 1995

Malaysia’s China policy has been a triumph of good diplomacy and good sense. … I believe that we blazed a trail for others to follow. Our China policy showed that if you can look beyond your fears and inadequacies, and can think and act from principled positions, rewards will follow.

Abdullah Badawi, Prime Minister of Malaysia, 2004

What do states do when faced with an increasingly stronger and potentially threatening power in an anarchic international system?1 For decades, mainstream International Relations (IR) theories have offered two broad answers to this central question: states will either balance against or bandwagon with that power.2 Recent scholarly debates and empirical observations, however, suggest that such dichotomous accounts might not be accurate in describing Asian states’ policies towards a rising China.3 Indeed, while some researchers continue to ponder the phenomenon along the balancing-bandwagoning dichotomy, there are analysts who observe that most regional countries have in effect adopted a middle position, widely known as “hedging.”4

1 The conceptual framework and discussion in this paper is derived from Kuik Cheng-Chwee, Regime Legitimation and Foreign Policy Choices: A Comparative Study of Southeast Asian States’ Hedging Strategies toward a Rising China, 1990–2005, a dissertation prospectus submitted to Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C., September 2006.2 See, for instance, Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979); Stephen M. Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” International Security 9:4 (Spring 1985), pp. 3–43; Robert Kaufman, “To Balance or to Bandwagon?” Security Studies 1:3 (1992), pp. 417–447; Randall L. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back in,”International Security 19:1 (1994), pp. 72–107.3 For a lively debate on whether Asian states have pursued balancing or bandwagoning in response to China, see David Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks,” International Security 27:4 (Spring 2003), pp. 57–85; Amitav Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?” International Security 28:3 (Winter 2003/04), pp. 149–164; David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order,” International Security 29:3 (Winter 2004/2005), pp. 64–99; Nicholas Khoo and Michael Smith, David Shambaugh, “Correspondence: China Engages Asia? Caveat Lector,” International Security 30:1 (Summer 2005), pp. 196–213.4 On the use of hedging as a state strategy, see James Shinn, ed., Weaving the Net: Conditional Engagement with China (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996); Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert Ross, eds., Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 273–295; Robert J. Art, “Europe Hedges Its Security Bets,” in T.V. Paul, Michel Fortmann, and James J. Wirtz, eds., Balance of Power: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 179–213; Chien-Peng Chung, “Southeast Asia-China Relations: Dialectics of ‘Hedging’ and ‘Counter- Hedging’,” Southeast Asian Affairs 2004 (Singapore: ISEAS, 2004), pp. 35–53; Evelyn Goh, Meeting the China Challenge, Policy Studies 16 (Washington, DC: East West Center Washington, 2005); Francis Fukuyama and G. John Ikenberry, Report of the Working Group on Grand Strategic Choices, The Princeton Project on National Security (September 2005), pp. 14–25.

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Borrowed from the world of finance, the term “hedging” in IR theory refers to an alternative state strategy distinguishable from balancing and bandwagoning. It has been used not only to describe the reaction of smaller states’ to a major power, but also to big powers’ strategies in dealing with one another.5

This paper examines the former, with case studies of Malaysia and Singapore. By comparing their foreign policies towards a rising China in the past Cold War era, it seeks to analyse how and why these smaller states have responded to their giant neighbour the way they have.

The main argument of the paper is that a small state’s strategy towards a rising power is driven not so much by the growth of the major power’s relative capabilities; rather, it is motivated more by an internal process of regime legitimation in which the ruling elites evaluate — and then utilise — the opportunities and challenges posed by the rising power for the ultimate goal of consolidating their authority to govern at home.

This argument — which may be termed the Regime Legitimation (RL) framework — is premised on three core assumptions. First, foreign policy choices are made by the ruling elites, which are concerned primarily with their own political survival. As such, their policy actions are geared towards mitigating all forms of risks — security, economic, and political — that may affect their governing capacity. Second, the representation of risks identified as foreign policy “problems” is neither given nor fixed, but is continually shaped by the actions of the elites seeking to justify their domination and authority at a given time. Third, such a foundation does not merely refer to the elites’ compliance with liberal-democratic norms, but also to their ability to preserve security and internal cohesion, to deliver economic growth, to uphold sovereignty and to promote a rationalised ideal (e.g. the imperative of “coping with vulnerability” and the necessity of “maintaining ethnic balance”).6 It is within the context of such legitimation that the elites assess the ramifications of a rising power and make policy choices.

This set of assumptions presents a counter-argument to the mainstream neo-realist tradition, which rests primarily on the following premises: first, states are unitary and functionally alike players seeking their own security in an anarchic system; second, states tend to rely on military force to pursue their goals; third, state behaviour is driven chiefly by systemic distribution of capabilities across units, rather than state-level character.7

If neo-realist premises hold true, then we should expect that a change in the distribution of power — in this case, an increase in China’s relative capabilities — will cause the smaller states to become apprehensive, which, in turn, will compel them to strengthen their alliance and armament for balancing China, as a necessary move to preserve their security.

5 For instance, Evan S. Medeiros, “Strategic Hedging and the Future of Asia-Pacific Stability,” TheWashington Quarterly (Winter 2005–06), pp. 145–167; Thomas J. Christensen, “Fostering Stability or Creating a Monster? The Rise of China and U.S. Policy toward East Asia,” International Security 31:1 (Summer 2006), pp. 81–126; Rosemary Foot, “Chinese Strategies in a US-Hegemonic Global Order: Accommodating and Hedging,” International Affairs 82:1 (2006), pp. 77–94.6 On inner justification of the “right to govern,” see Max Weber, “Legitimacy, Politics, and the State,” in William Connolly, ed., Legitimacy and the State (New York: New York University Press, 1984), pp. 32–62; David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (London: MacMillan, 1991); Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995). 7 On neorealism, see Waltz, Theory of International Politics; Robert Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).

On the other hand, if the RL premises are correct, then we should expect that a growth in China’s relative strengths may not necessarily have an inherent effect on the smaller states’ reactions. Instead whether or not the structural change will cause trepidation in the smaller states depend on whether the states’ ruling elites perceive the power to be a boon or a bane for their legitimation efforts. All things being equal, where the role of the major power is perceived to be positive, the state is expected to accept the power’s growing ascendancy. Conversely, where the major power’s growing might is viewed as a challenge to elite legitimation, the state is expected to counter-check it.

Finally, when the ramification of the power’s rise is perceived to be mixed or unclear, the state is expected to take a more intricate approach, the substance of which will depend on the ordering of the elites’

legitimation bases of the day. For instance, if the elites’ current legitimation relies more on the imperative of prosperity-maximising than on security-seeking, then the state is expected to highlight economic and political benefits that can be tapped from the power, while downplaying any security concerns it may have about the giant.

The remainder of the paper is divided into five sections. The first section shows how the Southeast Asian states’ China polices have deviated from the balancing-bandwagoning schools. The second section provides a working definition of hedging and identifies its antecedent conditions. In the third section, hedging is shown to have five components along the balancing-bandwagoning spectrum, which measures the range and variations in state strategies. On the basis of the identified components, the fourth section takes an empirical look by detailing the China’s policies of Malaysia and Singapore. The final section concludes with a discussion of the explanatory strengths of neo-realism and the RL framework in accounting for the variation in the two strategies.

Deviant Cases in International Relations To illustrate how the Southeast Asian states’ responses to a rising China can be regarded as deviant cases in IR, it is necessary to briefly review the key propositions and expected outcomes posited by the mainstream balancing-bandwagoning schools.

The balancing school, represented by realists such as Kenneth Waltz and Stephen Walt, maintains that states are more likely to balance against a growing power in order to preserve their security and safeguard their freedom of action.8 Building upon Waltz’s balance-of-power theory, Walt proposes the balance-of-threat argument and contends that a growing power is often a threatening power, when the power’s aggregate capability is accompanied by geographical proximity, offensive capability and offensive intentions.9 Driven principally by a security-maximisation impulse, states are constantly compelled to upgrade their own defence capability (internal balancing) or form military alliances with other powers (external balancing).10 The balancing school thus posits that, all things being equal, the greater a rising power’s capabilities, the more apprehensive other states will become, and the more likely these states will pursue internal and external balancing acts against that power.

8 Waltz, Theory of International Politics; Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power.”9 Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power.”10 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 168.

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The bandwagoning school, on the other hand, argues that states tend to bandwagon with, rather than balance against, a rising power. This is because, according to Randall Schweller, unlike balancing behaviour that is driven by a need to achieve greater security, bandwagoning behaviour is motivated by a desire to maximise gain or utility. “States, like delegates at party conventions,” Schweller writes, “are lured to the winning side by the promise of future rewards (emphasis added).”11 The bandwagoning theorists thus posit that, the greater a rising power’s economic and military might, the greater the perceived promise of rewards, and the more likely other states will be attracted to align with it.

Empirically, however, the China policies of Southeast Asian states do not fit neatly with the expectations of either school. None of the original member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Malaysia and Singapore, has practiced balancing or bandwagoning strictly.

While most of these countries do pursue a degree of defence modernisation and maintain some form of military cooperation with Western powers, such military endeavours do not necessarily constitute a balancing policy towards China in the neo-realist sense. This is because the existence of such cooperation predates the rise of China, and there is no clear indication that the states’ military modernisation programmes have accelerated in tandem with the growth of China’s power.12 None of the states have explicitly and specifically identified China as a target of their military endeavours. In fact, Southeast Asia today is more willing to view China as a source of stability and prosperity rather than a threat, compared with just a decade ago.13 This marked improvement is largely attributable to the concerted efforts made by each side to engage the other at both the bilateral and multilateral levels, mostly through ASEAN-led regional institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the “ASEAN Plus” cooperation.14 Apart from Beijing’s punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979 as well as the pending territorial disputes involving China, most political leaders in Southeast Asia today seem to downplay, if not dismiss, the possibility that Beijing might use force to pursue an expansionist territorial agenda in the region.15

In a similar vein, while all regional states have demonstrated an inclination to forge economic ties and to pursue an engagement policy towards China, this gesture should not be regarded as bandwagoning. Economic cooperation and diplomatic engagement are chiefly motivated by the desire for economic gain and to change China’s behaviour, respectively; by themselves they do not constitute acts of power acceptance.16 Bandwagoning, by contrast, reflects a readiness on the part of smaller players to accept — voluntarily or otherwise — the larger actor’s power ascendancy; and such power acceptance often takes

11 Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit.” On bandwagoning, see also Kevin Sweeney and Paul Fritz, “Jumping on the Bandwagon: An Interest Based Explanation for Great Power Alliances,” Journal of Politics 66:2 (2004), pp. 428–449.12 Amitav Acharya, “Containment, Engagement, or Counter-Dominance? Malaysia’s Response to the Rise of China,” in Johnston and Ross, Engaging China, p. 140; Herbert Yee and Ian Storey, eds., The China Threat: Perceptions, Myths and Reality (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002).13 Wang Gungwu, “China and Southeast Asia: The Context of a New Beginning,” in David Shambaugh, ed., Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 187–204.14 Kuik Cheng-Chwee, “Multilateralism in China’s ASEAN Policy: Its Evolution, Characteristics, and Aspiration,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 27, No. 1 (April 2005), pp. 102–122; Cheng-Chwee Kuik, “China’s Evolving Multilateralism in Asia: The Aussenpolitik and Innenpolitik Explanations,” in Kent E. Calder and Francis Fukuyama, eds., East Asian Multilateralism (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), pp. 109–142.15 Michael Vatikiotis, “Catching the Dragon’s Tail: China and Southeast Asia in the 21st Century,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 25:1 (2003), pp. 65–78.16 Amitav Acharya has rightly cautioned that engagement cannot be viewed as bandwagoning “because it does not involve abandoning the military option vis-à-vis China”, and that economic self-interest should not be confused with bandwagoning because economic ties “do not amount to deference.” See Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?”, pp. 151–152.

the form of political and military alignment with the greater power. Empirically, however, none of the old ASEAN member countries have chosen to align militarily with the PRC.

One might wonder why balancing and bandwagoning — despite the time-honoured wisdom of these practices — have not been adopted by the ASEAN states. A quick answer is the pure form of balancing strategy is considered strategically unnecessary, because the Chinese threat remains largely a potential rather than an actual one. It is also viewed as politically provocative and counter- productive, in that an anti-Beijing alliance would certainly provoke China and result in hostility, turning a perceived threat into a real one. Further, pure-balancing is regarded as economically unwise, as it is likely to result in the loss of lucrative trade opportunities that could be garnered from China’s growing market. Pure-bandwagoning, on the other hand, although economically appealing, is deemed politically undesirable and strategically dangerous since it is likely to risk the smaller states’ freedom of action.

For these reasons, it is not surprising that Singapore and Malaysia, like other ASEAN states, have rejected pure-bandwagoning or pure-balancing. Instead, they have taken a “middle position” that some analysts have chosen to call “hedging”. This is not to say that the balancing and bandwagoning propositions are no longer relevant. Rather, it only reflects that the antecedent conditions of balancing and bandwagoning behaviour are largely absent in the context of contemporary Southeast Asia-China relations. These conditions are, inter alia:

• thepresenceofadirectandimmediatesecuritythreat;• intenserivalryamongthegreatpowerswhichcompelssmallerstatestochooseaside;• ideologicalandpoliticalfaultlinesthatdividestatesintoopposingcamps;• strategicclarityinwhichstateshavenodifficultyidentifyingthekeysourcesofthreatandopportunity.

In the absence of these conditions, the smaller states in Southeast Asia can avoid taking sides between the big powers, and can afford to adopt non-clear-cut alignment behaviour such as hedging.

Defining and Delineating “Hedging” 17

Building upon existing conceptions of the term, this study proposes to define “hedging” as “a purposeful act in which, under the situation of high-uncertainties and high-stakes, a state seeks to insure its long-term interests by placing its policy bets on multiple counteracting options that are aimed at offsetting risks embedded in the international system.”18

The notion of “risks” is key to understanding hedging in human behaviour, in agricultural, financial or political domains. In agriculture and finance, the risks stem largely from uncertainty and fluctuations in prices of commodities and equities. In politics, the risks arise from uncertainty and fluctuations in power structure. In the realm of international politics, risks would involve the unpredictability and unfavourable changes in the distribution of power across the major units within the international system.

17 This section is drawn from Kuik Cheng-Chwee, “Theorizing Smaller States’ Aligning Choices: Balancing, Bandwagoning, and Hedging,” unpublished paper. 18 This definition is adapted from Glenn G. Munn, et al., Encyclopedia of Banking and Finance, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991), p. 485; Patrick Cusatis and Martin Thomas, Hedging Instruments and Risk Management (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005); Jonathan Pollack, “Designing a New American Security Strategy for Asia,” in Shinn, ed., Weaving the Net, pp. 99-132; Goh, Meeting the China Challenge, pp. 2–4.

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In order to understand how concerns about fluctuations in power structure may motivate a smaller state to

hedge, it is necessary to first reiterate the types of risks faced by a smaller state, and to illustrate the double-edged role of major powers in the smaller state’s efforts to mitigate those risks.

The Double-Edged Role of Major Powers in Smaller States’ Risk ManagementThe risks in international relations are of three major types: security, economic and political. While some of these risks (e.g. military aggression and political encroachment) originate from intentional acts of particular state or non-state players, others are products of impersonal or structural forces, such as systemic changes in the distribution of power, global economic downturns and domestic political decay. Regardless of their origins, these risks are especially harmful to smaller states, partly because the states’ domestic weaknesses tend to invite external exploitation, and also partly because they lack the resources to absorb structural shocks and to reduce these risks by themselves. In this regard, major powers often play crucial role — solicited or otherwise — in a smaller state’s risk management. Their roles, however, are far from unidirectional. On the one hand, a major power can benefit a smaller state, as it can throw its weight behind the ruling elites and provide them with needed resources to mitigate certain risks, such as looming military threats, enduring economic hardship or non-traditional security challenges like terrorism and natural disasters. On the other hand, a big power may harm a smaller state in every conceivable way. It may turn its might as a “right” to impose its political will on countries within its “sphere of influence”, enforce economic sanctions or invade them for resources or for political domination. These are all issues of survival. The stakes, therefore, are extremely high for smaller states to maintain “optimal” relations with the major powers. Such a double-edged problem is compounded by the complexity and high uncertainty in relations

between major powers. Whenever major powers are embroiled in intense rivalries, smaller states will be under pressure to take sides. Whichever position they take, they will risk alienating the opposing power. Conversely, if they choose to stay away from any camp, they will risk inviting suspicions and hostilities from all sides. In situations where major powers are engrossed in détente, smaller states may still suffer loss of their bargaining leverage, and may have to worry about the possibility of big-power collaborations at the expense of sacrificing their interests. An ancient proverb captures this well: “When two elephants fight, the grasses suffer; and when the same two elephants make love, the grasses also suffer.” In both scenarios, smaller states are powerless and have no control over what befalls them.

Why Are Smaller States Concerned about Fluctuations in Power Structure?Smaller states are acutely concerned about fluctuations in power structure, chiefly because any changes in the major powers’ relative capabilities and commitments are bound to alter their external environment, directly increasing or lowering the magnitude of their security risks. For instance, a smaller state is expected to face greater threats if its patron’s might declines or when its protector scales down its commitments in the region (e.g. Southeast Asia in the 1970s, after the British East-of-Suez pullout and the U.S. retreat from Indochina). Conversely, a smaller state is expected to enjoy greater security, if the distribution of capabilities abruptly shifts out of favour for its adversaries (e.g. Southeast Asia in the early 1990s, after the disintegration of Soviet power and the subsequent termination of Moscow’s assistance to Hanoi). In each scenario, the fluctuations affect smaller states’ external environment directly and forcefully, albeit in different directions. Significantly, what is at stake is not only security (the sources and magnitude of threat), but also prosperity and autonomy (the sources of economic and political assistance which smaller states depend upon).

The problem for smaller states is that while they know that the power structure will inevitably fluctuate at some point and affect them in some way, it is almost impossible for them to predict how and when this will take place. This unpredictability is partly because the distribution of power is a systemic process that cannot be controlled by any single actor, and in part because the strategic commitments of a major power are liable open to change. This unpredictability means two things for smaller states. First, the changeability of the commitment of larger powers results in uncertainty of “security guarantees”. As a result, there will always be a fear

of abandonment on the part of smaller states.19 Second, the unpredictability of major powers’ relative capabilities would render uncertain the sources and magnitudes of threat to smaller states. Thus, there will always be a fear of backing the wrong horse and an anxiety about being entrapped into conflicts that they did

not choose.

Structural Conditions for Smaller States’ Alignment ChoicesGiven the stakes and the uncertainties involved, smaller states invariably have to get to grips with an age-old question: how should a smaller t state position itself vis-à-vis the major powers in a way that would allow it to maximise benefits while simultaneously mitigating any undesired risks? Specifically, which power should it align with? How close or how distant should the relations be maintained? Which policy areas should one keep apart from the major powers, and which should it seek to close ranks with?

A state’s alignment choices are dependent on many structural- and unit-level factors, but two are most fundamental: (a) the presence or absence of an imminent and profound threat to its security; and (b) the availability of a reliable source of assistance.

The choice will be more straightforward if circumstances are clear-cut. In cases where a state’s leaders come to perceive a power as an unambiguous threat, the state is likely to align against it provided that reliable alliance partners are available, and balancing behaviour will prevail. The state’s strategic assets will thus be mobilised for security-seeking goal. Conversely, if a reliable source of assistance is not accessible for counter-checking the threatening power, the state is likely to align with the chosen power to avert attack or to avoid annexation. Security-motivated bandwagoning behaviour will then prevail. In cases where state leaders view a great power not as a threat but as an unequivocal source of opportunity which would bring multiple benefits, then the state is likely to align with it. Profit-driven bandwagoning will prevail in this instance.

More often, however, the circumstances are not clear-cut. This would happen when state leaders do not perceive any actor as a clear and present threat, and do not consider any particular power as a principal source of external assistance. Instead, risks and opportunities are more diffused, fluid, and uncertain. Typically, this would be a situation in which a smaller state’s relations with greater powers are characterised more by ambivalence than outright hostility or absolute amity, and where the state comes to view a power as a source of problems in certain domains, but one of support in other areas.

19 Glenn H. Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” World Politics 36:4 (July 1984), pp. 461–495.

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Under such conditions, a smaller state’s alignment choices will be rather more complicated. The state is likely to maintain equidistance and pursue mixed strategies vis-à-vis the major powers, in the hope of optimising its interests in various policy areas. Equidistance here means a conscious effort on the part of smaller states to avoid leaning on one single power at the cost of distancing others; it does not necessarily mean keeping exactly the same distance from every major power.

Why Equidistance?Smaller states, if they can, would prefer to maintain equidistance between two major powers, not least to get the best of both worlds while avoiding the dangers of tilting towards or away from a major player. Indeed, in circumstances in which they do not feel compelled to lean towards any particular power, smaller states would characteristically avoid being too close to or too distant from any of the major powers. This is because getting too close to a colossus may entail the possibility of losing their independence and inviting interference, which in turn may undermine the ruling elites’ legitimacy in the eyes of their constituencies. Moreover, getting too close to one power may also incur opportunity costs to small states, as they may have to forgo potential benefits that could have been tapped from other major powers. On the other hand, keeping too much of a distance from a Gulliver could cost the state elites the opportunity of gaining benefits that could boost their domestic political standing. It could also arouse distrust from the Gulliver, which would put the smaller states in an unfavourable position if the big power gains pre-eminence in the future. Therefore, maintaining equally close relations with all the major powers would not only enable smaller states to preserve their manoeuvrability, but also would enhance their leverage vis-à-vis the more powerful players.

In summary: given the major powers’ ability to make or break smaller states’ efforts to mitigate risks, the stakes are always high for the smaller players to maintain “optimal” relationships with the major powers. Nevertheless, in as much as smaller states would want to develop strong and stable relations with the powers, they simply cannot be absolutely certain about when and how the major powers’ relative capabilities and intentions will change, and how the fluctuations will affect them. Such unpredictability in the power structure would, more often than not, lead smaller states to fear the risks of abandonment, the dangers of backing the wrong horse, as well as other unpleasant consequences that might arise from aligning themselves with one single power. Because of the high stakes and uncertainty, smaller states would try to avoid making speculations about the future of big-power relations, and would avoid taking sides unless they were faced with an unambiguous source of threat or assistance. In other words, in circumstances where the stakes are high and the sources of dangers and opportunities uncertain, smaller states would be not likely to place all their eggs in one basket, but would maintain equidistance from all the big powers.

If the “equidistance” position is adopted together with mixed strategies intended to create certain mutually-

counteracting effects, this can be said to be hedging behaviour. However, if the position is not intended to produce any mutually counteracting results, then this would not be hedging, but the application of a mix of strategies. Mutually counteracting describes the act of making opposite transactions in order to offset the effects of one another. Hedging describes behaviour in which an actor counteracts one transaction against another in the hope of reducing their exposure to risks in the international arena. This behaviour aims to maximise anticipated benefits while providing a fallback position to cushion against risks in case the situation takes an unfavourable turn.

As a form of state alignment choice, hedging entails three behavioural attributes, as follows:

A function of offsetting potential risks In finance, risks stem mainly from the fluctuations in commodity prices. In IR, the risks derive from the possible fluctuations in the distribution of global power (a change in the relative capabilities among big powers). In order to offset a risk, a hedger state would typically bet on return-maximising options while simultaneously investing in contingency options that will serve to reduce loss if things take a negative turn. Hedging, therefore, is about risk management. Its function is much wider than that of balancing and bandwagoning, which are primarily about risk- minimisation and return-maximisation respectively.

the act of placing multiple policy bets This is a sharp contrast to balancing and bandwagoning, both of which are strategies involving the placing of one single bet. The former, driven by its function of risk-minimisation, is an act with which a state chooses to place all its bets on a third country, by allying with it to counter a growing threat, whereas the latter is an act in which a state puts all its bets on a rising power by jumping on its bandwagon for the goal of return-maximising. Hedging, by contrast, due to its very function of offsetting risks, is practiced when a hedger state places its policy bets on multiple options that are intended to produce counteracting effects. This requires the hedger state to simultaneously pursue “risk- contingency” and “return-maximising” measures.

A desire to avoid speculationContrary to common belief, hedging is not about speculating, but about avoiding speculation. While a hedger state is aware that some forms of risks may originate from future fluctuations in power structure, it is beyond its ability to know how and when such fluctuations will occur (e.g. which major power will prevail over the others). Hence, a proper hedging strategy serves as an insurance policy that would enable a hedger state to ensure its long-term interests, without having to make any

speculation about the future. This can be attained only if the hedger state has placed its bets on multiple options that are mutually counteracting — a loss on one front will be offset by a gain on another, regardless of the fluctuation. In contrast, states which pursue pure balancing or pure bandwagoning are likely to face entirely different outcomes, depending on the changes in power structure. They would be in a favourable position if the power they chose to bet on eventually prevails. Conversely, they would be in an unfavourable position if the power they had chosen to take sides with is vanquished by another competing power.

An empirical look at contemporary East Asian international relations reveals that the imperatives of high uncertainty and high stakes make hedging a logical choice for most Asian states in response to the rise of China amid the larger backdrop of structural changes in the post-Cold War era.

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While the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s effectively ended the decades-long East-West confrontation, the abrupt disappearance of bipolarity had nonetheless generated a widespread sense of uncertainty among countries in the Asia Pacific region.20 The ASEAN states in particular, being small- and medium-sized countries, face a host of external risks that could affect regional stability and their own national prosperity. These perceived risks include the possibility of a retreating America, the likelihood of a revisionist China and a remilitarised Japan, the danger of an irrelevant ASEAN as a regional organisation, as well as the peril of unresolved territorial disputes and sovereignty issues in the region.21 This sense of strategic uncertainty persists in our post-September 11 era, a time when all five original ASEAN members (namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) are being challenged by varying levels of religious militancy within and across their national boundaries. Although the United States still maintains a presence in the region, it is increasingly preoccupied with problems in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its larger “War on Terror” agenda, raising concerns over its long-term commitment in Asia Pacific. As for China, notwithstanding the emerging power’s recent diplomatic record in demonstrating its increased willingness to cooperate with the regional countries,22 trepidation over the giant’s future intention prevail in some quarters of the region.23 Taken together, these constitute the greatest uncertainty that persists in the minds of Southeast Asian leaders: how will the relationship between the world’s only superpower and the fast rising dragon evolve in the 21st century? This structural problem is made more complicated by the prospect of other strategic and regional issues such as the Taiwan question, the North Korean imbroglio, Sino- Japanese relations, an emerging India, East Asian regionalism, as well as the growing salience of non-traditional security challenges. For the individual ASEAN state, underlying these uncertainties is the paramount concern of how best to position itself to safeguard its present and future interests no matter

how the power structure evolves in the long run.

It is within this context of strategic uncertainty that one can discuss post-Cold War ASEAN states’ China policies in a more systematic way. State actors, like human actors, choose to hedge when the perceived risks and opportunities surrounding a phenomenon (in this case, the rise of China) are still uncertain and ambivalent. By contrast, states rarely hedge when they perceive the principal source of risks and rewards. Rather, they often choose to balance against (e.g. Taiwan and Japan in recent years) or bandwagon with (e.g. Burma [Myanmar], Cambodia, North Korea, and Pakistan) the rising power. Just as concerns about fluctuations in price often prompt economic actors to hedge their financial transactions to prevent potential losses, concerns about strategic uncertainty and possible fluctuations in the power structure may also propel political actors to hedge their bets by pursuing multiple policy options, so that any change in power configurations would not incur unacceptable losses to them in the future. Unless strategic certainty prevails — for instance, if Beijing turns aggressive and is increasingly regarded as a revisionist power that must be contained and balanced against if China becomes weaker and is no longer viewed as an alternative power centre or if China gains in strength and is becomes a key provider of regional public goods — the present hedging behaviour adopted by most Asian states is likely to continue.

20 On the idea of “strategic uncertainty,” see Yuen Foong Khong, “Coping with Strategic Uncertainty: The Role of Institutions and Soft Balancing in Southeast Asia’s Post-Cold War Strategy,” in J.J. Suh, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Allen Carlson, eds., Rethinking Security in East Asia: Identity, Power, and Efficiency (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 172–208.21 Michael Leifer, The ASEAN Regional Forum: Extending ASEAN’s Model of Regional Security, Adelphi Paper No. 302 (London: Oxford University Press for IISS, 1996).22 Alastair Ian Johnston, “Is China a Status Quo Power?” International Security 27:4 (Spring 2003), pp. 5–56; David M. Lampton, “China’s Rise in Asia Need Not Be at America’s Expense,” in Shambaugh, Power Shift, pp. 306–326.23 Sheng Lijun, China’s Influence in Southeast Asia, Trends in Southeast Asia Series No. 4 (Singapore: ISEAS, 2006).

ASEAn StAtES’ HEDGInG StrAtEGIES: FIvE POLICy COMPOnEntS

Based on the defining features delineated above, hedging is conceived as a multiple-component strategy situated between the two ends of the balancing- bandwagoning spectrum (see Table 1).24 This spectrum is measured by the degrees of rejection and acceptance on the part of smaller states towards a major power, with pure balancing representing the highest degree of power rejection, and pure bandwagoning the extreme form of power acceptance. In the context of Southeast Asia-China relations, hedging consists of five constituent components — economic pragmatism, binding engagement, limited bandwagoning, dominance denial and indirect balancing. Each of these components is distinguishable in terms of functions

and modus operandi (see Table 2). The components are both categorical and ordinal variables (ordered by degrees of power rejection and acceptance). They do not represent any interval or ratio values.

Each of these components shall be discussed, as follows:

Economic PragmatismUnder this policy, a state’s principal aim is to maximise economic benefits from its direct trade and investment links with a major power, regardless of any political tensions or ideological divisions that might exist between them. It is one of the three policy options that are equally emphasised by all the original ASEAN members. It is also the longest held, dating back to the Cold War period when the smaller states were at odds with China on ideological and political grounds.25 In fact, all ASEAN states had embraced economic pragmatism well before they decided to establish a formal diplomatic relationship with Beijing. Singapore was the first to forge direct commercial and trade ties with China as early as the 1960s.26 It was followed by Malaysia in 1971, the Philippines in 1972, Thailand in 1974 and Indonesia in 1985.27

Binding Engagement Binding refers to a policy wherein a state (or a group of states) seeks to establish and maintain institutional ties with a major power for the purpose of increasing “voice opportunities”, and hence enhancing its ability to influence the power’s policy choice.28 Engagement, on the other hand, refers to the use of diplomatic means to socialise and integrate a big power into the established order, and to give it a stake in the regional status quo, for the purpose of neutralising the revisionist tendencies of the power’s behaviour.29

In terms of actual implementation, binding and engagement always go hand-in- hand. They are performed primarily through ASEAN-led multilateral institutions — most notably the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) and the ASEAN-China dialogue — and also through bilateral consultative

24 The need to go beyond the dichotomous terms was emphasised earlier by Amitav Acharya and Ja Ian Chong. See Acharya, “Containment, Engagement, or Counter-Dominance?” and Chong, Revisiting Responses to Power Preponderance. Working Paper No. 54 (Singapore: Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, 2003).25 For instance, Malaysia in the 1980s pursued such a policy despite its persistent political distrust of China. See Stephen Leong, “Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China in the 1980s: Political Vigilance and Economic Pragmatism,” Asian Survey 27:10 (1987), pp. 1109–1126.26 Chia Siow-Yue, “China’s Economic Relations with ASEAN Countries,” and Chin Kin Wah, “A New Phase in Singapore’s Relations with China,” both in Joyce Kallgren et al. eds., ASEAN and China: An Evolving Relationship (Berkeley: University of California, 1988), pp. 189-214 & pp. 274–291, respectively.27 Ibid; John Wong, The Political Economy of China’s Changing Relations with Southeast Asia (London: Macmillan, 1984).28 Schweller, “Managing the Rise of Great Powers”, pp. 13–15.29 Ibid.; Khong, “Singapore”, pp. 110-113; Jusof Wanandi, “ASEAN’s China Strategy: Towards Deeper Engagement,” Survival 38:3 (1996), pp. 117–128.

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mechanisms such as the Malaysia-China bilateral meetings of their foreign ministry officials. Singapore and Malaysia have constantly been the stronger advocates and practitioners of this policy.

Limited BandwagoningBandwagoning refers to a state’s behaviour that is driven by a desire to win present profits or future rewards, chooses to align itself with a rising power that displays prospects for reaching pre-eminence. Viewed in terms of modus operandi, bandwagoning behaviour may exist in two forms: pure bandwagoning (PB) and limited bandwagoning (LB). In their pure forms, PB and LB differ in three ways.

First, PB often takes the form of military alignment (i.e. security alliance)30, whereas LB mainly involves political alignment that is manifested in: (a) policy coordination; and (b) voluntary deference given by smaller state to the larger partner’s core interests. At its highest level, LB is demonstrated by the smaller actor’s move to consult the greater power before making any major decisions affecting the latter. Deference behaviour is regarded as an important indicator, because it reflects a considerable degree of power acceptance on the part of the smaller players. Accordingly, PB entails policy coordination in virtually all key aspects of defence and foreign policy, whereas LB involves only cooperation on selective issue on which the two share common views and interests.

Second, PB signifies a zero-sum scenario for major powers. This means that when a state bandwagons with Power A, it simultaneously chooses to distance itself from Power B. LB, on the other hand, does not necessarily denote a zero-sum situation — a state may pursue an LB policy towards a rising power while still maintaining close relations with the preponderant or traditional hegemon.

Finally, PB connotes an acceptance of a superior-subordinate relationship between a greater power and a smaller partner, whereas LB is carried out consciously on the part of the smaller state to avoid the loss of autonomy or becoming over-dependent on the power. Simply put, PB is hierarchy-acceptance while LB is hierarchy-avoidance.

The following indicators are useful in observing when a smaller state’s LB behaviour is developing into a pure one:

• thepartnershiphasdevelopedbeyondpoliticalcollaborationandevolvedintomilitaryalliancein the strict sense of the term; • thejuniorpartner’spolicycoordinationanddeference-givingbehaviourhasbeenshownon virtually all major policy issues; • itsnewpartnershipwiththerisingpowerhasbeenaccompaniedbytheterminationor substantial erosion of its extant relations with the traditional hegemon; • thesmallerstatehasbecomeover-dependentandinpracticeacceptedahierarchicalstructurein the partnership.

As is will be shown, a desire to gain profit and a belief that China’s influence is likely to expand in the future — two inducements identified by Schweller as prime drivers of bandwagoning — have motivated Malaysia

30 Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?” p. 151.

to embrace elements of LB vis-à-vis China. None of these factors, however, has encouraged Singapore to move in the same direction.

While the above policy thrusts entail more persuasive, non-confrontational, and profit- maximising elements towards China, this is not the case for the remaining two.

Dominance DenialThis policy is aimed at preventing and denying the emergence of a predominant power that may dictate hegemonic terms to smaller states.31 Its modus operandi is political in nature, wherein the smaller players — either individually or collectively — seek to: (a) involve other big powers in regional affairs; (b) consolidate their collective diplomatic strength; and (c) express support to others’ alliance arrangement without involving themselves militarily, in order to countervail and offset the growing clout of a rising power. This policy is adopted by each of the founding ASEAN members, as shown by their common stance in maintaining a balanced — albeit not necessarily equal — relationship with all the big powers.

Dominance denial and binding engagement can be seen as two different sides of the same coin. They are related because both seek to influence a rising power by including it in an institutional web that often involves other powers. However, they are two distinctive approaches, because unlike binding engagement that seeks to change the rising power’s behaviour using a persuasive point (“let’s preserve the status quo together, because you too have a stake in it”), dominance denial seeks to perform the same task with an implicitly confrontational message (“don’t dictate to us in a hegemonic way, or we will have no choice but to move closer to other powers to check you”). ASEAN states recognise the need for such a carrot-stick approach, because they are well aware of the fact that their own capabilities are inadequate to guarantee an effective binding-engagement policy, and that other powers’ presence is essential to compel China to stay on the engagement course and to behave in a restrained manner. To a large extent, this logic resembles what John Ikenberry has called “the lock-in effect of institutions,” which allows the weaker states to constrain the stronger state’s action and “reduce the long-term implications of asymmetries of power”.32 ASEAN states’ efforts to involve other powers in the ARF and the EAS illustrate this.

Indirect BalancingThis is a policy in which a state decides to use military power to cope with the diffuse risks arising from strategic uncertainty, as opposed to a specific source of security threat. The state maintains military cooperation with a third power and develops its own military capability, without directly targeting a particular country. This term is different from the oft-quoted “soft-balancing”, which refers to the act of maintaining informal or loose forms of military collaboration in order to check a potential threat.33

31 This term is adapted from Amitav Acharya’s concept of “counter-dominance.” See his “Containment, Engagement, or Counter-Dominance? Malaysia’s Response to the Rise of China,” in Johnston and Ross, Engaging China, pp. 129–151.32 G. John Ikenberry, “Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Persistence of American Postwar Order, “International Security 23:3 (Winter 1998-1999), pp. 43–78.33 “Soft balancing” is used as a contrast to “hard balancing,” which refers to formal and definite military alliance. See Khong, “Coping with Strategic Uncertainty”; also Paul et al., Balance of Power, p. 13.

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There are reasons why the present study uses “indirect” rather than “soft” to describe the ASEAN states’ balancing acts. To begin with, the issue of “soft vs. hard” forms of military cooperation between ASEAN states and Western powers is largely attributable to factors other than the rise of China, and is therefore less relevant in reflecting these countries’ China policies. In contrast, “indirect vs. direct” balancing may usefully indicate a state’s evolving threat perceptions vis-à-vis Beijing. As soon as China is seen as an unambiguous security threat, the smaller states are expected to shift from indirect to direct balancing, by initiating military preparations explicitly targeted at China.

Currently, the ASEAN states’ strategic posture remains one of indirect-balancing. Their existing military cooperation with Western powers is aimed at preparing for diffused strategic contingency, rather than a specific existential threat. Their military actions may turn to any state — not necessarily China — which behaves in a way that makes the smaller states perceive it as a “clear and present threat” to their security. So long as China continues to behave in a cooperative rather than confrontational manner, there is no reason to believe that the smaller states would want to take the politically provocative action of identifying China as a threat.

In combination, these policy components indicate that hedging, in essence, is a two-prong approach, as it operates by simultaneously pursues two sets of mutually counteracting policies, which can be labelled as “return-maximising” and “risk-contingency” options. Such mutually counteracting options are needed to offset the perceived risks accompanied by the rise of China and the resultant structural change. The first set of options — consisting of economic-pragmatism, binding-engagement and limited-bandwagoning — serves as a form of positive offsetting which allows the hedger states to reap as many economic, diplomatic, and foreign policy benefits as possible from the big power when things are going well. They are counteracted by the risk-contingency set, which through dominance-denial and indirect balancing, seeks to enable the hedger states to minimise potential risks that might arise if the situation turns ugly.

The concurrent adoption of these mutually counteracting measures clearly reflects the type of bottom-line relations the smaller states want from China: “close, but not too close.” Having too close a relationship with a single power not only risks flexibility of action for the smaller players, it may also entangle them directly into potential major-power conflicts in future. Hence, as ASEAN states move closer to Beijing, they also simultaneously seek to strengthen their relations with other major powers, particularly the U.S.. Such a hedging approach serves as a kind of insurance policy and helps the smaller states ensure that they will not end up on the losing side regardless of which power prevails in the long-term.

One caveat is in order: while the term hedging rightly captures the multiple approaches and cautious attitudes shared by all the original ASEAN members (and for that matter, most regional states), one should not assume that these countries hold a common position vis-à-vis Beijing. As discussed earlier, there are in fact subtle differences across the states’ responses. This will be further elaborated upon in the following pages.

Table 1 illustrates Singapore’s and Malaysia’s responses to a rising China within the framework of the “balancing-hedging-bandwagoning” spectrum. Table summarises each of these policy options along the parameters of function, modus operandi and driving force.

tAbLE 1:ASEAN STATES’ RESPONSES TO THE RE-EMERGING CHINA

Countriesbalancing Strategy

(Pure form)Hedging behaviour

bandwagoning Strategy

(Pure form)

Risk-Contingency Options Return-Maximising Options

Indirect Balancing

Dominance Denial

Economic Pragmatism

Binding Engagement

Limited Bandwagoning

Singapore

Malaysia

To reject To countervail it To neutralise it To make To accommodate To draw To accept China’s power (militarily) (politically) economic it (diplomatically) strength from it China’s power profits

Degree of Power rejection neutrality Point Degree of Power Acceptance

tAbLE 2:SMALLER STATES’ POLICY OPTIONS IN RESPONSE TO POWER ASYMMETRY

Functions Modus Operandi/ Indicators Driving Force

bAnDWAGOnInG(Pure form)

“Profit first”

To reap present or future political rewards from a major power

Forging a military alliance with the major power, coordinating key foreign and defence policies

A desire to gain from perceived opportunities

LIMItED bAnDWAGOnInG

“Grasp the opportunity f or profit, but cautiously”

To reap present or future foreign policy rewards from a major power, but taking care to avoid the loss of its autonomy and any erosion of existing relationship with another dominant power

Forming political partnership with the power, coordinating external policies in selected areas, as well as deferring voluntarily to the dominant power

A desire for foreign policy returns from perceived opportunities

bInDInGEnGAGEMEnt

“Socialization matters”

To bind a major power in institutions, increase voice opportunities, familiarise the power with the established norms, and to increase the big power’s stake in the existing international order, with the ultimate goal of encouraging the dominant power to behave in a responsible and restrained manner

Creating and maintaining regularised institutional links as well as a web of economic interdependence with the dominant power through bilateral and multilateral diplomatic platforms

A desire to change the major power’s behaviour

ECOnOMIC PrAGMAtISM

“Business first”

To maximise economic benefits from its direct trade and investment links with a major power, regardless of any political differences

Establishing and maintaining direct trade and investment links with the major power, as well as entering into bilateral and regional economic cooperation (such as a free trade agreement) with that power

A desire to seek economic returns

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DOMInAnCE DEnIAL

“Ascendancy is okay, but not dominance”

To deny and to prevent the emergence of a dominant power capable of dictating hegemonic terms to smaller states

Making use of other powers’ balancing efforts to offset the growing clout of the major power, by ensuring the involvement of other powers in regional affairs, and by giving political support to others’ alliances and armaments

A desire to constrain the major power’s behaviour

InDIrECt bALAnCInG

“Just in case”

To prepare for strategic uncertainties arising from the emergence of a great power

Maintaining military ties (either a formal alliance or informal military cooperation) with another power, and modernising its own military, without explicitly identifying any specific target of its military efforts

A desire to protect itself from perceived threats

bALAnCInG (Pure form)

“Security first”

To check and counter balance the growing capability of a specific power

Entering into a military alliance with a third power and upgrading its own armament programme, for the purpose of containing a specific threat.

A desire to protect itself from perceived threats

EMPIrICAL CASES

This section compares the China policies of Malaysia and Singapore by operationalising the component parts of hedging as elucidated earlier.

Malaysia’s China PolicyThe evolution of Malaysia’s China policy illustrates how a previously hostile and distrusting relationship has transformed into a cordial political partnership over a short period of time.34 Up until the late 1980s, Malaysia still perceived China as a long-term threat, largely because of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s continued support for the outlawed Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), and also because of Beijing’s Overseas Chinese policy and its territorial claims in the South China Sea.35 Given these problems Malaysia’s China policy then was understandably highly vigilant, cautiously designed to “manage and control” what was considered to be the “most sensitive foreign relationship.”36

After the end of the Cold War, however, Malaysia adopted a much more sanguine outlook towards China. The dissolution of the CPM in 1989 effectively removed a long-standing political barrier. At the same time, the growing salience of economic performance as a source of authority for the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO)-led coalition government, along with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s foreign policy aspirations in the post-Cold War era, all contributed to the shift in Malaysia’s perception of China

from the largest security threat to that of a key economic and foreign policy partner.37 Such a perceptual change has led to an adjustment in actual policy. In addition to strengthening its long-held economic pragmatism, Malaysia gradually adopted policies that can be considered binding engagement and limited bandwagoning, which became apparent towards the second half of the 1990s.

Malaysia’s economic pragmatism is best illustrated by its leaders’ high-level visits to China, which have always been accompanied by large business delegations. These visits resulted in the signing of memoranda of understanding for many joint-venture projects. Mahathir made seven such visits during his tenure, while his successor Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi’s visit to China in May 2004 was his first bilateral visit to a non-ASEAN country after assuming his premiership. China is now Malaysia’s fourth-largest trading partner. Bilateral trade has increased more than eight-fold over the past decade, from US$2.4 billion in 1995 to US$19.3 billion in 2004.38

Binding engagement is apparent in Malaysia’s various diplomatic efforts to increase dialogue opportunities with China. Having become the first ASEAN state to forge diplomatic ties with Beijing during the Cold War, Malaysia was also among the first regional states to establish a bilateral consultative mechanism between the two countries’ foreign ministry officials as early as April 1991, in the immediate post-Cold War era.39 Beyond the bilateral level, Kuala Lumpur also tried to bind China at the regional level. Beijing’s appearance at the 24th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in July 1991 as a guest of the Malaysian government was China’s first multilateral encounter with the regional organisation. This laid the foundation for China’s subsequent participation in the burgeoning multilateral processes in the region.40 China joined the ARF in 1994, agreed to embark on the ASEAN-China SOM Consultation in 1995, and attended the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference as a dialogue partner in 1996. In addition to allowing Malaysia (and other ASEAN states) to engage the rising power at a time of strategic uncertainty, these institutions have also provided invaluable platforms for the management of the South China Sea dispute.41

Malaysia asserted its claim to part of the Spratlys archipelago in 1979. The country’s defence planners had been apprehensive of China’s intentions in the area, especially after China’s promulgation of a law on the territorial sea in 1992, and after the Philippine-China standoff over the Mischief Reef in 1995. Despite these concerns, however, the Malaysian leadership under Mahathir did not want the dispute to impede its goal of developing closer political and economic ties with China. This became apparent in the mid-1990s. In October 1995, Malaysia and China reached a consensus to reject “any form of outside interference or mediation” in the dispute42, and they signed a joint statement in May 1999 “to promote the settlement

37 Joseph Liow Chinyong, “Malaysia-China Relations in the 1990s: The Maturing of a Partnership,” Asian Survey 40:4 (2000), pp. 672–691; K.S. Nathan, “Malaysia: Reinventing the Nation,” in Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 513–548.38 Malaysia Trade and Industry Portal, Trade and Investments Statistics [accessed July 6, 2006] <http://www.miti.gov.my>39 UMNO [United Malays National Organisation] Online, “30 Years of Diplomatic Relations,” June 5, 2004, <http://www.umno-online.com>; Kethergany, “Malaysia’s China Policy”.40 Kuik Cheng-Chwee, “Multilateralism in China’s ASEAN Policy,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 27: 1 (April 2005), pp. 102-122; and “China’s Evolving Multilateralism in Asia: The Aussenpolitik and Innenpolitik Explanations,” in Kent E. Calder and Francis Fukuyama, eds., East Asian Multilateralism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), pp. 109–142. 41 Lee Lai To, China and the South China Sea Dialogues (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999).42 Liow, “Malaysia-China Relations in the 1990s,” p. 687.

34 Abdul Razak Baginda, “Malaysian Perceptions of China: From Hostility to Cordiality,” in Yee and Storey, The China Threat, pp. 227–247; Shafruddin Hashim, “Malaysian Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy: The Impact of Ethnicity,” in Karl D. Jackson et al. eds., ASEAN in Regional and Global Context (Berkeley: University of California, 1986), pp. 155–162.35 Leong, “Malaysia and The People’s Republic of China in the 1980s.”36 Chai Ching Hau, “Dasar Luar Malaysia Terhadap China: Era Dr Mahathir Mohamad [Malaysia’s Foreign Policy towards China: The Mahathir Mohamad’s Era]” (M.A. Thesis, National University of Malaysia, 2000); James Clad, “An Affair of the Head,” Far Eastern Economic Review, July 4, 1985, pp. 12–14.

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of disputes through bilateral friendly consultations and negotiations.”43 In July that same year, Malaysia opposed Filipino requests to discuss the dispute at the ARF. In August, while Manila vehemently protested Kuala Lumpur’s construction of structures on Terumbu Siput and Terumbu Peninjau, China’s response was mild. Considering the fact that the Malaysian foreign minister was in Beijing just before the construction took place, “it is a matter of conjecture,” a well-informed Malaysian analyst writes, whether the minister was “actually dispatched to Beijing in order to ‘explain’ the latest development over Malaysia’s position.”44

Malaysia’s moves, of course, were not so much about accommodating China’s position, but were calculated to promote its own interests on the Spratlys, defending territory and acquiring economic value from maritime resources. According to Joseph Liow, the fact that Malaysia’s claimed territory in the South China Sea was situated furthest from China, had kept both countries “from actual conflict over their respective claims and in turn … facilitated easier bilateral cooperation.” This was further aided by the fact that the two countries preferred “preserving the status quo” in the dispute.45

Malaysia’s limited bandwagoning behaviour is particularly apparent in the area of East Asian cooperation. Partly due to the shared worldview between the leaders of the two countries, and partly because of Beijing’s international influence, Malaysia considers China a valuable partner in pushing for its goal of fostering closer and institutionalised cooperation among the East Asian economies. This goal can be traced back to Mahathir’s East Asian Economic Grouping (EAEG) proposal in December 1990, which advocated the protection of regional countries’ collective interests in the face of trade protectionism in Europe and North America. The proposal involved ASEAN members, Indochinese states and Northeast Asian countries, but excluded the U.S. and its Australasian allies. The EAEG concept was met with strong objection by the U.S. and lukewarm response from Japan, South Korea and other ASEAN members, even when it was later renamed East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC). Malaysia was disappointed with Japan’s response as it initially hoped Japan would play the leading role in the proposed group.46 In due course, China stood out as the only major actor which lent explicit support to EAEC despite its initial hesitation.47

In 1997, China, along with Japan and South Korea, accepted ASEAN’s invitation to attend an informal meeting during the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, against the backdrop of the Asian financial crisis.48 The Summit was subsequently institutionalised as an annual cooperative mechanism among the East Asian economies, which marked the advent of the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) process. In 2002, Malaysia’s attempt to set up an APT Secretariat in Kuala Lumpur was opposed by ASEAN members, but supported by China.49

Malaysian and Chinese leaders clearly saw eye-to-eye on the need to accelerate East Asian cooperation and community building. In 2004, when Abdullah proposed to convene the first East Asia Summit (EAS) the following year, he was strongly backed by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. During the run-up to the

43 Joint Statement between the Government of Malaysia and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on Framework for Future Bilateral Cooperation, 31 May 1999. 44 Baginda, “Malaysian Perceptions of China,” p. 244.45 Liow, “Malaysia-China Relations in the 1990s,” pp. 688–689.46 Interviews with Malaysian diplomats and academia, January 2006 and February 2007.47 Stephen Leong, “The East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC): ‘Formalized’ Regionalism Being Denied,” in Bjorn Hettne, et al, National Perspectives on the New Regionalism in the South, Vol. 3 (London: MacMillan, 2000).48 Richard Stubbs, “ASEAN Plus Three: Emerging East Asian Regionalism?” Asian Survey 42: 3 (May/June 2002), p. 443.49 Interviews with Malaysian diplomats, January 2006 and March 2007.

inaugural meeting in 2005, Kuala Lumpur and Beijing initially wanted to limit the EAS membership to the 13 APT countries. Later, when it became clear that India, Australia and New Zealand would be included in the new forum, both Malaysia and China proposed that the APT would be the “main vehicle” for East Asia community building, and the EAS as “a forum for dialogue” among the regional countries.

The growing bilateral and multilateral interactions since the early 1990s have also offered opportunities for Malaysia and China to discover that they share important commonalities over many international issues. These range from human rights, the cause of the developing world, opposition to the U.S.-dominated international order, and so on. The congruence of interests in these areas has led them to support each other’s position at various international forums.50

The convergence of interests over these foreign policy issues, combined with tangible benefits accruing from closer bilateral economic ties, somewhat assuaged the Malaysian leaders earlier apprehensions about the potential security ramifications of their powerful neighbour. At an event celebrating the 30th anniversary of bilateral relations, Abdullah remarked:

Malaysia’s China policy has been a triumph of good diplomacy and good sense … I believe that we blazed a trail for others to follow. Our China policy showed that if you can look beyond your fears and inadequacies, and can think and act from principled positions, rewards will follow.51

Taking this stance, leaders from Mahathir to Abdullah have made efforts to reiterate and internalise Malaysia’s benign view of Beijing at various gatherings, often citing the example of Chinese navigator Zheng He’s peaceful voyages to the Sultanate of Malacca in the 15th century to underscore the benevolent nature of Chinese power. Thus far, the leaders’ open rhetoric had largely been matched by the country’s policy. Notwithstanding the lingering concerns over China’s long-term intentions within the Royal Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) circle, there had been no clear indication of Malaysia pursuing internal or external balancing acts against China. Liow suggests that Malaysia’s defence modernisation programme does not reflect a strategic priority that is targeted at China.52

To be sure, Malaysia has long maintained close defence ties with the U.S., and has been a participant in the Five Power Defence Arrangement (FPDA) that involves the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. In May 2005, Malaysia and the U.S. renewed the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement, first signed in 1994. These arrangements, however, should be seen a manifestation of “indirect” rather than pure balancing, given that their raison d’être had more to do with the need to prepare for contingency than to target a specific threat. As Malaysian scholar Zakaria Haji Ahmad observed, the view in Malaysia’s political leadership is that “China will not enact policies harmful to Malaysia and that it will be benign.” He adds that in Malaysian conceptions of the future, “there is no notion of the U.S. being a strategic partner to ‘balance’, counter or neutralise China’s ‘big power’ mentality and actions, should Beijing choose to actualise it.”53

50 Ibid., pp. 679–680. 51 Keynote Address by YAB Dato’ Seri Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi, Prime Minister of Malaysia, to the China-Malaysia Economic Conference, Bandar Sunway, February 24, 2004.52 Liow, “Malaysia-China Relations in the 1990s,” pp. 682–683.53 Zakaria Haji Ahmad, “Malaysia,” in Evelyn Goh, ed., Betwixt and Between: Southeast Asian Strategic Relations with the U.S. and China, IDSS Monograph No. 7 (Singapore: IDSS, 2005), pp. 58–59.

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To Malaysian leaders, the idea of a China threat could prove a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Mahathir once remarked: “Why should we fear China? If you identify a country as your future enemy, it becomes your present enemy — because then they will identify you as an enemy and there will be tension.”54 In this regard, the defence cooperation memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by Malaysia and China in September 2005 was significant not only because it institutionalised the bilateral defence ties, but also because it signified that Malaysia was now more willing to see China as a security partner than a security threat.

That limited bandwagoning has become part of Malaysia’s China policy does not imply that Malaysia favours a Beijing-dominated regional order. In fact, dominance denial continues to be an unwavering goal for Malaysia, as indicated by the country’s efforts to maintain close relations with all powers. In 2006, Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak remarked that the reality of China’s rise was “by no means a reflection of [Malaysia’s acceptance of ] fatalism”, nor did it indicate that Malaysia was “adopting a subservient position towards China.”55 Given Malaysia’s sensitivity about sovereignty and equality, along with the complexities of its domestic ethnic structure — one-fourth of its population is ethnic Chinese) — it seems reasonable to expect that Malaysia’s bandwagoning behaviour will remain limited in the foreseeable future.

Singapore’s China PolicyThe peculiarity of Singapore’s China policy is that, it is by design a highly ambivalent one — warm in economic and diplomatic ties but distanced in political and strategic spheres.56 Specifically while it concurs with Malaysia about the value of economic pragmatism and binding engagement in dealing with China, it has firmly rejected limited-bandwagoning as an option.

Economic gain has always been a key driving force behind Singapore’s China policy under the rule of the People’s Action Party (PAP). As far back as the 1960s and through the 1980s, Singapore already pursued an economically opportunistic policy, notwithstanding political differences. The island-state actively promoted bilateral economic relations, especially after the signing of the bilateral trade agreement in December 1979 as well as the exchange of trade representatives in July 1981. The launch of China’s open-door policy in 1978, together with Singapore’s economic recession in the mid-1980s and the PAP government’s plan to develop a “second wing” of the Singaporean economy, provided additional incentives for Singapore to exploit growing economic opportunities in China.57 Largely because of the complementary nature of the two economies, Singapore has long been China’s largest trading partner in ASEAN.

Singapore’s economic pragmatism persisted through the post Cold War era. Its initial objective of economic gain, however, was now meshed with the goal of engagement. Together with other ASEAN partners, Singapore’s engagement policy was implemented both through economic incentives and

54 I am Still Here: Asiaweek’s Complete Interview with Mahathir Mohamad,” Asiaweek, May 9, 1997, available at http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/97/0509/cs3.html55 Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Tun Abd Razak, “Strategic Outlook for East Asia: A Malaysian Perspective,” Keynote Address to the Malaysia and East Asia International Conference, Kuala Lumpur, 9 March 2006.56 Part of this section is drawn from Cheng-Chwee Kuik, “Shooting Rapids in a Canoe: Singapore and Great Powers,” in Bridget Welsh, et al., eds., Impressions of the Goh Chok Tong Years in Singapore (Singapore: NUS Press, 2010).57 Chia, “China’s Economic Relations with ASEAN Countries”; Lee Lai To, “The Lion and the Dragon: A View on Singapore-China Relations,” Journal of Contemporary China 10:28 (2001), pp. 415–425.

regional institutions such as the ARF.58 By binding Beijing in a cooperative framework, Singapore hoped to give China a stake in regional peace and stability.59 As Evelyn Goh notes: “Singapore wants to see China enmeshed in regional norms, acting responsibly and upholding the regional status quo.”60

Why does Singapore care so much about the regional status quo, and how is China factored into the equation? To begin with, Singapore is a tiny state with an acute sense of vulnerability. This could be attributed to this miniscule size, limited natural resources, demographic structure and geopolitical circumstances. As Michael Leifer observed, Singapore has, since 1965, addressed its vulnerability with a three-fold approach: the promotion of economic interdependence, pursuit of armament and alliance, and the cultivation of a balance of power at the regional level.61 Each of these approaches is in turn subject to the following pillars of “regional status quo-ness”: regional peace and stability, freedom and safety of sea-lanes, a cohesive ASEAN and a stable distribution of power. For instance, if there was no safe and free navigation of commercial vessels, Singapore’s economic viability would be severely affected; if ASEAN was weak and fractured, Singapore would not be able to play a disproportionate role in external affairs; and if there was no stable balance of power, Singapore’s autonomy would be compromised by the emergence of a dominant power that was likely to limit the strategic manoeuvrability of smaller states.

This explains Singapore’s concern over the Taiwan Strait, the Spratlys, and Beijing’s escalating power. Given its high dependence on maritime trade and sea- lanes of communication, Singapore becomes apprehensive whenever there is any rising tension in the Taiwan Strait. During the 1996 crisis, Singaporean officials feared that any armed conflict in the region would “totally destabilise foreign trade and investment.”62 Similarly, although Singapore is not a claimant to the Spratlys, it is concerned that the dispute will have a direct bearing on the safety of navigation in the South China Sea.63 Moreover, the Spratlys illustrates the extent to which China is willing to abide by regional norms and international law.

To Singapore, there is little doubt that China will be powerful enough to alter the strategic landscape of Asia. The question, however, is less about capability than intention — i.e. how a robust China will exercise its newfound power in the region.

In view of the uncertainty over Beijing’s intentions, Singapore has cautiously adopted indirect balancing as a “fallback position” should the engagement policy fail.64 Such a position is very much a reflection of a “classic anticipatory state” as described by Yuen-Foong Khong, thus: “the time frame for Singapore’s ruminations about China is not now, or even five years down the line; it is twenty to thirty years hence.” PAP leaders therefore tend to “think in terms of possible scenarios for the future and how they might affect Singapore.”65 Given Singapore’s relative geographical distance from China as well as the absence of territorial disputes, China does not pose any direct threat to the city-state. Singapore’s musings about

58 Khong, “Singapore”.59 Whiting, “ASEAN Eyes China.”60 Evelyn Goh, “Singapore’s Reaction to a Rising China: Deep Engagement and Strategic Adjustment,” in Ho and Ku, China and Southeast Asia, p. 313.61 Michael Leifer, Singapore’s Foreign Policy: Coping with Vulnerability (New York: Routledge, 2000).62 Whiting, “ASEAN Eyes China,” p. 308.63 Storey, “Singapore and the Rise of China,” in Yee and Storey, The China Threat, p. 213.64 Ibid., Wayne Bert, The United States, China and Southeast Asian Security: A Changing of the Guard (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), p. 180.65 Khong, “Singapore,” p. 113.

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China thus are mostly cast over the mid- and long-term, and revolve around whether Beijing’s behaviour will disrupt regional stability and prosperity, constrain Singapore’s policy choices or drive a wedge between Southeast Asian states that would undermine ASEAN cohesion.66

Singapore’s quintessence as an anticipatory state is clearly demonstrated - by a decision made by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in the immediate post-Cold War era. In August 1989, when it appeared that the U.S. might have to close the Clark and Subic bases in the Philippines, Singapore announced that it would grant the Americans access to its bases. Lee’s move was driven by his fear that the U.S. withdrawal would create a power vacuum in Asia Pacific, which would lead to competition and conflict among regional powers seeking to fill the vacuum. If that happened, the ensuing instability would threaten Singapore’s survival. To forestall this, Lee decided to “stick with what [had] worked so far,” i.e. the American military presence that he saw as “essential for the continuation of international law and order in East Asia.”67

While Lee’s decision addressed strategic uncertainty in general rather than China in particular, Beijing’s subsequent action over the Mischief Reef a few years later gave rise to the strategic uncertainty he was worried about. In 1998, Singapore further strengthened bilateral security ties with the U.S. by constructing a new pier at its Changi Naval Base designed specially to accommodate U.S. aircraft carriers.

While Singapore’s indirect balancing has relied primarily on its military cooperation with the U.S., it would be wrong to link Singapore–U.S. ties entirely to the China. In fact, Singapore’s recent efforts to solidify its collaboration with the U.S. have less to do with China than its new concerns over terrorism. According to Evelyn Goh, Singapore’s concept of security changed significantly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., as well as the arrest of members of the Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI) group in Singapore in 2002. Terrorism has now been identified as the key security threat. Consequently, the new counter-terrorism agenda now acted “as stronger glue for the Singapore-U.S. strategic partnership than the China challenge.”68

Such developments, however, do not mean that the China has been relegated to the sidelines of Singapore’s strategic concerns. In fact, despite Beijing’s charm diplomacy in recent years, Singapore still cautiously guards against any potential repercussions of an increasingly China. The tumultuous Sino-Singaporean diplomatic feud that erupted right after then Deputy Premier Lee Hsien Loong’s visit to Taipei in 2004 might have heightened Singapore’s trepidation about the ramifications of a too powerful China.

Finally, Singapore’s policy is also marked by its rejection of limited bandwagoning. This is owing to its demographic profile and geopolitical complexity. Ever since Singapore gained independence after its unpleasant separation from the Federation of Malaysia in 1965, the island, with an ethnic Chinese population of 76 percent, has been reluctant to be seen as the “third China,” especially by its larger neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia, which populations are predominantly of Malay ethnicity. During the Cold War, Singapore’s open declaration that it would be the last ASEAN state to establish diplomatic ties with Beijing was intended to dispel the image that it would be the “front post of China”69. Even after the

66 Goh, Meeting the China Challenge, p. 13.67 Khong, “Coping with Strategic Uncertainties,” pp. 181–182.68 Goh, Meeting the China Challenge, pp. 13–15.69 Suryadinata, China and the ASEAN States, p. 81.

end of the Cold War, Singapore still took care to downplay ethnic affinity in its bilateral relations with China, and to avoid leaving any impression that it was promoting China’s interests in the region.70 For this reason, Singapore set “a self-imposed limit” on the extent to which it could forge political ties with Beijing.71 Hence, bandwagoning behaviour, even in limited form, does not appear to be a likely option for Singapore.

COnCLuSIOn

Offsetting Risks for Domestic Authority ConsolidationThe preceding discussion suggests that the responses of Malaysia and Singapore to a rising China cannot be adequately explained by neo-realism. In the first place, neo-realism does not sufficiently capture the range of state options and functions in the face of power asymmetries. Neo-realists maintain that when faced with a rising power, states are likely to opt for internal and external balancing acts, to reduce threat. This discussion, however, suggests that state options are not confined to balancing (and its antithesis, bandwagoning), but may include mixed strategies such as hedging, which involves a combination of both military and non-military options, with particular reliance on multilateral institutions. This discussion also reveals that state functions are not limited to threat-reduction, but may involve the concurrent goals of risk-contingency and return-maximising. This is not to say that neo-realism is not relevant in explaining small-state responses to a rising power. It merely suggests that the paradigm is more useful in accounting for a situation in which states are confronted by an immediate security threat. In circumstances where the security of the states is not directly at stake — like the two cases at hand — neo-realism seems to lose much of its explanatory strength.

Moreover, neo-realism also cannot explain the variation in state responses. As discussed, the growth of China’s relative power since the 1990s induced Malaysia to move closer to Beijing by embracing limited-bandwagoning, the very same structural force did not inspire Singapore to the same actions. It thus follows that the structural factor per se has no inherent consequences on state behaviour. There are other unit-level factors that may have affected the state’s differing responses. The importance of domestic factors is further highlighted by the intriguing fact that Malaysia was more inclined than Singapore was to accommodate China. Considering Malaysia’s past problems and the pending Spratlys dispute with China, one would expect Malaysia to be more wary of China than Singapore would be as Singapore did not have any overlapping territorial claims with Beijing and was geographically farther away. Empirical records as discussed reveal just the opposite.

This is where the regime legitimation proposition comes in. It explains the variation in the responses of Malaysia and Singapore to the rise of China to be largely a function of the differing pathways of domestic authority consolidation, i.e. the differing sources through which the respective ruling elites seek to enhance their authority and rule at home.

70 Khong, “Singapore,” p. 119; Goh, “Singapore’s Reaction to a Rising China,” p. 316.71 Khong, “Singapore,” p. 119.

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In the case of Malaysia, the substance of its China policy mirrors the key sources of the UMNO-led coalition government’s political foundation. These include the promotion of Malay ethnic dominance, economic growth, electoral performance, national sovereignty and international standing.72 Pure bandwagoning (an across-the-board alignment and an acceptance of hierarchical relations) is a non-starter for the Malay-dominated regime, as the option would likely result in an imbalance in domestic political configuration and an erosion of external sovereignty. The limited form of bandwagoning, however, is desirable and vital, for the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition government. Given Malaysia’s multi-racial structure, any politically significant economic performance requires the ruling BN to concurrently attain two goals: the improvement of the Malays’ economic welfare and the enlargement of the overall economic pie for the non-Malay groups.73 For the ruling elites, this is indeed a key to consolidating their electoral base. In this regard, a closer relationship with Beijing is crucial for Malaysia not only because it boosts the bilateral trade and investment flows, but also because China’s support will strengthen Malaysia’s ability to promote a new economic order for East Asia, with the ultimate goal of reducing the effects of the volatile global economy on its national economic performance. This ambition, if realised, is expected to elevate Malaysia’s regional and international standing, which along with other legitimation pathways, would help consolidate its electoral base. Hence, a pure form of balancing against Beijing is not only unjustifiable, but would prove harmful to the BN regime’s interests because such an option would call for a full-fledged alliance with the U.S., which would in turn reduce the credibility of the BN’s claim of pursuing an “independent” external policy for Malaysia.

In the case of Singapore’s China policy, the rejection of limited bandwagoning despite the enthusiasm for binding engagement and economic pragmatism is best explained by the very foundation of the PAP elites’ political power, i.e. the imperative to cope with the island-state’s inherited vulnerability.74 Singapore’s close economic and diplomatic relations with the China would serve to attain this goal (by contributing to Singapore’s sustainable economic vitality and its regional stability), but a strict sense of political and strategic partnership would not. In fact, any bandwagoning posture towards China would only increase Singapore’s vulnerability by causing its two larger neighbours to be suspicious. For a “little red dot” that has been viewed as a Chinese island in a Malay sea, such a scenario is likely to destabilise Singapore’s immediate external environment and divert the attention of PAP elite away more crucial domestic economic tasks.

This study is significant for policy analysis. Theoretically, placing regime legitimation in the lexicon of foreign policy studies could help bridge the analytically misleading “divide” between IR and comparative politics as branches of knowledge. Specifically, in highlighting sources of regime legitimacy — rather than security or utility — as the key source of foreign policy choice, this study hopes to sharpen the focus of national interest analysis. As discussed above, whether and when a state chooses to pursue a security-maximising or utility-maximising behaviour depends on the ruling regime, which decides what the “national” interests are and how best to pursue them.

72 On political legitimation in Malaysia, see William Case, “Malaysia: Aspects and Audiences of Legitimacy,” in Alagappa, Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia, pp. 69–107.73 Liow, “Malaysia-China Relations in the 1990s,” p. 676.74 Leifer, Singapore’s Foreign Policy; Cho-Oon Khong, “Singapore: Political Legitimacy through Managing Comformity,” in Alagappa, Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia, pp. 108–135.

Given the fact that few states are adopting pure forms of balancing or bandwagoning vis-à-vis China, conceptualising the hedging strategy as a spectrum of policy options is a more realistic way to observe the change or continuity in a particular state’s policy choices of states over time. It allows policy analysts to ponder the possibility, direction and conditions of a horizontal shift along the building blocks of the spectrum — for instance, from indirect balancing leftward to pure balancing, or from limited bandwagoning rightward to pure bandwagoning. Considering that states are more likely to adjust their strategic posture gradually, such a “transitional” outlook will be useful in monitoring the vicissitudes of states’ alignment choices amid the emerging structural changes in the 21st century.

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Conceptualising the Chinese World:Jinan University, Lee Kong Chian,and the Nanyang Connection, 1900 – 42By Leander Seah

AbStrACt

Historians of modern China and Chinese migration have inadequately conceptualised the Chinese world. Historically significant maritime activities have been incorrectly confined to the periphery of studies on modern China. Scholars of Chinese migration have adopted the contradictory approach of using a Sino-centric “Chinese diaspora” theory to examine local communities in destination countries. The under-explored area of education can help to address these issues. It can provide a more satisfactory understanding of the Chinese world.

This report uses Jinan University (Jinan Daxue) as a case study to do so. Founded in 1906, Jinan was the first school in China dedicated to the education of Nanyang (Southern Ocean or South Seas) Chinese migrants and their offspring. A region which is now equated with Southeast Asia, the Nanyang was the main destination for Chinese migration. Jinan thus served as the cornerstone of governmental efforts to reach out to such migrants. Education in modern Chinese history should not be contextualised only in terms of late Qing modernisation.

My selection of an educational institution also rectifies the overemphasis on business activities in Chinese migration studies. I am primarily interested in analysing the experiences of Jinan students and intellectuals. Many of them traversed the two regions of China and the Nanyang even as they were influenced by non-Chinese ideas and people. One prominent example was the famous rubber magnate, Lee Kong Chian (Li Guangqian). My trans-regional interpretation of the school’s history differs from the official narrative, which has focused on developments on the mainland. I examine in particular the Nanyang connection in this report. A trans-regional approach privileges neither China nor Chinese migrant communities, yet such balance has hitherto been absent from the historiographies of modern China and Chinese migration. My research ultimately calls for a holistic conceptualisation of the Chinese world, which would have considerable contemporary significance in light of recent debates on the global role of China and Chinese identity.

PrEFACE

Through my academic training at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) in Philadelphia, United States, I have gradually realised that historians of modern China and Chinese migration have inadequately conceptualised the Chinese world. Historically significant maritime activities have been incorrectly confined to the periphery of studies on modern China. Scholars

4.

1 For the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University stipend levels, refer to these websites: <http://www.nus. edu.sg/registrar/sfau/gd-nusrs.html> and <http://www.ntu.edu.sg/GradStudies/Research+Programmes/Fees+and+Financial+Assistance/ research+scholarship.htm>.

of Chinese migration have adopted the contradictory approach of using a Sino-centric “Chinese diaspora” theory to examine local communities in destination countries. With these issues in mind, I selected a case study based on an educational institution for my Ph.D. dissertation topic at Penn.

I chose to study the history of Jinan University shortly after my arrival in the US in late August 2005. Jinan’s main claim to fame since its founding in 1906 has been its status as the first school in China dedicated to the education of Nanyang Chinese migrants and their offspring. Yet my focus differed from the perspective of the institution’s administration. I was interested in the experiences of Jinan students and researchers because they had traversed China and the Nanyang, even as they had been influenced by non-Chinese ideas and people. This focus would, I felt, help me to attain a more balanced understanding of the Chinese world, one which is neither China-centred nor Nanyang-centric.

The November 2005 launch of the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship (LKCRF) was fortuitous. I found out about the Fellowship from the websites of Singapore newspapers through which I have always been keeping track of developments in my home country despite my residence in the US. I thought that the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library’s (LKCRL) holdings would be ideal for my research due to the large collection of sources on Singapore and Southeast Asia. The Nanyang, which features prominently in my dissertation, was not only the main destination for Chinese migration, but was also a region that is now equated with Southeast Asia. Furthermore, I learnt from the grapevine that the National Library Board (NLB) would be organising an exhibition on Tan Kah Kee and Lee Kong Chian. I was thus very interested in applying for the LKCRF because Lee Kong Chian had been the epitome of the successful Jinan student and alumnus. The financial terms of the LKCRF are generous for foreigners and overseas Singaporeans. I found the S$3,000 transportation package to be particularly helpful given the high cost of round-trip airfares between the US and Singapore. While I was satisfied with my package, perhaps the NLB could consider modifying the monthly stipend and monthly housing allowance amounts such that the former would comprise S$1,500 and the latter S$2,000. This adjustment would make the LKCRF monthly stipend as competitive as that offered by several universities in Singapore.1 As for other LKCRF terms, while the NLB was kind enough to allow me to hold the LKCRF for approximately three months, the brochure states that the Fellowship has to be held for six months. This may be an issue for Ph.D. candidates at North American universities because many of them may be fully funded during the academic year and are consequently free agents only during the three-month-long summer (June-August). This being so, the NLB might wish to consider advertising that there is some flexibility in terms of the time period for successful LKCRF applicants on a case-by-case basis, subject to a fixed total stipend package. I was very grateful for the provision of other privileges. The laptop provided by the NLB was fantastic since it greatly facilitated my work, including the preparation of Microsoft Powerpoint slides for the public and internal lectures. I also appreciated the compactness of the laptop. Furthermore, I have nothing but praise for the work-station which was furnished. Fast internet access was very useful, and my work-station was conveniently located near LKCRL collections. The work-station layout was great: it was spacious and

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2 Wang Gungwu, Community and Nation: China, Southeast Asia and Australia (St Leonards: Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen & Unwin Pty ltd, 1992), 29.3 See table 3 in Adam McKeown, “Global Chinese Migration, 1840-1940,” paper delivered at ISSCO V: the 5th Conference for the International Society for the Study of the Chinese Overseas, Elsinore (Helsingor), Denmark, 10-14 May 2004, 5.

comfortable, and I appreciated the inclusion of drawers for storage of more sensitive items to be kept away from the public eye. The lighting and temperature were also ideal. I would also like to express my thanks for the extension of photocopying privileges to me, without which I would have been unable to complete my research. It was indeed very convenient to have photocopying facilities on almost every floor of the LKCRL. Finally, I enjoyed the LKCRL’s flexible opening hours, especially the fact that the library is open even on weekends. It was a wonderful experience to do research at such a library. I especially enjoyed the new NLB building and the LKCRL’s spacious shelving arrangement. The latter made it much easier to locate books.

Although the physical facilities at the LKCRL undoubtedly facilitated my research, I was most touched by the assistance rendered by the NLB administrators, staff and librarians. They made me feel very welcome after almost two years away from Singapore. I would especially like to thank Ms Ngian Lek Choh for her support and for attending my public lecture; Mrs Judy Ng for her support and advice; Mr Lai Yeen Pong for putting me in touch with an invaluable contact; Mr Johnson Paul, Dr Narinder Kaur, and Publishing & Research Services for their assistance, friendliness and patience; Ms Jane Wee for her suggestions and help; and Ms Ang Seow Leng, master of ceremonies for my internal talk and public lecture.

During the course of my stay at the NLB, Ms Wee Tong Bao served as my designated research assistant. She was simply first-class. She worked hard and was very helpful. She displayed much initiative in actively recommending (without my prior prompting) titles relevant to my research. Additionally, she served as liaison between Mr Lai and me in order that I would be placed in touch with Mr Xing Jizhong, a distinguished elderly writer in Singapore. This was absolutely crucial because Mr Xing was a very important figure in my research since he was possibly the most senior surviving Jinan alumnus in Singapore. Ms Wee also introduced me to the various facilities and collections at the LKCRL. She facilitated various logistics procedures (such as the setting up of the laptop), assisted in the efficient cataloguing and retrieval of books (e.g., RCLOS and RU/Repository), and helped to fulfil my inter-library loan request.

With regard to mentorship, I treated Ms Wee as a junior colleague given her previous research expertise. In fact, I had specifically requested that she be assigned as my research assistant in light of her excellent Master of Arts dissertation on Chinese education in pre-Second World War Singapore. I had found this thesis to be highly original, very well-written and thorough in terms of research. Due to my interest in her dissertation vis-à-vis my own research topic, I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to share ideas, bibliographical suggestions and so forth, with Ms Wee while I was based at the NLB. Besides, where academic mentorship is concerned, I personally believe in intellectual exchange rather than a hierarchical approach in order to ensure that both parties benefit the most from the relationship. My research project entailed a holistic conceptualisation of the Chinese world. I thus adopted a trans-regional framework in order to highlight interactions between China and the Nanyang against the backdrop of Western and Japanese influences. My trans-regional perspective was inspired by recent debates on trans-nationalism, which have explored the fluid movements of people and organisations across geopolitical boundaries during the more recent global age. The term “trans-regional” was, however, more suitable for my research. This was because of my earlier chronological focus, 1900-42. Furthermore, China had not been a nation-state before 1911, and there had been hardly any nations in the Nanyang before post-World War II decolonisation. Instead, I considered both of them as “regions.”

I thought that the best way to illustrate the trans-regional approach would be to focus on the lives of Jinan students and intellectuals. This was because they had traversed regions, moving freely between China and the Nanyang while interacting with non-Chinese people and influences. Researchers who had worked at Jinan had founded the field of “Nanyang studies” (Nanyang Yanjiu). They had subsequently migrated to the Nanyang, which had become their new base of operations. As for the school’s students, they had contributed greatly to the historical fabric of both China and the Nanyang despite their relatively small numbers.

I was especially interested in personalities from Singapore, which meant that the LKCRL’s holdings would be most useful for my research. While the Nanyang had comprised such other places as the Dutch East Indies and Malaya, Singapore had been historically part of the Singapore-Malaya (Xinma) entity that had constituted the “heart of the Nanyang.”2 Statistics further supported my choice: in his study of global Chinese migration over a century from 1840 to 1940, Adam McKeown has estimated that out of the 19-22 million Chinese who migrated to destinations around the world, almost one-third migrated to the Straits Settlements (of which Singapore was a part) and Malaya.3 I thought that a stay at the NLB would enable me to corroborate material found in Singapore with documents to be located in China during further research forays in 2008 and 2009. This method is innovative because scholars of modern China have primarily used archives on the mainland due to the continental focus of their research. Furthermore, their counterparts for Chinese migration have consulted holdings in mainly destination countries.

My two-pronged research strategy combines both approaches. This reflects my dissertation’s holistic conceptualisation of the Chinese world, which avoids overemphasis on either China or Chinese migrant communities. I found the NLB’s collection of publications to be fairly comprehensive in relation to my research topic. The LKCRL’s works were very useful, particularly the material in the RSING, RSEA, RCO, RCLOS, R (Chinese and English) and microfilm collections. The internet access at my work-station greatly facilitated my searches as I did not have to repeatedly stand at a terminal to look for call numbers and titles. As for the database access, I did not rely much on this. Regarding inter-library loans, I submitted only one request for a book from the University of Hong Kong. Everything else was available at the LKCRL. I began my research by searching for Jinan publications since the school’s history from the spine of my study. The LKCRL owns some titles important for my research. These included: Nanyang huaqiao huiyi

baogao (Shanghai: Guoli Jinan Daxue Nanyang Wenhua Shiyebu, 1930), although I already possessed a copy obtained via a loan from a North American library; Bainian Jinan shi 1906-2006 edited by Zhang Xiaohui (Guangzhou: Jinan Daxue Chubanshe, 2006), which was unavailable for loan at the time of my stay but which I later gained access to courtesy of a contact in Singapore; and Nanyang qingbao, a key periodical which had been published during the 1930s by Jinan and which had dealt with current affairs on the Nanyang (available on microfilm at the LKCRL). I also managed to obtain another crucial publication

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from the University of Hong Kong using the LKCRL’s inter-library loan facility: Jinan Daxue Tushuguan Huaqiao Huaren Wenxian Xinxi Zhongxin, ed., Jinan Daxue guanzang huaqiao huaren tushu ziliao mulu

(Guangzhou: Jinan Daxue Tushuguan Huaqiao Huaren Wenxian Xinxi Zhongxin, 1995). Yet, the NLB may wish to purchase additional Jinan titles (some of which contain biographical data on Lee Kong Chian and other Singapore Jinan alumni) which are unavailable in the LKCRL. I had borrowed them from North American libraries prior to my stay in Singapore. Examples include (see purchase list for full version) official Jinan histories such as Jinan Daxue Xiaoshi Bianxiezu, Jinan xiaoshi 1906-1996 (Guangzhou: Jinan Daxue Chubanshe, 1996); Zhou Xiaozhong’s Jinan yishi (Guangzhou: Jinan Daxue Chubanshe, 1996); and Jinan ren, vol. 1, ed. Zhong Yekun (Guangzhou: Jinan Daxue Chubanshe, 1996). Additionally, there exist primary sources such as Jinan Daxue Huaqiao Yanjiusuo (Institute of Overseas Chinese Studies, Jinan University), ed., Jinan xiaoshi, 1906-1949: Ziliao xuanji (Selected Source Material on History of Jinan University,

1906-1949), 2 vols. (Guangzhou: Jinan Daxue Huaqiao Yanjiusuo, 1983); and Jinan Xuetang xianxing

zhangcheng (Nanjing: Jinan Xuetang, c. 1911). Also, several volumes in the Huaqiao jiaoyu series published by Jinan in the early 1980s may constitute useful resources for scholars working on education in China and among Chinese communities worldwide.

Regarding material specifically dealing with Lee Kong Chian, I found that the LKCRL possesses a formidable array of such works, including List of Lee Kong Chian Documents, compiled by Tadao Harada in 1979; Zheng Bingshan’s Li Guangqian zhuan (Beijing: Zhongguo Huaqiao Chubanshe, 1997); and Li Yuanrong’s Li Guangqian zhuan (Hong Kong: Mingliu Chubanshe, 1998). I consulted all these works.

However, I found a few noticeable gaps in the LKCRL collection. In particular, the LKCRL may wish to consider checking out these collections: the collection of newspaper articles on Lee Kong Chian available in the National University of Singapore Central Library Reference Office Personality Files Collection (NB: information in these articles is frequently unreliable; the best version of the facts is available from my BiblioAsia article and the full report below since I spent much time carefully corroborating biographical data); and Quek Soo Ngoh’s “Lee Kong Chian: Contributions to Education in Singapore, 1945-1965,” unpublished B.A. Hons. thesis, Department of History, National University of Singapore, 1986/87 (I think that this thesis would be absolutely crucial to any LKCRL exhibition on Lee Kong Chian). My project emphasised the examination of Jinan’s history from the perspective of Singapore-based Jinan alumni. As such, locating sources pertaining to their experiences was a primary research agenda. Relevant material which I found at the LKCRL encompassed a very impressive collection of Singapore Jinan Alumni Association souvenir magazines. Even so, despite possessing the issues commemorating the 150th anniversary of Singapore’s founding as well as the 44th, 46th, 50th and 65th anniversaries of the Association, the LKCRL collection does not contain the issue celebrating the Association’s 60th anniversary. I have therefore included Xinjiapo Jinan Xiaoyouhui chengli liushi zhounian jinian tekan 1941-2001 (Singapore: Xinjiapo Jinan Xiaoyouhui, 2001) in the suggested purchase list. Two other categories of sources helped me to better understand the experiences of the Jinan alumni. First, I looked for works containing biographical data at the LKCRL. These included several important publication series such as the three-volume Dongnanya renwuzhi (Who’s Who in Southeast Asia) edited by Xu Jiaozheng

(Koh Kow Chiang) (Singapore: Xu Jiaozheng, 1965-1969) and the four-volume Xingma renwuzhi (Who’s Who

in South East Asia) edited by Song Zhemei (Sung Chek Mei) (Hong Kong: Dongnanya Yanjiusuo, 1969-1990). Other avenues encompassed publications by Jinan alumni, like Tan Ee Leong (Chen Weilong)’s Dongnanya

huayi wenren zhuanlue (Singapore: South Seas Society, 1977), and the LKCRL’s excellent newspaper collection. I regret that I did not have the time to consult the latter thoroughly since I was in Singapore for only about three months. Consequently, I had to resort to “surgical strikes” by selecting, for example, several articles on Jinan from the 1920s issues of the Nanyang Siang Pau (Nanyang shangbao). I found another category of sources to be most useful in the compilation of information on the Jinan alumni. Such works helped me to understand the various networks connecting these people.4 The LKCRL collection is rather comprehensive in this respect.5 Useful sources comprised: 1) commemorative magazines of Singapore schools (since several Jinan alumni served on their boards or taught there) such as Tao Nan (Daonan or Toh Lam), Yeung Ching (Yangzheng), Chung Cheng (Zhongzheng) and Chung Hwa Girls’ (Zhonghua); 2) Singapore clan association publications, including those for the Hokien (this is the original spelling as opposed to the commonly used “Hokkien”) (Fujian), Hui Ann (Huian), Foochow (Fuzhou), Eng Choon (Yongchun), Eng Teng (Yongding) and Khek (Kejia) huiguan; and 3) the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s commemorative publications. Besides alumni who had studied at Jinan, my project also examined the contributions of various intellectuals to the founding and flowering of Nanyang studies at Jinan. The LKCRL in Singapore was an ideal location for my research on this field because of two reasons. First, Nanyang studies later became the Chinese-language track of Southeast Asian studies, and, second, after working at Jinan, these intellectuals had moved to Singapore, where they had pioneered a new approach in Nanyang studies by studying the Nanyang from the region itself rather than from the perspective of China.

I extracted a fair amount of information on these intellectuals’ experiences from my Master of Arts dissertation (two copies are available in the LKCRL). However, I used my stay at the LKCRL to search for sources that would shed further light on the influence of Japanese Nanyo studies (“Nanyo” being essentially the Japanese term for the Nanyang) on the emergence of Nanyang studies at Jinan. The LKCRL possesses a good collection on this topic, including the works of Mark R. Peattie, a leading historian on the Nanyo. The Library even owns some interesting primary sources such as Nanyang yu Riben, originally written by Inoue Kiyoshi in 1913 but translated into Chinese by Huang Shuaizhen (Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju, 1914).6 But one key work is missing: Shimizu Hajime’s Southeast Asia in Modern Japanese Thought: Essays on Japanese-

Southeast Asian Relationship, 1880-1940 (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Prefectural University, 1997).7 This book is important because Shimizu remains one of the leading historians in Japan to have published on Japanese interest in the Nanyo.

4 I have discussed some of these networks in my two NLB talks (public and internal), and my BiblioAsia article. I will further illuminate them in my Ph.D. dissertation, which will be completed in May 2010.5 Titles missing from the LKCRL collection have been added to the purchase list.6 I will examine the ramifications of such translations on the founding of Nanyang studies at Jinan during 1927 in my Ph.D. dissertation.7 The LKCRL has a much earlier version of this work, which was published in 1980 under a different sub-title.

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Finally, while being based at the LKCRL, I looked for material related to the broader historical backdrop of my project, particularly in terms of education in Singapore and in China. The LKCRL has a fairly comprehensive collection of works, both in English and Chinese, pertaining to the former. Some titles which I consulted were: D.D. Chelliah’s “A History of the Educational Policy of the Straits Settlements with Recommendations for a New System Based on Vernaculars,” D.Phil. dissertation, University of London, 1940; and Xu Suwu’s Xinjiapo huaqiao jiaoyu quanmao (Singapore: Nanyang Shuju Zongjinghuo, 1950).

Education in China was very much a different story. I discovered that the LKCRL owns several gems, such as volumes from the Zhonghua Minguo shi dangan ziliao huibian series. This series consists of primary Republican-era documents reprinted by the Second Historical Archives of China in Nanjing. The LKCRL also has a very useful book by Ding Zhipin entitled Zhongguo jin qishinian lai jiaoyu jishi (Taipei: Guoli Bianyiguan, 1961). Yet there remain gaps in the NLB collection. For example, the LKCRL does not own several primary sources available in North American libraries. Such works include the periodical Jiaoyu

zazhi, which had been published in Shanghai by the Shangwu Yinshuguan (Commercial Press) from 1909 onwards, and various China Ministry of Education gazette series for the late Qing and Republican periods (see purchase list). The LKCRL also does not own a number of works by well-known educators in China like He Bingsong (refer to the purchase list). I was aware of their significance because these men had played instrumental roles in Jinan’s history. The LKCRL may also wish to consider purchasing Who’s Who in China,

1918-1950 (Hong Kong: Chinese Materials Center, 1982) for further biographical data on such important historical figures.

rESEArCH FInDInGS

IntroductionHistorians of modern China and Chinese migration have inadequately conceptualised the Chinese world. Historically significant maritime activities have been incorrectly confined to the periphery of studies on modern China. Scholars of Chinese migration have adopted the contradictory approach of using a Sino-centric “Chinese diaspora” theory to examine local communities in destination countries. The under-explored area of education can help to address these issues. It can provide a more satisfactory understanding of the Chinese world. This report uses Jinan University 暨南大學 (Jinan Daxue) as a case study to do so.8 Founded in 1906, Jinan was the first school in China dedicated to the education of Nanyang 南洋 (Southern Ocean or South Seas) Chinese migrants and their offspring. A region which is now equated with Southeast Asia, the Nanyang was the main destination for Chinese migration. Jinan thus served as the cornerstone of governmental efforts to reach out to such migrants. Education in modern Chinese history should not be contextualised only in terms of late Qing 清 modernisation.

My selection of an educational institution also rectifies the overemphasis on business activities in Chinese migration studies. I am primarily interested in analysing the experiences of Jinan students and intellectuals. Many of them traversed the two regions of China and the Nanyang even as they were influenced by non-

Chinese ideas and people. One prominent example was the famous rubber magnate, Lee Kong Chian 李光前 (Li Guangqian). My trans-regional interpretation of the school’s history differs from the official narrative, which has focused on developments on the mainland. I examine in particular the Nanyang connection in this report. A trans-regional approach privileges neither China nor Chinese migrant communities, yet such balance has hitherto been absent from the historiographies of modern China and Chinese migration. My research ultimately calls for a holistic conceptualisation of the Chinese world, which would have considerable contemporary significance in light of recent debates on the global role of China and Chinese identity.

Trans-Regionalism and Education in the Chinese WorldFew scholars of modern China have published analytical works on education.9 Studies on modern Chinese education have tended to contextualise educational developments against the limited backdrop of modernisation during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The pre-occupation with the late Qing period has in turn meant that there have been few monographs on education in Republican China with broader scopes beyond individual institutional histories.10 My research instead focuses on an educational case study which straddles both of these eras. Jinan was a school on the mainland for Chinese migrants that served as a cornerstone of state policies on Chinese migration during the late Qing and Republican periods.

At the same time, this report addresses the inaccurate conceptualisation of the Chinese world in the historiography on modern China. Historians have tended to examine continental events rather than the maritime sphere and migration. The post-1970s dominance of the approach favouring discussions of eighteenth-century China has only exacerbated this imbalance. Such works have privileged internal developments in response to the previous emphasis on the external Western impact during the nineteenth century.11 Established historians of maritime China and Chinese migration such as Wang Gungwu have been content to remain on the historiographical periphery even as they have argued for the need to study maritime activity.12 Since the maritime arena was hardly inconsequential in modern Chinese history, the next logical step would then be to re-evaluate the status of scholarship on the coastal regions and migration in the historiography on modern China.

9 I have excluded Chinese works on education from this overview of the historiography on modern China because they have tended to lack analytical purchase: Marianne Bastid, Educational Reform in Early Twentieth-Century China, translated by Paul J. Bailey (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1988), xvi.10 Three notable exceptions have been: Wen-hsin Yeh, The Alienated Academy: Culture and Politics in Republican China, 1919-1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Harvard University Asia Center, 1990); Ruth Hayhoe, China’s Universities, 1895-1995: A Century of Cultural Conflict (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996; reprint ed., Hong Kong: The Comparative Education Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong, 1999); and Thomas D. Curran, Educational Reform in Republican China: The Failure of Educators to Create a Modern Nation (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005).11 For further analysis of post-1970s scholarship on modern China, refer to: Hans van de Ven, “Recent Studies of Modern Chinese History,” Modern Asian Studies 30, no. 2 (May 1996), 226.12 Wang Gungwu, “Maritime China in Transition,” in Maritime China in Transition 1750-1850, eds. Wang Gungwu and Ng Chin-keong (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), 4.13 Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West (London and New York: Routledge, 2001). For a discussion of the theoretical implications of the term, “diaspora,” see Kim D. Butler, “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10, no. 2 (Fall 2001), 189-219.

8 This paper is a fragment of a Ph.D. dissertation in progress with the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania: “Conceptualizing the Chinese World: Jinan University, Nanyang Migrants, and Trans-Regionalism, 1900-1942.”

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Despite the peripheral status of maritime China in the field of modern Chinese history, works on Chinese migration have tended to subscribe to a Sino-centric concept called “Chinese diaspora.” Such a contradiction reflects the divide between the two historiographies, a gap which I aim to bridge. The diasporic framework which has been adopted in migration studies implicitly places primacy on the point of departure or homeland, China. This implication has been adequately discussed in much of the social sciences literature on “diaspora” and has, in fact, been examined by social scientists such as Ien Ang in relation to the Chinese case.13 Even so, promising scholarship on Chinese migration by historians like Adam McKeown has persisted in positing the existence of “diasporic networks,” thereby overemphasising the role of the mainland at the expense of migrants’ historical agency.14 Alternative conceptualisations remain unsatisfactory. Wang Gungwu has advocated the use of the phrase, “Chinese overseas” 海外華人 (haiwai huaren) while expressing reservations about “diaspora,”15 but this alternative contextualises those of Chinese ethnicity as being “overseas” relative to the mainland. His conceptualisation of Chinese migration has been appropriated in the Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas. The book scrupulously avoids any mention of “diaspora” yet portrays migration in terms of a concentric diagram with China as its core.16

Most of these works on Chinese migration have discussed business networks among migrant communities in destination countries. This approach has resulted in two problems. First, there has been tension between the Sino-centric character of the popular “Chinese diaspora” theory and the localised nature of such case studies.17 Second, their overemphasis on the economic dimension has indirectly perpetuated a form of Sino-centrism due to the pre-occupation with the presence of seemingly quintessential Chinese cultural values in business practices.18

My research instead adopts a more balanced approach towards understanding the Chinese world by examining linkages between the mainland and Nanyang migrant communities without overemphasising either connection. In choosing to examine the history of an educational institution, my report also diverges from the conventional path of examining Chinese business networks, thus demonstrating the importance of the educational sphere in Chinese migration.

This paper on the history of Jinan University calls for a holistic conceptualisation of the Chinese world. It adopts a trans-regional framework in order to highlight interaction between China and the Nanyang against the backdrop of Western and Japanese influences. My trans-regional perspective has been inspired by debates on trans-nationalism, which have explored the fluid movements of people and organisations across geopolitical boundaries during the more recent global age. The term “trans-regional” is, however,

more suitable for my research. This is because of my earlier chronological focus: 1900-42. China was not a nation-state before 1911, and there were hardly any nations in the Nanyang before post-World War II decolonisation. Both should instead be considered as “regions.”

The trans-regional approach can be most clearly seen from my emphasis on the lives of Jinan students and intellectuals, who moved freely between China and the Nanyang while interacting with non-Chinese people and influences. It is indeed tempting to make much of Jinan’s location in China (first Nanjing 南京

and then Shanghai 上海 for my chronological scope) and its existence during the pre-Second World War era, when links between the Nanyang Chinese and the mainland were the strongest. I instead examine the experiences of researchers who worked at Jinan, where they founded the field of “Nanyang studies” 南洋研

究 (Nanyang Yanjiu). These intellectuals subsequently migrated to the Nanyang, which became their new base of operations. I also discuss the profiles of several of the school’s students. They contributed greatly to the historical fabric of both China and the Nanyang despite their relatively small numbers.19

I focus in particular on personalities from Singapore. The Nanyang comprised such other places as the Dutch East Indies and Malaya.20 Singapore is, however, a suitable choice to reflect the Nanyang connection in Jinan’s history and in the larger backdrop of the Chinese world. The island was historically part of the Singapore-Malaya 新馬 (Xinma) entity that constituted the “heart of the Nanyang.”21 The statistics further support my choice: in his study of global Chinese migration over a century from 1840 to 1940, Adam McKeown has estimated that out of the 19-22 million Chinese who migrated to destinations around the world, almost one-third migrated to the Straits Settlements (of which Singapore was a part) and Malaya.22 This report’s coverage consequently ends in early 1942, when Singapore was conquered by the Japanese during the Pacific War.

My emphasis on the Nanyang connection stands in contrast to the Jinan official narrative’s Sino-centric focus. There are no English monographs and articles on the institution. Chinese works have been limited to official or semi-official accounts, many being published by Jinan University Press. The dominant official narrative has deprived the Nanyang students of their historical agency by examining the school’s history from the administration’s perspective. The narrative has similarly failed to examine the activities of the Nanyang studies researchers after they moved to Singapore. The Jinan story has consequently privileged developments in China. It is no wonder that the narrative has highlighted the origins of the school’s name, which can be traced to the phrase “shuonanji” 朔南暨 (from north to south). It is telling that the phrase was extracted from an ancient Chinese text, the Shujing 書经 (Book of Documents or Classic of Documents).23 The implication then has been that Jinan has helped to spread Chinese culture southward to the Nanyang.

19 For example, enrolment at Jinan Academy 暨南學堂 (Jinan Xuetang), the school’s earliest incarnation, peaked at 240 in 1911: Jinan Daxue Xiaoshi Bianxiezu 暨南大學校史編寫組, Jinan xiaoshi 1906-1996 暨南校史 1906-1996 (Guangzhou: Jinan Daxue Chubanshe, 1996), 5-7.20 I have previously examined the origins of the name, “Nanyang,” and the region’s geographical boundaries: Leander Seah, “Historicizing Hybridity and Globalization: The South Seas Society in Singapore, 1940-2000,” M.A. dissertation, Department of History, National University of Singapore, 2005. Refer also to Leander Seah, “Hybridity, Globalization, and the Creation of a Nanyang Identity: The South Seas Society in Singapore, 1940-1958,” Journal of the South Seas Society 南洋學報 (Nanyang xuebao) 61 (December 2007), 134-151.21 Wang Gungwu, Community and Nation: China, Southeast Asia and Australia (St Leonards: Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen & Unwin Pty ltd, 1992), 29.22 See table 3 in Adam McKeown, “Global Chinese Migration, 1840-1940,” paper delivered at ISSCO V: the 5th Conference for the International Society for the Study of the Chinese Overseas, Elsinore (Helsingor), Denmark, 10-14 May 2004, 5.23 Jinan Daxue Xiaoshi Bianxiezu, Jinan xiaoshi 1906-1996, 4; and “Muxiao xiaoshi” 母校校史, in Jinan xiaoshi, 1906-1949: Ziliao xuanji 暨南校史, 1906-1949: 資料選輯 (Selected Source Material on History of Jinan University, 1906-1949), vol. 1, ed. Jinan Daxue Huaqiao Yanjiusuo 暨南大學華僑研 究所 (Institute of Overseas Chinese Studies, Jinan University) (Guangzhou: Jinan Daxue Huaqiao Yanjiusuo, 1983), 3.

14 Adam McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900-1936 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 84-85.15 Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1991; reprint ed., Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1997); and Wang Gungwu, “A Single Chinese Diaspora?”, in Diasporic Chinese Ventures: The Life and Work of Wang Gungwu, eds. Gregor Benton and Hong Liu (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 157.16 Lynn Pan, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Published for the Chinese Heritage Centre by Archipelago Press and Landmark Books, 1998; reprint ed., Singapore: Published for the Chinese Heritage Centre by Archipelago Press and Landmark Books, 2000), 14-15.17 Zhu Guohong has rightly highlighted the localized focus of the extant scholarship, but his solution is still Sino-centric since it is based on understanding migrant activity as emigration from China. Refer to Zhu Guohong朱國宏, Zhongguo de haiwai yimin: yixiang guoji qianyi de lishi yanjiu 中國的海外移民: 一項國際遷移的歷史研究 (Chinese Emigration: A Historical Study of the International Migration) (Shanghai: Fudan Daxue Chubanshe, 1994), 5.18 Wang Gungwu, Don’t Leave Home: Migration and the Chinese (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 2001; reprint ed., Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2003), 291 and 293.

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Lee Kong Chian, Pioneer Students, and the Early Years, 1900-11Jinan’s official narrative has accorded much credit for the school’s establishment to its founder, Duanfang 端方. He was a high-ranking Qing official who was one of the most prominent reformists in China during the final decades of the nineteenth and the early years of the twentieth centuries.24 Yet the institution’s founding needs to be contextualised against the backdrop of Western and Japanese-inspired reforms which were implemented to address the vulnerability of imperial rule. The official narrative has also insufficiently examined the role of the Nanyang. The school was established by the Qing court to harness the financial resources of the Nanyang Chinese and cultivate political allegiance among younger generations of migrants in order to prop up its precarious rule.25 More tellingly, it was not Duanfang, but instead a low-ranking Qing official named Qian Xun 錢恂, who actually initiated the Jinan project. Qian Xun did so during a visit to the Nanyang in 1906 as part of a Qing Ministry of Education fact-finding mission.26 It is likely that given the rising number of new schools in the Nanyang for Chinese migrants by the turn of the twentieth century,27 he perceived the urgent need to seize the initiative and beat the competition by establishing Jinan in China.

The students who came from Singapore included Lee Kong Chian. This man was undoubtedly the epitome of the successful Jinan student. He has been better known for his business acumen and his rags-to-riches story. In 1916, he joined Tan Kah Kee’s 陳嘉庚 (Chen Jiageng) rubber company, and eleven years later at the age of 34, he started his own business in 1927. By 1942, Lee Kong Chian held leadership roles in organisations such as the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Rubber Trade Association of Singapore and the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation.28

As a rubber magnate and philanthropist, Lee Kong Chian certainly contributed immensely to the historical fabric of Singapore and the Nanyang. But it is equally noteworthy that the man had an eclectic background and that he traversed China and the Nanyang in his youth. Born on 18 October 1893 in Nan’an 南安, Fujian Province 福建, Lee Kong Chian migrated from China to Singapore in 1903. On the island, he enrolled in the Anglo-Tamil (or Anglo-Indian) School, and attended Chinese classes at Yeung Ching 養正 (Yangzheng) School on weekends. In 1907, he enrolled in Tao Nan 道南 (Toh Lam or Dao Nan) School, where he won a scholarship to study at Jinan Academy 暨南學堂 (Jinan Xuetang), the school’s earliest incarnation, in 1908.29 In early 1909, he arrived in Nanjing, where Jinan was located. He was part of the first group of

students from Singapore to study at the Academy. These students had been selected by the General Chinese Trade Affairs Association in Singapore 中華商會 (Zhonghua Shanghui), the predecessor of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Jinan administrators had given responsibility for the selection of suitable students to the various academic societies and Chinese Chambers of Commerce in the Nanyang,30 and this reflected an acknowledgement of the importance of the Nanyang connection. At the school, Lee Kong Chian excelled academically, being placed in the better of the two middle-school classes, and performed well in Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. One of his Chinese essays was even used as a model essay. It was no surprise then that he graduated as the top student in his cohort in 1911.31

Upon graduating from middle school, Lee Kong Chian was one of only ten from Jinan to be admitted to Qinghua High School 清華高等學堂 (Qinghua Gaodeng Xuetang) in China. Yet he rejected the admission offer, having reached a consensus with the other nine that none would enrol at Qinghua. This was because Jinan administrators had previously promised to send successful students to Western countries for further studies. The promise was not honoured, possibly due to financial constraints since the Qing dynasty was on the verge of collapse. Hence, Lee Kong Chian attended the Tangshan Railway and Mining College 唐山路鑛專學堂 (Tangshan Lukuang Zhuan Xuetang) where he was taught by Englishmen and Scots. At Tangshan, Lee actually joined the Tongmenghui 同盟會 (Revolutionary Alliance), the predecessor of the Kuomintang 國民黨 (Guomindang), since the school was a hotbed of revolutionary sentiment. He arrived back in Singapore during 1912, having left China due to the turmoil of the 1911 Revolution. He spent several years working first for the Survey Department as a surveyor, and then as a translator for a Chinese newspaper and as a teacher at Tao Nan and Yeung Ching 養正 Schools. In 1915, he joined the business world and subsequently cemented his place in history.32

Lee Kong Chian was not, however, the only prominent Jinan student from Singapore. Others among the first batch of students from the island included Lim Pang Gan 林邦彦 (Lin Bangyan) and Ho Pao Jen 何葆仁 (He Baoren or Ho Pao Jin). These two men were on such intimate terms that they became sworn brothers at Jinan. They were both born in Fujian Province, Lim Pang Gan in Yongchun 永春 during 1894 and Ho Pao Jen in Xiamen 廈門 during 1895. They even arrived in Singapore during the same year, 1905. Both men enrolled at Tao Nan School in Singapore, and were subsequently selected to join Lee Kong Chian at Jinan. There was indeed a strong Tao Nan connection in the initial batch of Singapore students at Jinan – out of an intake of 38 from the island, 18 came from Tao Nan.33

24 Bastid, Educational Reform in Early Twentieth-Century China, 241. See also Hiromu Momose’s biography in Arthur W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (1644-1912), vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1944), 781; and Wu Zixiu 吴子修, Xinhai xunnanji 辛亥殉难記 (N.p., 1916; reprint ed., Taibei: Taiwan Datong Shuju, 1968), 514-516. 25 The economic dimension has been thoroughly analyzed in Yen Ching-hwang’s book, Coolies and Mandarins: China’s Protection of Overseas Chinese during the Late Ch’ing Period (1851-1911) (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1985).26 Zhou Xiaozhong 周孝中, Jinan yishi 暨南逸史 (Guangzhou: Jinan Daxue Chubanshe, 1996), 2. Zhou’s book is possibly the only work published by Jinan University Press that has not downplayed this important fact.27 For instance, Wee Tong Bao has examined the case of Singapore in her dissertation: “The Development of Modern Chinese Vernacular Education in Singapore – Society, Politics & Policies, 1905-1941,” M.A. dissertation, Department of History, National University of Singapore, 2001, 1 and 14.28 See, for example, “Reliving Lee Kong Chian,” AlumNUS 17 (March 1994), extracted from National University of Singapore Reference Office Personality Files Collection. Known as the “rubber king” during the 1950s, Lee was so respected that he even lectured on Southeast Asia at the Naval School of Military Government and Administration (based at Columbia University in New York City) on the invitation of law professor Philip C. Jessup. Lee had been stranded there while attending a rubber conference during the Pacific War: Interview with Tan Kok Kheng by the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, Accession 000232 Reel 54; Schuyler C. Wallace, “The Naval School of Military Government and Administration,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 231 (January 1944), 29-33; and Chia Poteik, “Page 10 Profile Measures One Man and His Millions – Lee Kong Chian: Pay-off for Perseverance,” Straits Times, 12 June 1962, extracted from National University of Singapore Reference Office Personality Files Collection.29 Lee retained fond memories of his brief stay at Tao Nan. Indeed, his wedding ceremony was held there.

30 Jinan Xuetang xianxing zhangcheng 暨南學堂現行章程 (Nanjing: Jinan Xuetang, c. 1911), 13. 31 Selected sources on Lee Kong Chian: Zhou Xiaozhong, Jinan yishi, 11-12; Interview with Tan Ee Leong by the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, Accession 000003 Reel 14; Chia Poteik, “Page 10 Profile Measures One Man and His Millions – Lee Kong Chian: Pay-off for Perseverance”; Anonymous, “Li Guangqian boshi” 李光前博士, in Xingma renwuzhi 星馬人物誌 (Who’s Who in South East Asia), vol. 1, ed. Song Zhemei 宋哲美 (Sung Chek Mei) (Hong Kong: Dongnanya Yanjiusuo, 1969), 23-50; Zheng Bingshan 鄭炳山, Li Guangqian zhuan 李光前傳 (Beijing: Zhongguo Huaqiao Chubanshe, 1996), 17-20, 223-224; Quek Soo Ngoh, “Lee Kong Chian: Contributions to Education in Singapore 1945-1965,” unpublished B.A. Hons. thesis, Department of History, National University of Singapore, 1986/87, 15-17; and Chen Weilong 陳維龍, “Laotongxue jianjie” 老同學簡介, in Jinan Xiaoyouhui xinhuisuo luocheng ji Xinjiapo kaibu yibai wushi zhounian jinian tekan, 暨南校友會新 會所落成暨新加坡開埠一百五十週年紀念特刊 (Souvenir Publication on Inauguration of New Premises of the Chi-nan Alumni Association and 150th Anniversary of the Founding of Singapore) (Singapore: Jinan Xiaoyouhui, 1970), 37. Some of these sources furnish incorrect details. For example, Lee studied and taught at Yeung Ching School, and not “Yeung Chia,” “Chung Cheng” 中正, or “Chongzheng” 崇正 Schools. The facts cited in my main text have been selected after careful corroboration of information.32 Refer to the sources in the previous footnote.33 The first intake from Singapore was part of the fifth overall cohort (54 students) from the Nanyang. Refer to: Interview with Lim Pang Gan by the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, Accession 000036 Reel 2; and “Jinan biannian dashiji” 暨南編年大事記, Jinan jiaoyu 暨南教育 5 (December 1987), 82.

78 79

At Jinan, Lim Pang Gan and Ho Pao Jen did not join Lee Kong Chian in the better of the two middle-school classes, but were instead placed in the other middle-school class. The sworn brothers’ paths split amidst the upheaval of the 1911 Revolution. Lim Pang Gan returned to Singapore, where he had a day-time job as a clerk and worked as a Chinese tutor at night. He also worked as a bill collector, and in the tobacco business. Ho Pao Jen pursued further studies at Fudan University 復旦大學 (Fudan Daxue) in Shanghai, representing Fudan in a patriotic movement of student organisations during the 1919 May Fourth Movement. Ho Pao Jen subsequently headed to the United States in 1920 to study commerce at the University of Washington. He then joined the University of Illinois to pursue Masters and Ph.D. studies on Governance and Economics, after which he returned to Fudan in 1924 as a professor of Political Science.

Yet both of them continued to keep in touch. For example, it was Ho Pao Jen who recommended Lim Pang Gan for a book-keeping job at a provision shop. Both of them also featured prominently among the Chinese community in Singapore. Lim Pang Gan held various appointments on the boards of organisations and schools, including Chung Hwa 中華 Girls’ School (which he assisted in establishing), Chung Cheng 中正 High School, the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and clan associations. Ho Pao Jen moved to Singapore in 1925, being appointed as the principal of the Chinese High School 華僑中學 (Huaqiao Zhongxue). He stayed at the school for three years before becoming a banker in 1928. Ho then fled to Chongqing 重慶 in 1941 to escape the Japanese onslaught, and returned to Singapore in 1949 to pursue careers in business and banking.34

A second group of students from Singapore arrived at Jinan Academy in 1910. Two notable examples were Tan Ee Leong 陳維龍 (Chen Weilong) and Hu Tsai Kuen 胡載坤 (Hu Zaikun). Tan Ee Leong was born on 28 November 1897 in Yongchun, Fujian Province. He left China for the Nanyang in 1904 with his mother in order to join his father in Medan, Sumatra. There he studied Chinese, but then transferred to Jinan in 1910. At the Academy, Tan Ee Leong frequently consulted his senior, Lee Kong Chian, regarding Mathematics problems. Due to the 1911 Revolution, Tan Ee Leong moved to Penang, where he studied English at the Anglo-Chinese School and took supplementary lessons in Chinese. In 1914, he followed his father to Singapore, where he enrolled at the Anglo-Chinese School there for his middle-school education. Upon graduating in 1918, he worked for various banks and businesses. From May 1939 to February 1941, Tan Ee Leong served as the secretary of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce at Lee Kong Chian’s behest since Lee Kong Chian was then the head of the Chamber.35 Tan Ee Leong reprised this appointment from 1960 to 1964. He retired from banking and business in 1964.36

As for Hu Tsai Kuen, he is better known as the father of Richard Hu, the former Finance Minister of Singapore. But he was a prominent personality in his own right. Born during 1895 in Singapore, Hu Tsai Kuen was a Hakka. His schooling began with classes at the Anglo-Chinese School during the day and Chinese lessons at Eng Sing 应新 School at night. Hu Tsai Kuen then transferred to Tao Nan because he wished to attend Jinan, and thus arrived in Nanjing during 1910. He subsequently studied medicine at the University of Hong Kong from 1915 to 1921, after which he returned to Singapore in 1922. He set up the Nanyang Clinic on the island, where he practised Western medicine. Hu Tsai Kuen became well-known for his participation in the activities of the Overseas Chinese Association. This organisation was established in 1942 during the Japanese Occupation with the backing of Shinozaki Mamoru. The initial intention was to save Chinese lives, but the Association was forced to spearhead the campaign to raise the notorious $50 million demanded by the Japanese military authorities. Hu Tsai Kuen then took part in the Endau scheme to resettle Chinese in Johore in 1943, and was in charge of medical and health issues. He was an active member of the Hakka community in Singapore, and was also a patron of the arts during the 1950s.37

These students benefited from a modern education at Jinan. The Academy borrowed from the Japanese educational system, which featured nine years of elementary-standard schooling (divided into lower and upper levels) and five years of middle-school education.38 As such, there were two middle-school classes and four upper-elementary classes at Jinan. The medium of instruction was not Mandarin and instead depended upon the respective topolects of the teachers. More significantly, the syllabi were hardly Sino-centric. Jinan’s administrators placed heavy emphasis on comprehensive instruction in foreign languages, which encompassed not only reading but also translation work, conversational skills and writing. Students similarly benefited from History and Geography lessons which featured case studies beyond China’s shores (refer to the sample syllabi in tables A-C).39

tAbLE A: UPPER ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL SYLLABUS AT JINAN ACADEMY

number of Hours per WeekSubjects 1st Year 2nd Year 3rd Year 4th YearSelf-cultivation 2 2 2 2The Classics 8 8 8 8Chinese Literature 5 5 5 5English Language (reading, vocabulary, translation)

4 4 4 4

Chinese History 4 4 4 4

Geography 22 (switch from

China to foreign case studies)

2 (foreign) 2 (foreign)

Mathematics 4 4 4 434 Zhou Xiaozhong, Jinan yishi, 15-17; Interviews with Lim Pang Gan by the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, Accession 000036 Reels 2-3, Accession 000227 Reels 1-2; Xing Zhizhong 邢致中, “‘Gancao laoren’ lao shezhang Lin Bangyan xiansheng” [甘草老人]老社長林邦 彦先生, in Tongde Shubaoshe jiushi zhounian jinian tekan 同德書報社九十週年紀念特刊, ed. Tongde Shubaoshe Jiushi Zhounian Jinian Tekan Weiyuanhui 同德書報社九十週年紀念特刊委員會 (Singapore: Tongde Shubaoshe, 2000), 60-62; and Anonymous, “He Baoren boshi” 何葆仁博 士, in Xingma renwuzhi, vol. 2 (Hong Kong: Dongnanya Yanjiusuo, 1972), 113-114.35 Tan Ee Leong was on such intimate terms with Lee Kong Chian that he was the best man at Lee’s wedding in 1928. Tan Ee Leong’s younger brother subsequently worked for Lee Kong Chian as late as 1979.36 Interviews with Tan Ee Leong by the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, Accession 000003 Reels 1-2/7-8/10/14; Anonymous, “Chen Weilong xiansheng” 陳維龍先生, in Xingma renwuzhi, vol. 1 (Hong Kong: Dongnanya Yanjiusuo, 1969), 179-191; and Chen Weilong 陳維龍, Dongnanya huayi wenren zhuanlue 東南亞華裔聞人傳略 (Singapore: South Seas Society, 1977), vi. None of these sources, however, provide the correct dates for Tan’s second stint as the Secretary of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, using the years “1958-1964” instead of “1960-1964.” I have therefore referred to the Chamber’s official record: Fangyan sihai: Xinjiapo Zhonghua Zongshanghui jiushi zhounian jinian tekan 放眼四海: 新加坡中華總商會九十週年紀念特刊 (Singapore: Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry, 1996), 99.

37 Chen Weilong 陳維龍, “Qingmo Jinan huiyi zhier” 清末暨南回憶之二, in Jinan xiaoshi, 1906-1949: Ziliao xuanji, vol. 1, 98; Interview with Lim Pang Gan by the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, Accession 000036 Reel 2; Interview with Koh Soh Goh by the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, Accession 000495 Reel 2; “The Doctor who had a Shot at Art,” Straits Times, 30 October 1984; “Hakka Leader Dies after Illness,” Straits Times, 25 October 1984; and Mamoru Shinozaki, “My Wartime Experiences in Singapore,” in Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Oral History Programme: Japanese Occupation Project (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1973), 32-33, 79-80.38 Chen Weilong, “Qingmo Jinan huiyi zhier,” 99.39 Jinan Xuetang xianxing zhangcheng.

80 81

Science 2 2 2 2Drawing 1 1 1 1Music 1 (Singing only) 1 1 1Physical Exercise 3 3 3 3

Source: Jinan Xuetang xianxing zhangcheng 暨南學堂現行章程 (Nanjing: Jinan Xuetang, c. 1911), 33-37.

tAbLE b: MAIN MIDDLE-SCHOOL SYLLABUS AT JINAN ACADEMY

number of Hours per WeekSubjects 1st Year 2nd Year 3rd Year 4th Year 5th YearSelf-cultivation 1 1 1 1 1The Classics 7 7 7 6 6Chinese Literature 4 4 4 4 4Foreign Languages (reading, translation, conversational skills, writing)

7 7 8 8 8

History 3 3 3 3

3 (switch from China to foreign case

studies)

Geography 2 2 2

2 (switch from China to foreign case

studies)

2 (foreign)

Mathematics 4 4 4 4 4Natural Sciences 2 2 1 2 1Physics & Chemistry 1 1 2 2 3Drawing 1 1 1 1 1Law 1 1 1 1 1Music 1 1 0 0 0Physical Exercise 2 2 2 2 2

Source: Jinan Xuetang xianxing zhangcheng 暨南學堂現行章程 (Nanjing: Jinan Xuetang, c1911), pp. 33–37.

tAbLE C: MIDDLE-SCHOOL SYLLABUS WITH HUMANITIES EMPHASIS AT JINAN ACADEMY

number of Hours per WeekSubjects 1st Year 2nd Year 3rd Year 4th Year 5th YearSelf-cultivation 1 1 1 1 1The Classics 10 10 10 10 10Chinese Literature 7 7 6 6 6

Foreign Languages (reading, essay-writing, vocabulary)

6 66 (addition of translation of

essays)

6 (same as 3rd year)

6 (same as 3rd year)

History 3 (Chinese history)

3 (Chinese history)

3 (addition of histories

of Asian countries)

3 (exclusively histories

of foreign countries)

3 (foreign)

Geography 3 3

2 (switch from China to foreign case

studies)

2 (foreign) 2 (foreign)

Mathematics 3 3 3 3 3Natural Sciences 1 1 0 0 0Physics & Chemistry 0 0 2 2 2

Law 0 0 11 (addition of financial

management)

1 (exclusively financial

management)

Physical Exercise 2 2 2 2 2

Source: Jinan Xuetang xianxing zhangcheng 暨南學堂現行章程 (Nanjing: Jinan Xuetang, c. 1911), 22-27.

The closure of Jinan Academy took place amidst the turmoil of the 1911 Revolution which saw the end of Qing rule. The underlying cause was that the students cut their queues as early as fall 1910 after being exposed to revolutionary sentiment. The queue was a symbol of one’s loyalty to the Qing imperial court. This being so, during the fighting in 1911, the provincial governor gave the order that those without queues were to be treated as revolutionaries. Fearing for their lives, most of the students returned to the Nanyang, with a small group fleeing to Shanghai. Others made their way to Wuchang 武昌, where the Revolution had first broken out, participating in the fighting on the revolutionary side.40 It has been customary to highlight the financial contribution of Chinese migrant communities towards political movements in China.41 Yet many migrants actually sacrificed limb and life for the revolutionary cause.

Revival and Expansion, 1918-36Classes at Jinan began again on 1 March 1918 after the renowned educator, Huang Yanpei 黄炎培, pushed for the institution’s revival. He did so upon returning to China from a fact-finding mission in the Nanyang. He was convinced that Chinese migrants and their descendants should be encouraged to study on the mainland. Nanjing was once more the location for the institution, which was named “Jinan School” 暨南學校 (Jinan Xuexiao).42

40 Chen Weilong, “Qingmo Jinan huiyi zhier,” 97 and 102-103; Zheng Hongnian 鄭洪年, “Guoli Jinan Daxue zhi baogao” 國立暨南大學之報告, in Huaqiao jiaoyu huiyi baogaoshu 華僑教育會議報告書 (N.p., May 1930), 19; Jinan Gaojiaoshi Ziliaozu 暨南高教室資料組, “Jinan biannian dashiji” 暨南編年大事記, Jinan jiaoyu 暨南教育 5 (December 1987), 81-82; and “[Jinan dili, Jinling] Yuan Shikai danu: ‘Jinan doushi xie gemingdang” [暨南 地理、金陵]袁世凱大怒：暨南都是些革命黨, <http://www.jnu100.edu.cn/jd100/sjcx/200611150034.htm> (accessed May 30, 2007).41 See, for example, Yen Ching-hwang, The Overseas Chinese and the 1911 Revolution: With Special Reference to Singapore and Malaya (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1976), xviii-xix, 90-91, and 309.42 “Jinan biannian dashiji,” 82.

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This period in Jinan’s history also featured a prominent Nanyang connection. One example was the school’s establishment of a research institute to study the Nanyang. By 1927, Jinan was based in Shanghai, having moved there in 1923-24. Zheng Hongnian 鄭洪年, who had been the first principal of Jinan Academy (1906-09), once again played an instrumental role. Having returned to head Jinan in 1927, Zheng Hongnian made the decision on 13 June that year to expand the institution’s activities. He added a research dimension to Jinan by founding the Nanyang Cultural and Educational Affairs Bureau 南洋文化教育事業部. This was officially inaugurated in September 1927, the same month that the school was upgraded to the status of a national university. Zheng Hongnian appointed himself as the Bureau’s first head, an indication that this research institute was a top priority.43 The establishment of the Bureau also constituted the institutional beginning of the Chinese-language track of Southeast Asian studies. The significance of this move was two-fold. First, there had been no prior systematic attempt by scholars in China to conduct research on the Nanyang. Second, the field of “Nanyang studies” at Jinan pre-dated by several decades the North American contribution towards research on Southeast Asia.44

The formation of the Bureau represented the culmination of Chinese intellectual interest in the Nanyang which had been partly influenced by Japanese research on the “Nanyo.” The latter concept was a Japanese equivalent of the Chinese “Nanyang.” Liu Hong has suggested that the advent of Nanyang studies at Jinan could therefore be traced back to the “South Seas Fever” in Japan as early as the first decade of the twentieth century.45 My research has convinced me otherwise. The pre-World War I notion of the “Nanyo” in fact referred to Micronesia in the South Pacific, the islands being seized by the Japanese from the Germans in 1914. The term did not at first refer to Southeast Asia. It was only during the aftermath of World War I that the concept of the “Nanyo” came to resemble more closely that of the “Nanyang.”

Shimizu Hajime has suggested that this was due to Japanese economic penetration into Southeast Asia during World War I.46 The Nanyo Kyokai 南洋协會 (South Seas Association), founded during the war years, played a significant role in equating the Nanyo with Southeast Asia. Its activities encompassed the systematic training of experts and accumulation of information. It was supported by eminent Japanese, including nobility and important businessmen, with governmental backing.47 Mark Peattie has also observed that during the 1920s, there emerged a division between the “Inner South Seas” (Uchi Nanyo), which referred to Micronesia, and the “Outer South Seas” (Soto Nanyo), which meant Southeast Asia. He has further noted that Japanese interest in the Nanyo gradually declined during the 1920s, when Nanyang

studies began to emerge in China at Jinan. It was only during the 1930s that Japan began to rekindle its interest in the region due to the revival of Japanese commerce and the rise in its imperialist ambitions.48

Another instance of the importance of the Nanyang connection was the visit by the Jinan football (soccer) team to the region in 1928. The team was famous, winning the Kiangnan Inter-collegiate Athletic Association League nine times between 1927 and 1937. In spring 1928, Zheng Hongnian decided to send the Jinan football players to the Nanyang for a series of friendly matches. The objective of the trip was to raise the school’s profile in the Nanyang. This was a particularly apt goal in light of recent developments such as the achievement of university status and the founding of Nanyang studies at Jinan.

Singapore was a key destination on the tour, which took place from March to June 1928. Other destinations included Saigon (Vietnam), Bangkok (Siam/Thailand), and several locations on the Malay Peninsula (Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Penang, Kelantan, and Trengganu).49 The official Jinan narrative does not, however, mention that this tour provided the impetus for the beginnings of an alumni association based in Singapore. While the organisation was subsequently registered in 1941, the informal gathering of Jinan alumni on the island could be traced back to 1928.50 The Jinan football team’s visit rekindled interest among former students such as Lee Kong Chian in maintaining links with their alma mater.

Students from Singapore continued to arrive at Jinan throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Many of them traversed China and the Nanyang. Born on the mainland, they migrated to the Nanyang. Upon graduating from Jinan, they eventually headed to Singapore and played important roles in the Chinese community on the island. Such personalities included Sheng Peck Choo 盛碧珠 and Liu Kang 劉抗. Both of them were born in Fujian Province, Sheng Peck Choo in Quanzhou 泉州 during 1912 and Liu Kang in Yongchun during 1911. Sheng Peck Choo underwent elementary and middle-school education in China. This included a stay at Jimei 集美 School, which had been established to train teachers by the famous philanthropist in Singapore, Tan Kah Kee. Sheng Peck Choo then worked as a teacher before pursuing a university education with Jinan’s Education Department from 1932 to 1935. Upon graduation, she taught at a village school in China before leaving for Singapore to join her husband in 1937. She worked as a teacher before joining Chung Hwa Girls’ School in 1939. She was subsequently promoted to be the school’s principal in 1955 and held the appointment till her retirement in 1977.51

Liu Kang spent a substantial portion of his childhood (1917-26) in Malaya because his father was a rubber merchant there. He then pursued a middle-school education at Jinan for a year (1926-27) before switching to art classes at the Shanghai College of Fine Arts 上海美專. This was followed by further studies in Paris from 1929 to 1933, after which Liu Kang worked as a professor at the Shanghai College of Fine Arts for the

43 Jinan nianjian 1929 暨南年鑒 1929 (Chinan Annual 1929) (Shanghai: Guoli Jinan Daxue, 1929), n.p.44 The Bureau was active, publishing various periodicals like Nanyang yanjiu 南洋研究 and a monograph series. It also spearheaded the organization of academic conferences. One example was the large-scale 1929 Nanyang Huaqiao Jiaoyu Huiyi 南洋華僑教育會議 at Jinan, which featured 78 participants of which 49 were from the Nanyang: “Jinan biannian dashiji,” 86.45 Liu Hong, “Southeast Asian Studies in Greater China,” Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia 3 (March 2003), <http://kyotoreview.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp issue/issue2/article_232_p.html> (accessed September 13, 2005).46 Shimizu Hajime, “Southeast Asia as a Regional Concept in Modern Japan,” in Locating Southeast Asia: Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space, eds. Paul H. Kratoska, Remco Raben, and Henk Schulte Nordholt (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2005), 87-88.47 Mark R. Peattie, “Nanshin: The ‘Southward Advance,’ 1931-1941, as a Prelude to the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia,” in The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931-1945, eds. Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996), 198-199; Huei-ying Kuo, “Nationalism against its People? Chinese Business and Nationalist Activities in Inter-war Singapore, 1919-1941,” Southeast Asia Research Centre (City University of Hong Kong) working paper no. 48 (July 2003), <http://www.cityu.edu.hk/searc/WP48_03_Kuo.pdf>; and J. Charles Schencking, “The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Constructed Consciousness of a South Seas Destiny, 1872-1921,” Modern Asian Studies 33, no. 4 (October 1999), 792. Peattie indicates that the Nanyo Kyokai was founded in 1914, but Schencking states that this instead took place in January 1915. The precise date of establishment will be determined after further research in my Ph.D. dissertation.

48 Peattie, “Nanshin,” 190, 195-196, 212-213. 49 Jinan nianjian 1929, n.p.; and Ma Xingzhong 馬興中, “Jinan Daxue yu Xinjiapo” 暨南大學與新加坡, in Jinan Daxue bainian huadan, Xinjiapo Xiaoyouhui liushiwu zhounian 暨南大學百年華誕,新加坡校友會六十五週年紀念特刊 (Singapore: Xinjiapo Jinan Xiaoyouhui Chuban Weiyuanhui, 2006), 30.50 Xing Jizhong 邢濟眾, “Fengxian manhuai aixin gongchuang meihao weilai” 奉獻滿懷愛心共創美好未來, in Jinan Daxue bainian huadan, Xinjiapo Xiaoyouhui liushiwu zhounian, 1.51 While Sheng Peck Choo has stated that she retired in 1978, the school’s records indicate instead that this took place in 1977: Interviews with Sheng Peck Choo by the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, Accession 001608 Reels 1-4; and Zhonghua Zhongxue chuangxiao bashi zhounian jinian tekan 中華中學創校八十週年紀念特刊 (Zhonghua Secondary School 80th Anniversary Souvenir Magazine) (Singapore: Zhonghua Zhongxue, 1991), 41. For additional biodata, see: Jinan Xiaoyouhui xinhuisuo luocheng ji Xinjiapo kaibu yibai wushi zhounian jinian tekan, 147.

84 85

period 1933-37. He then moved to Singapore, teaching art at several schools, before going into hiding in Muar (Malaya) due to the Japanese conquest of the island. Liu Kang subsequently became a famous painter in Singapore as one of the pioneers of the Nanyang style of painting. This was a blend of both Western and Chinese methods, and paintings based on this style featured Nanyang subjects.52

War and the Move South, 1937-42In August 1937, the Japanese invaded Shanghai. Jinan was thus forced to shift its campus to the International Settlement, where the school stayed until 1941. The official Jinan narrative describes these years as the “Isolated Region” 孤島 (gudao) period of the institution’s history to indicate that the school was isolated from the rest of “Free China.”53 However, the invasion of Shanghai also meant that Jinan was cut off from the Nanyang. The centre of gravity in the Nanyang connection therefore shifted to the region itself. Singapore constituted the heart of the Nanyang connection until the fall of the island to the Japanese in February 1942. There were two reasons for this. First, Singapore became the base of operations for Nanyang studies with the founding of the South Seas Society 南洋學會 (Nanyang Xuehui) in 1940. Second, a Jinan alumni association was officially registered on the island in 1941.

The intellectual lineage of the South Seas Society could be traced back to China. Wang Gungwu has rightly stated that the organisation’s founders “wrote very much in the shadow of the Nanyang Research Institute of Chi-nan [Jinan] University in Shanghai,”54 and the full Chinese version of its name was “Zhongguo Nanyang Xuehui” 中國南洋學會 (China South Seas Society).55 Yet the “cradle for its initial development” was located in Singapore.56 Editors of the Sin Chew Jit Poh 星洲日報, a Chinese newspaper on the island, played a particularly important role in the Society’s birth. The organisation was founded by eight scholars on 17 March 1940 at the Southern Hotel 南天酒樓 in Eu Tong Sen Street. Five of the six who were actually present at this first meeting were linked to the Sin Chew Jit Poh. These five also constituted the majority in the seven-member inaugural council. They were: Guan Chupu 關楚璞 (Kwan Chu Poh), Yu Dafu 郁達夫 (Yue Daff ), Yao Nan 姚楠 (T.L. Yao/Yao Tse-liang/Yao Tsu Liang), Xu Yunqiao 許雲樵 (Hsu Yun Tsiao/Hsu Yun-Tsiao/Hsu Yun-ts’iao), and Zhang Liqian 張禮千 (Chang Lee Chien/Chang Li-chien).57

Two co-founders who did not attend the inaugural meeting were Liu Shimu 劉士木 (Lou Shih Mo/Liu Shih-Moh) and Li Changfu 李長傅 (Lee Chan Foo/Lee Chang-foo). Liu Shimu resided in Penang, having left China for the Nanyang in 1938 due to the upheaval of the Sino-Japanese War. Li Changfu was absent because he was then in Shanghai. The backgrounds of these two men shared a common denominator with Yao Nan’s profile: they all worked for the Nanyang Cultural and Educational Affairs Bureau at Jinan prior to establishing the South Seas Society.58 This reflected the Society’s ties with the China-based tradition of

Nanyang studies. The backgrounds of Liu Shimu and Li Changfu further indicated a Japanese component as well. Liu Shimu was born during 1889 in Xingning 興寧, Guangdong 廣東 province, while Li Changfu was born during 1899 in Jiangsu 江蘇 province. Liu Shimu was partly educated in Japan because of the availability of economics courses in Japan on the Nanyang, evidence of the Nanyo-Nanyang link. He then joined the Nanyang Cultural and Educational Affairs Bureau in February 1928 as head of the cultural affairs section. He subsequently headed the Bureau from June 1928 to 1933. Similarly, Li Changfu joined the Bureau in 1927 as an editor before leaving for Japan in 1929, where he had stayed for two years. In Japan, Li Changfu learnt Japanese and English, after which he returned to work at the Jinan Bureau.59

As for Yao Nan, he was born in Shanghai during 1912. His interest in the Nanyang originated in his youth. He felt that Chinese scholars needed to pay more attention to the region because the Chinese contribution had been lagging behind the scholarship of European writers. He enrolled in the Nanyang Middle School 南洋中學 at the age of fifteen. Yao Nan then pursued his interest in Nanyang studies by working as an English translator with the Nanyang Cultural and Educational Affairs Bureau at Jinan from August 1929. Yao Nan later became the first head of the South Seas Society by virtue of his appointment as the Honorary Secretary, which was the highest-ranking position then. Amidst the Japanese onslaught on Malaya and Singapore, however, he fled to the Chinese war-time capital of Chongqing in 1941 and did not re-settle in Singapore following the end of World War II.60

The activities of the South Seas Society were halted by the Japanese invasion of Singapore. Despite its short war-time existence, the Society nevertheless fulfilled an instrumental role in the development of Nanyang studies. It was the first Nanyang-based organisation specialising in research on the region. This represented a new approach of understanding the Nanyang from the region’s perspective without repudiating the debt owed to the China-based intellectual tradition. The Society’s flagship periodical, the Journal of the South Seas Society 南洋學報 (Nanyang xuebao), broke new ground by being the first scholarly journal in the Nanyang to study the area. It was possibly also the oldest Chinese-language academic journal in the region.61 The publication of the Journal and other Society activities resumed during the post-Second World War period.62

There was overlapping membership between the South Seas Society and a second organisation with links to Jinan, the Singapore Jinan Alumni Association. Lee Kong Chian, for example, was a member of both bodies and a key sponsor of their activities.63 Although the move to found the Singapore Jinan Alumni Association began in 1940 with the submission of its registration application, the organisation officially

52 For a discussion of Liu Kang’s Nanyang style, refer for example to Alicia Yeo, “Singapore Art, Nanyang Style,” BiblioAsia 2, no. 1 (April 2006), 4-11. I have also referred to numerous sources, including: Interviews with Liu Kang by the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, Accession 000171 Reels 1/5-6/37; “Liu Kang: A Biodata,” Straits Times, 3 February 1993; and “Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man,” Straits Times, 31 March 2000. Many sources provide incorrect dates for Liu Kang’s stay at the Shanghai College of Fine Arts because they do not take into account his studies at Jinan. The dates for his enrolment at Jinan can be found in: Jinan Xiaoyouhui xinhuisuo luocheng ji Xinjiapo kaibu yibai wushi zhounian jinian tekan, 149. 53 Zhang Xiaohui 張曉輝, ed., Bainian Jinan shi 1906-2006 百年暨南史 1906-2006 (Guangzhou: Jinan Daxue Chubanshe, 2006), 91.54 Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1991; reprint ed., Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1997), 34.55 See the inaugural annual report 會務報告, Journal of the South Seas Society 南洋學報 (JSSS) 1, no. 1 (June 1940), 95 of the Chinese section.56 Gwee Yee Hean, “South Seas Society: Past, Present and Future,” JSSS 33 (1978), 32.57 For further details, refer to Seah, “Hybridity, Globalization, and the Creation of a Nanyang Identity: The South Seas Society in Singapore, 1940-1958.”58 Jinan xiaoshi 1906-1996, 38 and table 7 on 325.

59 For Liu Shimu’s biographical details, see JSSS 8, no. 2 (December 1952), especially 1-13 of the Chinese section; and Yao Nan 姚楠, Nantian yumo 南天余墨 (Shenyang: Liaoning Daxue Chubanshe, 1995), 39. Concerning Li’s hometown, sources differ: it was either Dantu 丹徒 or Zhenjiang 鎮江 – see “Bianji suoyu” 編輯瑣語, JSSS 1, no. 2 (December 1940), 3 of the Chinese section; Yao Nan, Nantian yumo, 39; and Chen Daiguang 陳代光, “Li Changfu xiansheng zhuanlue” 李長傅先生傳略, in Li Changfu 李長傅, Nanyang shidi yu huaqiao huaren yanjiu 南洋史地與華僑華人 研究 (Guangzhou: Jinan Daxue Chubanshe, 2001), 1-2.60 “Yidai caizi Nantian Jiulou qi ‘hui’: Nanyang Xuehui 54 nian” 一代才子南天酒樓起‘會’: 南洋學會54年, Lianhe zaobao 聯合早報, 10 April 1994; Yao Nan, Nantian yumo, 39-40; and Yao Nan 姚楠, Xingyunyeyuji 星雲椰雨集 (Singapore: Singapore News & Publications Ltd. [Book Publications Dept.], 1984), 2.61 1940 annual report, JSSS 1, no. 1 (June 1940), 95 of the Chinese section; and the “Fakan zhiqu” 發刊旨趣 (Foreword) in the same JSSS issue, 1-2 of the Chinese section.62 For post-war activities, refer to Seah, “Historicizing Hybridity and Globalization.”63 Lee was a South Seas Society member from 1946 till his death in 1967, and was also a founding member of the Singapore Jinan Alumni Association. The overlapping membership will be further explored in my Ph.D. dissertation, “Conceptualizing the Chinese World.”

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came into being only on 23 April 1941. This was the date on which the organisation’s registration was approved. It was initially known as the “Chi-Nan Alumni Association (Singapore).”64 There were ten or so founding members, one of whom was Lee Kong Chian. Hu Tsai Kuen was the founding chairman and Lim Pang Gan was the inaugural treasurer. The Association initially rented the third floor of 72 Robinson Road to serve as its headquarters.65

The choice of the Association’s initial Chinese name, “Luxing Jinan Xiaoyouhui” 旅星暨南校友會, was significant.66 The first character, “lu” 旅, implied that the organisation’s stay in Singapore was temporary and that there was thus no repudiation of the linkage with China. Yet the second character, “xing” 星, was an abbreviation for Singapore and an implicit acknowledgement of the Nanyang connection. The organisation was also known as the “Jinan Xiaoyouhui” and not “Jinan Daxue Xiaoyouhui” 暨南大學校友會 (Jinan University Alumni Association) because its membership comprised graduates of earlier non-university incarnations of Jinan like Jinan Academy (1906-11).67 The Association’s activities came to a standstill with the fall of Singapore in February 1942. When it was revived in 1947 by Lim Pang Gan, it became known as the “Singapore Jinan Alumni Association” 新加坡暨南校友會 (Xinjiapo Jinan Xiaoyouhui).68

While the inaugural version of the Singapore Jinan Alumni Association survived for only a short time prior to the Japanese conquest of Singapore in 1942, its existence was significant. This was because the organisation was one of the earliest of the Jinan alumni associations worldwide and possibly the oldest in the Nanyang.69 The official coordinating body at Jinan University was not established until 25 December 1992. Furthermore, the founding of the Singapore-based organisation represented the culmination of close links among the alumni on the island.70 Informal gatherings of these Jinan graduates had indeed begun as early as 1928, being prompted by the Jinan football team’s tour of the Nanyang.

The reason for the delay in formalising the Association’s existence by submitting an application for registration has never been addressed by the organisation’s publications. The founding members have also passed away and are therefore not available for interviews.71 It may well have been the case that there were insufficient alumni in Singapore to make the founding of an organisation worthwhile, or that these alumni did not have the financial resources to support an alumni association until the 1940s.72 But another plausible explanation was that the Singapore alumni did not see the need to formally establish such a body

64 Straits Settlements Government Gazette 76, no. 55 (2 May 1941), 933.65 He Baoren 何葆仁, and Lin Bangyan 林邦彦, “Jinan Xiaoyouhui chuangli shimoji” 暨南校友會創立始末記, in Jinan Xiaoyouhui xinhuisuo luocheng ji Xinjiapo kaibu yibai wushi zhounian jinian tekan, 89; Xing Jizhong, “Fengxian manhuai aixin gongchuang meihao weilai,” 1; and Ma Xingzhong, “Jinan Daxue yu Xinjiapo,” 30-32. 66 Straits Settlements Government Gazette 76, no. 55 (2 May 1941), 933.67 Interviews conducted in Mandarin with Xing Jizhong 邢濟眾 on 25 June 2007 and 16 August 2007. Also known by his pen-name, “Xing Zhizhong” 邢致中, Xing is a famous writer in Singapore who was born in China and who studied at Jinan University from 1943 to 1947. At the time of my interviews, he had recently relinquished his position as the head of the Singapore Jinan Alumni Association after five years of leadership. He joined the organization in 1982 as its Assistant Secretary, was the Secretary from 1984 to 2002, and became the head in 2002. He is possibly the Association’s most senior surviving member.68 Refer to the sources in footnote 65.69 See footnote 67.70 These networks will be further explored in my Ph.D. dissertation, “Conceptualizing the Chinese World.”71 Oral interviews which were recorded prior to their demise do not contain information on this issue.72 See footnote 67.

73 Wang Gungwu, Don’t Leave Home: Migration and the Chinese, 91; and Tu Wei-ming, “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center,” in The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today, ed. Tu Wei-ming (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 1-34.

until the isolation of Jinan following the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937. The siege of the school meant that there was now a need to keep the memory of their alma mater alive south of China, in the heart of the Nanyang.

COnCLuDInG rEMArKS

This paper contributes to debates on such contemporary issues as Chinese identity and the global role of China. More recent approaches to these subjects have included the “Greater China” economic notion and the centre-periphery dichotomy in the “Cultural China” concept.73 Such perspectives have presented an imbalanced interpretation of the Chinese world. My research offers a different approach. I examine Jinan University’s history using a trans-regional framework. This report in particular has analysed the experiences of Jinan students and intellectuals. Such people as Lee Kong Chian traversed the two regions of China and the Nanyang while being influenced by non-Chinese people and ideas. My research thus demonstrates the usefulness of an educational case study in understanding the history of modern China and Chinese migration. The ultimate goal is to formulate a holistic historical conceptualisation of the Chinese world.

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Public Celebrations in Colonial Singapore — With Particular Reference to a Case Study of Celebration and Homicide in 1872By Erik Holmberg

AbStrACt

Research on public celebrations in colonial Singapore can go beyond the spectacular imagery of the grand extravaganzas that were sponsored by the colonial state and private-sector elites. Such research can even use celebratory events as entry points into the underside of the colonial society. An exploration of how a homicide at the Fortune of War tavern during a Christmas celebration in 1872 was reported in the local newspaper at the time (together with some consideration of the social and criminal context of this incident and its aftermath) supports David Cannadine’s argument that class divisions were at least as important as racial divisions in the British Empire. This case study of celebration and criminality supports the conclusion that much can be learned about the nature of the social history of colonial Singapore from the pages of the local press, including its class structure, and even about the long-forgotten people who lived on the margins of that society. The image of the European section of the local population which emerges from this research is quite different from the preoccupation with a small group of elite Westerners who comprise the cast of characters in the standard works on Singapore’s colonial history. Instead, this study has uncovered traces of colonial Singapore’s European underclass, allowing a glimpse of an almost totally forgotten aspect of the underside of this colonial society, and showing that even the tiny European population was more socially diverse than we might expect. This essay demonstrates how the exploration of a single celebration, together with its context and its aftermath, can expand the boundaries of the field of colonial social history in Singapore. Public celebrations in colonial Singapore (or, more specifically, the surviving evidence of these past celebrations) offer a means to gain a better understanding of the social history of the people of this Settlement, especially when placed within their social context. In particular, an exploration of the history of public celebrations on this island may provide insights into the nature of the social structure and the social interactions among people belonging to different sections of its ethnically-diverse population. Through certain festivities, we may even learn something about the lives of people who have been largely forgotten. Although the space limitations of this essay prevent a detailed discussion of multiple celebrations, it is possible nevertheless to focus special attention on a single celebration as a case study while also paying some attention to its social and historical context, in order to reveal aspects of Singapore’s past that have been largely overlooked and point the way towards further historical research.1

5.

1 I am very grateful to Clement Liew, Assistant Professor Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied, and Professor James Francis Warren, each of whom inspired me to attempt to retrieve the history of some of the forgotten people of colonial Singapore — including those who sometimes found themselves on the wrong side of the law. I am also grateful to Senior Reference Librarian Nor-Afidah Abd Rahman of the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library for her assistance, and to Johnson Paul, Narinder Kaur Bawa Singh, Veronica Chee, Pat Ng, Angelina Phoon, Sandy Huey Jing Toh, Akshata Ramchandra Patkar, and the many other people at the National Library who helped me in various ways.

Colonial Singapore was the scene of a variety of public celebrations, many of which were colourful and spectacular. Some celebrations that took place in public were organised especially by and for the members of certain ethnic or religious groups, while others attracted participants from many or all sections of the diverse population. Such festivities included celebrations of royal birthdays, coronations, and jubilees, visits by travelling royalty, anniversaries of the founding of colonial Singapore by Sir Stamford Raffles, and celebrations of imperial military victories. Naturally, such royal and imperial events were grand, spectacular extravaganzas, which were organised by official and private-sector elites — in other words, the type of people whose names most often found their way into the newspapers and the history books. Indeed, such events and the newspaper reports about them helped ensure that local Asian elites received public recognition of their elite status. These spectacular festivities attracted the attention of the diverse local population. For example, the celebrations in Singapore of the Silver Jubilee of King George V in 1935 included a parade at the Padang which attracted a cosmopolitan audience of almost 50,000 spectators;2 there was also a three-mile-long Chinese lantern procession organised by the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce in which 200 organisations and 30,000 people participated, and which attracted an estimated crowd of 300,000 spectators.3 The organisers of these celebrations included not only colonial government officials, but also the organisations and associations of various sections of the population, and the parades and decorations themselves often showcased the diversity of the population, as well as the organisational ability of community leaders. However, this is not to say that the public celebrations of the past can only teach us about the elites. In fact, the records of celebrations can also tell us about the lives of non-elite, working-class or underclass people — in other words, the forgotten people of the past.

Public celebrations belonged to the masses as well as to the elites. The Padang provided an important venue or stage for many colonial-era festivities, and the grand scale and spectacular imagery of these events naturally attracted a great deal of public interest, at a time when there was no television or Internet. Crowds of spectators often numbered in the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands, all evidently interested in seeing the parades and decorations. Their shared interest in these events transcended the boundaries of their cultural, ethnic, and religious identities.

However, we must not assume that celebratory activity was limited to the grand and spectacular public celebrations of the British Empire, its monarchy, its victorious wars, and its local hero and founding father, Sir Stamford Raffles.4 Indeed, celebratory activity could also take the form of much more humble sorts of activities and occasions, such as a Christmas celebration at a tavern in Tanjong Pagar in 1872 that had tragic consequences. What can such events tell us about the social structure of the ethnically diverse population of this colonial port city? How did certain members of different sections of this population interact with one another? What can certain festivities tell us about the lives of the forgotten people of the past? What about the

2 Straits Times, 6 May 1935, p. 11.3 Straits Times, 8 May 1935, p. 12.4 Regarding the founding of the Settlement of Singapore by Sir Stamford Raffles, see, for example: Ernest C.T. Chew, “The Foundation of a British Settlement,” in: Ernest C.T. Chew and Edwin Lee, editors, A History of Singapore. (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991, third impression 1997), pp. 36–40. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 959.57 HIS -[HIS].

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social and historical context of these celebrations? Can (and should) a particular event in the past that was apparently regarded as relatively insignificant at the time and soon forgotten, be transformed through a process of scholarly interpretation (as E.H. Carr famously explained) into a significant historical fact?5 These are the sorts of questions which have been considered in my research, and are brought into focus through the consideration of a specific event and its historical context. Though the scope of this essay is necessarily modest, it just might help suggest a whole new field of research in the history of Singapore: namely, the social history of crime in this multiethnic Southeast Asian city and its utility as a means to better understand the working-class people of the past, a direction of research which has been suggested recently by Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied.6 The topic of murder in the social history of colonial Singapore has also been explored by William Roff7 and James Francis Warren.8

The exploration of the social history of colonial Singapore offers the intriguing possibility that we may retrieve not only the lives of forgotten individuals, but actually reveal whole sections or classes of the population which have been largely overlooked in the existing historical narrative. One of these sections is the working-class European population of colonial Singapore. Just as the Chinese of colonial Singapore were not all impoverished coolies (indeed, some local Chinese elites were extremely rich), the Europeans of colonial Singapore were not all wealthy elites. Indeed, the vast majority of the Europeans who stayed in colonial Singapore for any length of time (that is, who could be described as inhabitants of Singapore) must have been working-class soldiers and sailors. Some of these soldiers and sailors committed crimes which were reported in the local newspapers. This is not to say that all of them engaged in violent crimes — but the reports of such crimes give us some insights into how these people lived (and sometimes died) in Singapore.

James Francis Warren has shown that the lives of the forgotten people of the past can be retrieved through the records of their deaths, in his famous books Rickshaw Coolie and Ah Ku and Karayuki-san. A tragic and violent incident that occurred at a tavern in Tanjong Pagar on the evening of Christmas Day in 1872 provides an example of how a report of a violent death which occurred during a holiday celebration can shed light on the lives of non-elite people of the past, and, more broadly, on certain aspects of the nature of the colonial society. The following pages will take this incident as a case study, exploring this event in detail and placing it within its historical context, in an effort to reveal previously underappreciated (or even unknown) aspects of Singapore’s colonial-era social history.

5 Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History?: The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge January-March 1961. Second Edition. Edited by R.W. Davies. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986, pp. 4–7. I am grateful to Associate Professor Stephen Keck for introducing me to the work of E.H. Carr.6 Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied, “Murder as a Prism for Understanding the Social Worlds and Daily Life of Working-Class Sikhs in Singapore and Malaya,” paper presented at the International Workshop on Sikhs in Multicultural Southeast Asia: Negotiating an Identity, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), 12–13 May 2008. 7 William R. Roff, “Murder as an Aid to Social History: The Arabs in Singapore in the Early Twentieth Century,” in: Huub de Jonge and Nico Kaptein, editors, Transcending Borders: Arabs, Politics, Trade and Islam in Southeast Asia (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), pp. 91–108.8 James Francis Warren, Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore 1870–1940 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1993), Chapter 12: “The Other Side of Midnight,” especially pp. 290–305. See also: James Francis Warren, “A Strong Stomach and Flawed Material: Towards the Making of a Trilogy, Singapore, 1870–1940,” Southeast Asian Studies, Volume 33, Number 2, September 1995, pp. 245–264. See especially pp. 253–254. This article is available online at this Japanese web site: http://www.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/seas/33/2/index.htm.

A trAGEDy At tHE FOrtunE OF WAr tAvErn In 1872: A CHrIStMAS CELEbrAtIOn In tAnjOnG PAGAr tHAt turnED vIOLEnt

“A very serious affray occurred last night at a tavern called the ‘Fortune of War,’ on the corner of Tanjong Pagar and New Harbour roads, between some men of the 80th Regiment from the steamer Scotland, and some sailors belonging to that vessel. … a patrol of soldiers, with sidearms, was sent out from the ship to look for stragglers, but the attractions of the tavern, and the fact of it being Christmas, proved too great for them, and the patrol remained there, drinking with the sailors and others, until a late hour, when, as usual when sailors and soldiers meet at a drinking bout, the entertainment wound up with a fight. The soldiers used their bayonets, and the sailors their knives and anything else they could get hold of. One of the sailors was killed, we believe with a bayonet wound in the abdomen, and there were several wounded on both sides.” — Singapore Daily Times, 26 December 1872.

While exploring the history of public celebrations in colonial Singapore, I happened to find an account of a Christmas celebration in 1872 which sadly degenerated into a tragic and violent incident. By piecing together the news reports that appeared over several months in the pages of the Singapore Daily Times, it is possible to reconstruct an account of violence and bloodshed in a tavern and its judicial aftermath, as well as certain aspects of the social and criminal context within which this story played out. It is a story that reads like something out of the lore of the Wild West of the American frontier, rather than what one might expect to find in the history of Singapore, which is today a city-state that is internationally renowned for its orderliness and safety. This forgotten tragedy in 1872 provides insights into a little-known aspect of the social history of colonial Singapore, namely the lifestyle and recreational activities of European soldiers and sailors, their presence on this island, the nature of their criminal activities, and the responses of the colonial authorities and the local press. These insights may help to provide a more balanced view of the society of colonial Singapore, and could help to clear up some possible misconceptions about this society that might exist in the present day.

Today, when we think of Europeans in the colonial Settlement of Singapore, we may imagine wealthy people who lived in mansions, attended by servants. However, not all Europeans in the Settlement were wealthy and privileged; in fact, it is practically certain that most of them were working-class soldiers and sailors, whose natural habitats included taverns and the less-reputable streets and alleys of Singapore, rather than sumptuous mansions in fashionable suburbs. Likewise, when we think of rioting or other violence in colonial Singapore, we may think of gangs of Chinese samsengs who belonged to secret societies, fighting each other in the streets.9 However, the Chinese secret society members weren’t the only offenders who committed acts of violence here. Not all of the Europeans here were respectable law-abiding inhabitants of the Settlement, and violent crimes committed by Europeans were not unknown. Indeed, the number and variety of crimes committed by Europeans in Singapore in late 1872 and early 1873 is sufficient to suggest that European criminality was a significant component of the overall criminality in this Settlement, and, hence, a feature of the local social history of crime which must not be overlooked in the study of Singapore’s social past.

9 Edwin Lee, The British As Rulers: Governing Multiracial Singapore 1867–1914. (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1991), pp. 23–47. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 959.57022 LEE -[HIS].

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The respectable side of the Western presence in the Settlement has been conspicuously commemorated in the statue of Raffles, in the names of Raffles Place and Raffles Hotel, in all the other streets and places which were named after prominent Westerners, and in the mansions which were the homes of wealthy Europeans, some of which still survive today. However, the involvement of some Westerners in the disreputable side of life in colonial Singapore was, quite naturally, never commemorated with monuments, for obvious reasons.10 There was evidently a belief among the British elites in the colonial era that the presence of poor or unemployed Europeans in Singapore and Malaya was an embarrassment that posed a threat to European prestige; moreover, they felt that their prestige had to be sustained at all times, since it was regarded as essential to the colonial system here.11 John Butcher has explored this topic in detail in his book The British in Malaya, 1880–1941: The Social History of a European Community in Colonial South-East

Asia.12 Nevertheless, there was a presence of working-class Europeans in colonial Singapore, and it is the task of the social historian to explore such forgotten elements of this society, in order to achieve a fuller understanding of the social history of this place.

It is understandable if the way in which the colonial past is remembered or imagined gives scant attention to non-elite Europeans, and most especially to those who strayed from the straight and narrow path of the law-abiding subjects of the Empire, and put themselves on the wrong side of the law. Still, the presence and activities of working-class and underprivileged Europeans in the Settlement of Singapore — including the involvement of some of them in criminal activities — should not be forgotten, since they were part and parcel of the overall picture of the colonial society. Without taking these people into consideration, no account of Singapore’s past society can hope to be complete.

In the interest of promoting a more balanced view of the colonial past, the following pages will show what went wrong when soldiers and sailors celebrated Christmas together in a tavern in Tanjong Pagar in 1872. A consideration of this case may shed light on several aspects of colonial Singapore at that time. For example, it may reveal information on the nature of the European population in Singapore back then (a population which included those who were just passing through, as well as those who had settled down here), together with the local law-and-order situation, and the nature of the colonial criminal justice system, including the types of sentences which this system meted out to those who were convicted of violent crimes. The discussion in the following pages will also attempt to place the involvement of Europeans in criminal activities and the colonial justice system within the broader social and criminal context of Singapore in the early 1870s.

The work of prominent historians on the social history of Singapore and Malaya has inspired this exploration of celebration, crime, and death in Tanjong Pagar in 1872. James Francis Warren has shown

10 In 1986, James Francis Warren pointed out that there was no monument to rickshaw pullers in Singapore. See: James Francis Warren, Rickshaw Coolie: A People’s History of Singapore (1880–1940) (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 326. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 301.4444095957 WAR.11 See: John Cameron, Our Tropical Possessions in Malayan India: Being a Descriptive Account of Singapore, Penang, Province Wellesley, and Malacca; Their Peoples, Products, Commerce, and Government (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), p. 281. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RRARE English 959.5 CAM, also available on microfilm reel NL11224. Reprint edition, Singapore: Ascanio Books, 2007, Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 959.503 CAM. Also reprinted as Our Tropical Possessions in Malayan India with an Introduction by Wang Gungwu (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1965), Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RCLOS and RSING English 959.5 CAM.12 John G. Butcher, The British in Malaya, 1880–1941: The Social History of a European Community in Colonial South-East Asia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 127, 128, 132, 157, and 223. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 301.4512105951033 BUT.

how historical research can recover and retrieve the experiences and lives of largely-forgotten people,13 in his classic studies of the social history of rickshaw pullers and prostitutes: Rickshaw Coolie: A People’s History

of Singapore (1880–1940) and: Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore 1870–1940. John Butcher has described the situation of non-elite Europeans in Malaya, including working-class train divers and unemployed rubber planters, and also analysed the significance of a well-known European murder case, in his book The British in Malaya, 1880–1941: The Social History of a European Community in Colonial South-

East Asia.14 The lives of Chinese immigrant labourers, including their experiences in China which motivated them to leave their homeland, the process of emigration, and the social problems which they experienced in Singapore and Malaya, have been vividly depicted by Yen Ching-hwang, in A Social History of the Chinese

in Singapore and Malaya 1800–1911.15 While Chinese immigrant labourers comprised the bulk of the labouring-class population of Singapore in the 19th and early 20th centuries, we should not forget the other, less numerous sections of the working-class population, including those who were from Europe.

European soldiers and sailors belonged to the social landscape of colonial Singapore, even if their stays here were sometimes brief, when they were just stopping here on their way to other posts or ports. It must be remembered that the terms soldier and sailor were not just the descriptions of individuals; they were also the descriptions of categories of people in Singapore. As individuals, soldiers and sailors may have been members of a floating, transient population, some of whom were posted here, while others were just passing through; but as categories of people, soldiers and sailors were long-term fixtures of the population of colonial Singapore. Although the individuals circulated in and out of this port city, the categories were represented year after year, and generation after generation.

Western soldiers and sailors have been continually present in modern Singapore, alongside the Arab, Armenian, Chinese, Eurasian, Indian, Jewish, and Malay elements of Singapore’s population. The evidence presented in the following pages will suggest the unfortunate possibility that Western soldiers and sailors may have been responsible for a significant share of the local criminality. At the same time, the evidence suggests that the considerable amount of violent crime in 19th century Singapore was normalised and considered tolerable in the context of a frontier society in this Southeast Asian port. While analysing the significance of certain acts of violence in an effort to find what they can reveal about the social context, and especially about forgotten people of the past, this essay will endeavour to allow the Singapore Daily Times

to tell what happened in its own words, allowing this essay’s readers to receive the news just as the original readers of the newspaper did over a century ago. The Singapore Daily Times was evidently the leading local daily newspaper in the early 1870s. There were no Chinese-language or Malay-language local newspapers at that time.

13 Regarding the recovery and retrieval of the lives of prostitutes through historical research, see: James Francis Warren, Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore 1870–1940 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 389. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 306.74095957 WAR.14 John G. Butcher, The British in Malaya, 1880–1941: The Social History of a European Community in Colonial South-East Asia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 93–96, 127–133, 233–238. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 301.4512105951033 BUT.15 Yen Ching-hwang, A Social History of the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya 1800–1911 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 1–10, 112–116, and 222–258. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 301.45195105957 YEN.

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tHE CrIMInAL COntExt In SInGAPOrE In DECEMbEr 1872

Before proceeding to the tragedy at the “Fortune of War” tavern, a few examples of other violent criminal activities that occurred in December 1872 will help to place the homicide in the tavern within the context of criminality and bloodshed in Singapore at that time. Singapore in the 19th century was the home of a multiracial society; it was an income-tax-free paradise for rich men regardless of their race or religion, and its economy was in the hands of a multiracial business class, which included wealthy Arabs, Chinese, Europeans, Indians, and Jews. Perhaps it should be no surprise that a multiracial criminal element perpetrated the violence that plagued this sunny island.

One example of such violence was a fight that broke out among some Chinese men in Kampong Glam on 16 December 1872, and that involved, among other violent acts, the killing of a man with a spear. According to the report in the Singapore Daily Times of that date:

This morning, a serious riot occurred at Campong Glam, between two factions of Chinese, — we believe the Old Ghee Hin and the Say Tan kongsees, — in which spears, poles, and even firearms were used. There have been … three stabbed and one shot …16

Yet, despite the gruesome nature of this incident of street-fighting in Kampong Glam, the way this incident was reported in the newspaper suggests that its editor did not regard it as especially upsetting — rather, it seems more likely that such gang battles were regarded as part and parcel of life in Singapore back then, and not particularly threatening to the overall social, political, and economic order.

The Singapore Daily Times provided additional information on this riot in its next issue, including the identities of the groups involved in the violence, and details of the death of a man from a spear wound

The riot at Campong Glam yesterday was not, we learn, between the Say Tan and Ghee Hin Kongsees, but between two Teo Chew factions, the Ghee Hin and Ghee Kee Societies. About fifty police were under arms … besides a large body of constables armed with batons. … one man [was] killed outright with a spear, which broke off in his body …17

These reports indicate that the editor of the Singapore Daily Times believed that the paper’s readers were interested in reading about street battles between groups of Chinese in Kampong Glam, yet there is no sense of shock or panic; evidently, these things happened from time to time in frontier Singapore in the 1870s.

Similarly, a report on a murder trial in 1873 suggests that deadly brawls were commonplace in Singapore at that time. According to the Singapore Daily Times:

16 Singapore Daily Times, 16 December 1872, p. 2.17 Singapore Daily Times, 17 December 1872, p. 2.

There was one case, in which four men were charged with the murder of a man in a riot. Riots, unfortunately, are of too frequent occurrence here, and murder during those riots also occurred lamentably often. In the present case, a man had been most barbarously murdered, having no less [than] four spear wounds, one of the spears having entered under the rib and penetrated into the heart, causing instant death.18

Spears seem to have been popular weapons in Singapore in those days. In 1873, a Bugis man by the name of Wah Dolah killed two people at Changi, one of whom was a Chinese Muslim named Mat Sallee, who was speared to death. The murderer initially evaded capture,19 but, ironically, he was arrested in the police court when he appeared there on an unrelated matter. The Singapore Daily Times informed its readers that:

Some time ago, we reported a double murder committed at Changhie, by a man named Dolah. The murderer has been caught, under somewhat curious circumstances. He stole some rice from a Chinaman at Bukit Timah, and the Chinaman gave him a beating. He gave the Chinaman in charge for assault, and a counter charge of theft was preferred against himself. Both parties were brought to the police court, where the murderer was recognised and arrested for the crime.20

An incident which occurred on the day before the Teo Chew battle in Kampong Glam in December 1872 suggests that there was a certain degree of indiscipline (including drunkenness and violent criminality) among some of the very men upon whom the local colonial authorities relied to help maintain order in Singapore. The Singapore Daily Times complained about the conduct of some Indians (the newspaper called them Klings) on a Sunday evening along Orchard Road:

The overbearing conduct of a Kling with a badge, the banding together of Chinamen for revenge, and the cowardice of some members of the Police, were so clearly demonstrated in a case which came before Mr. F.H. Gottlieb the day before yesterday … On Sunday, about 8 p.m., a Kling named Iman Kader, (the Chief Peon21 attached to the Establishment of our Chief Justice) accompanied by three companions, all of them intoxicated, took it into his head to assault a Chinaman who was passing quietly by on Orchard Road … an Acting Corporal and a Police Constable … were standing by … the Acting Corporal and Constable disappeared … [after fighting broke out between a group of Chinese and a group of “Klings”] The row was stopped by the interference of Dr. Anderson, Mr. Atchison, and Mr. Koek …22

18 Singapore Daily Times, 17 April 1873, p. 2.19 Singapore Daily Times, 3 March 1873, p. 2.20 Singapore Daily Times, 31 March 1873, p. 2.21 Peon is pronounced pyoon; this title was applied to certain Indian office-workers who worked for the British during the colonial era. See the entry for peon in The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright © 2006 by the Houghton Mifflin Company, at: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/peon22 Singapore Daily Times, 19 December 1872, p. 2.

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These few examples of criminality will suffice to give a sense of the context of criminality at the time of the Christmas celebration at the Fortune of War tavern in 1872, and to indicate that a certain degree of violence and disorderly behaviour was a fact of life in colonial Singapore at that time. The examples above also show that violent crimes were committed in this frontier Settlement by people of various ethnic and occupational backgrounds — in these cases, we have examples of violent crimes committed by Chinese gangsters, a Bugis man, and an Indian subordinate of the Chief Justice — and soon we will turn to European criminality as well. However, if the tone of the reporting in the Singapore Daily Times is any indication, the resident European population does not seem to have been especially alarmed about such violence. For example, this researcher found no evidence that Europeans were thinking of fleeing Singapore because of the endemic violence here, or were planning to send their children away to safety. Could their apparently calm reaction be explained by the perception that the violence was evidently not directed at them, and did not threaten the colonial social, political, and economic order? The nature of colonial Singapore as a frontier Settlement in the early 1870s is further emphasised by the fact that this island was adjacent to the Malay States which were then regarded as dangerous places in desperate need of the imposition of the imperial order of Pax Britannica; indeed, in April 1873, Chinese businessmen petitioned the British authorities to intervene in the Malay States.23 However, this was a time when the British authorities were reluctant to increase their involvement in Malaya. On 8 November 1872, Governor Sir Harry St. George Ord announced that “Her Majesty’s Government will hold out no promise of protection to the gentlemen who live by commerce in their trading and mining operations in these native states.” The Singapore Daily Times criticised the Governor’s statement, claiming that:

This unblushing abnegation of the very first duty of any government and its only raison d’être, has not been appreciated by the community as perhaps it ought to be and people ask whether it would not be better, more honest and certainly more dignified, for Great Britain, if afraid or unwilling to fulfil its responsibilities in this quarter of the globe, to retire and give place to some other power, say America for instance, who would not hesitate a moment in protecting its citizens in their lawful callings, exacting instant and ample satisfaction for insults to its flag, and making short work with pirates, their friends and abettors.24

The situation in the Malay Peninsula must have appeared quite bleak for the Singapore Daily Times to suggest (even with tongue-in-cheek) that Great Britain should allow the United States of America to take charge of the Malay States and impose Pax Americana! Of course, it is practically certain that the real intent of this provocative statement in the Singapore Daily Times was to goad the British Empire into expanding its dominion throughout the Malayan Peninsula — which, in fact, it did soon after, presumably to the great relief of many Chinese businessmen, who proceeded to amass vast fortunes in the Malayan tin-mining industry.25 But, back in 1872 and 1873, Singapore could still be seen by Europeans — and by local Chinese businessmen, for that matter — as a frontier port on the edge of Western civilisation in Southeast Asia.

23 See the text of a petition dated 19 April 1873 and signed by Chinese merchants and traders, which was presented to Captain E.W. Shaw, R.N., the Lieutenant Governor of Malacca, in the Singapore Daily Times, 8 May 1873, p. 2.24 Singapore Daily Times, 30 January 1873, p. 2.25 See, for example: K.G. Tregonning, Straits Tin: A Brief Account of the First Seventy-Five Years of The Straits Trading Company, Limited. 1887–1962. (Singapore: Straits Times Press, 1962), and: Wong Lin Ken, “Western Enterprise and the Development of the Malayan Tin Industry to 1914,” in: C. D. Cowan, editor, The Economic Development of South-East Asia: Studies in Economic History and Political Economy (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1964), pp. 127–153. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RCLOS English 330.959 COW.

When the British steamship Scotland steamed into Singapore’s harbour, the ship’s passengers and crew found themselves in a frontier Settlement that was rife with an endemic yet manageable level of disorder and violence, a place where men speared each other to death in the streets, and where the police were accused of cowardice. Perhaps it might even be said that violent crime had become normalised in colonial Singapore, at least up to a point. A colonial frontier society that could not completely rid itself of violence could at least accept some violence as a normal and tolerable fact of life and become accustomed to it, so long as the social structure was not threatened and business was able to proceed and flourish as usual.

tHE ArrIvAL OF tHE StEAMSHIP SCOTLAND

A British steamship called the Scotland arrived in Singapore from London on 23 December 1872, under the command of Captain James. This 1,286-ton vessel was apparently a merchant ship — the Scotland

was listed under the heading of “Steamers” in the published shipping list, rather than under the heading of “Men-of-War,” and the mercantile firm of Paterson, Simons & Company was listed as the “Consignee or Agents” for the Scotland.26 Nevertheless, some soldiers of Her Majesty’s 80th Regiment were aboard this ship.27 The Scotland had arrived in Singapore in time for Christmas, and we can imagine that the soldiers and sailors aboard this British vessel looked forward to celebrating Christmas ashore — though their ideas of celebration may have involved liquor and prostitutes rather than religious observance. Unfortunately, their celebrations were marred by violence, and for one of them, Singapore would be the final port of call.

The arrival of the Scotland immediately preceded (and perhaps even caused) the unleashing of violence and terror upon some of the law-abiding people of Singapore. Ironically, the perpetrators included men who disgraced the honour of the armed services to which they belonged, and who were duty-bound to defend the subjects of the British Empire, rather than assaulting and robbing them. During Christmas Day in 1872, soldiers and sailors invaded the homes of local people, with the intention of seizing their holiday cakes and liquid refreshments. The Portuguese inhabitants of Singapore seem to have been particularly targeted by these unwanted visitors. These Portuguese people were probably members of the Portuguese Eurasian community of Singapore. We can only speculate as to why the Portuguese people were targeted by the European criminal element, but this could have been related to the fact that the Eurasians were Christians (and were therefore celebrating Christmas with cakes and beverages that tempted certain unwanted visitors), as well as the fact that many of them lived in a centrally-located residential area, where they may have been noticed by passing soldiers and sailors. The centre of this Eurasian residential area included the locality of Queen Street, Waterloo Street, and Bencoolen Street,28 near St. Joseph’s Church in Victoria Street, which was founded by the Portuguese Catholic Mission in Singapore.29

In addition, the fact that the Portuguese Eurasians belonged to a relatively small minority within the ethnically diverse population of Singapore might have caused their would-be attackers to view them as

26 Singapore Daily Times, 27 December 1872, p. 3, table headed: “Shipping in the Harbour.”27 Singapore Daily Times, 26 December 1872, p. 2.28 Regarding the social and cultural history of the Eurasian community of Singapore, see: Myrna Braga-Blake, with co-researcher Ann Ebert-Oehlers, Singapore Eurasians: Memories and Hopes (Singapore: Published for the Eurasian Association, Singapore, by Times Editions, 1992). Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 305.80405957 SIN.29 Fr. Manuel Teixeira, The Portuguese Missions in Malacca and Singapore (1511–1958). Volume III — Singapore. (Lisboa: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1963), Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RCLOS English 266.25953 TEI v. 3.

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more vulnerable than the members of the Chinese majority here. It could well be that the lawbreaking soldiers and sailors knew enough about Singapore and the reputation of its Chinese community to know that anyone who interfered with the Chinese here might well provoke swift and severe retaliation by members of the powerful Chinese secret societies.30 Certainly, at least some of the British soldiers and sailors were familiar with the inside of the Singapore jail, and their terms of incarceration there would have given them opportunities to become acquainted with the local Chinese gangsters. Still, this explanation is merely speculation, which may attribute to these loutish and violent soldiers and sailors a far greater degree of rationality and intelligence than they actually possessed, particularly when they were under the influence of alcohol while ashore after a long sea voyage.

The Singapore Daily Times informed its readers on 26 December 1872:

We hear that yesterday afternoon some drunken sailors forcibly entered a private house in North Bridge Road, opposite the Scotch Church, and made a general smash of everything they found on the ground floor, including all the eatables prepared for the Christmas dinner. The master of the house came down stairs with some friends to drive out the intruders, and the sailor[s] showed fight, assaulting two or three of the visitors in a brutal manner. We understand a number of soldiers and sailors went about during the day, walking uninvited into the houses of Portuguese residents, to the alarm of the inmates, that they might regale themselves with drink and Christmas cakes.31

Since this report in the Singapore Daily Times did not specify whether these soldiers and sailors were from the steamship Scotland, we must not assume that the perpetrators were necessarily connected with this doubtlessly excellent vessel. It is quite possible that the seafarers may have been from other ships in the harbour, and that the soldiers could have belonged to the 10th (The North Lincolnshire) Regiment of Foot, 1st Battalion, which arrived in Singapore in December 1872.32 Some of these intrepid soldiers evidently found themselves unequal to the challenge of staying on the right side of the law: by 1875, no less than 23 soldiers of Her Majesty’s 10th Regiment were securely accommodated behind bars in the Singapore jail.33

At the risk of getting ahead of the story, it seems appropriate to mention here as an aside that the local Portuguese Eurasians later demonstrated that they were fully capable of dealing with the British soldiers who dared to invade their homes and threaten their families. When some soldiers from Her Majesty’s 10th Regiment entered a private residence in Queen Street uninvited in June 1873, the inhabitants and their neighbours treated their unwelcome visitors to a lesson they would remember, and were commended for it by the Singapore Daily Times, which reported the incident as follows:

30 Edwin Lee, The British As Rulers: Governing Multiracial Singapore 1867–1914. (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1991), pp. 23–47. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 959.57022 LEE -[HIS].31 Singapore Daily Times, 26 December 1872, p. 2.32 See the 1873 edition of The Straits Calendar and Directory (Singapore: Commercial Press, 1873), p. 31, which mentions the arrival of the 10th Regiment in December 1872. See also: Chiang Ming Shun, “Britannia Rules the Waves? Singapore and Imperial Defence 1867–1891,” in: Malcolm H. Murfett, John N. Miksic, Brian P. Farrell, and Chiang Ming Shun, Between Two Oceans: A Military History of Singapore From First Settlement to Final British Withdrawal (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 95, Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 355.0095957 BET.33 Chiang Ming Shun, op. cit., p. 96.

We think it is greatly to be regretted that the men of the 1/10th are allowed to roam about the streets of the town at night, after so many instances of their excesses as our police records afford. On Saturday evening, two soldiers of this regiment, in a quarrelsome, drunken condition, attempted to carry things with a high hand in Queen Street. They unceremoniously entered the house of a Portuguese family, whereupon the women, who were sitting in the lower room, took flight up stairs. The soldiers attempted to follow, but were stopped by the men in the house, and quietly asked to leave. Instead of doing so, the soldiers deliberately shut the doors, and took off their belts to use as weapons, but before they could make use of them the neighbours rushed in and gave the two ruffians a sound beating, after which they were given in charge to the police. We understand they were so severely punished that it was deemed advisable to send them to hospital. We trust a few examples like this will have a good effect.34

Could it be that the Singapore Daily Times was actually in favour of some form of vigilante justice? This conclusion is suggested by the report’s comment on the “good effect” of such examples of summary “punishment” meted out on-the-spot to would-be attackers by their intended victims. In any case, this article provides further evidence for the pattern of criminality on the part of the soldiers of the garrison, supporting the conclusion that among these soldiers were members of the British underclass who had been kitted out in uniforms and sent out to the colonies, where they sadly disgraced the reputation of the British army and the British Empire itself.

It can only be hoped that such individuals were a minority within their regiments, and that their fellow soldiers were generally law-abiding; this could well have been the case, since the bad elements would naturally tend to receive more attention in the press than the soldiers who stayed out of trouble. The article also indicates that Singapore’s Portuguese Eurasians were not about to passively submit to the depredations of rampaging British soldiers; these Eurasian Singaporeans were ready and able to defend their families, with force if need be. Still, it was a profound disgrace to the British Empire that Singapore’s respectable law-abiding civilians were forced to resort to violence in self-defence against the very soldiers of Her Majesty’s 10th Regiment who were supposedly stationed in Singapore to protect this place.

yuLEtIDE CELEbrAtIOn AnD trAGEDy

Alas, the invasion of the home in North Bridge Road on Christmas Day in 1872 and the assault on the people there was not the only violent incident that Christmas, nor was it the most serious crime on that date. The newspaper’s narrative turned swiftly from stolen Christmas cakes, to a story of sailors’ knives, soldiers’ bayonets, and sudden, violent death. The setting of this bloodshed was a tavern called the “Fortune of War” in Tanjong Pagar, in an insalubrious swampy locality near the harbour, which seems to have been devoted at least in part to the refreshment of seafarers. We can imagine what this area was like in the 1870s, thanks to a description of the place written by a visitor who landed here five years after the deadly Yuletide brawl. When the American naturalist William Hornaday arrived in Singapore on 20 May 1878, he described a stinking creek of slime along the road between the harbour and Chinatown, and he noted

34 Singapore Daily Times, 9 June 1873, p. 2.

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several taverns with nautical names in this area.35 The imagery of Tanjong Pagar in the 1870s that Hornaday thus bequeathed to us — an image of seafarers’ taverns and a slimy, reeking stream — sets the stage for the picture of holiday celebration and deadly violence that emerges from the microfilmed pages of the Singapore Daily Times.

The first of several reports on the bloodshed at the “Fortune of War” tavern on the night of Christmas in 1872 appeared in the Singapore Daily Times on the following day. This account explains how the soldiers and sailors happened to engage in what seems to have been a friendly Christmas celebration together, complete with alcoholic refreshments, before the party turned ugly. The report goes on to recount how the men in the tavern attacked and wounded a European police officer when he tried to stop the brawl, and how reinforcements finally arrived and brought the situation under control. In the words of the Singapore Daily Times:

A very serious affray occurred last night at a tavern called the ‘Fortune of War,’ on the corner of Tanjong Pagar and New Harbour roads,36 between some men of the 80th Regiment from the steamer Scotland, and some sailors belonging to that vessel. There was, we hear, a fight between a sailor and a soldier in the afternoon at this tavern, which resulted in the arrest of the parties. In the evening, a patrol of soldiers, with sidearms, was sent out from the ship to look for stragglers, but the attractions of the tavern, and the fact of it being Christmas, proved too great for them, and the patrol remained there, drinking with the sailors and others, until a late hour, when, as usual when sailors and soldiers meet at a drinking bout, the entertainment wound up with a fight. The soldiers used their bayonets, and the sailors their knives and anything else they could get hold of. One of the sailors was killed, we believe with a bayonet wound in the abdomen, and there were several wounded on both sides. There are two men, a soldier and a sailor, lying wounded on board the steamer, and two or three others in the hospital. The police arrived while the fight was going on, and Corporal Barrow, a European police officer, while endeavouring to make arrests and stop the row, received two or three bayonet scratches and was pretty well beaten. Reinforcements arrived, however, and a number of combatants were arrested, and several others were taken into custody this morning from on board the steamer for having been concerned in the fight. Among the trophies secured by the police are, an old-fashioned cutlass covered with rust, and with spots of blood on it, — a jack knife with a pointed blade about four inches long, and a heavy iron belaying-pin. The police are inquiring into the affair, and an inquest will be held on the body of the sailor who was killed.37

35 William T. Hornaday, Two Years in the Jungle: The Experiences of a Hunter and Naturalist in India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula and Borneo (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885), Parts III and IV reprinted as: The Experiences of a Hunter and Naturalist in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, with an Introduction by J.M. Gullick (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 3, Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 910.4 HOR.36 New Harbour was renamed Keppel Harbour on 19 April 1900, in honour of Admiral of the Fleet the Honourable Sir Henry Keppel, while the road leading to this harbour was named after Admiral Keppel fifteen years earlier, according to C.B. Buckley’s Anecdotal History, p. 493.37 Singapore Daily Times, 26 December 1872, p. 2.

It requires no great stretch of imagination to fill in the details omitted in the brief account published in the Singapore Daily Times, and thus in some sense to bring this long-forgotten incident in Tanjong Pagar back to life, recovering it from the oblivion to which it was consigned generations ago by time’s relentless flight onward into the future. We can picture the soldiers and sailors engaging in a convivial drinking bout, sharing the holiday season and their relief from the monotony of shipboard life with their fellow countrymen, perhaps even singing their homeland’s traditional drinking songs together, drinking merrily side-by-side until soldiers and sailors alike were three sheets to the wind, only to see their Christmas celebration abruptly shattered by a sudden explosion of violence, carnage, and death, transforming the Fortune of War tavern from a place of friendly celebration to a gruesome arena of combat. We can imagine the sounds of breaking glass, clashing steal, and vile profanities, in the heat of the bloody barroom brawl. The floor of the tavern may well have been sprinkled with sawdust, to soak up spilt drinks and the vomit induced by the overconsumption of liquor; but on this occasion, the floor was bespattered with freshly- spilt blood.

tHE WEAPOnry OF SOLDIErS AnD SAILOrS

A few words are in order here about the nature of the weapons mentioned in the preceding account, and their respective military and nautical characters. The list of weapons shows that the soldiers and sailors brought with them the deadly tools of their respective professions. While many readers may know what a bayonet is, the other weapons mentioned — a jack knife, a cutlass, and an iron belaying pin — may be somewhat less familiar to readers in Singapore today. A bayonet is a knife or dagger designed to be fixed to the muzzle of a soldier’s rifle, for use as a stabbing and slashing weapon to cut down his enemies in close-quarter combat. Even today, newly-commissioned officers of the Singapore Armed Forces parade armed with rifles with bayonets fixed.38

The British soldiers in Singapore in 1872 were likely armed with .577-calibre Snider-Enfield rifles,39 equipped with narrow-bladed, socket-mounted, spike bayonets.40 However, the fact that the initial report describes the soldiers who went to the tavern as having been equipped with sidearms might suggest that the type of bayonet which they used in their fight with the sailors could have been a different kind of weapon from the handleless spike bayonets that were made to be attached to rifle muzzles, but were not designed to be used as knives dismounted from the rifles. Perhaps the soldiers carried sword bayonets, sword-shaped knives with handles; these had wider blades than spike bayonets, and featured sword-style hilts that made them suitable for use as dismounted weapons — that is, unattached to rifles.41

Turning to the other weapons mentioned in the article — a jack knife with a four-inch blade, a rusty cutlass bespattered with blood, and an iron belaying pin — it should be noted that each has been traditionally associated with seafarers. A jack knife is a clasp knife with a blade that can be folded into the handle when

38 For example, see: http://www.mindef.gov.sg/safti/ocs/news_and_events/press_releases/Articles_07/2007-12-18_6706_Comms_Parade.html39 See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snider-Enfield. The replacement of the British army’s Snider-Enfield rifles with the Martini-Henry model began in 1874.40 See the photos at: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/explore/object.cfm?ID=AAA2567 and: http://www.denner.ca/weapons/Bayonets/41 See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_bayonet

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not in use. The word jack in jack knife probably refers to a sailor, as in jack-tar.42 A cutlass is a short sabre or sword with a wide blade that was long favoured as a sidearm by seafarers in the age of sail.43 A belaying pin is a club-shaped iron bar, thirty to forty-five centimetres in length, which was used to secure ropes called lines to the pinrails along the bulwarks of old-fashioned square-rigged sailing ships. Belaying pins could also be used as deadly weapons in hand-to-hand combat, handy and effective for crushing bones and smashing skulls on land as well as at sea.44

Bearing in mind that the cutlass, the jack knife, and the belaying pin that were seized by the police may have been only some of the weapons that were employed in the brawl, and that the newspaper report mentions that the sailors also armed themselves with “anything else they could get hold of” (which might refer to broken bottles, bar stools, and so on), it seems fair to conclude that the men who gathered to celebrate Christmas at the Fortune of War tavern were well-equipped for mayhem. Indeed, given the deadly nature of the available weaponry, it seems somewhat surprising that there was only one fatality during the carnage at this gruesome Christmas celebration. Perhaps the brawl’s surprisingly limited body count can be attributed to some degree of physical impairment and lack of coordination of the combatants, due to the consumption of prodigious quantities of whatever alcoholic refreshments that were on hand during the Christmas celebration preceding the brawl?

tHE AFtErMAtH OF tHE KILLInG At tHE FOrtunE OF WAr tAvErn

The Singapore Daily Times later continued the narrative of the incident at the Fortune of War tavern, picking up the story where it left off with the arrival of police reinforcements and the arrest of the perpetrators, and detailing the removal of the dead sailor to the hospital and the subsequent autopsy. Surprisingly, it appeared that the sailor actually died as a result of one or more persons stepping on him, rather than from his multiple wounds. It would seem that the sailor’s immediate cause of death may have been a boot, rather than a bayonet. The Singapore Daily Times reported that:

After the fight, the man was picked up and taken to the hospital, but he died before reaching there, — in fact he died immediately. In this case, it was most extraordinary that though the deceased man had no less than ten bayonet and contused wounds on his body, Dr. Hampshire, who made the post-mortem examination, would be able to tell them that not one of these wounds was sufficient to cause death, but that death was caused by the rupture of an artery, which was very probably done by his being trampled upon. There was, however, the probability that the man was stunned by one of the wounds he received, which caused him to fall.45

Thus, the sailor was apparently knocked to the floor of the tavern, whereupon one or more persons trampled or stomped upon him so severely that one of his blood vessels burst open and he bled to death.

42 See the entries in the Oxford English Dictionary Online for jack-knife, n., jack-tar, and jack, n. 1, 3. a.43 See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutlass44 For more information on belaying pins, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaying_pin, and: http://www.gentlemenoffortune.com/weapons.htm.45 Singapore Daily Times, 7 January 1873, p. 3.

What do these two accounts of the brawl reveal about the newspaper and its readership? The description of the violence, the weaponry, the injuries, and the precise cause of the dead sailor’s exsanguination, could all be indicative of the interests of the readership of the Singapore Daily Times, or at least the editor’s perception of the readers’ interests. What is perhaps more interesting, however, is a rather important detail which was omitted from both of these reports: the dead sailor’s name. Can we conclude that, in the midst of the aftermath of the brutal killing on Christmas night, the individual identities of Dr. Hampshire and Corporal Barrow were far more important in the eyes of the readers of the Singapore Daily Times than the identity of the unfortunate sailor who bled to death on the blood-splattered floor of the Fortune of War tavern?

The newspaper’s accounts left the dead sailor nameless — he was, in fact, relegated to the status of a merely anonymous and passive subject at the centre of the drama that was played out inside the tavern, as well as at the courthouse and in the pages of the Singapore Daily Times. It would seem that the details of the crime, the examination of the corpse, and the apprehension and prosecution of the perpetrators were the topics which attracted the interest of the paper’s editor and readers, rather than the identity of the victim, who was not considered important enough to be named. In contrast to the local European elites who were celebrated in C.B. Buckley’s Anecdotal History and the names of Singapore’s streets and places, this sailor represented the opposite end of the social spectrum within the European presence in colonial Singapore — he was (in the view of the Singapore Daily Times) nameless and apparently unimportant as an individual. He vanished from the documentary record almost as soon as he vanished from the face of the earth following his autopsy. The names of the soldiers who participated in the brawl were, however, published in the newspaper. According to the Singapore Daily Times:

Ten soldiers of the 80th regiment, named John Langman, Thomas Lovegrove, John Thomas, William Harrison, Hans Wilson, Partridge Farrar, James Walker, William Dyball, William Hanna, and Isaac Wooden, who were engaged in the fight at the ‘Fortune of War’ tavern on Christmas night, were on Tuesday [31 December 1872] committed by Captain Walshe, Police Magistrate, to take their trial at the next criminal session on a charge of ‘Culpable Homicide.46

The newspaper explained the legal rationale for charging all of the soldiers for complicity in the death of the sailor:

… ten soldiers were charged with having taken part in an affray in which a sailor met his death. … in law if a number of men were engaged in a fracas they were all liable for any consequences that might accrue from their action. It would be no excuse to say that they were drunk, for in law a drunken man is just as liable for his acts as though he were perfectly sober. The Grand Jury would have to determine whether those ten men were actually present and engaged in the affray.47

46 Singapore Daily Times, 2 January 1873, p. 2.47 Singapore Daily Times, 7 January 1873, p. 3.

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The Grand Jury was empanelled at the Court House on 6 January 1873, before Chief Justice Thomas Sidgreaves. The list of the names of the jurors reveals the ethnic diversity of the local European population. All seventeen jurors had European names, although one of them, M.F. De Souza, was probably a local Portuguese Eurasian, and hence an Asian Singaporean. The names of the remaining 16 jurors were divided evenly between eight British names and eight continental European names. The British names were all Scottish: J.B. Caldbeck, A. Duff, C.H. Harrison, W.R. Leisk, G.M. Matson, W. Mulholland, H.W. Wood, and J. Young. The continental European names consisted of two French names (P. Brasier and G.H. Reme), and six Germanic names (J.G. Brinkmann, E. Engel, J.S. Maier, J.G. Rutishauser, C.G. Stahlknecht, and T.H. Sohst).48 This list of names conforms to this researcher’s hunch — based on reading a variety of documents — that the two most important ethnic categories within the European population in late 19th century Singapore were the Scots and the Germanic continental Europeans, with the latter category including Hollanders, Switzers, and possibly Austrians, as well as Germans.

One of these Grand Jurors, C.G. Stahlknecht, was the Consul who represented the German Empire in Singapore.49 Thus, the fates of the British soldiers charged with homicide were decided in part by non-British jurors, one of whom was the Kaiser’s representative. This illustrates the prominence of continental Europeans in colonial Singapore, and underlines the fact that the term European as used here at that time must not be understood to have been equivalent to the term British. The Germans were especially important as business elites within the European section of Singapore’s population from the middle of the 19th century up to the outbreak of World War One in 1914, when the Germans were interned as enemies of Britain and their extensive properties in Singapore were confiscated by the colonial government.50 One of these German properties was their magnificent clubhouse, the Teutonia Club, which later became the Goodwood Park Hotel. By 10 January 1873, the Grand Jury had found cause to charge eight of the ten soldiers with two counts of indictment: a “count for culpable homicide not amounting to murder” and a “count for culpable homicide not amounting to murder by causing bodily injury likely to cause death.” The Grand Jury did not find cause to charge two of the soldiers, namely Hans Wilson and Isaac Wooden.51 The remaining eight soldiers were soon tried, convicted, and sentenced, as announced by a one-sentence report in the Singapore Daily Times:

In the case of the eight soldiers of the 80th, tried on the 20th January, for having caused the death of a sailor at the ‘Fortune of War’ tavern on Christmas night, the jury found the prisoners guilty on the second count, for Rioting, and the Sergeant, John Langman, was sentenced to two years, and the other seven to nine months, rigorous imprisonment.52

48 Singapore Daily Times, 7 January 1873, p. 2.49 The Straits Calendar and Directory, (Including Sarawak and Labuan.) for the year 1873 (Singapore: Commercial Press, 1873), list of Consuls in Singapore on p. 33.50 See: “The Alien Enemies (Winding up) Ordinance 1914.” (“Ordinance No. XXIX of 1914.”). In: Ordinances Enacted by the Governor of the Straits Settlements with the Advice and Consent of the Legislative Council Thereof During the Year 1914. (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1915), pp. 123-127.51 Singapore Daily Times, 11 January 1873, p. 2.52 Singapore Daily Times, 1 February 1873, p. 2.

A LOCAL POLICEMAn bEAtEn tO DEAtH by A brItISH SOLDIEr

A sense of the social and criminal context of the celebration and killing at the Fortune of War tavern requires some consideration of other criminal activity around that time. Tragically, the killing of the sailor in this tavern was not the only case of homicide committed by British soldiers in Singapore that was tried in the local court in 1873. Only about a month after the killing of the sailor on Christmas night in 1872, a soldier from Her Majesty’s 10th Regiment at Tanglin Barracks beat to death an Asian police corporal when the policeman tried to arrest him for the assault and robbery of a Chinese man.

The Singapore Daily Times informed its readers that:

We regret to learn of very grave charges being brought against the conduct of the men of H.M. 10th Regiment. They are talked about as being very disorderly, and four of them are accused of being concerned in the death of a Corporal of police, murder in fact. The circumstances are stated to have been as follows. Mr. Snowden, the Senior Magistrate, driving out one evening lately, found those four men assaulting and robbing a poor wretch of a Chinaman. The rascals frankly confessed to Mr. Snowden that they wanted money for a spree and that was their reason for attacking the unlucky Chinaman. Mr. Snowden drove to the Police Station, and an unfortunate native Corporal proceeded alone, with more pluck than wisdom, to the scene of action. He found the soldiers still there, and he was set upon immediately by them with their belts, and mauled to such an extent that he has since died from his injuries. It appears, however, that the soldiers were secured and taken to the Police Station, and then under some misapprehension ordered to be sent up to the Tanglin Barracks to be dealt with by their commanding officer. Upon their arrival there they are said to have been allowed to mix with their comrades, and the result now is that it is impossible to identify them.53

However, the soldiers were identified and brought to justice, apparently with the help of a non-commissioned officer at Tanglin Barracks, as the Singapore Daily Times reported in a brief article which also provided additional details about the crime, as well as offering a few comments about the significance of the case for the Settlement of Singapore:

There was another case of murder, of a nature that rendered it one of the worst in a community like this. Four European soldiers were charged with assaulting a Chinaman for the sake of plunder, and with the murder of a policeman who was endeavouring to arrest them for it. Information had been sent to the Tanglin Police station that some soldiers were assaulting a Chinaman in the street, and four men were sent out from the station to arrest them. They met the four soldiers, and the soldiers ran into Mr. Gottlieb’s plantation, the policeman following them. Two of them, Stacy and Headley, ran into a swamp, and the other two, Barden and Felton,

53 Singapore Daily Times, 30 January 1873, p. 2.

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ran on up the hill and hid themselves in the brushwood there. The deceased and one or two others followed them, and Mr. Gottlieb’s syce, who was with him, went to assist in arresting them. One of the soldiers took that very formidable weapon with which they are provided, a soldier’s belt, and struck the syce with it, inflicting a wound in the forehead which bled profusely, and he fell back. The deceased, however, pushed on and seized one of the men, but was beaten over the head by one or both of them, inflicting injuries which caused his death. The main question in this case also, was as to the identity of the prisoners; but it had been ascertained that two of them were absent from the barracks at roll call that evening, and they were in barracks next morning. There was one curious fact regarding the belt, that it had a peculiar clasp called the Union clasp, part of which was missing from the belt of one of the prisoners next morning, as would be learned from the evidence of the non-commissioned officer who examined the accoutrements. There did not appear to be any evidence to show that Stacy and Headley had any part in the murder, though they had apparently with the assault upon the Chinaman; and though it was certainly a very bad thing for soldiers who are kept here to preserve the peace of the Settlements to commit assaults and robberies upon the people, yet it was by no means so serious an offence as that committed by the others. 54

The soldier named Felton was convicted of the killing of the police corporal and sentenced to “penal servitude for the term of his natural life.”55

CrIMInALIty AnD tHE LEGItIMAtIOn OF tHE COLOnIAL StAtE

Two passages in the extract quoted above deserve special attention: first, the newspaper’s characterisation of the nature of the murder of the Asian police corporal as one “that rendered it one of the worst in a community like this,” and secondly, the remark that “it was certainly a very bad thing for soldiers who are kept here to preserve the peace of the Settlements to commit assaults and robberies upon the people”56. When placed in their social and historical context, these two passages may reflect a concern for European prestige that was typical of the British inhabitants of Singapore and Malaya during the colonial era, who believed that their authority was sustained by their prestige in the eyes of the Asian population.57 John G. Butcher has explored this topic in his fascinating book entitled The British in Malaya, 1880–1941: The Social

History of a European Community in Colonial South-East Asia.58

54 Singapore Daily Times, 17 April 1873, p. 2.55 Singapore Daily Times, 8 May 1873, p. 2.56 Singapore Daily Times, 8 May 1873, p. 2.57 See: John Cameron, Our Tropical Possessions in Malayan India: Being a Descriptive Account of Singapore, Penang, Province Wellesley, and Malacca; Their Peoples, Products, Commerce, and Government (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), p. 281. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RRARE English 959.5 CAM, also available on microfilm reel NL11224. Reprint edition, Singapore: Ascanio Books, 2007, Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 959.503 CAM. Also reprinted as Our Tropical Possessions in Malayan India with an Introduction by Wang Gungwu (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1965), Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RCLOS and RSING English 959.5 CAM.58 John G. Butcher, The British in Malaya, 1880–1941: The Social History of a European Community in Colonial South-East Asia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 127, 128, 132, 157, and 223. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 301.4512105951033 BUT.

The concern for maintaining the prestige of the colonial order in the eyes of the Asian population was also revealed in the newspaper’s coverage of the punishment of convicted murders. In 1873, the Singapore

Daily Times complained that Governor Sir Harry St. George Ord was rather reluctant to allow murderers to be executed. This topic was addressed in various issues of the paper, which suggest that the paper became increasingly disappointed with the Governor with each instance of his merciful attitude toward convicted murderers:

The Governor in Council has been deliberating over the question as to whether the sentences of death passed on eleven prisoners during the last Criminal Session should be carried into effect or not; and the result has been that the sentences of six of them have been commuted to imprisonment for life, and four of the High Street robbers and murderers will be hanged.59

However, Governor Ord soon decided to exercise his prerogative of mercy yet again. The Singapore Daily

Times reported:

A number of natives and Chinese and a few other persons assembled at Her Majesty’s Jail this morning, to witness the execution of the four Chinese whose death had been determined upon by the Governor in Council for the High Street robbery and murder. … it transpired that the execution would not take place, two of the condemned prisoners having been reprieved for one week, and two more having had their sentences commuted.60

The newspaper argued that firm measures were especially necessary in view of an increase in the frequency of gang robberies, asserting that the government had

shown a vacillation and want of firmness which is calculated to bring all law and authority into contempt, and to lower the administration of justice in the eyes of natives. … these gang robberies have become very frequent of late … An example, therefore, would appear to be absolutely necessary, in a case like this, with evidence against the prisoners for murder satisfactory to Judge and jury, we are at a loss to conceive the motives which have actuated the Executive in interposing between the law and its transgressors. The criminal classes can only come to the conclusion that the Government is either afraid or unwilling to carry out the law …61

However, the government was evidently not swayed by the newspaper’s argument, as indicated by the following news report: “The remaining two of the eight Chinese sentenced to death for the High Street robbery and murder, who were last Wednesday reprieved for one week, have also had their sentences commuted to imprisonment for life.”62 It would seem that colonial-era justice was not necessarily as harsh

59 Singapore Daily Times, 19 May 1873, p. 2.60 Singapore Daily Times, 21 May 1873, p. 2.61 Singapore Daily Times, 23 May 1873, p. 2.62 Singapore Daily Times, 28 May 1873, p. 2.

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as might have been expected in a frontier town such as the Settlement of Singapore was at that time; indeed, Governor Sir Harry St. George Ord seems to have been a rather merciful administrator. While altruistic personal motives may well have been behind his lenient policy, it seems likely that this policy functioned to promote good public relations for the colonial state, regardless of whether or not this was his real intention. Thanks to their publicity in the press, the Governor’s acts of mercy must have contributed to an image of a humane and compassionate administration, and to the legitimation of the colonial state (as well as the British Empire to which it belonged) as a civilised and civilising entity, despite this state’s employment of representatives of the criminal element among its own soldiery and police. Of course, the criminal activities that took place in colonial Singapore were not all of the violent type that would provoke the Singapore Daily Times to demand the swift imposition of the death penalty. Singapore had its share of nonviolent crimes, and European criminals were prominently represented in this variety of criminality as well, as illustrated in this news report of thieving soldiers in May 1873:

Michael Cunningham, Henry Reeves, and James Waugh, privates of the 1/10th Regiment, were arraigned on a charge of stealing two gold rings from the shop of Lee Ching, goldsmith, in North Bridge Road. … All three then ran off into Hill Street, where they were stopped by the patrol. … the Corporal in charge of the patrol … said he could not arrest them, — application must be made to the police; he would, however, be able to identify the men. The matter was reported to Inspector Barnum, who proceeded to the barracks and had the prisoners arrested. Capt. Walshe [the Police Magistrate] … sentenced them each to three months’ rigorous imprisonment.63

This incident suggests that the authorities faced some difficulties in the identification and apprehension of lawbreaking British soldiers, including difficulties related to problems of jurisdiction between “the patrol” versus the police. Yet, despite these difficulties, the thieving soldiers were eventually apprehended and brought to justice. The overall picture that emerges from this and other incidents that occurred in late 1872 and early 1873 is one of an imperfect yet adequate degree of colonial order that coexisted uncomfortably with an unending stream of criminality, even among some of those men in uniform who were charged with the duty of enforcing that order. Could it be that the guardians of the law and their enemies were actually locked in an eerie dialectic of order and disorder? Of course, the authorities needed to suppress crime and disorder, but perhaps they also required a certain level of crime and disorder to confirm their own reason for existence? While the colonial state legitimated itself by keeping the disorderly elements in check, the incessant presence and persistence of the threat of disorder confirmed the continual necessity of the colonial state.

“tHE bEArEr WILL GIvE yOu A KISS FOr ME.”

It must not be assumed that the only disreputable Europeans in Singapore in 1872 were the criminal elements among the soldiers and sailors, such as those who joined in the Christmas celebration and

63 Singapore Daily Times, 28 May 1873, p. 2.

subsequent fight at the Fortune of War tavern. There is also evidence that there were unruly European boarding-house residents living in Singapore, judging from a report of an incident at Mrs. Hansen’s establishment in High Street in November 1872:

The Junior Magistrate’s Court was … engaged in hearing two prosecutions for assault … The case, briefly stated, is that on the morning of the 7th inst., at Mrs. Hansen’s boarding house in High Street, several of the boarders came to the room of Mr. Howard, and an assault was committed upon him and Mr. T.W. Mercer, who was in the room. Mr. Mercer was struck in the head with a chair, and Mr. Howard was struck and otherwise assaulted. Mr. Howard charged the assault upon himself against five men, named Waller, Grahame, McClure, Latimer, and Mesurier, and Mr. Mercer charged only the first three in his case. McClure had left the Colony after being admitted to bail. The only charge against Latimer and Mesurier was that they were present … but the evidence went to show that they acted as peacemakers … The direct cause of the assault was a letter which had been sent by Mercer to a young lady in the house, by the hand of a Chinese boy, bearing on the envelope the words, ‘The bearer will give you a kiss for me.’ This letter fell into the hands of another person, and was shown to the defendants, who resented it on the young lady’s behalf as an insult … The Magistrate gave judgment … For the assault on Howard, each must pay a fine of $25 … and for the assault on Mercer, a fine of $45 each … In addition, Grahame must give bail in $100 himself, with two sureties to the same amount, to keep the peace for six months.64

McClure’s apparent escape from justice by means of absconding from the Straits Settlements while on bail indicates a certain degree of inefficiency on the part of the local judicial system; still, the fact that four of the five accused defendants were put on trial suggests that this system managed to function with a tolerable level of success.

T.W. Mercer not only survived being hit on the head with a chair at Mrs. Hansen’s boarding house, but he seems to have recovered quickly enough to engage in his own criminal activity soon after. According to the Singapore Daily Times:

At the Police Court, on Monday [30 December 1872], T.W. Mercer was brought before Captain Walshe on a warrant for cheating. The prosecutor was Mr. A.H. Preston, proprietor of the Pavilion Billiard and Bowling Saloon, who had been induced by Mr. Mercer to give him credit ….65

These incidents of European criminality connected with a boarding-house and a billiard and bowling saloon both suggest that there was a working-class civilian European population resident in Singapore in the early 1870s. The settings of these crimes — the boarding-house and the billiard and bowling saloon — hint that these men had sufficient incomes to rent lodgings and indulge in commercialised recreational

64 Singapore Daily Times, 18 November 1872, p. 2.65 Singapore Daily Times, 2 January 1873, p. 2.

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activities, yet not enough to establish themselves in the luxurious landed properties in prestigious residential areas such as Tanglin, with which colonial Europeans may be associated today in popular images of that era. The boarding-house inhabitants were evidently not the lowest stratum of the European civilian population then residing in the Settlement. It would seem that there were also destitute, unemployed European men living in Singapore at that time, as indicated by an item that appeared in the Singapore Daily Times when a United States Navy ship visited Singapore early in 1873:

It is rumoured on shore that the American Corvette, Lackawanna, being short of her crew’s complement, is shipping or about to ship hands from this port. If this be the case, we trust a little gentle persuasion will be put on any able bodied destitute white men, who may be knocking about the Colony, to induce them to avail of this opportunity of earning a livelihood. This will be a good chance to get rid of our unemployed idlers.66

Despite whatever “gentle persuasion” may have been exerted upon these “unemployed idlers,” this researcher found no evidence that any unemployed Europeans actually followed the newspaper’s advice and signed on as sailors aboard the Lackawanna. Maybe these destitute Europeans considered a life of poverty in sunny Singapore to be preferable to subjecting themselves to naval discipline aboard an American man-of-war. But, while there may have been some sort of unemployed European underclass residing here, it remains practically certain that the vast majority of working-class Europeans who landed in Singapore throughout the colonial era were soldiers and seafarers, as befit a strategic Settlement which was both a colonial garrison and an imperial port.

Singapore’s military, naval, and maritime trade functions within the British Empire ensured a continual flow of working-class European soldiers and sailors into the growing city. Although their residence here as individuals may have been temporary, their presence here as a category within the working-class population was long-term; they were, in fact, a permanent fixture of colonial Singapore, as characteristic of the place as Chinese rickshaw pullers and Japanese prostitutes. Indeed, European soldiers and sailors were here long before the first rickshaw appeared in Singapore in 1880,67 and both before and after the heyday of Japanese prostitution in Singapore, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.68 The membership of the local European working class and underclass deserves inclusion within colonial Singapore’s social and criminal history, in order to provide a more complete (as well as a more colourful!) picture of this multiracial island’s past.

66 Singapore Daily Times, 22 January 1873, p. 2.67 James Francis Warren, Rickshaw Coolie: A People’s History of Singapore (1880–1940) (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 14.68 James Francis Warren, Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore 1870–1940 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 85–87.

COnCLuDInG rEMArKS

Starting with a Christmas celebration and a brutal killing, this account has depicted the social context of this event, moving in concentric circles outward from the Fortune of War tavern and beyond, to present a long-forgotten drama with a diverse cast of characters that included holiday revellers, an unfortunate sailor, murderous soldiers, intrepid corporals, four soldiers wanting money for a spree, a Chinese robbery victim, Chinese street fighters, gang robbers, spear-brandishing killers, Portuguese Eurasians who courageously defended the honour of their ladies, a Senior Magistrate taking an evening drive, a Consul of the German Empire, a merciful Governor, a newspaper baying for blood, and a newspaper-reading public that was evidently accustomed to a tolerable level of endemic violent crime and bloodshed. The sailor’s violent death in a barroom brawl — together with various other criminal activities that took place around the same time — highlighted the multiracial nature of the working class and underclass of colonial Singapore

circa 1872.

While this essay has focused on the criminal activities of soldiers, sailors, and boarding-house inhabitants who were likely members of the British working class or underclass who were present in colonial Singapore, it should not be forgotten that there must have been many other British soldiers and sailors, as well as residents of boarding-houses on this island, who were law-abiding, and who therefore left even less footprints in the historical record. The same must certainly have been true with regard to the Chinese who made up the majority of the working-class population, as well as the Indian and Malay inhabitants of colonial Singapore; most of them must have been law-abiding, and therefore less visible historically (if not actually invisible), in the historical narrative. After all, if most of the Asian working-class people were not basically law-abiding, then the Settlement would have been totally ungovernable; indeed, it would have descended into total chaos, which would have been contrary to the interests of local Asian elites and European elites alike. Yet, given the limited information available for law-abiding working-class people in Singapore in the early 1870s, we may thus be left to rely largely upon the records of their law-breaking brethren, Asians and Europeans alike, with which we can try to gain some sense of the nature of colonial working-class life on this island.

It might not be too much of an exaggeration to conclude that the lives of working-class Asians and Europeans in colonial Singapore are largely invisible in the historical record, except for when they engaged in criminal activities, and, in some cases at least, when they died. James Francis Warren has shown how the Coroner’s Records of colonial Singapore, which are available for the years from 1883 to 1940, can shed a great deal of light on the lives and deaths of working-class people, by providing historians with rich sources of information.69 For the years prior to 1883, the crime reports published in the local newspapers may help to fill in some of the gaps, as the preceding pages have endeavoured to demonstrate.

On the other hand, in contrast to the relative dearth of information on working-class people, the colonial-era newspapers contain a great deal of information on the social and public activities of Asian and European elites, including their participation together in spectacular public celebrations and elite social functions. Still, there is at least one point of commonality between the colonial elite class and the criminal element of the working class: both were cosmopolitan, in the sense of having been characterised by

69 James Francis Warren, Rickshaw Coolie: A People’s History of Singapore (1880–1940) (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. x and 5–8.

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racial and ethnic diversity. The multiracial character of the underclass parallelled the similarly multiracial nature of the upper or elite class: Asians and Europeans alike were well represented among both the most respectable and the most disreputable elements of this colonial society, and probably at every social stratum in between. These facts drive home the point that the cosmopolitan population of this island was characterised at least as much by class divisions as it was by racial identities, and that these class divisions transcended the racial and ethnic categories within the population.

Asians and Europeans alike were members of the underclass and the working class here, as well as the middle class and the elite class.70 Studies of the social history of colonial Singapore (and probably of other colonial societies as well) should endeavour to avoid the temptation of simplistically reducing or essentialising the local population and its experiences into racial or ethnic blocs. To echo a point which David Cannadine has made in his book Ornamentalism, the concept of class was at least as important as race within the history of the British Empire — and this may well have been true with regard to other empires, too.71 At the top of the social hierarchy of colonial Singapore was a multiracial elite class, within which political power was officially controlled by a few Europeans, but the bulk of the wealth and property was apparently controlled by Asian elites. At the base of the social pyramid was a multiracial underclass which included European soldiers and sailors, as well as Chinese labourers and Malay and Indian policemen. The criminal element within this underclass was kept in check by the enforcers of the colonial system, including European soldiers and Asian policemen, but some of these uniformed enforcers were themselves prone to violence and crime.

The diverse elements of this colonial society coexisted in an uneasy yet manageable equilibrium that provided the setting for the continued economic and social success of the wealthy Asians and their European co-elites who together comprised the colonial elite class, while the continuity of the economic success of the Settlement legitimised the social and political system. The continual, even routine, incidence of violent crime in Singapore provided a constant reminder of the necessity of the colonial state as a bulwark against disorder; and the reliable success of this state in keeping crime and disorder down to a manageable level justified the continuity of the state and contributed to the legitimation of the British Empire.

The colonial state in Singapore provided an adequate degree of order and stability with a minimum of force, despite often suffering from limited resources and numbers of personnel, from 1819 until it was conquered by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1942. In 1870, there were a total of 744 soldiers of the British

70 I refer to classes as working, middle, and upper or elite, merely because these terms have been widely used, and because I find them useful for explanatory purposes in the current context. I am not arguing that there are a fixed number of social or economic classes, or that the boundaries between different classes are necessarily definite and fixed. However, the concept of class seems to have sufficient social reality to be useful in discussions of societies and social structure, despite the difficulty in finding clear-cut class definitions — indeed, it seems likely that such clear boundaries will never be found, because they do not exist today, at least not in modern industrial or post-industrial societies. Still, the uncertainty over the number and definition of classes within a given population does not prevent us from thinking about societies in terms of class. Class terms or concepts are socially real, because they shape our perceptions, attitudes, and behaviour, including our patterns of social interactions. We can still think in terms of concepts, despite our doubts about their definitions or boundaries. For example, it may be generally accepted that, in all cities, there is a segment of the population which could be described as the elderly, and that certain people are generally perceived as clearly belonging to this elderly category, despite the fact that there may be no consensus on precisely how old a person must be in order to be described as elderly. It seems that a social concept or category such as class can be socially real, even when there is disagreement over the definition of its boundaries — indeed, even if we agree to disagree, and accept that class definitions are blurry and may never be precisely defined.71 David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 2001), pp. 9–10, Lee Kong Chian Reference Library R English 305.52 CAN. I am grateful to Associate Professor Maurizio Peleggi for urging me to read Ornamentalism in 2002.

Empire in Singapore, including 138 Royal Artillery gunners, 326 European infantrymen, and 280 Madras Native Infantry soldiers,72 while the local police force had a total strength of 550 in the 1870s, mainly Malays and Indians.73 Despite its limitations and shortcomings, the colonial order here was sufficiently adequate to serve British interests, while enriching an opulent class of locally-domiciled Asian plutocrats, supporting a prosperous local Asian middle class, and attracting large numbers of working-class Asian migrants, who voted with their feet by leaving their homelands behind to set out across the seas for Singapore.

Most of the Europeans who set foot on Singapore soil during the colonial era must have been soldiers and sailors; indeed, most of the Europeans who lived here for any length of time during that era were probably the British soldiers who were garrisoned here at Tanglin Barracks and other places on this island. Yet most of them left almost no trace in the published histories of Singapore — and, it would seem that they left few footprints in the written records, such as the contemporary newspapers. Only when they disgraced themselves and dishonoured their professions by committing crimes did they find their way into the newspapers — but even then, their activities and their presence were apparently, for the most part at least, deemed too unimportant or unremarkable to deserve attention in historical accounts, with a few notable exceptions, such as the excellent recent military history of Singapore entitled Between Two Oceans74 and the personal memoirs of armed forces personnel who served here during World War Two. Such exceptions aside, the relatively small number of Europeans who comprised the usual cast of characters in the historical narrative of colonial Singapore was merely a privileged minority within a local European population, which was itself a tiny minority within the mostly Chinese population of multiracial Singapore. According to the 1871 Census, this island had a total population of 97,111, including 54,098 Chinese, 19,250 Malays, 9,297 “Klings or Natives of Southern India,” 1,925 “Europeans and Americans,” and 1,414 “Native Prisoners,” as well as “Bugis, Boyanese and others.”75

It was not the skin colour of these Europeans that determined their prominence or absence in the documentary record and the historical narrative, nor was it their nationality; the British soldiers and sailors who brawled in the Fortune of War tavern were likely just as European and just as “white” as any of the Europeans here. What distinguished the Europeans who were remembered from those who were quickly forgotten was their social class or status within the local social structure. Likewise, wealthy local Chinese elites and other Asian elites of the colonial era were (and still are) celebrated and remembered in print and in the names of streets and places, while the working-class masses of the Chinese majority were largely forgotten, at least until James Francis Warren painstakingly recovered the details of their lives from the crumbling pages of the coroners’ records.

The Christmas bloodshed in 1872 reveals the underside of celebratory activity, the potential for violence inherent in the combination of alcohol and weapons, and soldiers and sailors, even at Christmas. Evidence from public celebrations, as from a Christmas celebration in Tanjong Pagar that turned ugly, offer

72 Edwin Lee, The British As Rulers: Governing Multiracial Singapore 1867–1914. (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1991), p. 51. Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 959.57022 LEE -[HIS].73 Ibid., p. 53.74 Malcolm H. Murfett, John N. Miksic, Brian P. Farrell, and Chiang Ming Shun, Between Two Oceans: A Military History of Singapore From First Settlement to Final British Withdrawal (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 95, Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSING English 355.0095957 BET.75 See the report on the census of Singapore Island taken on 3 April 1871, in: Singapore Daily Times, 16 May 1873, p. 4.

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opportunities to learn not only about the activities of elites, but of working-class and underclass people as well. The preceding pages give some idea of the wealth of information on the social history of Singapore which may be found in the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library in the National Library Building, where the collections housed within the soaring halls of this futuristic structure contain tragic tales of brutal crimes that were committed when Singapore was a frontier Settlement, on a par with the Wild West.

The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Dr Ernest C.T. Chew, Associate Senior Fellow, ISEAS, in

reviewing this paper.

References

The Alien Enemies (Winding up) Ordinance 1914. (Ordinance No. XXIX of 1914.). In: Ordinances enacted by

the Governor of the Straits Settlements with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council thereof

during the Year 1914. Singapore: Government Printing Office.

Aljunied, S. M. K. (2008, May 12-13). Murder as a prism for understanding the social worlds and daily life of

working-class Sikhs in Singapore and Malaya. Paper presented at the International Workshop on Sikhs in Multicultural Southeast Asia: Negotiating an Identity, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore.

Buckley, C. B. (1984). An anecdotal history of old times in Singapore. (with an Introduction by C. M. Turnbull). Singapore: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1902, Singapore: Fraser & Neave).

Butcher, J. G. (1979). The British in Malaya, 1880-1941: The social history of a European community in colonial

South-East Asia. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.

Cameron, J. (2007). Our tropical possessions in Malayan India: Being a descriptive account of Singapore, Penang,

Province Wellesley, and Malacca; Their peoples, products, commerce, and government. London: Smith, Elder and Co. Reprint edition, Singapore: Ascanio Books. (Also reprinted as Our tropical possessions in

Malayan India with an Introduction by Wang Gungwu. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1965).

Cannadine, D. (2001). Ornamentalism: How the British saw their empire. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press.

Carr, E. H. (1986). What is history?: The George Macaulay Trevelyan lectures delivered in the University of

Cambridge January–March 1961. (R. W. Davies, Ed., 2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Chew, E. C. T. (1997). The Foundation of a British settlement. In Chew, E. C. T. Chew and Lee, E. (Eds.), A history of Singapore (3rd impression, pp. 36–40). Singapore: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1991).

Hornaday, W. T. (1885) Two years in the jungle: The experiences of a hunter and naturalist in India,

Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula and Borneo. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. (Parts III and IV reprinted as: The experiences of a hunter and naturalist in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, with an Introduction by J.M. Gullick. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Lee, E. (1991). The British as rulers: Governing multiracial Singapore 1867–1914. Singapore: Singapore University Press.

Roff, W. R. (2002). Murder as an aid to social history: The Arabs in Singapore in the early twentieth century. In: de Jonge, H. and Kaptein, N. (Eds.), Transcending borders: Arabs, politics, trade and Islam in Southeast

Asia (pp. 91–108). Leiden: KITLV Press.

Singapore Daily Times, 1872–1873.

The Straits calendar and directory, (Including Sarawak and Labuan.) for the year 1873. (1873). Singapore: Commercial Press.

The Straits Times. (1935, May).

Teixeira, F. M. (1963). The Portuguese missions in Malacca and Singapore (1511–1958). Volume III — Singapore. Lisboa : Agência Geral do Ultramar.

Tregonning, K. G. (1962). Straits tin: A brief account of the first seventy-five years of The Straits Trading Company,

Limited. 1887–1962. Singapore: Straits Times Press.

Warren, J. F. (1995, September). A strong stomach and flawed material: Towards the making of a trilogy, Singapore, 1870–1940. Southeast Asian Studies, 33 (2), 245–264. See especially 253–254. This article is available online at this Japanese web site: http://www.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/seas/33/2/index.htm.

Warren, J. F. (1993). Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore 1870–1940. Singapore: Oxford University Press.

Warren, J. F. (1986). Rickshaw coolie: A people’s history of Singapore (1880–1940). Singapore: Oxford University Press.

Wong, L. K. (1964). Western enterprise and the development of the Malayan tin industry to 1914. In: Cowan, C. D. (Eds.), The economic development of South-East Asia: Studies in economic history

and political economy (pp. 127–153). London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

Yen, C. H. (1986). A social history of the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya 1800–1911. Singapore: Oxford University Press.

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European Perceptions of Malaccain the Early Modern PeriodBy Dr Katrina Gulliver

IntrODuCtIOn

In this paper I sketch Malacca’s development from the early 16th century until World War I. Malacca was taken by European powers; first by the Portuguese in 1511, later by the Dutch in 1641, and finally by the British, first temporarily in 1795, then from 1824 as part of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty, by which the city was exchanged for Bengkulu in Sumatra.

Malacca held an important role in the European expansionist imagination. In the 16th century, Tomé Pires said: “Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice.” English texts from the 16th century onwards demonstrate a desire to capture the port, and the position its name held as a symbol of culture, wealth and exoticism. This paper examines how Malacca was used, and how it demonstrated changing European attitudes towards their colonies, and the idea of the city.

Despite the shift in European economies away from the spice trade, the city retained a symbolic value, outweighing its usefulness as an economic asset. British parliamentary records from the 18th and early 19th centuries reveal disputes over whether Malacca was worth retaining, with a strong argument that maintaining the city cost far more than it was generating in income. My approach is to examine the city as a reflection of three colonial philosophies: Portuguese, Dutch and British, overlaid on an existing Malay town.

Malacca’s architecture demonstrated the purpose of the city, be it a defensive position, a trading post, a metropolis (including the projection of Christianity), or some combination of all three, contributing to a distinctive ambience. The Portuguese focused on military defence. The Dutch planned more centrally, dictating brick sizes and drainage in civil architecture. The British incorporated the Dutch buildings and focused on access and transport. In addition to these colonial styles, there existed (and exist still) the Melaka-style (should it be spelt Melaka?) Malay house and Chinese shop houses.

Malacca was an important site in European expansion into Asia. In the 15th century, the city was a crucial nexus of a trade network from the Moluccas to Venice. Being at the “end of the monsoon”, it served as a major site for intra-Asia trade between China and India. I have chosen to look at the city from a different angle – by examining how important Malacca was to Europe, and how the city developed with European influence.

Working on a study such as this, it is easy to slip into the error of projecting backwards from Europe’s later control of Asia. Michael Pearson has commented on the risks of “being blinded

6.

1 M. N. Pearson, “Introduction,” South Asia XIX (1996), 3.2 Paul Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1961), 138.3 Gasparo Balbi, Viaggio Dell’indie Orientali (Venice: 1590).4 José de Acosta, The Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies (London: Edward Blount and William Aspley, 1604), 37.

by the largely peripheral activities of the early Europeans”1 when studying Asian history. I am not making any claims to the significance within Asia of European activities in Malacca. This is a consciously Eurocentric study, about how the European notions of the city evolved in a port thousands of miles from Europe.

European Perceptions of the CityThe term Golden Khersonese (or Chersonese) appears in Ptolemy’s geography, referring to what was later confirmed to be the Malay Peninsula.2 This term was in use during the early modern period in Europe to refer more specifically to the region, and in a vaguer, mythical sense as a site of treasure. During the late 15th century, the city of Malacca came to be known of in Europe, and references to it began to appear in literature.

During Portuguese control of the city, the references became more common, both in factual references and literature. I am limiting my references to printed works that would have been available to a broader audience than manuscripts. Gasparo Balbi’s Viaggio dell’Indie Orientali, published in Venice in 1590, described Malacca’s location, what could be bought there (sandoli, pocellane: sandalwood and porcelain, p.64) and detailed the dates of the monsoon season between Goa and Malacca3. The overlap in usage between Malacca/Golden Chersonese is discussed in this 1604 text:

Is it not easie to find Molaco in ancient bookes, which they called the golden Chersonese: the Cape of Comori, which was called the Promontorie of Coci; & that great & famous Iland of Sumatra, so well knowne by the ancient name of Taprobana.4

The “great & famous island” also demonstrates a level of knowledge in Europe about the East Indies, but also confusion and conflation of different parts of the Indies. Nonetheless, even by this stage (the English East India Company’s first mission was in 1601) the East Indies had become part of the mental map projected from Europe. A more detailed description of Malacca was given by Pierre d’Avity, translated into English in 1615:

Malaca is seated upon the river of Gaza, and is a good faire Towne, having in circuit neere twentie miles. The originarie or first inhabitants of this place report, that the beginning came of six or seven fishermen, which came to dwell there, but their number increased, by the arrivall of other fishermen of Siam, Pegu, and Bengola, who built a towne, and framed a particular language, taking all the best kind of speech from other nations. They named

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their towne Malaca, which is growne so rich and mightie in a short time by reason of her situation, as she contends for precedence with the greatest townes, yea with some realmes thereabouts.

The Countrie people sleepe upon trees for feare of Tygers, whereof there are so many as they will come into the towne for a prey. The Portugals who tooke this towne from a king of the Moores, found the scituation so commodious, as they have made it in a manner the Center of all the merchandise and trafficke of the East, and the head of a kingdome, which extends from Sincapura to Pullo, and Cambilan;5

Here we see two elements emerging in the description. One is the wealth and success of the town, and the other its place as a gathering centre for traders from different regions, what might be termed proto-multiculturalism. Interestingly, although it refers to the Portuguese as having taken the town from a sultan (“king of the Moores”), the description of the origins of the city mark it as a fishing village.

Portuguese literature (the city is mentioned in the Lusiad, of 1572, an epic poem by Luís Vaz de Camões, depicting Portuguese history and the events of the discovery of India as blessed by mythological figures) demonstrates even at this stage its role – and that of colonialism in general -- in Portuguese national culture. Malacca is mentioned in Book X, verse 44:

Nor Him shalt Thou (though potent) scape, and flye, (Though sheltred in the Bosome of the Morn) MALACCA (and the Apple of her Eye) Prowd of thy wealthy Dow’r as her first-born. Thy poyson’d Arrows, those Auxiliary CRYSES I see (thy Pay That do not scorn) MALACCANS amorous, valiant JAVANS, Shall all obey the LUSITANIANS.

And verse 57:

Great Actions in the Kingdom of BINTAN Thou shalt perform, MALACCA’S Foe: her score Of Ills in one day paying, which That ran Into, for many a hundred year before. With patient courage, more then of a man, Dangers, and Toyles, sharp Spikes, Hills always hoare, Spears, Arrows, Trenches, Bulwarks, Fire and Sword, That thou shalt break, and quell, I pass my word.

5 Pierre d’ Avity, The Estates, Empires, & Principallities of the World, trans. Edward Grimston (London: Mathewe Lownes and John Bill, 1615), 184.

(text from Richard Fanshawe’s 1655 translation, the work has been translated a number of times into English)

By the 17th century, Malacca was making a more regular appearance in literature written in English. As well as its inclusion in guides of the world, guides to spices, and general histories, it was again featured in poetry. David Dickson was a Scottish preacher, and his Truth’s Victory over Error, or, An abridgement of the chief controversies in religion which since the apostles days to this time, have been, and are in agitation, between those of the Orthodox faith, and all adversaries whatsoever…, was a translation into English of his sermons given in Latin. A classic Reformation text, it is relevant that by this stage the city of Malacca was being specified rather than the vague “Golden Cherson”.

“As Ophirs Gold, which from Malacca came, Made Solomon on Earth the richest Man. So will this Book make rich thy heart and mind, With Divine Wisdom, Knowledge of all kind. Thee richer make than Croesus of great name, Thee wiser make than Solon of great· fame. Than all the seven wise Sages, Greeces Glory, I do protest it’s true, and is no Story.”6

We also see the direct Biblical link being used. Malacca was being firmly situated in the cultural geography of Europe in texts such as this. Being already “familiar” and linked to Biblical and classical references, it was easier to harness the city’s depiction in European culture. This was also linked to the Portuguese use of religious justification for colonisation.

Under the heading “Manners of the People”, the residents were described thus:

There are in this place about a hundred families of Portugals, which live after the manner of their countrie, with a Bishop, and a Colledge of Jesuits, besides the Castell. They that are borne in this place weare long haire, they have malitious spirits, and take delight to commit murders in the night, to the end the authors may not be known. Both men and women make love alike, and thinke that there is not any Nation can mannage it so well: they make amarous songs and rimes, and doe wonderfully commend the power of love in their verses, which are wittie, well composed, and of a good grace. They have the nearest, and most elegant language of all the East: and therefore many at the Indies doe use it; as in England, Germanie, and the Low-countries they use the French tongue.7

6 David Dickson, Truth’s Victory Over Error. (1684).7 Pierre d’ Avity, The Estates, Empires, & Principallities of the World, 184.

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He draws a clear distinction between the Christian Portuguese residents and the local community. The exoticism of the Malays in this description, as both murderers and passionate authors of romantic songs and poems, is an interesting juxtaposition. It is particularly relevant that the Malays, or “they that are borne in this place” are not described as Muslim.

Building the CityThere are two major themes in colonial historiography that are often applied to city sites: one is that colonisers took the opportunity to create “ideal” cities, often based on the Renaissance vision of the perfect city with straight streets and boulevards as well as a central square and visual symmetry and balance. The idea of building the ideal city from scratch was appealing because it was something that could not be done in Europe where most of the cities had developed organically over hundreds of years without central planning. These neoclassical ideas were taken to, for instance, city planning by the Spaniards in the Americas. It was also seen in some of the towns built by the British in India, where they were built to appeal to an aesthetic of Oriental classicism, rather than resembling architecture in Britain.

The second approach to colonial cities is a presumed intention of replication of the metropolis. More than simply utilising known construction techniques and plans, this vision aimed at recreating the experience of living in Europe.

This was certainly what the Dutch initially attempted to do in Batavia (Jakarta today), modelling the city after Delft.8 They built Dutch-style housing along canals although they were not suitable for the climate.

Antony King’s theories on the colonial city draw on these ideas, and epitomise much of the analysis of colonial urban development. He divides the colonial city into “colonial urban settlement” (European base) and “indigenous settlement”9, and argues that “the first characteristic of the colonial city is that it is the product of a contact situation between at least two different cultures”.10 Leaving aside the definitional distinction of “colonial” in this context, and the obvious fallacy of this argument for cities such as Sydney or Montreal (in which there was no indigenous influence on the cities themselves), it is open to question even how much it can be applied to Malacca, which fulfils more of the criteria.

King’s analysis assumes a coloniser/colonised dichotomy, which does not fully hold in multiethnic Malacca. By some of the same theories – division of settlement along ethnic lines – the Chinese in Malacca could be seen as constituting a “colonial town”, without the power relationship implied in the term.

8 Leonardo Benevolo, The European City (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 111. 9 Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development, The City (Oxford: Routledge, 2007), 17-18.10 Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development, 34.

Under the PortugueseThe built environment at Malacca was shaped by the Portuguese, most famously by their construction of the fort.

At the time that the Portuguese captured Malacca, it is problematic to apply the notion of colony and the attendant philosophies. The Portuguese did not establish a large settlement of civilians, they did not hold much territory beyond the borders of the city itself; however, their fortifications at least hinted at plans for permanence extending further than simply a factory. Nonetheless, their attitude towards the Malay Peninsula seemed ambivalent. The idea of conversion to Catholicism was clearly part of the rhetoric of the Portuguese expansion. Nonetheless, missions to be used by the Jesuits, while endorsed by the Portuguese, were not really part of the official expansion and nor was it something that the Portuguese crown invested in. It was very convenient to promote the idea of converting the Malay world from Islam to Christianity, for audiences in Europe particularly the Vatican, but in practice the Portuguese showed little interest in actually pursuing this.

The fort did not really replicate something that was in Portugal although it used the building styles there. It has a fairly organic shape, and is responsive to the natural geography of the hill. The lack of a grand design for the city is an indication of several things about the Portuguese, one being that they did not know how long they would stay. And it is evident from Portuguese documents of the time that their goals towards the city were somewhat conflicting. Building forts was something that the Portuguese tended to focus on in their colonial efforts in other parts of the world, and a clear resemblance can be seen between the Malacca fort and those at Mombasa, Goa and elsewhere.

The pre-existing town was sizeable, with the description in 1510: “In Malacca, there are approximately ten thousand homes, which are located along the sea and river. Those who live further away from the sea are at a distance of a little more than a cross-bow’s shot”11. This assumes a population of at least forty thousand, in housing clustered close to the sea.

The fort was constructed with a thick heavy wall. It was obviously designed to protect the city from attack, but it created a very strong separation of the city from the hinterland of the surrounding regions. And it is significant particularly when the city was ruled by foreigners. The strength of the fort also suggests a permanence to the Portuguese settlement. Dianne Lewis’s work on the Dutch East India Company12 implied that the Portuguese explorers were parochial, recounting Asia as the metropolis and Europe as a backward outpost, rather than seeing Malacca as the encounter point of sophisticated cultures. It is, however, far too easy to project backwards and adopt a teleological approach, in this case from the standpoint of Portugal’s later failure in Asia.

11 Rui de Araujo, “Letter to D. Afonso De Albuquerque, Malacca, 6 February,” Portuguese Documents on Malacca (1510).12 Dianne Lewis, Jan Compagnie in the Straits of Malacca, 1641-1795, Monographs in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series (Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1995).

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A lot of what was written in Portugal about the city from the time of its capture focused on the spiritual element, rather than any goals for the site of the city in terms of construction. The context of Portugal’s arrival in Malacca must also be remembered. The re-conquest of Europe -- with the Moors being driven out of southern Europe, particularly the Iberian peninsula -- was completed only in 1492, fewer than 20 years before their conquest of Malacca.

Although Portugal itself had not been under Muslim control for several hundred years, there were obviously lingering sentiments: even today in popular language and imagery in Portugal and Spain, there are idiomatic expressions referring to “moors” and the time of Al-Andalus. So we should not be surprised to find that the Islamic faith of the Malays was of importance when the Portuguese wrote about Malacca, much more so than for the Dutch and British.

The idea of conversion in the region was sometimes used to justify capturing the city. However, I am a little sceptical of a lot of these narratives. They were obviously written for a Catholic audience, specifically the Vatican, whose support the Portuguese needed. Nonetheless, Jesuits played a prominent role in the Portuguese settlements in Asia. In particular, Francis Xavier’s association with Malacca gave the city another identity in European narratives. Economically the city was not a great success for the Portuguese; they were unable to regain the city’s prosperity when it was under the sultan. The Portuguese did act in accordance with their Christian expansionist plans to the extent that they limited Muslim trade in the town,13 which reduced profitability.

Macau’s duties paid to Malacca and Goa sustained Malacca.14 The true scale of its economy cannot be established, as much was unofficial, either private individuals or on the side (illegally) by agents of the state; also the loss of documents, and the fact that much of empire “was created and functioned in the pre-statistical age”.15

According to Victor Savage, Malacca was in the 16th century, as Ayuthia was in the 17th, a “comfortable and beautiful city for Western residents”.16 While Malacca might have been beautiful, it was not precisely a city on European lines. The largest reminders of the Portuguese were the fort and the church, which were reused by the Dutch. Savage’s description also hints at the evolving European taste for the exotic, in listing the destinations of luxury for European residents and the temporal/geographic shift around Asia.

13 Radin Fernando, “Metamorphosis of the Luso-Asian Diaspora in the Malay Archipelago,” in Iberians in the Singapore-Melaka Area and Adjacent Regions (16th to 18th Century), ed. Peter Borschberg, South China and Maritime Asia (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), 162.14 George Bryan Souza, The Survival of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).15 Stuart B. Schwartz, “The Economy of the Portuguese Empire,” in Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400-1800, ed. Francisco Bethencourt, and Diogo Ramada Curto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 20.16 Victor R. Savage, Western Impressions of Nature and Landscape in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1984), 282.

Under the DutchWhen it came to the Dutch taking possession of Malacca, they did not attempt to do what they had initially done in Batavia of replicating a Dutch city. Likewise, they were not taking large numbers of civilian settlers to Malacca either. So it developed as an Asian city under European jurisdiction rather than a European city in the tropics. Direct European influence on architecture during the Dutch colonial period did not extend past official buildings. The Dutch built the State House and other administrative buildings, as well as private housing. But their arrival did not signal a rapid overhaul of the city; rather it was a slower evolution. Dutch reuse of the fort demonstrated this continuity17.

Malacca was unique in the region for not relying on an agrarian hinterland, due to its “unusually favourable position”.18 This favourability depended on supplies from outside, and a level of trade to maintain it, which did not always hold under the Dutch.

Under the Dutch, there was a small European population and not much work for European artisans, and tradesmen,19 which meant that the European influence on material culture was less than in other colonies. Chinese and Indian artisans were often involved in construction and design. This led to the development of a unique visual idiom and these elements also helped to give the city a unique identity, but also the citizens a particular identity.

Again Malacca was not an economic success, as described in this account:

The conquerors found a fort, which, like all the works of the Portuguese, was built with a degree of strength, which has never since been imitated by any nation. They found the climate very healthy, though hot and moist; but the trade there was entirely decayed; the continual exactions having deterred all nations from resorting thither. It has not been revived by the company, either on account of some insuperable difficulties, or the want of moderation or the fear of injuring Batavia. The business is confined at present to the sale of a small quantity of opium, and a few blue linens, and to the purchase of elephants teeth, calin, which cofts 7o livres a hundred weight, and a [end p. 166] small quantity of gold at 180 livres a mark.20

The description mentions the Portuguese fort, and their notable skill in such construction. Again we see that the port was not a great success, and again this was due to tax and duty impositions.

17 Barbara Watson Andaya, “Malacca Under the Dutch 1641-1795,” in Melaka: The Transformation of a Malay Capital, ed. Kernial Singh Sandhu, and Paul Wheatley (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1983), 200.18 M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago Between 1500 and About 1600 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 7.19 Barbara Watson Andaya, “Malacca Under the Dutch 1641-1795,” 206.20 Peter Heylyn, Cosmographie in Four Bookes : Containing the Chorographie and Historie of the Whole World, and All the Principall Kingdomes, Provinces, Seas and Isles Thereof (1652), 166.

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MALACA, Which is a Town belonging to the Company, and was taken from the Portugueze. This Place is very considerable, and much frequented for Traffick, and is the Magazine of the Eastern Trade, where all Nations, who have frequented the Seas, met heretofore. At present, its Trade is not near so considerable, not sufficient to answer the Charge; which Inconveniency might be remedied, by sending thither a good Director; for it is certain, that there is a good Vent in that Town for great Quantities of Linnen Cloth, of all sorts, as well as in many other Towns, its Dependencies, or which lye round about it ; as Andragieri, and other Towns, and such Places as lye along the Rivers of Sierra, Per- ra, &c. where for the moft Part the Payments are made in Gold and Tin, which is a Return very rich, necessary, and profitable for the Good and Support of the Trade of the Company. Malacca is the Rendezvous of all the Vessels that return from Japan every Year with their Cargoes, and which they there sort and distribute, in order to their being sent to the [end p.212]other Store-houses on the Coast of India, Coromandel, Bengal, & c.21

Once again we see a return to the standard descriptions of Malacca, that even in an account of its economic failure, it is referred to as the “magazine of the east” and in positive terms. Malacca’s ability to retain a positive image in European minds even as it was a poor investment merits further investigation, which I hope to pursue. The Dutch construction included St John’s Fort, which was sited for inland defence rather than defence against attack from the sea. As well as a demonstration of the politics involved, such an element of the built environment serves to imply a level of visual hostility to the surrounding area, and to reinforce insularity to the city.

Under the BritishWhereas the descriptions of Malacca in the 16th century saw it as a metropolis, demonstrating some of the elements of cosmopolitan modernity, which was just beginning to shape the urban experience in Europe, by the 19th century the descriptions changed to those for a sleepy backwater. This was partly based on the reality that Malacca’s importance as a trade centre had

21 Pierre-Daniel Huet, Memoirs of the Dutch Trade in All the States, Empires, and Kingdoms in the World, trans. Mr Samber (from the French) (London: C. Rivington, 1719), 212.

declined, and partly on the changed circumstances of colonisation. London had grown to be the heart of a huge empire, a metropolis from which all colonial cities were outposts. William Guthrie wrote in 1801:

Some missionaries pretend that it is the Golden Chersonesus or Peninsula of the ancients, and the inhabitants used to measure their riches by bars of gold. The truth is, that the excellent situation of this country admits of a trade with India ; so that when it was first discovered by the Portuguese, who were afterwards expelled by the Dutch, Malacca was the riched city in the East, next to Goa and Ormus, being the key of the China, the Japan, the Moluccas, and the Sunda trade. The country, however, at present, is chiefly valuable for its trade with the Chinese. This degeneracy of the Malayans, who were formerly an industrious, ingenious people, is easily accounted for, by the tyranny of the Dutch, whose interest it is they should never recover from their present date of ignorance and slavery.22

By this stage the myth-making of Malacca was sliding somewhat, with the Dutch being blamed in this account for the city’s economic decline. This brings in another layer to the situation -- the fact that colonies were used to judge other European states by, in terms of their power and of their methods of conquest and rule. In Malacca, we also have an account from the Malay side, comparing the Dutch and the British from the perspective of the local residents. Abdullah Bin Abdul Kadir wrote that after the treaty of Vienna of 1815, which returned Malacca to the Dutch from the British caretaker control:

At the same time the majority of the Malacca folk of all races were glad that the Dutch were taking back the Settlement, for they thought they would be better off than under English rule. But they did not realise that the newcomers were leeches who would suck the very blood from their bodies.23

The Dutch changed the administration from the English ways; taxes were raised and new taxes imposed, such as the tax on house construction, thus putting greater hardship on the poor. The Dutch were regarded as oppressing the “servants of Allah” in Malacca.24 Views of the British had changed, so that when they returned eight years later, they were welcomed.

22 William Guthrie, A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar and Present State of the Several Kingdoms of the World (London: Vernor & Hood, 1801), 765. 23 Abdullah Bin Abdul Kadir, The Hikayat Abdullah, trans. A. H. Hill (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1969), 137. 24 Abdullah Bin Abdul Kadir, The Hikayat Abdullah, 148.

126 127

After I had been in Malacca for a month the English came suddenly to take the Settlement out of the hands of the Dutch. This was in the year 1823, Malacca having been exchanged by the English for Bencoolen. Now at last I noticed that all races in Malacca were pleased, for they had tasted the bitter nastiness of Dutch rule. At the time when the Dutch had taken over Malacca from the English the majority of people had felt glad because they thought that the Dutch were much better people than the English. But they had now felt the iron hand of the Dutch and welcomed the return of English rule.25

The author was closely linked to the British administration in Singapore when he wrote his memoir, so cannot be assumed to be entirely impartial. Nonetheless, his views merit consideration, in the notion of the Dutch falling so spectacularly in the eyes of the Malaccan residents. Most notoriously, the British destroyed the Portuguese fort, in order to prevent Malacca rising again as a rival to the new settlement of Georgetown, Penang. Visually, this changed the city entirely, breaking the division between the colonial and local zones of the city. The period of British rule also saw the establishment of Singapore, which drew away much of Malacca’s labouring and trading population.

But even by the end of the 19th century, hints of its former grandeur were still common in observers’ accounts of the city:

“…the city of Malacca, sacked it, slaughtered the Moors (Mohammedans) who defended it, destroyed its twenty-five thousand houses abounding in gold, pearls, precious stones, and spices, and on its site had built a fortress with walls fifteen feet thick, out of the ruins of its mosques. The king, who fought upon an elephant, was badly wounded and fled. Further, on hearing of the victory, the King of Siam, from whom Malacca had been “usurped by the Moors,” sent to the conqueror a cup of gold, a carbuncle, and a sword inlaid with gold. This conquest was vaunted of as a great triumph of the Cross over the Crescent, and as its result, by the year 1600 nearly the whole commerce of the Straits had fallen into the hands of the Portuguese.”26

British construction in the town included administrative buildings as well as residences. The most interesting example of the evolution of the city can be seen in buildings from the turn of the 20th century. An example is the former Malacca Club building. What is interesting here is that in some of the design, the mouldings, for instance, there are references to Peranakan design that had developed in the city. There are also hints of Islamic architecture, so that rather than a European building, this one is an abstraction of the local idiom.

25 Abdullah Bin Abdul Kadir, The Hikayat Abdullah, 231.26 Isabella L. Bird, The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither (London: Putnam, 1892).

There was not a large enough European civilian population to influence design. In fact, there was a reflection the other way, with Malaccan structures being built by the colonial power as a reflection of the Straits Chinese idiom. This is an interesting example that perhaps parallels the use of Indo-Saracenic architecture in British India. However, whereas that was a projection of an idealised design in big architecture, in tandem with the ideal of an exotic-science, classical-city design, the choice in Malacca was to draw on actual existing local architecture in decorative features.

Conclusion and Further PlansMalacca offers a unique lens for comparing colonising strategies within a city site, both among different colonisers and over time as ideas of colonisation in Europe were evolving. The structures created as part of the built environment are significant for their visual effects, and psychological formation of the urban environment for the residents.

It is simplistic to see European colonies as attempting to replicate life at “home” because it is underpinned by an assumption that this was desired. Again, the definitional conflict of colony arises, because the desires of settlers in Nova Scotia, for instance, were greatly different from those of European settlers in Africa or Asia. As has been successfully argued, those who chose to go to Asia were self-selected individuals who did not want to live in Europe.27 Malacca particularly, having a relatively small European population, was never going to mimic a European city, and gave more opportunities for access to the “exotic” by those seeking it. Gilberto Freyre theorised Lusotropicalism, which he applied directly to Brazil, but which could usefully be applied to Malacca as well:

Unlike the activities of other Europeans in the Tropics, those of the Portuguese have nearly always been an endeavour of great depth and purpose, which had its (check) in some ways conscious and in other ways methodical beginnings with Prince Henry. It was conscious of a Christian mission meaning more than lip service, the sign of the cross and Sunday observance; more practical, everyday and useful: and as has been noticed already by more than one Franciscan observer, sociologically Franciscan. They were, however, conscious that this mission did not mean subjugating oriental peoples, cultures and values so that European men, values and imperialist cultures could rule over them, if only superficially; but it meant a much more complex process of adaptation, contemporisation, acclimatisation and adjustment, in fact, of interpretation of values or cultures, as well as the miscegenation they nearly always practiced.28

27 William B. Cohen, “The Lure of Empire: Why Frenchmen Entered the Colonial Service,” Journal of Contemporary History 4, no. 1 (1969), 103.28 Gilberto Freyre, The Portuguese and the Tropics (Lisbon: Executive Committee for the Commemoration of the Vth Centenary of the Death of Prince Henry the Navigator, 1961), 32.

128 129

Here again is a comparison between colonial powers, buttressed by Freyre’s claim that Moorish heritage gave the Portuguese a particular affinity for the tropics:

In the hot countries overseas the Portuguese were to find exaggerated or intensified the colours and forms and women and landscapes, flavours, scents, sensations, qualities in the soil and culture values that they knew already in less intense, lively and less crude forms in the parts of Portugal most deeply marked by Moorish occupation.29

The merits of his argument are less in the discussion of Moorish influence and more in the exceptionalism of Portuguese tropical experience, which did differ from the practices of other colonisers. The fact that Malacca was left with a relatively large Portuguese Eurasian community which retained a strong community identity serves to demonstrate the greater success of the Portuguese in forming a society of different ethnic groups, and this became one of the key influences in Malacca’s development, setting it apart from other towns in (what is now) Malaysia. The British and Dutch had a very different approach to colonisation, and there has yet to be a social theorist suggesting any affinity for tropicalism being heritable in those states. Regardless of Freyre’s dubious ethnographic claims, they do resonate as a state of mind and sense of national identity, as behaviour in colonies was seen to exemplify the essential national characteristics of each European group (in the eyes of their observers). This was overlaid in Malacca on the “condition of racial and cultural diversity characteristic of the region”.30

The Useems devised the notion of the “third culture”, “the complex of patterns learned and shared by communities of men stemming from both a Western and a non-Western society who regularly interact as they relate their societies, or sections thereof, in the physical setting of non-Western societies”.31 This is particularly relevant to Malacca.

Malacca’s economic decline meant that it was not faced with rapid development in the landscape until the 20th century. This slow acculturation of different influences helped to create a hybrid community. It also contributed to the state of “antique modernity” the city found itself in at the end of the 19th century, leading Isabella Bird to describe her first sight of the city:

…a town of antiquated appearance, low houses, much colored, with flattish, red-tiled roofs, many of them built on piles, straggling for a long distance, and fringed by massive-looking bungalows, half buried in trees. A hill rises near the middle, crowned by a ruined cathedral, probably the oldest Christian church in the Far East, with slopes of bright green grass below, timbered near

29 Gilberto Freyre, The Portuguese and the Tropics, 46.30 Robbie B. H. Goh, and Brenda S. A. Yeoh, “Urbanism and Post-Colonial Nationalities: Theorizing the Southeast Asian City,” in Theorizing the Southeast Asian City as Text, ed. Robbie B. H. Goh, and Brenda S. A. Yeoh (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2003).31 R. Useem J. Useem, J. Donoghue, “Men in the Middle of the Third Culture: The Roles of American and Non-Western People in Cross-Cultural Administration,” Human Organization 22 (1963), 169.

their base with palms and trees of a nearly lemon-colored vividness of spring-green, and there are glimpses of low, red roofs behind the hill. On either side of the old-world-looking town and its fringe of bungalows are glimpses of steep, reed roofs among the cocoa-palms. A long, deserted-looking jetty runs far out into the shallow sea, a few Chinese junks lie at anchor, in the distance a few Malay fishermen are watching their nets, but not a breath stirs, the sea is without a ripple, the gray clouds move not, the yellow plumes of the palms are motionless; the sea, the sky, the town, look all alike asleep in a still, moist, balmy heat.32

The influence of European colonisation as well as the Peranakan and Chitty communities meant that the city had an identity that was very different from other regions in its level of cosmopolitanism, reflecting a lot of what we ascribe to be the social condition of urban modernity. In further research I hope to analyse this more fully. This paper offers an introduction to those plans.

The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Dr Merennage Radin Fernando, Senior Fellow, Humanities & Social Studies Education, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, and Dr Ashley Wright, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, in reviewing this paper.

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Chinese Education Across the Empires: Knowledge, Politics, and networks between batavia, Singapore, and nanjing1

By Oiyan Liu

“I have observed that in the near future there will spring up one new independent country,

the Malay Peninsula, the Straits Settlements. The masters of this new political division will

certainly be Chinese…Now is the time for you students to build up your political ability,

because the future masters of the Malay Peninsula are you students of this College.”2

This quote is extracted from Juin Li’s lecture entitled “Chinese Emigrants and their Political Ability” at Jinan College in Nanjing (China) on 8 February 1922. Jinan, established at the end of the year 1906, was the first institution of higher education that was especially opened for overseas Chinese. Functioning under the auspices of China’s central government, the school aimed at integrating with the Chinese from Southeast Asia and trained Nanyang Chinese to become agents for spreading China’s political influence overseas. This school, which was built after the educational movements in the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya had already started, first approached advocates of the educational movement in Java for institutional integration. Soon afterward Jinan also started to recruit students from British Malaya, particularly Singapore. This essay seeks to understand how institutional circulations of people, thought and activities across Dutch-ruled Batavia (now Jakarta), British-ruled Singapore and China were related with one another. I analyse the circumstances under which these triangular relations intensified, and the conditions under which this integrating process weakened. More interestingly, I seek to understand how educational exchanges mutually shaped the political visions of diasporic Chinese. This essay concentrates on the case of Batavia and examines how the educational movement of the Dutch East Indies Chinese was connected to the educational movements in Singapore and China.

The educaTional MoveMenT in BaTavia

“China is so much vaster and bigger than Japan! How great could we become if the great

China reorganises! We could become the most powerful nation in the world, but first we

need education to reach that goal.”3

This expression is quoted from the notes of Sandick, inspector at the Department of Domestic Governance of the Dutch colonial government, who examined essays that were written by students of the Tiong Hoa

7.

1 I thank Professor Eric Tagliacozzo for being the reviewer of this research essay, and I thank Chua Leong Kian for sharing his knowledge on Mr. Lee Teng-hwee with me. Lastly, my gratitude goes to Wee Tong Bao and other staff members at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library for offering excellent assistance on my research. 2 NAS, MBPI, (1 October 1922), section 41.3 L.H.W. van Sandick, Chineezen Buiten China: hunne beteekenis voor de ontwikkeling van Zuid-Oost-Azie, speciaal van Nederlandsch-Indie. (‘s-Gravenhage: Van der Beek, 1909), p. 255. NLB Call no.: RSEA 959.8004951 SAN

Hwee Koan School in Batavia. This source from 1909 reveals that, at the time, Indies Chinese students felt that they were part of China. They envisioned (by comparing themselves with Japan as inspiration) China becoming the most powerful entity in the world through education.

Chinese, Dutch and Malay documents state that modern Chinese education in Java started at the turn of the 20th century when Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan (中華會館hereafter THHK) was established in 1900. It was the first pan-Chinese association in the Indonesian archipelago and its school was named the “Tiong Hoa Hak Tong” (中華學堂 Zhonghua Xuetang). Founding members included Lee Hin Lin,4 Tan Kim Sun,5 Lie Kim Hok6 and Phao Keng Hek.7 The school was funded with an annual support of 3,000 guilders from the Chinese Council (Kong Koan), and aimed at providing free education for all children of Chinese descent. The funds for its establishment came from the sale of land owned by local Chinese. Kong Koan then used these funds to invest in charity issues.8

THHK was the first Chinese educational institution in Java that raised worries among the Dutch. The association played an important role in stimulating the educational concerns and political movement in Java.9 Even before the establishment of THHK in 1900, the Chinese in Java played a pioneering role in the educational development of overseas Chinese. It has been stated that the first school for the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia was established in Java, even before the opening of Singapore as a port city in 1819. Schools for overseas Chinese in Nanyang existed before China opened classes for the Nanyang Chinese community. It has been documented that the earliest school for huaqiao (overseas Chinese) in Nanyang was established in Java in 1729 when Yangjiyuan (養濟院) established a Chinese branch called Mingcheng Shuyuan (明誠書院).10 Schooling in this period, however, was considered as an activity for

4 “Chinese Schools in Java”, The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol 10, no. 2 June 1906, p. 100. Lie Hin Liam was a founding member of THHK and was interested in the political affairs of China at the time. He hosted Kang Youwei on his visit to Batavia, and supported the revolutionaries in 1911. For biographical information I refer to: Leo Suryadinata, Prominent Indonesian Chinese: Biographical Sketches, (Singapore: ISEAS, 1995), pp. 78-9. R Sing 959.8004951 SUR 5 “Chinese Schools in Java”, The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol 10, no. 2 June 1906, p. 100. Tan Kim San (b. 1873, Jakarta). After his education at a local Hokkien school in Batavia and an English school in Singapore, he became a founding member of THHK-Batavia where he served as secretary from 1900 to 1902. From 1904 to 1916 he served as master of ceremonies. He was appointed director in 1915. In 1911, THHK sent him to Singapore to attend a conference on “Malaysia Mission of Methodist Episcopal Church”. He attempted to recruit an English teacher for a high school did not succeed. For biographical details I refer to: Leo Suryadinata, Prominent Indonesian Chinese: Biographical Sketches, (Singapore: ISEAS, 1995), pp. 172-3. R Sing 959.8004951 SUR 6 Lie Kim Hok (1853-1912) was born in Buitenzorg (now Bogor) where he attended missionary school, and learned Chinese (huawen) in later life. He published writing and translations of Chinese stories, legends, etc., into Low Malay until he became a founding member and elected executive of THHK and THHK’s school, where he was in charge of Confucianism and customary affairs. In 1909, he received a medal from the Qing government. For biographical details, see: Shijie Huaqiao Huaren Cidian (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1990), pp. 369-70. NLB call no. R CO 305.8951 DIC. 7 Phao Keng Hek (b. 1857-1937, Buitenzorg (Bogor). Leader of the Chinese community and president of THHK from 1900 to 1923. He was the son of a Chinese Kapitein, and attended a missionary school in Cianjur with European students. He met Lie Kim Hok at the missionary school. He also went to a Hokkien school. He furthered his education at the Primary School for Europeans (Europeesche Lagere School) in Bogor, which was opened especially for Dutch children in the Dutch Indies. He moved to Batavia after his marriage and worked in the business of agricultural products. He was fluent in Dutch and Hokkien. While being a founding member and president of THHK, he often used his pseudonym “Hoa Djin” (Huaren) to write in the Sino-Malay periodical Perniagan, in which he criticised the racial discriminative and educational policies of the colonial government. He was knighted by the Dutch queen in 1937. For biographical details, see: Shijie Huaqiao Huaren Cidian (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1990), pp. 884, NLB call no. R CO 305.8951 DIC.; Leo Suryadinata, Prominent Indonesian Chinese: Biographical Sketches. ISEAS, 1995, pp. 130-1. R Sing 959.8004951 SUR 8 “Our Batavia Letter”, The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 22, June 1902, p. 88; “THHK” school, The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 24, December 1902, p. 168. . 9 Lea E. Williams, Overseas Chinese nationalism; the genesis of the Pan-Chinese movement in Indonesia, 1900-1916, (Glencoe: Ill., Free press,1960) NLB Call no.: RDTYS English 325.25109598 WIL10 Qian He, “Ten problems concerning Huaqiao education in Nanyang” in Nanyang Huaqiao Jiaoyu Huiyi Baogao, by Jinan National University, (Shanghai Dadong Shuju yinshuasuo, 1930), pp. 326-7. NLB call no: RDTYS Chinese 370.959 CNT.

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families of higher social and economic status, and had no political meaning. It was only at the turn of the 20th century that Chinese education in the Dutch East Indies became politicised. Education before 1900 was in the form of the traditional style, and was regarded as a social phenomenon as only the wealthier classes could afford sending their children to school.11

Promoters of the educational movement aimed at making education accessible to all children of Chinese descent. Educators designed a curriculum along “modern” lines which meant instruction in modern Chinese. While some studies claim that THHK’s educational programme was meant to reform outdated practices within the Chinese community,12 I believe that the educational movement should be considered more as a public reaction of local Chinese towards anti-Chinese colonial policies at the time.13 Over the course of the last decades of the 19th century, the Chinese lost their privileged status as commercial intermediaries with the government that had secured their economic position. Moreover, under the so-called Ethical Policy, the Dutch government provided privileges for indigenous inhabitants but excluded Chinese from using colonial benefits. The Dutch stripped away privileges for the Chinese. Under the new state policy, the Dutch provided education and subsidies for indigenous natives, but, with the exception of a few Indies peranakan Chinese, continued denying education for the Chinese. This led to criticism of the Dutch government for not providing similar educational opportunities for children of Chinese descent and propelled THHK to use its own funds through contributions from the local Chinese to make its political point for equal rights under the Dutch colonial administration.

In his pertinent essay “What is a Chinese Movement” written in 1911, Dutch lawyer Fromberg observed that there were desires for equal education and equal treatment among races, and equal law in Java. Some notable Chinese from western Java requested the Dutch colonial government to work on judicial matters. They hoped that the Chinese in the Netherlands East Indies would be considered as equals to Europeans and therefore wished not to be restricted by colonial policies that did not favour local Chinese.14 The Chinese movement, of which the educational movement was a part, emerged in a period when Indies Chinese were experiencing transformations in the colony. When the Dutch removed opium-farming, a credit system for agriculture emerged that caused competition among financial businesses. The Chinese were challenged with these new demands. Lack of experience, skill and education hindered the Chinese in successfully managing financial and commercial institutions by themselves. In this situation, the Chinese started to realise that education would teach them the appropriate skills to meet these demands. .

11 Ong Hok Ham. “Sejarah Pengajaran Minoritas Tionghoa,” Riwayat Tionghoa Peranakan di Jawa. (Depok: Komunitas Bambu, 2005), pp. 89-103. NLB call no.: RSEA Malay 305.89510598 ONG Benny G. Setiono, Tionghoa dalam pusaran politik (Jakarta: Elkasa, 2003). NLB call no.: R Malay 305.89510598 SET12 See for instance; Kwee Tek Hoay, The origins of the modern Chinese movement in Indonesia. (Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1969). NLB call no: RCLOS English 301.4519510598 KWE Charles A. Coppel, Studying ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, (Singapore: Singapore Society of Asian Studies, 2002) RCLOS English 305.89510598 COP English 305.89510598 COP13 This is based on primary sources I used. See for instance, The Straits Chinese Magazine, -“Chinese Schools in Java” , Vol 10, no. 2 June 1906, p. 100. The article states: “The Dutch Government has been advised to grant the Chinese the privilege of forming literary societies. Their purpose is to collect funds and to bring the blessings of education within the reach of every Chinese childe, male, or female.” Another author who emphasised anti-Dutch policies as the catalyst for the educational movement was: Ming Govaas-Tjia, Dutch colonial education: the Chinese experience in Indonesia, 1900-1942, (Singapore : Chinese Heritage Centre, 2005). NLB call no.: RSEA English 370.95980904 GOV Mona Lohanda, Growing pains: the Chinese and the Dutch in colonial Java, 1890-1942, (Jakarta : Yayasan Cipta Loka Caraka, 2002) NLB call no.: English 959.82004951 LOH14 Mr P.H. Fromberg, “De Chineesche beweging op Java”, (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1911), pp. 1-65. NLB Call no.: MR 301.45195105 FRO

Under these circumstances, education became the tool to address the unequal treatments, such as passenstelsel (a system that restricted the mobility of the Chinese), racial competition and other judicial treatments that did not benefit local Chinese communities.15 Indies Chinese took the case of Japan as an example to evaluate their own position. It was believed that, based on ethnic backgrounds, the Japanese in the Indies should belong to the racial category of “Foreign Orientals” (Vreemde Oosterlingen). However, in the late 1890s, the Japanese, as the only Asiatic people who were granted the same judicial status as Europeans, were incorporated in the category of “Europeans” in Dutch census. From the Dutch perspective, it could therefore be inferred that “colour” was not the most important parameter for defining “race”; it was the “civilised status” that formed the criterion for racial categorisation. Japan attained “equal status” with Western powers after having undergone educational modernisation during the Meiji Reformation. Moreover, starting from 1908, the Dutch allowed the presence of a Japanese consul in the Indies.

Looking at the Japanese who attained a status that was equal to Europeans, Indies Chinese believed that education would improve the political outlook for the Chinese in Java in the long run. Hence, even without the support of the Dutch government for education, the Chinese in Java took the initiative to establish their own schools that allowed all Chinese children of various classes to attend.

tHE SInGAPOrE COnnECtIOn

The educational movement of the Chinese in Java emerged at the initiative of Indies Chinese, but the educational movements in Singapore and China had an impact in shaping the educational movement in Java. Enlightened Chinese outside Java had guided Indies Chinese, and showed that education and the press were effective tools to realise their political ambitions.16 Singapore, in particular, played an important role in framing THHK’s educational system in its initial stages. The Straits Chinese Magazine, a prominent Singaporean periodical delivered to Chinese communities in Nanyang, including Java, stated that its Straits Chinese representative visited schools in Java regularly and that Chinese in Java declared that “they derived the germ of their ideas on [education] from Singapore.”17

Among the connections outside Java, Lim Boon Keng, who started promoting modern Chinese education during the Confucian revival movement in the Straits Settlements at the end of the 19th century, played an important role in the initial stages of the educational movement in Java.18 In One Hundred Years of Chinese

in Singapore, Song Ong Siang stated that Lim Boon Keng revived Confucianism in Malaya. He toured throughout Malaya promoting Confucianism and education through lectures between 1894 and 1911.19 When the THHK-school in Batavia was established, it received assistance from Lim Boon Keng in Singapore. A report shows that Lim Boon Keng had provided Louw Koei Hong, who was originally hired in Japan for a

15 P.H. Fromberg, Verspreide Geschriften, verzameld door Chung Hwa Hui Chineesche Vereeniging in Nederland, (Leiden: Leidsche Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1926), pp. 423-4. NLB call no.: RDTYS Other 349.598 FRO16 Ibid, p. 424. 17 “Chinese Schools in Java”, The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol 10, no. 2 June 1906, p. 100.18 Yen Ching-Hwang, “The Confucian Revival Movement in Singapore and Malaya, 1899-1911”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 33-57.19 Song Ong Siang, One hundred years’ history of the Chinese in Singapore, (Singapore : University Malaya Press), pp. 235-6 NLB call no: RCLOS English 959.57 SON

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position in Singapore, to become the first principal of the Chinese school in the Netherlands Indies.20 Lim Boon Keng also appointed a teacher for THHK.21

Lim Boon Keng and Song Ong Siang, as editors of The Straits Chinese Magazine, were clearly well connected with THHK. Even before the official opening of THHK, the magazine informed its readers that the school would be offering courses in Chinese and Dutch languages, Chinese manners and customs, mathematics, geography and other useful and practical subjects. For members of the THHK, the editors announced that competent teachers would give lectures on the doctrines and writings of Confucius.22 Staff of the magazine also received a pamphlet from THHK members in Batavia that was entitled “Soerat kiriman pada sekalian

orang bangsa Tjina, terkirim oleh lid-lid-pengeroes dari pakompoelan Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan” (translated as: Letter sent to all Chinese, by members of the THHK).

In 1902, on the occasion of celebrating the anniversary of the THHK School, the magazine’s editorial staff acknowledged THHK’s contribution in awakening Indies Chinese awareness and praised the spirit of reform in the Dutch East Indies, which took place simultaneously with the reform movement in the Straits Settlements.23 Although not explicitly stated in published matters, connections between the pioneering leaders of the educational movements in the Straits Settlements and Dutch East Indies proved that both movements were connected. In the same year when The Straits Chinese Magazine (co-edited by Lim Boon Keng who led the movement in Singapore) congratulated THHK with its establishment, THHK extended its education in Batavia with the institutionalisation of an English school called Yale Institute. Yale Institute was founded by Lee Teng-Hwee but supervised by THHK.24

Lee Teng-Hwee was an educator who tried to model education in Batavia according to his alma mater Yale University in the United States. Lee Teng-Hwee, a Batavia-born Chinese, had strong institutional connections with Singapore where he studied at the Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) headed by William Oldham in 1886. He taught at its ACS Penang branch as English director upon his return from Yale University. Together with Lim Boon Keng, Lee Teng-Hwee opened a private English school in Penang.25 The Dutch colonial government was concerned that its subjects, through their connections with the Chinese in the Straits Settlements, would become more supportive of British rule. The Dutch felt particularly threatened by the influence of THHK in fostering the idea that Dutch rule was less favourable than its imperial competitor. THHK’s curriculum was similar to that in schools in the Straits Settlements, and its schools taught children to read and write Chinese. It also taught “modern” subjects such as mathematics, singing, gymnastics, physics and (when funding permitted) English.26 Initially, THHK wanted students to

20 Ming Govaars-Tjia, Dutch colonial education: the Chinese experience in Indonesia, 1900-1942, (Singapore: Chinese Heritage Centre, 2005), p. 5521 Sandick, p. 251. 22 “Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan”, The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol.4, No. 16, December 1900, p. 18323 “Our Batavia Letter” (written on 14 March 1902), The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 21 March 1902, p. 53. 24 Lee Teng Hwee stayed in Batavia till 1903. He resigned on 1 May 1903, and left Batavia for the United States in pursuit of a post-graduate degree in political economy at Columbia University. He was denied entry to the American border due to visa issues, and was deported to China with coolies in July 1903. He stayed in China after his deportation. See: New York Times, 20 July 1903, p. 1; The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 21 March 1902, p. 53. “Lee Teng Hui, 1872-1947” Shijie Huaqiao Huaren Cidian (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1990), p. 377. NLB call no. R CO 305.8951 DIC. 25 Chua Leong Kian, “Bendi yinghua shuyuan xiaoyou Li Denghui huiying Fudan daxue”, Lianhe zaobao (19 June 2008), p. 5; “Lee who? A Chinese intellectual worthy of study”, in Sunday Times (22 June 2008)26 Sandick, p. 252.

learn Dutch, but it soon proved to be impossible.27 Hiring Dutch instructors was too expensive, and the Dutch government did not allow Chinese to learn and speak Dutch because in the Indies, the Dutch language was synonymous with the language of the rulers and positions of authority28 . 28 Social stigma and lack of funding to learn Dutch led THHK to teach English as the representative European language. The Chinese in the Indies soon realised that the learning of English had its benefits. The Dutch were losing their power and status to the British. English therefore had become more useful for engaging in commerce. Within the first year of the establishment of THHK’s school, it had already been observed that the Chinese in Batavia were starting to prefer the English language to Dutch.

In 1902, THHK extended its education in Batavia with the institutionalisation of Yale Institute, led by Lee Teng-Hwee. He and ACS alumni Lim Boon Keng not only connected the educational spirit between Java and the Straits Settlements, but also helped integrate Nanyang Chinese with mainland Chinese through their educational efforts. Lim Boon Keng became president of Xiamen University, founded by Tan Kah Kee in 1921. Lee Teng-Hwee, upon leaving Batavia in 1904, worked and later became president of Fudan University from 1906 till the Japanese Occupation. These two educators, Lim Boon Keng from Singapore and Lee Teng-Hwee from Batavia, are two important examples of how early Nanyang Chinese were connected to extra-local networks of educational movements and influenced the intellectual and educational development in China.

IntEGrAtInG WItH CHInA

Initial steps of Integration The connection of Chinese in Java with Chinese in Singapore was laid by local Chinese settlers in the Indies, but the intensifying integration with China was mainly due to efforts of (first) Chinese reformers and (shortly after) revolutionaries exiled from China who were active in Nanyang. Through educational efforts, the Chinese reformers and exiled revolutionaries encouraged overseas Chinese to participate in the changing political situation in China. Kang Youwei, leader of the Chinese reform party, travelled to Singapore via Hong Kong after his reform movement was crushed by the conservative party led by the Empress Dowager Cixi in China. From Singapore, Kang Youwei further travelled to Java, most likely with the help of promoters of the movement in Singapore, and his presence had an impact on the local movement. Chinese schools in Java grew steadily since the establishment of THHK in the Indies, but it was in 1903 when Kang Youwei travelled through the Netherlands East Indies that made THHK more popular.29 In Singapore, he attempted to promote schools in the same manner as in Java and Japan. In 1903, he met male and female students at THHK.30 He appointed teachers to instruct students.31 Because of his efforts, one can say that schools in the Dutch and British Indies started to have an integrating character for the first time.

27 Before the opening of its school, The Straits Chinese Magazine announced that THHK-school would be offering Dutch language courses. After its establishment THHK decided to offer English courses instead of Dutch. See: The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol.4, No. 16, December 1900; Vol. 6, No. 21 March 1902. 28 Fromberg (1926), p. 424. 29 Kang Youwei was received with enthusiasm in the Dutch Indies, especially among the better classes. See: “Kang Yuwei”, The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 3, September 1903, p. 10130 Nio Joe Lan. Tiongkok Sepandjang Abad. (Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1952), p. 231 NLB call no. R SEA 951 NIO. Note that the author expresses that THHK was not established by Kang Youwei, because THHK was already established prior to his arrival. 31 Sandick, p. 251.

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The increasing success of the educational movement, partly encouraged by political exiles from China, inspired the Qing state to actively promote education for overseas Chinese, which had caused competition among the Chinese state, reformers and revolutionaries for overseas Chinese support. For the Nanyang Chinese who promoted education, however, it seemed that the political visions of these activists from China did not matter to them as much, since they were more concerned with providing education and strengthening their power and influence against the colonial regime. Lim Boon Keng and other Straits Chinese expressed sorrow two years after the “Hundred... Days of Reform” was interrupted. The Straits

Chinese Magazine, under the chief editorship of Lim Boon Keng and Song Ong Siang, published articles and poems of political discontent regarding the interruption of the reform movement. Nevertheless, the presence of political activists in Nanyang did further stimulate local educational movements. Although political exiles from China promoted education, this alignment cannot be considered as official integration with education in mainland China.

Official Integration with China: Jinan, 1906–ca. 1911/2Ideological integration with China sprouted in Nanyang through contacts with political exiles travelling in Nanyang, but official educational integration with China started in 1906 when the Qing Empire established Jinan Xuetang (暨南學堂) in Nanjing. Jinan Xuetang was the first school for Huaqiao on Chinese soil, and was meant to be the highest educational institution for all overseas Chinese. Its establishment could be considered as the milestone for educational integration through which the Chinese government officially reached out to Nanyang.

The founding of Jinan was part of the Qing government’s educational reform programme. The Qing government abolished the examination system that had existed since the Han Dynasty and launched a system of “modern education”. Instead of being tested on their knowledge of the Chinese classics, students were now trained in practical matters. Initial efforts for implementing curricula for “modern education” was put into practice in 1898 by Emperor Guangxu (on the urgent request of Kang Youwei), but was aborted by the right-wing Empress Dowager Cixi, who subsequently persecuted Kang Youwei and his adherents.

However by 1906, Empress Dowager Cixi re-implemented reforms after witnessing the success of Chinese schools. In the previous year, governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi Cen Chunxuan (岑春煊) sent Liu Shiji (劉士驥) to various cities in Nanyang to inspect Nanyang schools. The inspection tour revealed that ethnic consciousness among Nanyang Chinese had risen rapidly. The Qing authorities feared that if they continued delaying in seeking support among Huaqiao, these overseas Chinese and the Nanyang Chinese would increase their support for the court’s adversaries, namely Kang Youwei’s reform party and Sun Yatsen’s revolutionary party (Guomindang). The Qing regime was particularly threatened by the Guomindang, which had been intensively promoting its activities in Nanyang since 1905. Liu Shiji reported to Cen Chunxuan that most of the Guomindang’s branches were located in Nanyang, and therefore the schools there needed to be supervised before it was too late.32

Following the inspection tour, Empress Dowager Cixi appointed Duan Fang (端方), governor-general of Jiangxi and Jiangnan, to open Jinan at the end of 1906. Jinan was an institute for higher education that was especially designed for overseas Chinese. Jinan’s mission was to spread Chinese culture beyond China’s

32 “Huaqiao minzu yishi de juexing ji qi yu zhongguo geming yundong he dangdi minzu duli yundong de guanxi”, in Yindunixia Huaqiaoshi, (Beijing: Haiyang chubanshe, 1985), pp. 296-338. NLB Call no. R SING 959.8004951 YDN.

territorial borders by nourishing returning Huaqiao who would then further spread the spirit of Chinese civilisation to other places.33

Pioneers from JavaThe school was led by Zheng Hongnian (鄭洪年). The first batch of students at Jinan came from Java.34 The Qing Empire and THHK had existing educational exchanges prior to the establishment of Jinan. By way of the Department of Education it allowed THHK to request qualified teachers with certification from China to teach in Java.35 While the Qing government sent teachers to Java, the THHK committee selected students who would be sent to China.36 In China, these students received further education under the auspices of the Chinese government. The purpose was to nourish ties of Indies-born Chinese towards “the motherland”, and to keep China’s national enterprises running. The press reported that the Chinese in the Indies were “stepchildren” who were abandoned by the Dutch Indies government but who were awakened and recognised by their own father (referred to China) who had been previously “dormant”.37

It would be incorrect, however, to assume that Nanyang Chinese uncritically embraced the Chinese government. It was noted that Indies Chinese reacted to the Qing court’s outreach to Java with suspicion. One source reported “… at first, our association [THHK] did not think of sending our kids to China, because we did not know if we could count on the Chinese state.”38 Questioning the accountability and reliability of the Qing state was understandable, for the Qing state prohibited officials and commoners from leaving Qing territory without imperial approval. Until 1893, when Xue Fucheng (薛福成) petitioned to re-recognise overseas Chinese, Nanyang Chinese were considered “traitors” of the Chinese state.39 THHK, therefore, was cautious about sending Chinese children from Java for further studies at a school opened by the Chinese empire. Therefore, contrary to what most scholarship had inferred, integration between the two parties at this stage was primarily not caused by a form of romanticised, essentialist patriotism towards China as some scholars had argued,40 but was due to the fact that Jinan’s mission as proposed to Nanyang Chinese was in line with THHK’s purposes.

On 1 January 1907, three Qing officials, Chen Baozhen (陳寶箴), Qian Xun (錢恂), and Dong Hongwei (董鴻褘), attended an ad hoc meeting that the THHK-Batavia organised. At the meeting Qian Xun announced that the Department of Education in Beijing was accepting returning Huaqiao to further education at Jinan.41 The Dutch were well aware of the intensifying connections between the Chinese court and Indies Chinese. A Dutch inspector reported:

33 邢济众, 暨南大学百年华诞, 新加坡校友会六十五周年纪念特刊 (2006), p. 1.34 Ma Xingzhong (馬兴中), “ 暨南大学與新加坡” (Jinan University and Singapore)” in新加坡暨南校友会出版委员会 ed. 暨南大学百年华诞, 新加 坡校友会六十五周年纪念特刊 (2006), pp. 30-33 NLB Call no.: RSING Chinese 378.51 JND35 Sandick, p. 251. 36 “Our Java Letter”, The Straits Chinese Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 1907, p. 34. 37 Fromberg (1926), p. 425. 38 Sandick, p. 252.39 For a translated section of Xue Fucheng’s Proposal see Philip A. Kuhn, “Xue Fucheng’s Proposal to Remove Stigma from Overseas Chinese (29 June 1893)” in Chinese Among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) pp. 241-3. NLB Call no. R SEA 304.80951 KUH40 A notable scholar who supports this argument is Yen Ching-hwang. See, for instance, The overseas Chinese and the 1911 revolution, with special reference to Singapore and Malaya (Kuala Lumpur ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. NLB call no. RSING English 301.451951095957 YEN41 “Huaqiao minzu yishi de juexing ji qi yu zhongguo geming yundong he dangdi minzu duli yundong de guanxi”, in Yindunixia Huaqiaoshi. (Beijing: Haiyang chubanshe, 1985), pp. 296-338. NLB Call no. R SING 959.8004951 YDN.

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We have learnt from Tjian Soen [Qian Xun] and Tong Hong Wie [Dong Hongwei] (respectively secretary and attaché of the Chinese delegation in The Hague) who visited THHK schools in 1906, that the Emperor gives our students the opportunity to complete their studies in Nanjing … On 21 February 1907, the first 21 students went to Nanjing. They received state-sponsored education and stipends … According to their letters to their parents, these students do not want to return to Java unless they have completed their studies. The Chinese state has also told them, that after they have completed their studies, they can continue their studies in Europe, Japan, or the US by using funding of the state.”42

Indies Chinese were increasingly inclined to integrate with China, because the Chinese state provided educational facilities for the young Chinese — a primary goal that Indies Chinese tried to attain with the Dutch colonial government. Considering the fact that the educational issue in the Dutch Indies was most pressing compared with other places in Southeast Asia, it is therefore not surprising that the Chinese state tried to reach out to Dutch subjects first. From the perspective of the Chinese state, it can be argued that its goal was two-fold: one, to have the most intelligent and competitive overseas Chinese students become China-oriented, as they could become leaders of their local community after returning to the colonised areas, and two, to have them learn from competing empires so as to protect the Chinese state from being further victimised by Western imperialism.

Expansion and DisintegrationThe Chinese court expanded its educational integration with other Chinese communities in Southeast Asia in the second round of student recruitment. In 1908, Jinan recruited 38 students from several schools in Java, but students from the Straits Settlements formed a major part of the student body.43 Zuo Binglong (左秉隆), consul in Singapore, selected 54 Huaqiao in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Penang to go to Jinan in 1908. From 1908 onwards, the Qing regime requested that Zuo Binglong send 45 students to Jinan annually.44 The first students from Singapore included Lee Kong Chian (李光前), who had studied at Jinan for two years before he went for further studies at Qinghua Xuetang.45 Many students from Jinan were engaged in the fields of business, finance, education and culture after graduation.46 Based on the school’s curricula, it could be concluded that the school not only sought to build national consciousness, but also ensured that their students were leaders in finance, commerce and education — fields that were considered crucial by both China and Nanyang Chinese to compete with Western imperial powers.

Jinan closed down after the fall of the Qing Empire. Yuan Shikai, president of republican China at the time, was reluctant to reopen the school out of fear that the Guomindang opposition would thrive at Jinan,

42 Sandick, pp. 252–343 On 5 October 1908, 38 other boys originating from several schools in Java went to Nanjing. In 1909, the number of students from Java since the first dispatch to Jinan totalled 111. See: Sandick, pp. 252–254.44 Ma Xingzhong馬兴中, “ 暨南大学與新加坡” (Jinan University and Singapore)” in新加坡暨南校友会出版委员会 ed. 暨南大学百年华诞, 新加 坡校友会六十五周年纪念特刊 (2006), pp. 30–33. NLB Call no.: RSING Chinese 378.51 JND45 Short biographical details of Lee Kong Chian, entrepreneur, philanthropist and educator: He was head of Singapore “Zhonghua zhongshanghui” (中華總商會) and head of “Xingma zhonghua Shanghui lianhehui” (星馬中華商會聯合會). He was founder of certain Huaqiao schools and hospitals in Singapore. In the 1930s when Tan Kah Kee experienced difficulties in his business, Lee Kong Chian donated money to Xiamen University. In the 1930s–40s, Lee Kong Chian also established many primary schools and Guoguang High School (國光中學) in his home province Fujian. He established Lee Foundation that supports education.46 新加坡暨南校友会出版委员会 ed. 暨南大学百年华诞, 新加坡校友会六十五周年纪念特刊 (2006), pp. 30-33.

many of whose students had participated in the 1911 revolution.47 However, the need for a post-primary school was still felt among Nanyang Chinese. In May 1913, Tan Kah Kee proposed starting a middle school in Singapore. The following year, consul-general Hu Weixian re-submitted the proposal and requested assistance from the Chinese government. It was not until 1917, however, that the Department of Education in China agreed with the request of the Nanyang Chinese. In addition to the financial assistance from the Chinese government Tan Kah Kee received donations from other places in Nanyang. Tan Kah Kee took the proposal to Nanyang Chinese in the British and Dutch colonies in June 1918, and established the “Xinjiapo Nanyang Huaqiao Zhongxuexiao” (Singapore Nanyang Overseas Chinese High School) in 1919.48

While Nanyang Chinese advocated the establishment of a school exclusively for Nanyang Chinese, advocates who pioneered the promotion of modern Chinese education at the turn of the century scrutinised the problems in the existing educational system two decades later. In his speech delivered at the Ministry of Education on 9 January 1917, Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei’s student who promoted reforms including education, commented that unlike at the end of the Qing Empire when passionate propagators believed that education was a necessary tool for saving the country, Chinese society in the republican period were suspicious of education, believing that education only benefited the government. Liang Qichao explained that education was the foundation of a country and that the head of the educational department was responsible for remedying the problem. He argued that even though the traditional examination system had been abolished, traditional characteristics still persisted in the educational system at the time. He said that despite the implementation of modern education, it was still unable to gain popularity among commoners as it was seen as only necessary for people who intended to become government officials. Education was not sufficiently practical; Liang Qichao noted that it still perpetuated “knowledge on paper” rather than practical competency . Moreover, he acknowledged the problems that persisted in the transitional period from the “old school” to the “new school” in this regard. Learning contemporary science required a “new language”. However, modern Chinese in speech and writing was still at the developmental stage and hence students had difficulty learning science while the language was not fully developed.49 While Nanyang Chinese felt the need to establish a school to meet their own purposes,50 the Chinese government also re-evaluated the value of reinforcing ties with Nanyang Chinese through education.

Reintegration: Jinan 1917–late 1920s After Yuan Shikai’s death, the Chinese government sought to reinforce its ties with Nanyang Chinese by reopening Jinan. Yuan Shikai’s successor Li Yuanhong sent the educationalists Huang Yanpei and Lin Dinghua to examine Chinese education in Nanyang. They toured Malaya, lectured in schools and discussed educational problems with the Nanyang Chinese. After the inspection tour, Huang Yanpei concluded that Nanyang Chinese wanted to have teachers and citizens with commercial knowledge. Upon returning to China, he subsequently requested that the government reopen Jinan so as to train teachers and

47 Lee Ting Hui, Chinese schools in British Malaya: policies and politics, (Singapore : South Seas Society, 2006), p. 28. NLB call no.: RSING English 371.82995105951 LEE 48 Ibid, pp. 28-9. 49 Liang Qichao, “Zai jiaoyubu zhi yanshuo” originally published in Chenzhong, 12-13 Jan 1917. Republished in Yinbingshi heji: ji wai wen. Vol. 2. Peking University Press, 2005, pp. 666-674. NLB call no. R C814.3008 LQC. 50 See for instance Wee Tong Bao, “The Development of Modern Chinese Vernacular Education in Singapore – Society, Politics & Policies, 1905–1941” (MA thesis, Department of History, NUS 2001).

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entrepreneurs.51 Since Jinan’s reopening in 1917, the school increasingly modelled the curricula to meet the demands of both the Nanyang Chinese and the “national needs” of the Chinese government.

Compared with its foundational years when Jinan focused on stimulating nationalistic sentiments, Jinan now concentrated on training students with skills that were needed to prosper in commerce and trade. However, while teaching students professional skills such as commerce and accounting were its primary role, the aim of developing students with love for “the motherland” (i.e. China) persisted. The reopening of Jinan in some way helped strengthen ties between Nanyang Chinese and China, but its age-old problems nevertheless existed. Jinan expanded its student body and networks in Southeast Asia in addition to its foundational networks with Chinese in the Dutch and British Indies. At around 1925, there were more than 800 male and female students at Jinan from various places, including Java, Sumatra, Batam, Borneo, Straits Settlements, Malay Peninsula, Burma, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Annam, Taiwan and Siam. Jinan also accepted some students from Hawaii52, a community that Sun Yatsen had strong connections with.

Despite the increasing integration with Nanyang Chinese, Jinan’s aim to become a centralising force for all schools in Nanyang did not go smoothly. In 1930, Liu Shimu (劉士木), director of Jinan’s Nanyang Cultural Affairs Department and previously principal of a Chinese school in Dutch-ruled Sumatra, believed that despite the meetings and conferences with the central government and other educational bodies of overseas Chinese education, huaqiao education was not well-coordinated or unified. Liu Shimu believed that self-government of schools in Nanyang obstructed the integration of Nanyang with China. Other factors that caused problems were lack of facilities, insufficient financial means and the presence of unqualified teachers.53 Following an inquiry received from schools in Nanyang between 1928 and 1930, Chinese educational bodies therefore suggested that teachers (both male and female) should be required to have sufficient knowledge of the following subjects: Chinese as the national language (Guoyu), English, mathematics, sports, science, music, history, geography, drawing, social knowledge, sanmin zhuyi (Sun Yat-sen’s political philosophy “The Three Principles of the People”) and handicraft. Above all, fluency in Guoyu, the national language of China, was required.54

AMbIGuOuS MISSIOnS: EnvISIOnInG StuDEntS bECOMInG “FuturE MAStErS OF tHE MALAy PEnInSuLA” AnD tHE nOn-IMPErIALISt rHEtOrIC

Although organisational problems and the increasing desire for autonomy among overseas Chinese obstructed China’s centralisation project; the Chinese authorities assessed that its integration efforts were mainly hampered by colonial forces. Since the establishment of republican China, colonial forces had been enforcing stricter measures on educational bodies located in their territories. In the Straits Settlements, for instance, the British Legislative Council launched an education bill for the first time on 31 May 1920. The bill

51 Lee Ting Hui, p. 28.52 Cai Yuanpei (蔡元培), 國立暨南學校改革計劃意見晝 , p. 7. Minguo 16. Shanghai Archives #Q240-1-270 (7)53 Liu Shimu (preface), (Jinan University, 1930), Nanyang Huaqiao xuexiao zhi diaocha yu tongji (Qian He ed), pp. 1–3. NLB call no. MR 370.959 CNH.54 For the preparation of the book Nanyang Huaqiao xuexiao zhi diaocha yu tongji, the editor Qian He sent out more than 1,000 questionnaires to Chinese schools in Nanyang. He stated that only 10% of the schools responded to his investigation. Nanyang Huaqiao xuexiao zhi diaocha yu tongji (Qian He ed), pp. 3; 570–1. NLB call no. MR 370.959 CNH.

gave the British government control over Chinese schools. Schools were allowed to continue functioning, but they were obliged to remove their political ambitions and curricula that contained Chinese nationalistic content.55

Colonial policies succeeded to a great extent in preventing overseas Chinese from furthering their education at Jinan. In 1927, Jinan released a public announcement which stated that it wanted to prevent any misunderstanding with the imperial powers. The school stated that its mission followed Sun Yat-sen’s political framework and that, according to the school, it was meant to merely nourish generations of Nanyang Chinese with good personalities, knowledge, interest and the capacity to survive. The purpose was to train settled and journeying students to become individuals who contributed to society. The school hoped that all people of Chinese descent would be able to maintain the solid positions that the ancestors of the Chinese nation created. Jinan claimed that its task was to have Chinese settlers and sojourners subject to colonial rule obtain equal political status and economic treatment. Jinan stated:

We want to prevent misunderstanding of colonial governments, that is: we do not want them to think that Jinan’s national establishment is aimed at constituting a type a statism or imperialism. We do not want colonial powers to think that we instill students with thoughts of invading territories of others. We do not want them to think that once our students graduate and return to Nanyang, they will disturb the authority of colonial rule and stir revolutions against colonial governments with indigenous inhabitants.56

The document, written in Chinese, was presumably mainly targeted at Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. Instead of employing nationalistic terms that the college used in its foundational years, Jinan now used imperialistic vocabulary and attempted to distort its imperialistic tendencies by differentiating the Chinese government from Western imperialist powers. Instead of having imperialist and nationalist ambitions, Jinan claimed that the GuominDang’s goal was simply to have China reach freedom and equality in the world and have its huaqiao enjoy freedom in international settings. Jinan hoped that the Chinese subjects of imperialist powers would not be oppressed and would not suffer from economic and political discrimination. It urged the colonial powers to allow Chinese in Southeast Asia to manage their Nanyang society in an autonomous manner.57

Despite attempts of Chinese authorities to invalidate Jinan’s imperialist and nationalist tendencies, British intelligence reports revealed that Jinan took a strong anti-colonial position. The institution was particularly against the British Empire, which was considered the greatest colonial power at the time. China’s educators did stir up anti-colonialist sentiments among their students. The British government confiscated correspondence between Nanyang and China. Secret letters from a teacher at Jinan, who previously taught in Batavia, complained that “school registration in Malaya and the ‘cruel rules’ of the Dutch in Java are examples of foreign oppression which will destroy the foundation of China.”58 Intelligence reports also

55 Lee Ting Hui, “Proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements 1920,” pp. B78–9.56 Cai Yuan Pei (蔡元培), 國立暨南學校改革計劃意見晝. Minguo 16 (1927). Shanghai Archives #Q240-1-270 (7)57 Ibid.58 NAS, MBPI (1 April 1925), pp. 22-5.

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revealed that Jinan, as the primary educational facility administered by the Chinese government, nurtured students with visions of a future government that would be ruled by Nanyang Chinese. On 8 February 1922, Juin Li, lecturer at Jinan University, expressed the following in his lecture:

Look at the map of Asia; I have observed that in the near future there will spring up one new independent country, the Malay Peninsula, the Straits Settlements. The masters of this new political division will certainly be Chinese. The British power in Egypt and India is crumbling, so the tide of revolt will spread to the East, and the Malay Peninsula will be the first to catch its new influence … I do not advise you to revolt against the British authority at once, because first you must be prepared yourself to organize a government and conduct political affairs, otherwise even if the British authority should be overthrown, you will be helpless. Now is the time for your students to build up your political ability, because the future masters of the Malay

Peninsula are you students of this college.59

This is evidence that educators at Jinan were encouraging and preparing their students to become pioneers of anti-colonialism in Southeast Asia. Contrary to its public claim that it did not encourage overseas Chinese to challenge colonial rule, this lecture shows that Jinan did stir up movements against the imperialist powers. By the 1920s, this institution intensified its anti-British attitudes and claimed that the Chinese were the original people who developed Malaya before the British took over. Jinan stated that “the Chinese were better off in Malaya before the English came … We Chinese opened Malaya — it ought to be ours.”60

In short, even though Jinan publicly claimed that unlike Western colonial powers, China did not aim at encroaching on non-Chinese territory, confidential reports shows that it did hope to expand its power by integrating with Nanyang Chinese whom they encouraged to take over the power of the colonial rulers. China’s non-imperialist claim is therefore contradictory for it hoped to gain control over territories which were not under China’s sovereignty through the intervention of overseas Chinese. The colonial powers therefore sought ways to disempower Jinan, which was seen as the primary institution for training students to play key roles in a Southeast Asian society.

DutCH COuntEr-IntEGrAtIvE POLICy

The Dutch implemented counter-integrative measures a decade earlier than the British did, with British policies against further proliferation of Chinese integrative tendencies around 1920. It was towards the end of the first decade of the 20th century that the Dutch were aware of political indoctrination of Indies Chinese through their connections with Straits Chinese and Jinan. Integration of overseas Chinese with China and increased connection with Straits Chinese through THHK’s educational programmes alarmed the colonial authorities. In 1909 Sandick, official of the Department of Domestic Affairs, reported that:

59 NAS, MBPI, no. 8 (1 October 1922), section 41. Emphasis added by the author. 60 NAS, MBPI (1 April 1925), pp. 22-5.

… most pressing issue of this private education for Chinese children is not the instruction of mandarin-language, not history, nor geography [etc.], but ideas. Ideas that indoctrinated into the mind of the Chinese youth, because the aim is that these ideas will form the foundation of the next generations of the Chinese.61

The spread of ideas was described as the “yellow peril.” Borel, renowned specialist on Chinese matters in the Dutch Indies, gave an overview of the content of the readers used in Chinese schools. According to him, the National Chinese Reader was completely filled with modern ideas and evoked consciousness of nationalities. The yellow peril, therefore, did not refer to supremacy of military power (such as guns and canons), but referred to the threat of modern ideas. He expressed concern, and estimated that, by the end of the first decade of the 20th century, approximately 5,000 students were influenced by these ideas.62 It was during this period that the Dutch feared losing their authority over Indies Chinese. The Dutch press expressed concern that Chinese movements in the Indies would endanger Dutch sovereignty in the Indies, mainly because these movements were nurtured by outside forces, particularly China. Some Dutch authorities suggested revising laws so as to secure political legitimacy over the Chinese. The Dutch were concerned with attracting loyalty of Chinese settlers only because they were regarded as the most industrious residents in the colony.63

Dutch paranoia of losing their political authority over their subjects made the colonial government modify its policies. In order for the Dutch to maintain political support of Chinese settlers in the Indies, the colonial government competed with the Chinese government to provide state-sponsored education. In 1908, just one year after pioneering students from Java sailed off to Jinan, the Dutch government established the “Hollandsche Chineesche School” (Dutch Chinese School, hereafter HCS) with the view to roll back Indies Chinese integrative tendency with China. Its founding was meant to wipe out the increasing influence of THHK that had strong relations with Jinan. The Dutch established HCS to compete with the Chinese government on controlling education of the Chinese. HCS’s curriculum was aimed at “Dutchifying” Indies Chinese as opposed to THHK’s curricula’s aim of sinification. After the establishment of THHK, the Chinese empire attempted to develop patriotism among overseas Chinese and to construct a pan-Chinese empire. Out of fear that the Indies Chinese were becoming increasingly politically supportive of the Chinese empire through educational efforts, the Dutch hoped to reduce the wave of Chinese nationalism in the Indies and reinforce Dutch authority over their subjects.64

HCS public schools were opened specifically for Chinese under the same conditions as for indigenous inhabitants. Instruction at HCS was completely in Dutch, and the curriculum was similar to curricula at European primary schools. Admission was therefore conditioned upon sufficient proficiency in the Dutch language.65 Some Indies Chinese settlers regarded the founding of HCS as a good start but were not completely satisfied. Soon after the Dutch implemented educational policies for the Chinese, community leader Tan Siauw Lip (Kapitein Chinees) from Semarang stated that he wished to have equal job opportunities for the Chinese in Java. He explained:

61 Sandick, p. 255.62 Ibid. 63 Fromberg (1926), p. 431.64 Wen Guangyi (ed.), Yindunixiya Huaqiao shi, (Beijing: Haiyang chuban, 1985), p. 461. NLB call no.: RSING Chinese 959.8004951 YDN65 Sandick, pp. 204-5

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The [Dutch] government has now started to fulfil our educational needs for the Chinese, but I hope these wishes do not just end with providing education similar to Europeans. We hope that the gate will be further opened for our children. We hope our children are allowed to take exams under the same conditions as Dutch children, and that upon passing the exams, our children will have equal professional opportunities as Dutch children.66

The establishment of HCS succeeded in attracting Indies Chinese to become more oriented towards the Dutch. Indies Chinese responses to HCS’ foundation revealed that the main goal of Indies Chinese was to attain equal rights and status. The Dutch succeeded in reducing Indies Chinese orientation towards China, but did it succeed in completely rolling back their integration with China?

LIMItAtIOnS OF DutCH COuntEr-IntEGrAtIvE POLICy

The establishment of HCS and its “equalising” position for Indies Chinese helped in rolling back the integrative process with China but was never successful in completely erasing the impact of Chinese schools on the political orientation of Indies Chinese. A report on detained and expelled instructors reveals that Dutch paranoia of the threat of Chinese schools still persisted two decades after the establishment of HCS. This document “Huaqiao xuexiao jiaozhiyuan chujing ji beibubiao” reveals that in 1929 the Dutch, as the colonial government, punished 33 instructors.67 The list of names included mostly teachers from Java, some from Sumatra, and a few from Borneo and Menado. All instructors were punished for political reasons, including teaching political ideologies (such as Sun Yatsen’s “The Three Principles of the People”) and using political tutorials. Instructors were mostly expelled from the Indies. In a few cases instructors were detained. Others were forced to stop teaching for unclear reasons. Students were investigated as well, and in one case a teacher was forced to leave his post after being discovered that a student wrote an essay discussing judicial equality.68 These cases show that even after two decades, the Dutch still struggled with the threat of Chinese schools in the Indies.

The absence of Dutch inspection reports on the weaknesses of the educational policies at the time makes it impossible to make firm conclusions on why Dutch counter-integrative policies did not succeed in removing China-oriented schools entirely. However, some facts released by Dutch and Chinese authorities can offer plausible explanations to this phenomenon. By the 1920s, China-oriented schools had spread to the outer islands. Schools in Java continued to exist, but centres of pro-China activities had moved from Java to the outer islands. The outer islands had high concentrations of new migrants and the Chinese schools there had more room to thrive by being away from the colonial administration in Batavia. Moreover, Dutch language proficiency requirements excluded the majority of Indies Chinese (who spoke Chinese or local dialects) from being eligible to attend schools run by the Dutch government. In fact, a Dutch aim was

66 Ibid, p. 206 67 This report also contained information about punishments of the Siamese government. Dutch and Siamese governments had punished 52 Chinese instructors, out of which 19 instructors were penalised by the Siamese government. Generally speaking, Siamese punishments were more severe than Dutch punishments. See “huaqiao xuexiao zhiyuan chujing ji beibubiao” in Nanyang huaqiao xuexiao zhi diaocha yu tongji, ed. Qian He. Shanghai: Shanghai Dahua yinshua gongsi, 1930. Call no NLB: MR 370.959 CNH.68 This fascinating list releases names of detainees and “colonial violators”. It also reveals the names of schools where these instructors were employed, their punishments, and reasons and dates for punishment. Call no NLB: MR 370.959 CNH.

to attract support from the upper and middle classes of the Chinese community because Chinese settlers of upper strata were considered the most industrious residents who helped the colonial economy thrive.69 HCS establishments were therefore concentrated in the main cities of Java, including Batavia, Surabaya, Semarang and Makassar in the Celebes — places with relatively high concentrations of settlers of Chinese descent.70 Dutch policies were therefore not only based on ethnic lines but also on class.

COnCLuSIOn This essay has attempted to map out the interconnectivity among educational movements in Dutch-ruled Batavia, British-ruled Singapore and coastal China. By looking at institutional circulations of people, thought and activities across colonial and imperial port cities, I have analysed the circumstances under which these triangular relations intensified and under what conditions this integrating process was disrupted. By focusing on Batavia, this essay has examined how educational exchanges shaped the political visions of diasporic Chinese. In the Dutch Indies, Chinese were critical of Dutch educational policies that benefited indigenous inhabitants but discriminated against settlers of Chinese descent. Looking to the Japanese to whom the Dutch granted a status that was equal to that of Europeans, Indies Chinese also came to realise that it was not race but “the civilised status” that would improve the position of Indies Chinese. Under these circumstances, education therefore became a tool for realising their political ambitions.

While local changes played a role, political visions were mainly shaped by connected educational movements in Singapore and China. Particularly, Singapore played an important role in guiding the initial stages of the movement. Although the educational movement in Batavia was initiated by local Chinese leaders, the movement was assisted by intellectuals such as Lim Boon Keng and Lee Teng-Hwee. Educational movements in Batavia and Singapore also helped shape the educational movement for overseas Chinese in China. Jinan, the first post-primary school for overseas Chinese, was opened after the educational movements in the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya had started. Jinan launched institutional integration with Nanyang Chinese and nourished its students with visions of a greater China, anti-colonialism and a future Malaya that was ruled by people of Chinese descent. On the other hand, by attracting Nanyang Chinese support, China continually changed its mission and curricula according to the needs of Nanyang Chinese that seemed to be more concerned with obtaining more favourable professional benefits than to support China unconditionally.

My study reacts to two dominant approaches in the present scholarship on the subject. It distorts the conventional perspective that Nanyang Chinese uncritically and unconditionally supported the Chinese state. This romanticised view has been questioned by more recent studies that emphasise the autonomy of Nanyang Chinese ambitions that were separate from China’s. My study also illustrates weaknesses of both uni-directional approaches mentioned above. By mainly using Chinese, Dutch, English and Malay

69 A proposal was presented at an annual audience. The proposal suggested reviewing the judicial status of the settled community only. Chinese settlers in the Indies were considered as the most industrious residents in the Indies; Dutch colonial authorities therefore wished to maintain their sovereignty over the settlers. See: Fromberg (1926), p. 431. The Dutch focused on gaining political support of the middle and upper classes; they did target the lower classes that formed the majority of the Chinese population in the Indies. See: Wen Guangyi (ed). Yidunixiya Huaqiao shi, p. 461.70 Sandick, p. 205.

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sources, I analyse the circumstances under which simultaneous educational movements integrated and disintegrated. My research concludes that visions of the Nanyang Chinese were continuously shaped by the dynamic relationship among the educational movements in the Dutch Indies, Straits Settlements and China.

The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Associate Professor Eric Tagliacozzo, History Department,

Cornell University, in reviewing the paper.

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In touch with My routes:Becoming a Tourist in SingaporeBy Desmond Wee

To tourists around the world over, the Merlion is the tourism symbol of Singapore. To the

architects of independent Singapore, it is the story of a concept that worked. To the travel

industry, it is a souvenir spinner and an icon that helps to sell Singapore overseas.

Pamelia Lee (2004, p. 99)

It struck me when the Merlion was struck, more by the discourses around it than by the stroke of lightning that bore a hole in its skull. Forty-five years after its creation, I wonder about the Merlion as an emblem for the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board (now Singapore Tourism Board), how Singaporean Fraser Brunner felt when he conceptualised the animal and if that mattered at all. According to the Report of the Tourism Task Force 1984 (as cited in Schoppert, 2005, p. 25), “what Singapore suffers from is an identity problem as there is no landmark or monument which a tourist can easily associate Singapore with”. In a paper for a course “Questioning Evolution and Progress” conducted at the National University of Singapore, Devan (2006, p. 4) related the issue — rather than being about “how tourists identify Singaporeans”, it was about the Singaporean “struggle for an identity”. However, the complexities of identity acquisition cannot elude how tourists identify Singaporeans. As described by Lanfant, Allcock & Bruner (1995, p. ix), it is tourism which “compels local societies to become aware and to question the identities they offer to foreigners as well as the prior images that are imposed upon them.” Representations in this sense are not only constituted by embodied practices, but they also constitute the ways in which identities are performed. By the same token, Singaporeans identify tourists as much as tourists identify Singaporeans, and in asking how Singaporeans identify themselves in the fostering of identity, I also ask if it is possible for Singaporeans to identify themselves as tourists. Who is the Singaporean under the Merlion?

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew once remarked that economic progress must not undermine the “heart ware of Singapore” referring to “our love for the country, our rootedness and our sense of community and nationhood” (The Straits Times, 20 October 1997). The cultivation of identity, as a need and means of survival, has evolved into a “substantial injection of self-definition and national pride” (Chua & Kuo, 1990, p. 6). However, given the rise of active citizenry, contestations across and in-between routes pertaining to the definition of self come to the fore. Kellner (1992) has suggested the emergence of identity as a “freely chosen game” in a “theatrical presentation of the self”. In this sense, our rootedness is also our “routedness”, a play in which identities are constituted within and not outside representation, and “relate to the invention of tradition as much as to tradition itself” (Hall, 1996, 4). Instead of the “so-called return to roots”, Hall (1996, p. 4) advocates a “coming-to-terms-with our ‘routes’” with which we can relate to cultural identities as fluid and emergent rather than being static. In the same way, Crouch, Aronsson & Wahlström (2001) maintain that the consideration of place and its represented culture “through encounter as ‘routes’ suggests a much less stable and fixed experienced geography”. This framing of text and place in terms of a becoming of identity repositions the performance of self as “the changing same” (Gilroy, 1994) and discusses the myriad ways in which knowledge and performances based on their representations are being (re)produced.

8.

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PErFOrMInG tOurISM

Tourism has traditionally been studied in a linear fashion between its consumption and its production, as well as how one affects, impacts and produces the other. Lanfant (1995, p. 32) maintains that tourism “has exposed, frantic forging of signs of identity with a view to their manufacture as tourist products where everybody is being exhorted to prepare representations of themselves.” However, it is in the recognition and engagement of the individual in a complexity of practices that we disrupt the familiar, more linear relationship between tourism semiotics and the knowledge and sense tourists make of touristic space in terms of their actions and their making of representations (McCabe, 2002). By traversing beyond “authenticity” (MacCannell, 1976) and the “gaze” (Urry, 1990) into the “performance” turn, we look at the constant negotiation within infrastructures of complex networks and mobilities, experiences, discourses, technologies and agencies framed within an ordering of spatialities in which embodied performances and practices are facilitated (Crouch, 2002; Franklin, 2003; Edensor, 2006; Haldrup & Larsen, 2006). In this sense, places emerge as tourist places when they are performed (Coleman & Crang 2002) and when they are appropriated, used and made part of memories, narratives and images of people engaged in embodied social practices (Urry, 2006). Spaces which are determined as tourist places, given both industry backing and the dynamic flux of tourist and local (among many others) practices, are not only packaged for touristic consumption, but are also constantly redefined in terms of “place”.

That constant refrain “where are you from?” that constantly follows tourists becomes variegated within the space of modernity evidenced through a measure of uncertainty as fluid productions of meanings manifest. With emergent hybridities evidenced in the blurring of traditional dichotomies like subject-object, production-consumption and tourist-local, it becomes increasingly difficult to ascertain a place called “home”. With the “organic binding of different cultural conventions and symbols”, there is no longer any “simple sense of the spatially and temporally distinct ‘home’ and ‘away’” (Rojek & Urry, 2000, p. 4). Perhaps the most lucid description is one by Zygmunt Bauman (1996, p. 30) in which he affirms the problem,

that as life itself turns into an extended tourist escapade, as tourist conduct becomes the mode of life and the tourist stance grows into the character, it is less and less clear which one of the visiting places is the home.

Following from this, one might also concur that the notion of being “home” could also be “visited”, “away” and prone to being an object of tourism. This is also the problem of modernity in which home is not only “fluid” (Bauman, 2000), it is also constantly being displaced, placed and replaced. Veijola (2006) writes,

How do you know and experience a place you knew as a child; and how does that place know you? At which point do strangers turn into friends, tourists into neighbours, locals into visitors, and places into tourist destinations? Can Heimat be revisited? How is ontological security, guaranteed by being at home and having a home, produced and managed in the modern world? How does one trust a place?

To clarify the notion of home and its proliferating mobilities is also to ask if the every day could be used as a premise for analysis in which “the every day becomes the setting for a dynamic process: for making the unfamiliar familiar; for getting accustomed to the disruption of custom; for struggling to incorporate the

new; for adjusting to different ways of living” (Highmore, 2002). By looking at the everyday practices that formulate and reformulate personal nostalgia related to the sense of Heimat, I attempt to construe the ambiguities involved in constructing identities.

The setting of the every day is as modern as it is trying to separate images and experiences that shape tourism from the every day. McCabe (2002, p. 63) reiterates that “tourism is now so pervasive in postmodern society that, rather than conceiving tourism as a ‘departure’ from the routines and practices of everyday life, tourism has become an established part of everyday life culture and consumption.” The “touristification of everyday life” (Lengkeek, 2002) is evident in a “spectacular society bombarded by signs and mediatized spaces [where] tourism is increasingly part of everyday worlds” (Edensor, 2001). While “everyday sites of activity are redesigned in ‘tourist’ mode’” (Sheller & Urry 2004, p. 5), I ask how we deal with becoming tourist

and who becomes the tourist. By contemplating the tourist, tourist place and tourist practice and their concomitant relationships, what are the kinds of dynamics that (re)produce these spaces and how do these relate to the acquisition of identity?

In an indispensable relationship between tourism and identity in which one informs the other, my research in Singapore induces the questioning of identity in terms of the spatial and embodied practices of tourism and the (re)production of representations and discourses which are performed every day. Identities rather than being rooted by place are re-emerging with new meanings and attributions. What is home? Who is a tourist? Can I be a tourist at home? When does that liminal transition happen and when it does, how do I perform tourism? This paper considers how tourist practice is assimilated in the context of the every day through “local” consumption, its translation into tourist identities and vice versa. In contextualising the city and juxtaposing my three-faceted persona as researcher, tourist and local in Singapore, I explore through photography how Singaporeans perform tourism en route home through institutional attempts to “rediscover” and “love” the city and the local reiteration of place and identity.

PErFOrMInG PLACE AnD PHOtOGrAPHy

Places are produced and reproduced on a daily basis through an embodied relationship with the world that is never finished and is always “becoming” (Seamon, 1979; de Certeau, 1984; Pred, 1984; Thrift, 1997). They are being performed on unstable stages as they are being reproduced and re-imagined. However, rather than performing social practices in a void, we are embodied in the materiality of places and their contingent meanings. Cresswell (2004, p. 39) asserts that place is the “raw material for the creative production of identity rather than an a priori label … [and] provides the conditions of possibility for creative social practice.” This creativity underlies a performance which ensues as part of an everyday experience of place in the construction of self in which “the performance offers cultural content for that identity” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1998).

Places are reproduced through systems of tourist performances, made possible and contingently stabilised through networked relationships with other organisations, buildings, objects and machines (Baerenholdt et al., 2004). Tourist photography as embodied performance is likewise performed through heterogeneous actor-networks of photographers, actors and spectators, technologies, materials, scripts and practices

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(Larsen 2003; 2005). As “practice” in determining spatial stories (de Certeau, 1984), photography becomes an extension of walking and knowing the city through constitutive performances. It is a corporeality that “acts” (Haldrup & Larsen 2006) in ways in which the tourist photographer frames, as well as, is being framed. It is a performance in which the very blatant act of carrying a camera and taking a photograph of a tourist becomes a tourist script in itself.

Photography exists as a technology and practice which reproduces place rather than consumes it. In modernity, tourist photography not only reproduces the real, it recycles “in the form of photographic images [where] things and events are put to new uses, assigned new meanings …” (Sontag, 1999, 91; Bauman 1996). New agencies come into place: the urge to take photographs become an “experience seeking a crisis-proof form” (Sontag, 1999, p. 84), the camera positions the user and the camera “acts” in sync with the photographable object. The place object queries the gaze and coerces the photographer to look at it in a particular way. It defines and negotiates a meaning with the self the same moment as the click.

Plate 1. Souvenir photo taken at a fully automated photo booth at the Singapore Visitors Centre on Orchard Road. Before the photograph was taken, I was asked to describe my Singapore experience.

Plate 2. Signature image in a series entitled “Tourist from here” as part of “Shooting Home” Exhibition.

According to Chaney (1993, p. 64), we are “performers in our own dramas on stages the industry has provided”. By engaging place using photography and vice versa, I attempt to perform the tourist (while bearing the traits reflexively as a local and a researcher) and compare the kinds of performances in which Rae & Low (2003) depict the consumption of the Singaporean scent-scape,

To press on, you need to take a step back and look to your own place in the scheme of things. Amidst these most pungent practices of the every day, it is you who are the performer. Play it up. Hitch a ride on a more available identification: the tourist. Perform a little journey of your own …

The following four segments attempt to leverage on the platform of performance, and discuss the becoming and commingling of tourism and identity representations of tourist performance, looking at how tourists are being identified, how they identify themselves through practice and the discourses on how tourism is being performed. Apart from “doing tourism” in Singapore during this phase of my field work as part of the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship, I also participated in the “Shooting Home” project which culminated in a photo exhibition of my series taken while en route entitled “Tourist from here”. Using photographs as methodology, as a performative of self and as a tool for analysis, we look at the meanings derived through place performance and their conjunctions with tourism.

bECOMInG IDEntIty

I believe it has come to the point where Singaporeans cannot imagine Christmas without bright lights along Orchard Road. Likewise, they cannot imagine Deepavali without lights in Little India, Chinese New Year without lights in Chinatown and Hari Raya Puasa without lights in Geylang Serai. Pamelia Lee (2004, p. 45)

The year 1819 marked Singapore’s founding by the British East India Company after acquiring the strategic port in the Strait of Malacca. Singapore’s independence and departure from the Malaysian federation in 1965 meant that its leaders were faced with the task of building a nation out of a racially diverse population and developing the nation’s economy without access to any natural resources (Wee, 2003). The island became an independent nation characterised by a post-colonial complex amidst ethnic diversity. In 2000, Lee Kuan Yew (2000, p. 19), then Senior Minister of Singapore, wrote that

(t)here are books to teach you how to build a house, how to repair engines, how to write a book. But I have not seen a book on how to build a nation out of a disparate collection of immigrants from China, British India and the Dutch East Indies.

The building of a common national identity became an important and complex state-led project (Yeoh & Willis, 1997) and a “multiracialism” (Benjamin, 1976) developed as a crucial means for the maintenance of racial harmony. The Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others (CMIO) quadratomy (Siddique, 1990, p. 36) which was established as a classification of multiracialism has held its ground until today.

Since its independence, the development of identity in Singapore was authored alongside tourism. The tagline created by the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board, Instant Asia, was an “exotic” blending of a “state-conceived model which is amenable to tourism promotion on one hand, while conveying an image of ethnic harmony on the other” (Teo & Chang, 2000, p. 125). According to Chang (1996, p. 205), “Tourism’s contribution to multiculturalism in the form of Instant Asia marketing image served equally as part of the nation building apparatus. Tourism provided an invaluable opportunity to advance the CMIO ideology …”. After Instant Asia was Surprising Singapore which added a splash of modernity and New Asia in the ’90s, and which promoted Singapore as the cultural hub of Asia and global city for the arts (Teo & Chang, 2000). The current ‘Beyond Words’, The Next Phase of Uniquely Singapore Brand Campaign, Breaks New Ground” (2006) bears “personal” traits, goes “beyond promoting the destination through product attributes and strives to

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bring out the depth of the Singapore experience.” However, the contexts for the experience in which “no two experiences are the same” (2006) continue to resonate with an already internalised CMIO complex, exemplified in the definition of four uniquely ethnic “places”. Chinatown, Kampong Glam, Little India and the colonial quarter are the places that epitomise representations for the making of identity and tourism.

Plate 3. Image of an inconspicuous side street in Little India as part of “Shooting Home”.

While in Singapore in a guest lecture to a hundred polytechnic students I asked where this place was (Plate 3), and there was a roar of “Little India”. Most of the students (who were Singaporean) had not been to the place or Little India for that matter (why is another matter). If they looked carefully for leads, they would have found an address on the plaque which might have rewarded them with a clue, but instead, the place name was determined based on its relationship with the colourful images of Indian women. Admittedly, the question that I asked was loaded because there was no other “place” that could bring out these images in the Singaporean place knowledge. What seemed to unfold was a play of synecdoche in terms of image, Indianness and the ascription of place such as Little India as the beholder of all signification. Little India in its place(d) performance enacted the whole rather than its part of Indianness.

There is also the question of the tourist carrying that ubiquitous blue book. She is found in Little India through her dedication to the inscriptions of the guide, but it is also because of her presence in Little India where the place is performed and reinforced. Not only are tourist places produced places, but “tourists are co-producers of such places” (Larsen, 2005). Her recognition of Little India contributes to Little India being more recognisable, as a place and as a tourist place. But what if in her place was one of the other three “races” that constitute Singapore’s multiculturalism: Chinese, Malay or Indian? How do we make sense of these faces as tourists and tourism?

Plate 4. Lady in Kampong Glam in “Tourist from Here”.

Plate 5. Lady in Little India in “Tourist from Here’”.

Plate 6. Lady in Chinatown in “Tourist from Here’”.

These images question what the woman is doing in these places. Her “race” is put at stake by being “Chinese” in the ethnic areas either through incorporated difference and the rhetoric of place. She is my model and also my grandmother who is experiencing Kampong Glam and Little India for the first time in her life. By using her as subject, the kinds of performances of the people in the backgrounds are also being questioned. These emergent ways of personal and subjective experience look at an already established CMIO and reveal seepages in terms of what is being experienced and who are involved in the experience. It is no longer possible to separate the branding of image and the construction of identity as they are fused in ways that reinforce each other. By looking at identity and tourism through performance, questions evolve as to who the tourist is and how this relates to the expression of self.

rEPrESEntInG tOurISt

After a visit to the Singapore Visitors Centre, I was armed with things to do around Singapore. From the “topless” Hippo Bus tours which gave me an overview of the city, I ventured into the four ethnic quarters in the name of cultural tourism. I visited Chinatown, Little India, Kampong Glam and the colonial district, I took a bumboat ride along the Singapore River to marvel at the waterfall spouting out of the Merlion’s mouth. Since I was travelling alone and could not take photographs of myself and my experience on the boat, I sought postcards like any normal tourist would. I also consulted the National Library educational e-resource, OnAsia (onasia.com/nlb) which consisted of “high-quality copyrighted images created by some of Asia’s finest photojournalists and photographers” featuring “photographic essays, stock photographs and conceptual images that represent a unique visual description of Asia, offering online access to a comprehensive collection of historical, political, social and cultural images.” By using two search criteria: “tourism” and “tourist”, I extracted and sought an analysis of visual imagery and descriptions which determined place in tourist settings.

Plate 7. Singapore, 22 May 2007. A bumboat carrying tourists on a sight-seeing cruise along the mouth of the Singapore River. This area used to be the old port of Singapore where the city’s first settlements were. Back in the colonial days, the river mouth was the centre of entrepot trade, commerce and finance. To this day, it remains the most expensive and economically important district in Singapore. © Edgar Su/OnAsia.com.

Plate 8. Singapore, 26 May 2006. A boat carrying tourists along the Singapore River near Clarke Quay. © Erick Danzer/OnAsia.com.

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Upon viewing both images and the attached descriptions in plate 7 and 8, I realised that through an other perception, I became by default, a tourist the moment I was in the boat. My choice to engage in a tourist activity in a designated tourist area afforded a tourist practice that made anyone who sat in the boat a tourist. In plate 9 and within the same area, Duggleby likewise captured yet another tourist, this time taking a photograph. Without a priori knowledge, one would become a tourist while indulging in tourist practice within a tourist place. But at which point did I become a tourist? How do we determine the confines of what constitutes a tourist place and the reciprocity of practice in place?

Still within sight of the Sıngapore River, plate 10 demonstrates what one might “mistake” for passers-by or pedestrians, tourists walking on the waterfront. In fact, I was a tourist even before I arrived at the ticketing booth. The sense of place and what constitutes an identifiable tourist space remains arbitrary depending on the kinds of performances delineated by embodied practice. In plate 11 is a total role reversal in which the Caucasian man carrying a camera in a place of worship frequented by tourists is suddenly acknowledged as a Buddhist devotee, rather than as a tourist. Perhaps the man was, or at least considered himself to be, a devotee or a local, rather than a tourist. If not, at least the photographer thought so. The issue is an epistemological one, delving into a typology of knowledge produced and reproduced in order to sustain performance, perhaps also incorporating other roles like tourist Buddhist devotee, expatriate Buddhist devotee or local Buddhist devotee.

Plate 9. Marina Bay, Singapore, 16 April 2006. On a bridge crossing the Singapore River in the Marina Bay district, tourists walk along to view the skyline in the distance. © Luke Duggleby/OnAsia.com.

Plate 10. Marina Bay, Singapore, 16 April 2006. On the waterfront at Singapore’s Marina Bay district, tourists walk along its many paths to view the skyline across the Singapore River. © Luke Duggleby/OnAsia.com.

Both tourist practice and the emphasis on place invite interpretations which seem to disclose the “increasing difficulty of drawing boundaries between the tourist and people who are not tourists” (Clifford, 1997) while distinguishing a tourist becomes “more difficult in circumstances of more complex tourist practices” (Crouch, Aronsson & Wahlström, 2001). The performance of place seems to elicit emerging definitions of tourist and how tourism is performed. In other words, all the photographers of the images reproduced above were also tourists doing tourism as they were indulging in taking photographs of tourists and tourism. They were framing the tourist text as much as they were being framed. It is within this context that creative spaces are developed in terms of social practice, with which the place determines performance as tourist.

IDEntIFyInG tOurISt

One definition of the tourist in cultural tourism is a “temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change” (Smith, 1977). Since then there have been definitions in terms of typology (Cohen, 1979), performance (Edensor, 2001) and even ambiguities (McCabe, 2002), and the writer advocates an investigation into the forms of touristic experience rather than the concept of the tourist as a stable category within tourism discourses. In an e-mail correspondence with a representative of the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) in my capacity as tourism researcher, I asked how the STB would define the tourist, and received this reply: “The STB looks at more than tourists. We welcome visitors (non-residents) who visit Singapore for all kinds of purposes, be it Leisure, Business, Healthcare or Education.”

How would residents fit into this broad, welcoming definition? The current “Beyond Words” concept which is part of the greater “Uniquely Singapore” campaign “moves beyond promoting the destination through product attributes and strives to bring out the depth of the Singapore experience” (STB, 18 July 2006) illustrated in the article entitled “Beyond Word”, The Next Phase Of Uniquely Singapore Brand Campaign,

Breaks New Ground,

On-GrOunD CrEAtIvE APPrOACH

The new creative experience for the on-ground component of the new campaign “Beyond Words” strikes a deep chord with locals (and local families, businesses, retailers and hospitality agents) as well as generates multiple layers of local and international (e.g. ASEAN) publicity. It is designed to promote direct interaction between locals and tourists to enhance the “personal experience” element that is “Beyond Words”. Refreshing and vibrant bus wraps, taxi wraps, personalised bus hangers with information on various attractions, mobile display units, banners and standees all combine to make the brand personable and accessible to locals and visitors in Singapore.

Plate 11. China Town, Singapore, 16 January 2009. A Buddhist devotee prepares to offer incense in the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum in Singapore. Buddhist devotees flock to the temple to offer their prayers for the upcoming Chinese New Year. © Joel Boh/OnAsia.com.

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The depiction of various modes of visual paraphernalia with the aim of personalising experience is perhaps less convincing and creative than the point that tourists and, especially, locals are targeted as part of this direct interaction. Indeed the STB welcomes more than “non-residents”, but how would residents or locals consume this new creative experience and would this consumption be any different from that experienced by tourists?

It was International Tourist Guide Day on 21 February 2009 and in commemoration of the event by the STB, free walking tours of three designated heritage areas were conducted by more than 80 Singaporean tour guides. Registration and assembling of the tours were coordinated on the grounds of the National Library where excited participants gathered. What was revealing was an interesting question posed on the registration sheet, “Tourists?”, of which all the participants answered in the negative, safe for “No. 12” who did not seem to be able to answer the question. In my subsequent hunt for “obvious” tourists, I found a German who would not consider himself a tourist as he was married to a Singaporean and lived in Singapore, and a Polish woman who asked the person at the registration desk to re-circle the “N” instead of the “Y” because she considered herself an expatriate in Singapore. At the end of the day, I finally found an American couple who said explicitly that they were tourists and were elated to have chanced on the occasion while walking by.

I wondered what kind of conclusion could be drawn from the curious question posed to the thousands of locals who thronged there. The event was conceived by the tourism board for locals, but the intrusion of touristic concepts in terms of the activity and the purveyors of tourism were not central to the discourse. In an ironic way, it was ostensibly a tour which did not constitute tourism, nor was it meant for tourists. Yet, it is also in this respect of ambiguity that challenges notions of tourism beyond the commonly agreed borders and the nuanced practices of the actors at play.

PErFOrMInG tOurISt

In an article in the Straits Times on 18 April 2009 entitled “Rediscover Singapore, says URA”, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) as “Singapore’s master planning agency … is kicking off a string of initiatives to plan for the eventual recovery and to expand its own role locally and globally. It is also hoping to reacquaint Singaporeans with the city and renew their love for it, National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan said”, and added, “So let’s do what we would like to do overseas — let’s do our shopping, our eating, our sightseeing — let’s travel around Singapore, revisit the places we have not visited for a long time, maybe even discover some new surprises.”

“Rediscover Singapore” is also the name of a compact booklet highlighting places of interest for Singaporeans to experience. In the introduction of the publication, Jason Hahn (2003) writes,

Plate 12. Public Registration Sheet for the International Tourist Guide Day 2009 free walking tour.

[I]n our rush to explore the world, all too often, we overlook the fact that we are strangers to our own backyards. In some ways, it’s almost trendy to trumpet the fact that we don’t even know what’s beyond Orchard Road or our block of flats. As phenomena go, this is nothing new. There are born and bred New Yorkers who’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty, while millions of tourists travel around the globe to visit her. But, if you ask us, that’s a shame. As the Chinese writer, Han Suyin, once observed, the tree is known by its roots …. And while it may seem odd, at first blush, to be producing a publication such as this, it became very clear right at the beginning that Singaporeans are very unfamiliar with many of these places. In a quixotic sense then, this magazine is about Singapore for Singaporeans.

The institutional attempt and discursive implements of identity building seem rather apparent. It is about a coordinated planting of human roots into spaces of familiarity and belonging. However, the kinds of identities that are being determined in terms of inclusionary and exclusionary space bring to fore the complexities of “love” for the city. Relph (1976, p. 49) in Place and Placelessness elaborates on “insideness” and “outsideness” in terms of human experience of place wherein “[t]o be inside a place is to belong to it and identify with it, and the more profoundly inside you are the stronger is the identity with the place.” Why is there pride in being putatively oblivious to the outskirts of downtown and cultivating an inside-outside confusion? And what is this quixotic sense: the ideal, the romantic or the delusional? The fluidity of tourist places and experiences and the meanings enmeshed in their constant negotiations and (re)productions are constructed through performance (Tucker, 2007; Chronis, 2005; Coleman & Crang, 2002). More than being about Singapore for Singaporeans, the discourse is laden with how to be “authentically” Singaporean and how to perform a Singaporean identity within compressible spaces. By looking at performance in terms of “symbolic interactions, discourses and signifying practices” (Mordue, 2005, p. 181), it is specifically the renewal of love and the rediscovery of the city which is becoming tourism and identity simultaneously.

Plate 13 is a walking tour map and guide of the “Malay ethnic” area known as Kampong Glam. It is one of the four prominent ethnic enclaves demarcated both in terms of national rhetoric to mark multiculturalism as a melange of CMIO, as well as, supporting tourism place designation. Unlike other guides similar to this one published by the STB, the URA version has a significantly Singaporean appeal. In the foreground is a young “Chinese” couple exploring the “traditional” Malay place exemplified by three “Malays” in the background flanked by two rows of shop houses, the women wearing baju kurung and donning tudung over their heads. The “races” in question are crucial to highlight the inherent representations of Chinese as Singaporeans performing tourism within a systematic, othered Malay space. But what if the Malays in the background were also performing tourist rather than performing local? Would there be a difference in comprehending the loci of a contextualised Singaporean space? I suppose the ideal place performance envisaged for the audience of this pamphlet would comprise the initial will to be there, the (re)

Plate 13. Image of a walking map produced by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (2005). © Urban Redevelopment Authority. All rights reserved.

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discovery process of an exotic culture and a consequential knowledge fulfilment by way of experience which produces a greater place identity. The quest for identity is revealingly its acquisition at once, wherein the performance constitutes the thing it is performed for, when both locals and tourists engage in a co-production (Bruner, 2005). In a “quixotic” sense, the Singaporean identity is seemingly about performing Singaporeanness through tourist practice.

SInGAPOrEAn unDEr tHE MErLIOn

For a while I stood under the Merlion doing a vox pop, trying to understand what Singaporeans thought of the Merlion. I realised the answers were standardised depending on whether I was a tourist or a local. As a tourist, I was portrayed the way Ulysses would describe it, “This lion of the sea/This image of themselves” (Thumboo, 1979) in multicoloured splendour. As a local, I collected discourses of Sa’at’s (2005) Merlion, “how its own jaws clamp open in self-doubt”, “so eager to reinvent itself”. In answer to the “where are you from?” question, I would like to say after some contemplation, that I am a tourist from here. I have written elsewhere (Wee, 2009) that on the one hand it would seem that the determined national imperative to acquire a particular identity has seen ramifications that question its very construction, but on the other, the same national ideology that expends its energies in producing contrived identities is also capable of producing other forms of ironic and even affectionate identifications. The modern Merlion, albeit filled with conflicts and uncertainties and somewhat depressing, is also more real and aware of the incessant search for identity embedded as everyday discourse within itself. The Singaporean under the Merlion teases the reflexive self as person, concept, feeling and most crucially, the becoming of each or all given the locality.

It is also under the Merlion where “I” gaze and am being gazed at, in a “watching community … [where] it is in the audience watching shared events that identity is created” (Crang, 1998, p. 166). Local agencies are no longer simply producers of the product, but are an inherent part of the product in producing and projecting their bodies as performed selves in the construction of identity (Featherstone, 1983, p. 29). Rather than “who we are” or “where we came from”, Hall (1996) would assert that the more crucial questions would be what we might become, how we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves. This paper explores the connections between representations of the tourist place through the branding, the ways in which they are consumed and experienced by the “local” and the kinds of identities that are constructed, questioned and reproduced. In an attempt to elucidate the tourist and how tourism is performed within a cityscape, questions are raised on how we identify tourists and how tourists identify themselves through the fusing of discourses, practices, materiality and technologies. The method employed is a doing of photography as tourist practice by analysing the production of images given by the tourist gaze and the reflexivities incorporating the self as photographer, researcher, tourist and local. More than sheer tourist snapshots exemplified by the Kodak moment, photography as practice incorporates photo taking as performance, agency of the photographable object and camera possession as tourist practice.

In the same way through performance, tourism and its actors are constantly in states or conditions of becoming, re-evaluating and repossessing particular jurisdictions of space and cultivating emergent forms of identity through meaningful contestations. If we look at everyday life as “the starting point of inquiry and

the rationale for touristic behaviour”, (McCabe, 2002, p. 66–67), then the place performance of Singapore as a tourist city through its branding confounds identity in terms of how we identify tourists and how tourists identify themselves. Tourism is being incorporated into the every day and vice versa in ways whereby they are being reproduced through embodied practices. The positioning of “experience” in Singapore as creative space for local consumption through the Uniquely Singapore and the Rediscover Singapore campaigns provoke the collapsible nature (Simpson, 2001) of tourism and the everyday. This reproduction of space through the lens of the tourist and the local confuses the localities of consumption and acknowledges routes as performance.

In my second photograph (plate 14) taken at the Singapore Visitors Centre, I found next to the automated photo booth, a wardrobe containing different “ethnic” costumes one could don for the picture. I picked the outlandish Chinese outfit along with a skullcap with a Manchurian pigtail attached and expressed my absurdity wearing it. Just then, a lady with a fine British accent who worked there walked by and said to me, “You actually look quite good in it!” By looking at how tourist performance affords local performance, this paper seems to have produced a vague formula: local becoming tourist becoming local, which acknowledges a deeper enquiry into the agency of tourism rather than producing answers. It also investigates the bigger question, if the nomenclature of tourist-local is not already coalesced into a tourism-scape of buzzing practices. Baerenholdt et al. (2004) suggest the possibility “[t]o leave behind the tourist as such and to focus rather upon the contingent networked performances and production of places that are to be toured and get remade as they are so toured”. The allusion to the need of eschewing tourist practice instead of dealing with the fuzzy tourist is admittedly being overshadowed by the omnipresence and gregariousness of that same tourist. Rather than being a part of tourism, the tourist is indeed the bearer and embodiment of tourism, a synecdoche in which the tourist constitutes tourism.

The Sante Fe meeting on Creative Tourism posed a provocative question while introducing the agency of the local community, “Who are we as Creative Cities” and emphasised that “[i]n order for the tourist to feel a part of the city, the community must know and be proud of what they have, and be willing to cultivate local enterprises that share the experiences” (Towards Sustainable Strategies for Creative Tourism, 2006). Instead of looking at the construction of place as artificial or contrived by national imperative, the city of Singapore is nevertheless creative in that feeling part of the city is not only the desire of the tourist, but the local as well, who is also the tourist. The play of identities and the incessant adoption and rejection of places as part of an embodied pride to what constitutes Singaporean, is an attempt to negotiate a case of a relatively new sovereign-city state within the monuments of modernity.

The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Dr Philip Long, Principal Research Fellow, Centre for

Tourism and Cultural Change, Faculty of Arts and Society, Leeds Metropolitan University, The Old School Board,

in reviewing the paper.

Plate 14. Souvenir Photo taken at a fully automated photo booth at the Singapore Visitors Centre on Orchard Road (on a separate occasion as the first in plate 1.) Naturally I described my Singapore experience another time.

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Squatters, Colonial Subjects and Model Citizens: Informal Housing in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong after World War IIBy Loh Kah Seng

AbStrACt

Informal housing communities of semi-autonomous urban migrants emerged rapidly at the margins of Southeast Asian cities and Hong Kong after World War II. Their development constituted an important moment in post-war social history: the dwellers eked out a livelihood on land which initially lay beyond official control, relying on family, kinship and community ties to cope with the challenges of employment, environmental disaster and eviction. What was also historic was the response of the colonial and post-colonial states to the informal housing.

Influenced partly by the advice of international experts on the need for controlled development, the region’s governments criminalised informal housing, represented their dwellers as socially inert and warned of the dire impact such unplanned settlements — like a contagion — would have on the character and future of the society and nation. To varying degrees, they also undertook to either resettle the dwellers in emergency public housing or reorganise social life in the settlements through aided self-help. Only in the former British-ruled city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong did the authorities succeed in transforming the face and character of the city. Elsewhere, the pressure of patronage politics and the preference for “prestige projects” greatly limited the scope of the actual reorganisation. Drawing upon James Scott’s concept of “high modernist” planning and social governance, this paper examines the origins and development of informal settlements in urban Southeast Asia and Hong Kong and the different outcomes of state efforts to transform their residents from “squatters”, to colonial subjects and, finally, model citizens of new nation-states.

In Seeing Like a State (1998), James Scott discusses how high modernist states characteristically seek to reduce the great complexity of city life to scientifically simplified and visually legible “abridged maps”. High modernism, he explains, is a philosophy of social governance based on a “self-confidence about scientific and technical progress … the mastery of nature (including human nature) and, above all, the rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws”. He observes that the success of such an ambitious reordering of society hinges on the balance between state-society relations: an authoritarian state with sufficient coercive power to implement its plans, and the absence of a strong civil society capable of challenging it (Scott, 1998, pp. 4–5).

This social-political framework for understanding the transformation of cities is useful for approaching the history of housing in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong after World War II. As I have argued elsewhere, in Singapore, the resettlement of large numbers of residents of kampungs (villages) located at the margins of the city in emergency public housing after the war was an ambitious state project which occurred over the course of the late colonial and early post-colonial periods. The rehousing did not merely constitute a change in shelter, but effectively transformed the semi-autonomous informal dweller into a model citizen

9.

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of the newly independent Singapore state. Mass resettlement, then, critically reforged the balance of state-society relations in favour of the former.

This social transformation of a community that was discursively labelled as “squatters” to “Singapore subjects” was achieved by the People’s Action Party (PAP) government. But the project had its origins in the post-war British programme of decolonisation, which used social policy — including housing policy — as a means to restructure Singapore society. By the completion of the second five-year housing plan at the end of the 1960s, the PAP government’s public housing agency, the Housing and Development Board (HDB), had removed most of the informal settlements in the city and resettled their former residents in planned public housing. The residents were being socialised into becoming model citizens whose lives were now much more intimately bound up with the due processes of the state (Loh, 2007, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2009d).

The transformation of Singapore into a high modernist state through the rehousing of the informal population merits comparison with other cities in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. The immediate post-war years constitute an important historical period in terms of demographic, social and housing changes and of rehousing efforts by the state. As Richard Harris aptly points out, the British concern with housing in its colonies had arisen not because conditions were drastically deteriorating but because they were changing radically from the pre-war situation (Harris, 2002, p. 4).

By 1961, there were an estimated 750,000 informal dwellers in Jakarta (constituting 25% of the city’s population), 320,000 in Manila (23%), 250,000 in Singapore (26%) and 100,000 in Kuala Lumpur (25%) (McGee, 1970, p. 123). In Manila, 71,000 out of 177,000 dwellings were constructed with light or mixed (wood and thatched roof ) material (Philippines, 1962, p. 22). The state’s response to the informal housing development was historic. After the war, both the colonial and post-colonial states first began to view the development of informal housing as a major social problem. In India, the post-colonial government began to systematically compile information on informal settlements for the official census in the 1950s. This demonstrated the important link between knowledge, developmental planning and societal transformation (Schenk, 2001, pp. 18–9). In Southeast Asia, however, official research into informal housing was more uneven: only in Singapore, Hong Kong and, to some extent, the Philippines were there systematic studies and commissioned surveys on housing (Karnjanaprakorn et al., 1979, p. 73).

Rehousing campaigns in the post-war period also throw light on the current trends and problems in urbanisation and urban housing development in Southeast Asia (Jones, 2002). Another aspect of the historical continuity is that the forced eviction of informal dwellers continues in many countries in contemporary Southeast Asia, which has drawn attention as a violation of the basic human right to shelter (Olds, Bunnell & Leckie, 2002, Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, 2002, Human Rights Watch 2006). Some scholars have also framed the unique character of social life in informal settlements in the contemporary Middle East, Latin America and South Asia as a response to the recent wave of economic liberalisation and globalisation. This “new way of life” can be usefully compared to the Southeast Asian context and can be traced back to the immediate post-war years (Roy & AlSayyad, 2004).

This essay is an exploratory paper. It revisits the literature on the clearance of informal settlements between the end of the war and the 1970s, and is supplemented by some official publications. The paper examines how the late colonial and early post-colonial states sought to discursively criminalise semi-autonomous

informal dwellers as “squatters” and then transform them into colonial subjects and, subsequently, model citizens (only in Hong Kong did this disciplinary project remain “colonial” in the period under study). It seeks to identify major questions and themes in the period under study: how informal settlements developed after the war; the character of social life within; why and how the state discursively represented the residents as “squatters” eking out an insanitary, dangerous and socially undesirable existence; the extent to which the state’s attempts to remove or reorganise such housing were influenced by international consultants; and the great difficulty of rehousing the residents in high modernist public housing.

Study of the immediate post-war period also offers us an exciting possibility, because the historical archives on the period have begun to be declassified. As Richard Harris, Alan Smart and others have argued, archival research helps to problematise some of the foundational myths in the history of housing. This preliminary study hopes to pave the way for further empirical research and to encourage interviews with both officials and residents involved in the rehousing in the region.

Hong Kong, of course, does not formally belong to Southeast Asia, but I have drafted it into the discussion because of its similarity to Singapore and because it offers another case study of British colonial policy towards informal housing. In terms of vocabulary, this paper problematises the criminalising official label “squatters”, which simply denotes a conferred illegal status. It uses instead the term “informal housing”, which refers more usefully to how the residents of such housing stood socially, economically and culturally outside the conventions of the state and mainstream society. In using the term “informal housing”, I do not assume it to be the inferior accommodation of socially disorganised or passive people, but as “an important contribution to shelter”, which aptly serves the needs of those who reside in them (Kasarda & Crenshaw, 1991, p. 480).

tHE MOvEMEnt OF PEOPLE AnD DEvELOPMEnt OF SEMI-AutOnOMOuS COMMunItIES

The proliferation of informal housing in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong was closely tied to the large-scale movement of people after the war, particularly transnational, rural-urban and intra-urban migration. In some cases, the war had precipitated the internal migration. Most Southeast Asian cities did not experience heavy fighting and were spared serious damage to their housing stock. However, Manila’s war-struck ruins attracted rural migrants. The capital received a major influx of rural migrants during the Japanese occupation into Intramuros, the original inner city of the capital and the former centre of Spanish administration, which had been devastated by the fighting (Ooi, 2005, p. 58). After the war, Intramuros’ population, mostly Filipinos, jumped from 987 in 1948 to 13,243 in 1960, and most of its dwellings were made of light materials (Philippines, 1962, pp. 30–4). Other rural migrants in the Philippines had fled from a different, chronic form of disaster — typhoons, which perennially struck provinces such as Samar and Leyte (Juppenlatz, 1970, p. 103). The population movements caused by various types of emergencies were in addition to the high rate of population growth of 3% per annum between 1948 and 1960 in the Philippines. Much of the growth occurred in the dense population centres in Luzon and the Visayas (Dwyer, 1976, p. 133). By 1960, nearly half of the population of Manila and the nearby province of Rizal was not locally born; among these, 30% were slum or informal dwellers whose numbers were growing at the high rate of 12% per year (Hollnsteiner, 1976, p. 174). Three years later, an official survey confirmed that the number of informal dwellers in metropolitan Manila had grown steadily from 23,000 in 1946 to 98,000 in 1956 and 282,730 in 1963 (Juppenlatz, 1970, p. 97).

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What occurred in the Philippines mirrored developments elsewhere in the region, where surges in population, particularly in the urban populations, were buoyed by both rapid natural increases and high rates of migration (Yeung & Lo, 1976, p. xviii). By 1957, Malaya became the most urbanised state in Southeast Asia, with 42.7% of its population living in urban areas, followed by the Philippines (35.3% in 1956), Burma (15.3% in 1953), Thailand (11.8% in 1960) and Indonesia (9.1% in the 1950s) (Milone, 1976, p. 91). In Malaya, the movement of people into informal housing had developed over the long term due to the impact of national and global events such as the Great Depression, the Japanese Occupation and the communist insurgency in 1948–60 (Johnstone, 1981, p. 367). The Federal Territory of Malaya, which includes the capital Kuala Lumpur, experienced an annual population growth rate of 7% between 1960 and 1970, driven evenly by natural increase and rural-urban migration (as cited in Lim, 1976, p. 43). Most of the migrants in Malaya, as elsewhere in the region, were from low-income backgrounds: in 1958, 62% of the urban Chinese households earning a monthly income of $150 or under were living in informal wooden houses, compared with 49% for those on incomes of $151–$300, 30% for those on incomes of $301–$500, and 16% for those of incomes of $501–$1,000 (Malaya, Department of Statistics 1958, pp. 51–4).

The peninsula’s developments were similar to those in Singapore; the island’s high annual population growth rate of 4.5% from 1947–57 was buoyed partly by migrants from China and Malaya rejoining their families in Singapore or seeking to start new families, but much more by large numbers of people marrying and having multiple children after the war. This population surge made sharing cubicles in the shophouse — the established housing form for the low-income Chinese in the inner city — impossible, whereupon either the migrants arrived directly in the informal settlements or the new families moved from the overcrowded shophouses to the margins of the city to seek larger accommodation (van Grunsven 1983, pp. 97–8).

In Thailand, the urban population also increased at a high annual rate of 5% between 1947 and 1960 (compared with 3% for the rural population) with the greatest urban growth taking place in the central region around Bangkok (Goldstein, 1976, pp. 102–5). In Klong Toey, one of the biggest informal settlements in Bangkok, nearly four-fifths of the inhabitants in 1970 had been born in the central region, with only a fifth having arrived from the northeast (Sakornpan et al., 1971, p. 69). Similarly, urbanisation in post-war Hong Kong was driven by heavy immigration. By 1961, the colony’s pre-war population had nearly doubled to 3.1 million, due mainly to the influx of refugees from war-torn China, many of whom settled down in the colony’s informal housing (Dwyer, 1976, p. 135). At the end of the decade, Hong Kong was still receiving an average of 90,000 immigrants annually (United Nations, 1971, p. 47). In Surabaya, the second largest city in Indonesia, heavy rural-urban migration had taken place since the Japanese Occupation, with the migrants arriving in the city to join their urban relatives and establish a new livelihood. Many of them settled into the informal housing located within the city limits (Dick, 2003, pp. 365–7).

The post-war urbanisation and proliferation of informal housing in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong was viewed pejoratively by the state and even academics, who framed their disapproval in academic terms or jargon (Lloyd, 1979, p. 53). Using the Western model of urbanisation as a yardstick, many academics in the 1950s and 1960s conceptualised the Southeast Asian phenomenon as deviant cases of “over-urbanisation” or “pseudo-urbanisation”. These concepts reflected the basic argument that urbanisation in the region greatly outstripped the country’s industrial capacity and the availability of jobs for the new migrants (Yeung & Lo, 1976, pp. xvi–xvii). In 1957, the United Nations held that the migration of farmers into informal

housing in the city represented no more than the transplanting of rural poverty into an urban context (as cited in Dwyer, 1976, p. 132; Sendut, 1966, p. 487).

In contrast to such official and academic views, the development of informal settlements underlines the combination of social dynamism, opportunism and resistance of the migrants who had settled into them. Scholars such as Janice Perlman and Manuel Castells countered in the 1970s that informal dwellers ought not to be viewed as “marginal people” who had failed to integrate into the fabric of mainstream society and had been relegated to the physical and economic fringes of the city. In fact, informal dwellers were, to some extent, socially, economically and politically well integrated into mainstream society. Janice Perlman and Manuel Castells argued that the notions of social marginality, including Oscar Lewis’ concept of the “culture of poverty” in slums, were really discursive instruments of social control intended to keep informal communities disenfranchised and leave them disempowered (Perlman, 1976; Castells, 1983; Lewis, 1959). Even the positive-sounding term “slum of hope”, which assumes that these dwellers seek acceptance from the dominant political culture and economic structure of the country, ought to be problematised (Lloyd, 1979, pp. 33–4).

The social history of informal settlements in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong remains an important area of research, in which oral history or ethnographic approaches will prove useful. One important outcome of such research is in highlighting the agency of informal dwellers. Far from being passive, the settlement of urban migrants into unauthorised informal housing can be viewed as constituting “the quiet encroachment of the ordinary”, which in the long term significantly expanded the social power of the community vis-à-vis the formal authority of the state (Bayat, 2004, p. 90). Such an agency can also be viewed as a form of covert everyday social resistance — which James Scott has called “the [weapon] of the weak” — that nevertheless manages to undermine the hegemony of the state in the long run (Scott, 1985, 1990).

It has been convincingly argued that social life in informal housing areas was not always dangerous or criminal, as frequently depicted, but socially cohesive and vibrant. This underlines the fact that although they were tied to the formal structures of the state and mainstream society, informal communities subscribed to different cultural and social norms and remained semi-autonomous. The poor physical state and unplanned nature of the housing often belied the strong sense of community and healthy living in the settlements, facts which high modernist planners and commentators, in their visual approach these settlements, frequently failed to acknowledge. In Brazil, Kenya, Ivory Coast and Chile, informal dwellers possessed a high level of social organisation and a strong work ethic. They also participated in local and national politics both formally and informally, through the heads of their ethnic communities and through gangs (Berg-Schlosser & Kersting, 2003, pp. 4–6, 210).

The agency and social organisation of informal communities in post-war Southeast Asia and Hong Kong are clearly demonstrated in contemporary ethnographic studies by social workers and students. The dwellers typically established multiple layers of mutual self-help, extending from the family level to collaboration with politicians and other “outside” patrons. The residents of Klong Toey evidently felt that in 1970, there were few criminals or drug addicts in the area. Even the social workers surveying the settlement concluded that “the overall impression is not one of hopeless poverty and degradation” (Sakornpan et al., 1971, pp. 61–4). A study of another slum located in north-central Bangkok in the late 1960s found that many of the women living in informal housing worked as peddlers and petty traders to support their families. Extending

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naturally from such family bonds was a strong element of mutual self-help between the residents and their relatives in the settlement, who had followed them along a chain of migration into the area, and other kin in the home provinces with whom they remained in close contact. Both groups of relatives provided informal dwellers, directly and indirectly, with food, shelter, accommodation and other forms of assistance (Rabibhadana, 1975, pp. 101, 199, 214–5, 239). In post-war Hong Kong, living in unauthorised, self-built housing could be traced to a long historical tradition and carried no social stigma. For many victims in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia who had their wooden housing destroyed by fires or typhoons, the very act of returning to the site to rebuild their homes highlights not desperation or marginalisation but a stoic resilience towards the daily struggle to eke out a living (Golger, 1970, pp. 24, 31).

Slum and informal dwellers in Manila also felt that, contrary to the expectations of outsiders, their community was safe and harmonious, while their forms of mutual self-help included establishing volunteer fire brigades and anti-crime patrols (Laquian, 1971, pp. 196–7). Many slum and informal dwellers in Manila belonged not to passive communities but to those that were “psychologically attuned to take advantage of changing conditions and available opportunities”. They possessed a strong identity as residents of slum and informal housing and felt no stigma about residing in such accommodations. The residents had developed their confident identity through sustained interaction in certain social spaces in the settlement, namely, the streets, corner stores, barber shops, restaurants and bars. They possessed a strong sense of neighbourliness and community cohesion, which was nurtured by participating in social gossip. For the youths in the settlement, group identity was accorded by membership in the locality’s gangs and their unwritten codes of behaviour (Jocano, 1975, pp. 7, 20, 33–50, 105, 173–4). In post-war Singapore, similarly, there were informal forms of mutual self-help such as secret societies, while volunteer fire-fighting brigades and anti-crime patrols were also formed with the aid of both the municipal administration and leftwing anti-colonial organisations (Singapore Fire Department, 1958, p. 1; Chin, 2006; Chio, 2007).

Finally, ethnicity also played a role in the social life of informal settlements and contributed to community organisation and mutual self-help. Many settlements had been home to what had once been migrant communities, which became much more settled after the Pacific War. The reduction of municipal control during the war and the Japanese Occupation accelerated the move of families into ethnically exclusive slums and informal settlements. A Chinese quarter emerged this way in Binondo, Manila. Likewise, in Kuala Lumpur, there was a Chinese quarter in Kampong Bahru and Indian enclaves in Sentul and Brickfields (McGee, 1967, pp. 144–6; Laquian, 1979, p. 59). In post-war Malaya, a country dominated by communal politics, there were 20,000 informal dwellings in Kuala Lumpur in the mid-1960s, or a quarter of all dwellings in the city; Chinese people comprised two-thirds of the 156,000 informal dwellers (Malaysia Kementerian Penerangan, 1971, p. 5). Informal Malay dwellers were located mostly to the east, northeast and southeast of the capital, while Chinese dwellers lived in separate enclaves in the north, northeast, south, and southeast, and Indians in the north and southwest (Sen, 1979, pp. 187–8). The resettlement of informal dwellers in Malaya sometimes also followed ethnic lines: Chinese and Indians were relocated close to the inner city, and Malays rehoused further away (McGee, 1967, p. 148). In Manila, many informal settlements and slums were also ethnically homogeneous; Chinese settlements were considered far more socially and economically mobile but were also socially and culturally active in maintaining their ethnic identity (Laquian, 1971, pp. 187–8).

There were clearly different circles of mutual self-help and supportive relationships forged between informal dwellers and both insiders and outsiders. In Bangkok, the more outward social networks of community organisation were the informal patron-client relationships and web of reciprocity established with “outsiders”, including the police and other public officials (Rabibhadana, 1975, p. 241). As in the case of India, it was natural for slum and informal dwellers in Southeast Asia to seek the patronage of local politicians, community leaders and non-governmental organisations to defend their local interests (Desrochers, 2000, pp. 275–81).

The social and political organisation of informal dwellers is well-illustrated in Malaya. There, the “rural squatters” were literally a “state within a state” but also had a significant impact on urban social and political life. Many of the peninsula’s Chinese urban workers were in fact seasonal migrants from informal housing areas in the countryside. Socially mobile, many such workers joined the cities’ fledgling trade unions in the 1950s and participated in strikes with little fear of dismissal, leading to the rise of an organised labour movement in post-war Malaya (Harper, 1998, pp. 105, 107). In mid-1970s Kuala Lumpur, residents in Chan Sow Lin, an established informal settlement, possessed a strong sense of community and mutual self-help. They accepted the illegal gang elements and activities in the area as part of everyday life. By this time, the residents felt resigned to their low standard of living and the inevitability of eventual eviction from the area (Ng, 1976, pp. 37–9; Wong, 1976, pp. 39–40). In other informal settlements in Kuala Lumpur, the residents were not so socially passive: they were both knowledgeable about external events and were able to organise themselves collectively to deal with the authorities and address problems that directly affected them, the most important of which was eviction (Sen, 1979, pp. 194–5).

The very location of informal settlements in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong testifies to their social dynamism and opportunism. The urban migrants were able to construct viable livelihoods on land that lay initially beyond the official gaze. In Singapore, these settlements were located along the trunk roads at the margins of the city, on hilly ground, frequently being disused cemeteries, or over swampy land or near incinerator sites. These places were either idle or were still being deliberated on by the state and private developers as to their acquisition or development (Singapore Improvement Trust, 1957, p. 29). New urban migrants regarded such sites as suitable for both raising an expanding family and residing close to their workplace, often in the inner city, to minimise the cost of transport (Singapore Improvement Trust, 1952a).

In Malaya, too, many of the informal settlements were found on land that initially escaped the notice of state and private developers: low-lying flood plains of the main rivers, vulnerable to flooding, or on railway reserves and disused mining land, all located at the urban periphery of cities like Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh (Sendut, 1976, p. 79; Johnstone, 1981, pp. 374, 376). Kampong Setor in Kuala Lumpur, for instance, was an informal Malay housing settlement located in the urban core between a river and a railway line (McGee, 1967, p. 161). In other cases, some of the “New Villages”, established by the British colonial regime during the Malayan Emergency to resettle half a million Chinese rural villagers, were in fact placed within the redrawn municipal boundaries at the edges of cities. This included Jinjiang, the largest New Village with 13,000 people, and Ayer Panas in Kuala Lumpur, Kampong Bahru in Kuantan and Kampong Simee in Ipoh (Johnstone, 1981, p. 372; 1983, p. 299).

In Hong Kong, likewise, Chinese families built their wooden houses on steep hillsides (Dwyer, 1976, p. 132). As a British official stated in 1960, the press of refugees from the Chinese mainland had caused such a proliferation of unauthorised housing in the Victoria-Kowloon area that:

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... it would have required an army of police to have restrained them. Virtually every sizeable vacant site … was occupied, and where there was no flat land remaining, they moved up the hillsides and colonised the ravines and slopes that were too steep for normal development. (as cited in Dwyer, 1976, p. 136)

In Bangkok, a low-lying city, informal dwellers commonly lived over swamps or on narrow strips of land lining the city’s numerous canals. Such lands were rarely used for development and were owned by the state but had been occupied for low-income informal housing, despite their lack of waste drainage and vulnerability to floods (Giles, 2003, p. 231). Many of these settlements were located on the periphery of Bangkok, where the low prices of land made development and eviction less likely (Korff, 1986, pp. 55–7). In post-war Saigon, like Bangkok, informal settlements developed along the beaches and open canals (Ooi, 2005, p. 82).

Just beyond the municipal boundaries of Jakarta, informal settlements also developed due to a lack of planning regulation, leading to the formation of “a crowded, unhygienic and combustible jumble of housing … mostly along the trunk roads” (United Nations Mission of Experts, 1951, p. 134). In Surabaya, informal dwellers were clearly visible in large numbers in public spaces such as parks, riverbanks and railway lines in the 1950s, living without the benefit of public facilities. In 1953, there were a total of 3,000 illegal dwellings in the city, a third of which were located on former rubbish dump sites. They were given the legal status of “kampongs” by the post-colonial state so that they could be earmarked for kampong improvement schemes, which had resumed in 1949 (Dick, 2003, pp. 144, 210).

In metropolitan Manila, where the poor lived in segregated sectors of the city apart from middle- and higher-income communities, many of them resided in unauthorised housing built within the ruins of Intramuros (Ooi, 2005, p. 56). Other informal dwellers lived near their workplace in the centre of the city, such as in Tondo; Casbah; the piers of Cebu; park sites in Davao, Mindanao; and near swamps, factories, fish ponds, market areas, railway tracks and army reservations; in addition, there were also large numbers of “foreshore squatters”, “shop squatters” and “wagon squatters” in Philippine cities (Abrams, 1970b, pp. 141–2; Laquian, 1969, p. 6; Stone, 1973, pp. 70–1). In 1959, flash floods struck many such families living along the dried-up riverbeds and riverbanks of Manila, causing numerous deaths (Juppenlatz, 1970, p. 95).

The location of the informal settlements at the physical and administrative margins of the Southeast Asian city caused the post-war state much anxiety. Here, as Mary Douglas observed, was where official control was weakest and where, as the state feared, any social change could profoundly alter the basic character of the entire society (Douglas, 2002, p. 150). I have argued elsewhere how the building of low-cost, emergency public housing at the administrative periphery of Singapore city, frequently over the sites of informal settlements themselves, were in essence an attempt by the state to restore a margin perceived to have been dangerously overrun by dense illegal housing and semi-autonomous communities living beyond the formal structures and social norms of the state (Loh, 2009a). Preceding and reinforcing this public housing programme in Singapore was a controlling official discourse against informal housing and its residents.

tHE MytH OF tHE ‘SquAttEr’ AnD tHE EMErGEnCy DISCOurSE OF rEHOuSInG

In post-war Singapore, the British regime’s criminalisation of informal dwellers as “squatters” was a discursive and politically driven act. The term conveys an instant impression of both illegality and social inertia and forges a powerful sense of social crisis. As Greg Clancey has argued, such a discourse of emergency served to empower the high modernist state with the moral authority to intervene robustly in the everyday lives of informal dwellers (Clancey, 2004, p. 53). In fact, most of them were not squatters but rent-paying tenants, having settled in informal housing as migrants from China and Malaya or from the overcrowded shophouses in the inner city after the war. The Land Clearance and Resettlement Working Party of 1955, an official committee established to investigate the problem of unauthorised wooden housing, rejected the term “squatter”, as it had been “a long established custom in Singapore for owners of land not required for immediate development to rent out plots on a month-to-month basis and for the tenant to erect thereon a house” (Singapore Land Clearance and Resettlement Working Party, 1956, pp. 2, 3).

The term “squatter”, together with a whole list of other official lexicons such as “emergency”, “fire”, “clearance”, and “resettlement”, constituted an entire discourse rationalising the state’s social intervention in the lives of a semi-autonomous community, including, first and foremost, their resettlement. In Malaysia, similarly, informal dwellers, in being classified as “squatters” also became “anti-development” within the developmentalist discourse of the state (Yeoh, 2001, pp. 116, 119). In 1965, this criminalisation was extended to Malay informal dwellers through the implementation of the National Land Code. Hitherto, Malays, who were regarded as bumiputra (sons of the soil) with special rights by the state, had been free under customary law to occupy vacant land in both the pre-colonial and colonial periods, while the only “squatters” during the British period, in the legal sense, were the Chinese (Kassim, 1982, pp. 5, 12).

This criminalising discourse also appeared in post-war Thailand. Here, only a small minority of the informal dwellers were technically squatters. Like in Singapore and Malaya, the majority were renters who had been granted permission on a temporary basis by landlords to build houses on their land (Giles, 2003, p. 213). In Manila, many informal dwellers confidently viewed themselves not as squatters but as rent-paying tenants. In 1962, when the Philippine state sought to clear informal dwellers in Singalong and took them to court, the residents argued that they were not squatters but “lessees who had been paying rentals”. Such an assertive self-perception was rooted in the popular belief among Filipinos that public land in the country was not the possession of all but belonged to no one, and could be freely occupied (Stone, 1973, pp. 40–3, 71–3, 80).

In Hong Kong, as Alan Smart as argued, the illegality of “squatters” was based on an official distinction between building land and agricultural land, which stipulated that residents could erect buildings only on the former. This distinction was made at the beginning of the 20th century and had been hotly contested; it could lead to the criminalisation of residents who had built unauthorised houses on their own agricultural land. The legal distinction reveals how the British colonial regime had played a central role in the social production of space in Hong Kong long before it launched its first major public housing programme in the mid-1950s. The colonial land policy made it difficult for the private sector to satisfy the requirements of the complex building regulations to convert agricultural land into building land. The construction of informal wooden housing consequently became illegal (Smart, 2003, pp. 212–3).

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The use of a criminalising discourse of illegality and social inertia to provide the state with a powerful mandate to rehouse unauthorised housing dwellers in public housing in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong did not simply aim to represent. Rather, it sought to depict the “squatter” as the liminal other who needed to be eliminated so that the city could be re-created in the political and public imagination (Mayne, 1990, pp. 8–9). In short, the term “squatter” was politically determined. Scholars in India have contended that the notion of illegality was really a fabrication since the laws of the state served chiefly the interests of the powerful. Cities, as John Desrochers argued, had always been built from the bottom up, while planned urban development was a recent colonial invention; the poor had the right to build their own housing if the government was unable to provide for them (Desrochers, 2000, pp. 17–22, 27).

The discursive vocabulary of “squatters” was common in official statements on housing in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong because it had strong transnational links and advocates. The 1951 United Nations Mission of Experts, which visited informal settlements in Thailand, India, Indonesia, Malaya, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore as part of its survey, reported that “squatting on somebody else’s land has become an art and a profession” in the Philippines (United Nations Mission of Experts, 1951, p. 157). Charles Abrams, an influential American urban planner in the post-war period, warned that, although most of them were law-abiding citizens, the residents of informal housing formed a “formidable threat to the structure of private rights established through the centuries”, the rule of law and the basic sovereignty of the state (Abrams, 1970a, p. 11, 1970b, p. 143, 1966, p. 23).

Charles Abrams and other Western urban planners such as Morris Juppenlatz frequently advised Southeast Asian governments on housing and urban planning after the war. Morris Juppenlatz was a United Nations town planner who had worked in post-war Manila, Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro. Drawing from the stark, powerful metaphors of disease and contagion, he represented informal housing as “a plague” and an “urban sickness”. Morris Juppenlatz reveals his high modernist mind in expressing his distaste for the physical appearance of informal settlements, where “[t]he outward appearance of the malady, the urban squatter colonies, when viewed from the air, from a helicopter, is that of a fungus attached to and growing out from the carapace of the city”. He blamed many of the cholera outbreaks in Philippine cities on the physical environment of the informal settlements and the social habits of their residents. The basic solution, he urged, was to organise the residents’ integration into the state as tax-paying citizens. In this, the government’s role was pivotal and needed to be “based on the scientific method and planned urban development throughout the entire nation” (Juppenlatz, 1970, pp. 1–5, 41, 104, 212). Charles Abrams also warned that the “diseases of housing rival those in pathology” (Abrams, 1965, p. 40).

British officials in the colonies fully endorsed such abject views of informal housing. In 1948, the British housing authorities in Malaya represented the “mushrooming” informal housing as being “temporary buildings of a very inferior type, erected without regard to the elementary requirements of sanitation, light and air” (Johnstone, 1983, p. 298). In Hong Kong, similarly, the connection between the clearance of informal housing and state interventions into public health matters was similarly strong: informal housing became illegal when British colonial officials ruled it to be unhealthy for habitation (Smart, 2006, p. 32). In Singapore, the 1947 Housing Committee also reported that the unplanned urbanisation and development of slum and informal settlements in the city after the war were “detrimental to health and morals” (Singapore 1947, p. 11), and in literally being “schools for training youth for crime” (Singapore Improvement Trust, 1947).

The likening of informal housing development to the spread of disease in official and even academic discourse in the immediate post-war period simply underlined the social and moral danger the residents were alleged to pose. They were regarded not only as a threat to themselves but also to the fabric of society at large. Also, many official and academic commentators did not fail to point to the alleged prevalence of crime and gangsterism in the informal settlements. Morris Juppenlatz emphasised that the Oxo and Sigue Sigue — organised criminal gangs in Manila — were based in informal housing areas (Juppenlatz, 1970, p. 107). In Jakarta, groups of djembel-djembel (vagabonds), also based in slums and informal settlements, gained a reputation for being responsible for much of the crime in the city (as cited in McGee, 1967, p. 159). In Malaysia, increased overcrowding in the cities produced “a mood of urban anxiety”, with which not only the state but also the middle class viewed their values to be coming under severe threat (Harper, 1998, p. 218). The Ministry of Local Government and Housing depicted informal settlements in Kuala Lumpur in 1971 as “seedbeds of secret societies and racketeers” (Malaysia Kementerian Penerangan, 1971, p. 42). In Singapore, too, the PAP government portrayed slum and informal housing as “breeding grounds of crime and disease”, where “[t]he incidence of tuberculosis is higher here than anywhere else on the island, as is the incidence of crime and gangsterism” (Choe, 1969, p. 163). Frequently, commentators projected their anxieties onto the dwellers themselves, as T. G. McGee stated, “[f ]ear of eviction, fear of fire, fear of crime — fear is the governing force of the squatter area” (McGee, 1970, p. 126). They, however, failed to note that the residents themselves usually did not hold such views.

Another international dimension of the emergency housing discourse was related to the Cold War and the attempt of Western planners to determine the character of the post-colonial societies in Southeast Asia. Informal residents, understood to be resistant to resettlement, were seen to constitute “a potentially dangerous mass of political dynamite”, wherein lay the deadly possibility for anti-establishment and revolutionary politics (McGee, 1967, p. 170). Charles Abrams acutely feared how the rural-urban migration was leading many Asian cities to relive the unfortunate history of Western cities:

[Asian cities] have become the haven of the refugee, the hungry, the politically oppressed. The Filipino hinterlanders fleeing the Huks pour into Manila, the Hindus escaping the Moslems head into New Delhi, and the victims of Chinese communism head into Hong Kong. (Abrams, 1966, p. 10)

In Malaya, the British perceived locally born Chinese of the first generation, who did not speak English and whose fathers were immigrants, as a great menace to peace; their numbers were “expanding in labour forces and squatter settlements ... [and] nothing can be done to convert them into Malayan citizens” (Britain Colonial Office, 1948). The Malaysian state, which won with British support the counter-insurgency against the communists, maintained that the clearance of informal housing was “not only in the best interests of Kuala Lumpur as a capital city but also to foster economic growth, improve social standards and improve security thereby making for greater political stability” (Malaysia Kementerian Penerangan, 1971, p. 29). In 1968, political scientist Samuel Huntington also wrote of how an enforced programme of urbanisation in South Vietnam, which was already 40% urbanised because of war refugees moving into the cities, offered an important way for the anti-communist regime to defeat the Vietcong insurgents based in the countryside (Huntington, 1964, pp. 648, 652).

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The fear of communism was deeply embedded in the minds of Western, particularly American, urban planning experts. It forged a strong, although by no means straightforward, link between their ideas and practices and the housing programmes that emerged in post-war Southeast Asia. As Charles Abrams warned, unlike the institutional and cultural buffers that existed against communism in Europe, Asian countries were openly vulnerable to the spread of communism. The “housing famine”, he cautioned, could easily encourage the ascendancy of Marxism, and “today’s masses” could turn into “tomorrow’s mobs”. Such an ideological view of urban housing reflected his belief that the city was the frontier in the post-colonial struggle to establish peaceful, democratic and stable societies in the less developed world. Asian cities were not only sites of great social and demographic growth; they were also politically explosive places, where the housing crisis represented a serious threat to both national development and global stability (Abrams, 1966, pp. 287–8, 296). The 1962 United Nations Ad Hoc Group, which Charles Abrams chaired, likewise believed that housing and urban development were activities in which “social and economic progress meet” (United Nations, 1962, pp. 1, 9–19).

‘LInKInG tHE IntErnAtIOnAL, nAtIOnAL AnD LOCAL: PubLIC AnD AIDED SELF-HELP HOuSInG’

The discursive criminalisation of informal settlements strongly suggests that post-war rehousing policies in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong did not develop in isolation within the political boundaries of emerging nation-states. They were very much part of a transnational project in which external ideas were imposed on or, more commonly, adapted to the local context. In the aftermath of the war, decolonisation gathered apace in the American, British and subsequently Dutch and French territories in Asia, even as a bipolar world emerged. There was much concern and effort on the part of Western planning experts to ensure that the citizenry in the former colonies did not traverse the anti-colonial, pro-communist path. The United Nations, dominated in this period by the Western states, sending numerous field experts to countries in the less developed world, including Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. Their consultancy work did not simply entail offering advice on housing but also included helping the national governments prepare master plans for coordinating housing construction within a national framework for developmental planning.

The United Nations also collaborated with international agencies working indirectly on housing in the less developed countries and offered fellowships to train urban planners. Charles Abrams emphasised the importance of international cooperation and the systematic provision of international and American aid to assist housing programmes in less developed countries. This, he urged, was critical in the context of the Cold War because the Soviet Union was also providing aid to the less developed world in its pursuit of friendly client states (Abrams, 1966, pp. 91, 242; United Nations, 1962, pp. 46–58).

Recent work on the transnational history of housing after World War II has highlighted both similarities and differences in the housing practices of countries in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. In resettling families en masse in public housing, as Greg Clancey argued, British policy in the region was exceptional. Britain’s ambitious post-war rehousing campaigns in its three colonies were responses to what was believed to be the growing threat of Chinese communism. Accordingly, the British sought to relocate Chinese farmers in Malaya to planned New Villages in order to undercut the social support for the largely Chinese Malayan Communist Party during the Emergency between 1948 and 1960, and to achieve the same objective of undermining support for the communists south of the peninsula in Singapore by removing informal dwellers to planned emergency public housing. In Hong Kong, too, the British sought to safely rehouse

refugees from China in similar emergency housing in order to avoid a diplomatic dispute with the Chinese Communist Party. By contrast, Greg Clancey argued that the colonial and post-colonial states in other Asian countries either had less inclination to pursue mass resettlement projects, as in China and Japan, or carried out only minor rehousing where expedient in order to redevelop the site, as was practised in the Philippines, Thailand, Korea and Indonesia.

In particular, Clancey maintained that the rehousing of Chinese farmers in the New Villages in Malaya and the urban resettlement project in Singapore should really be viewed as two threads of a single historical event: both were coercive and targeted the rural or semi-rural Chinese populations. Both were also based on a strong fear of Chinese communism and attempted to forge farmers into urban wage labourers, which made the rehousing projects developmental as well as political and military in character, and illustrated the connection between the economic and ideological objectives of housing. In the mid-1950s, as Greg Clancey revealed, the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), the de facto colonial housing authority in Singapore, recruited a number of resettlement inspectors who had served in the New Village campaign in Malaya (Clancey, 2004, pp. 39–42).

Recent archival research into Singapore housing has also revealed the influence British and American planning ideas had on the work of the SIT and the HDB respectively. Two high-profile British housing planners, George Pepler and Patrick Abercrombie, played major roles in advising on and coordinating public housing planning and development in the city-state in the 1950s. They assisted the British colonial regime’s attempt to resuscitate its rule on the island after the war. George Pepler in particular helped formulate the island’s 1958 colonial Master Plan, in which a modified form of the British new town model was exported to the Singapore context. In the 1960s, similarly, the HDB, upon the received advice of Charles Abrams, Otto Koenigsberger and Susume Kobe, robustly applied the American ideal of using public housing as a social bulwark against Chinese communism in the region by building tens of thousands of high-rise flats at the margins of the city over the former sites of informal housing. In this way, both the SIT and the HDB were drawing heavily from British and American use of rehousing as a means of reorganising social networks and re-establishing high modernist social and political control over the population (Kwak, 2009).

The British resettlement programmes had a significant if less robust and ultimately less successful American parallel in Southeast Asia. Drawing from the successful British model, which resettled thousands of Chinese informal dwellers in New Villages in Malaya, often “urbanising” them in the process, the Americans dealt with the Huk rebellion in the Philippines in the early 1950s and with the Vietcong insurgency in Vietnam a decade later by resorting to similar resettlement methods — rehousing villagers who were deemed to be sympathetic to the rebels. Mass rehousing of both rural and urban informal dwellers in the post-war period was a social form of counter-insurgency and was in effect aimed at achieving social and political consolidation (Yeung & Lo, 1976, p. xix; Jones & Richter, 1982).

Both international and local experts shared discursive and culturally inflected views on the need to transform indigenous Southeast Asian housing. The visual and social “messiness” of informal housing was deemed to be a major threat to healthy living and warranted robust state intervention. The 1951 United Nations Mission of Experts to South and Southeast Asia, led by the American planner Jacob Crane, warned that “[p]revailing conditions in Asia create the greatest housing problem in the world”. In the countries it visited, the mission abhorred the “ravages of tuberculosis”, which thrived in overcrowded slums and

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informal housing and the fact that “humans and animals are housed together within the same walls”. It urged that the national government be directly involved in the centralised planning of housing and community development in general. While it acknowledged the great costs involved in a comprehensive public housing programme, the mission reminded the Asian governments that, when rehoused, “the lower-income groups would be adequately housed in healthy, modern, self-contained neighbourhoods, where young people could develop into valuable and healthy citizens, who would help to increase the prosperity of the country in the future”. Public housing, in particular, “should be considered … as a sound investment for good citizenship” (United Nations Mission of Experts, 1951, pp. 10–11, 20, 142, 163).

Notwithstanding such transnational influence, however, Western recommendations on housing reform were often selectively or inadequately implemented in Southeast Asia. Recent scholarship has highlighted the fact that some Southeast Asian states, in principle at least, preferred to build modern public housing. As Richard Harris and others have pointed out, the archival evidence strongly suggests that many of the recommendations of international housing experts were either were not successfully implemented or even ignored by the post-colonial governments.

The three key framers and movers of this Anglo-American-led international housing policy were Jacob Crane of the US-based Housing and Home Finance Agency between 1945 and 1953, G. A. Atkinson of the British Colonial Office (1948–62) and Ernest Weissman in the Housing, Building and Planning Branch of the United Nations (1951–65). Richard Harris’ research demonstrates that these and other consultants from the United Nations, the International Labour Organisation and British and American housing and development agencies never solely advocated the option of public housing in the immediate post-war period. They also supported the idea of aided self-help housing and emphasised the role of the private sector in housing the people. Particularly among the American experts, it was felt that self-help housing was a necessary and pragmatic step in the transition towards permanent but more expensive houses built by the private sector in less developed countries. The 1951 United Nations Mission of Experts strongly recommended aided self-help housing as a way of dispersing overcrowded slum dwellers to the suburbs or new satellite towns. Such housing, it argued, could produce “more and better houses and communities than any other method, and at far less money cost” (United Nations Mission of Experts, 1951, pp. 19, 30; Harris & Giles, 2003, p. 177). The British planners had a more established belief in public housing than their American counterparts. Britain had already considered introducing public housing in its colonies before the Pacific War, announcing, as early as 1940 that colonial administrations would be made responsible for improving housing conditions throughout the empire. Three years after the war ended, the Colonial Office appointed G. A. Atkinson as its housing adviser, a signal of the importance of public housing in its post-war public policy in the colonies. Ambitious housing programmes subsequently commenced in British colonies in Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa (such as in Nairobi, Kenya) and the West Indies (in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; and in Kingston, Jamaica). By 1956, London had pledged financial support for housing projects for the development of both the rural and urban areas in the colonies.

Even after most of its territories were seceded to decolonisation in the 1960s, British housing influence continued in an indirect form on the post-colonial governments. But the British colonial governments quickly realised that, given the high costs involved, the public housing programmes could not resolve the housing crisis in the colonies. Moving closer to the American view, the British concluded that it would be better to encourage families to own self-help housing of a temporary sort than to build public

housing merely for rent (Harris & Giles, 2003, pp. 170–81; Harris 2002). In this broad pattern of transnational housing policy, Singapore was an important exception. The island’s colonial planners consistently rejected the idea of temporary wooden and attap housing. In 1955, the SIT decided that “self-help housing was ‘impracticable in Singapore’, as ‘[t]he squatter is not an experienced house builder, he wastes materials, makes constructional mistakes, or engages second rate ‘skilled labour’ ” (Singapore Housing & Development Board 1955). The initial British support for public housing programmes in their colonies was tied to its larger policy of decolonisation in Southeast Asia. Decolonisation to the British meant a substantial reform of colonial society in order to establish politically stable and economically viable nation-states in the region (Tarling, 1993, pp. 157, 170, 173). Politically, with their mandate to rule severely undermined by the Pacific War and facing more assertive indigenous nationalist movements, British colonial regimes in Southeast Asia attempted to regain the consent of their subjects. For both the British and the post-colonial regimes that succeeded them, public housing projects were politically expedient because they were highly visible and gave the elected representatives of the people an excellent opportunity to obtain mass support (Harris, 2002, p. 7).

The disjuncture between what the international experts proposed and what local governments actually built is well-illustrated by the case of Thailand. As Ceinwen Giles has demonstrated, the Thai government repeatedly ignored the pragmatic recommendations of the United Nations in favour of aided self-help housing and persisted with limited public housing programmes in the 1950s and 1960s. As early as 1951, the United Nations Mission of Experts proposed the idea of aided self-help housing to the Thai government. The latter, however, decided to undertake eight major public housing projects in Bangkok between 1950 and 1972. Giles argues that this Thai reluctance to fully endorse aided self-help housing had a cultural-political explanation. The Thai state was used to its traditional role as the patron of its subjects and to implementing social policy unilaterally from above. Self-help housing, however, gave an important social role to the residents of informal housing. The government consequently preferred to build public housing, despite its obvious costs, because the policy gave it the greatest political visibility and popular approval (Giles, 2003, pp. 232–5).

Such a pragmatic official housing policy coincided with the system of patron-client relations prevailing in Thailand. As the overall patron of the people, the state gained an important measure of flexibility in its housing policy. Selected informal settlements and slums were cleared when it served the priorities of the political leadership. The country’s decision to host the 1966 Asian Games promoted a wave of public housing construction, with government funds made immediately available for the project. At other times, clearance was carried out to remove “eyesores” sited near the royal palace in the capital.

In general, however, the Thai government treated the other slums and informal settlements with what seemed to be benign neglect in the hope that they would simply disappear and that their residents would move into standard housing. At the same time, the “non-policy”, instead of an aided programme, enabled low-income Thais to build their own inexpensive accommodation at minimal cost to the state and without gaining land rights and tenure (Chiu, 1982, pp. 71–2, 89, 248). Such a housing policy served the pragmatic interests of both patron and client, although it prevented the Thai state from attaining a high modernist control of society, compared with Singapore and Hong Kong.

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The work of Richard Harris and Ceinwen Giles is important in raising new questions about the real impact of the international housing policy and in underlining the importance of archival research to challenge popular misconceptions of housing. However, as Harris has pointed out, the ideological gap between public and aided self-help housing was not as great as one might initially suppose. Both approaches enabled the state to impose some measure of social and political control over semi-autonomous communities, albeit in different ways and to varying degrees of success. Harris observes that while public housing development was politically, if not financially, expedient to the state, aided self-help housing was more ideologically ambivalent. The aided programme possessed the potential to ascribe a degree of agency to ordinary people; taken to extremes, it suggested social and political anarchy. At the same time, however, the provision of government aid for informal housing also enabled the state to closely regulate its development and intervene in the lives of the residents (Harris, 2002).

Charles Abrams, in considering the systematic clearance of informal settlements, went further: he suggested that while a “limited number of apartment houses” might be built in the city for some workers, in the majority of cases, “a simple self-help programme properly supervised may accompany the clearance of squatter settlements” and greatly enable the removal of the remaining ones (Abrams, 1966, pp. 234–5).

The 1971 United Nations Seminar on the Improvement of Slums and Uncontrolled Settlements, which advocated aided self-help ahead of eviction and clearance, still underlined the important role of the government in improving living conditions in the settlements and, specifically, in mobilising the latent social energies of the informal communities to this end (United Nations, 1971, pp. 171–2). Depending on the way in which informal dwellers were to be mobilised, aided programmes could socialise them into the formal structures of the state as much as public housing.

In the Philippines, the pilot project implementing aided-self-help housing in Barrio Magsaysay, Tondo that started in 1966 was envisaged as an urban community development programme. It aimed not only at housing improvement but also in cultivating a sense of civic consciousness in the community. The project had considerable official participation, involving one national government and two local government agencies, as well as one private civic and two foreign-based organisations (Laquian, 1969, 31, pp. 133–4). In fact, aided programmes such as the Barrio Magsaysay project could also be viewed as means by which the state and dominant elites offered aid, rather than public housing, in exchange for political support from the masses (Ruland, 1989, pp. 22–3). The basic guiding idea behind both public and aided self-help housing was that “[h]ousing must be viewed as an active environment producing a change in attitude not just physical shelter”, as United Nations planners had consistently emphasised (United Nations, 1970, as cited in Desai & Pillai, 1970, p. 253). Consequently, the real difference between public and aided self-help housing may lie more in the methods used by the state rather than an actual shift in aims.

The British “aided self-help” programme in resettling informal dwellers in the New Villages in Malaya is sometimes lauded as a rare case of success in Southeast Asia. The application of the term is contentious, since both the “aid” and “self-help” did not take place in the original settlement but in new resettlement areas. Nevertheless, the British programme demonstrates the great degree of social engineering involved in the aided self-help approach. In the large-scale, and largely involuntary, resettlement of Chinese villagers to the New Villages, the British colonial government did not provide built rural houses for the villagers, but organised an enforced form of aided self-help. The authorities supplied the sites, public utilities and roofs, while the villagers, with the government’s assistance (or insistence), used their own materials to erect the

houses. The implementation of aided self-help in Malaya coincided with the recommendation of the 1951 United Nations Mission of Experts that housing planning and development in the Federation be centralised under the authority of the state (United Nations Mission of Experts, 1951, pp. 104–7).

However, what Alan Smart has termed as “impeded self-help” in Hong Kong shows that even the mere toleration of informal housing without aid may serve the interests of the colonial state in controlling such housing. He has observed that the British government adopted a policy of containment by restricting wooden dwellings to “permitted areas”, “cottage areas” and “Temporary Housing Areas”, without enabling their improvement or legalisation. This policy discouraged “new squatting” and permitted the administration to control the number of informal dwellers. In contrast to the public housing programme, the tolerated areas constituted only a minor part of the official housing policy in Hong Kong. From the end of the war until the great Shek Kip Mei fire of 1953, the authorities prevented new informal housing from being built while tolerating the existing housing until there was a need to clear them for development (Smart, 2003, p. 209; Drakakis-Smith, 1989, p. 130). The public housing programme that took off in the 1950s, particularly after the 1953 inferno, significantly reduced but did not eradicate the incidence of informal housing.

In June 1963, an official committee was established to examine the problem of informal settlements and the possibility of building low-cost public housing. It reported that the expansion of public housing in the preceding decade had not deterred the proliferation of informal housing, as both natural increase and immigration continued to swell the numbers of such housing. In that year, there were still more than half a million people living in informal housing, most of who were residing on Crown land (Report of the working

party, 1963, pp. 6–8, 19–21, 53, Appendix B).

In Hong Kong, the public housing programme and the toleration policy existed side by side until 1997, when the territory was returned to China. As Alan Smart notes, the toleration was based on a deliberate bureaucratic inertia to allow informal housing to remain until there arose a developmental need to clear it (Smart, 2001, p. 40). The Hong Kong case of “impeded self-help” is important in highlighting that what may appear to be official “benign neglect” and bureaucratic impotence towards informal housing is actually much more politically motivated when viewed within the larger context of the state’s overall housing policy and its relationship with the people. In the case of “benign neglect” in Thailand discussed previously, what appeared to be a passive, even helpless, “non-policy” towards informal housing in fact served the Thai state’s role as the patron of its people at minimum political and financial cost.

The toleration policy in Hong Kong was also similar to Singapore’s experience. Contrary to the recommendations of the 1951 United Nations Mission of Experts, the Singapore authorities held firmly to the belief that “[t]he Attap [thatched roof ] Dwelling will not be appropriate within the built-up precincts of a modern City” (Singapore Improvement Trust, 1952b). In July 1953, the City Council commenced demolishing, with “no exceptions”, newly or partly erected unauthorised wooden dwellings, with its staff accompanied by policemen to prevent a breach of the peace (Singapore City Council, 1952, 1953, pp. 18, 218). In the 1958 Master Plan for the development of the island, 85,000 out of 246,000 urban dwellers were allowed to remain in 16 informal settlements designated as “tolerated attap areas”. Dwellings in these settlements were mandated to meet strict official standards: a distance of 15 feet between walls of non-flammable materials like brick or corrugated iron, or 25 feet for flammable materials; a concrete floor and drain, and corrugated iron walls for the kitchen as a fire precaution (Singapore Housing & Development

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Board, 1957a). This policy of toleration was a political decision undertaken against the opposition of the SIT, but it gave the British breathing space in dealing with the problem of informal housing without having to commit themselves to organising the residents through an aided programme (Master plan, 1955, pp. 26–8; Singapore Housing & Development Board, 1957b).

Alan Smart also observes that the main role of the British colonial state in Hong Kong in building public housing while tolerating some informal housing was made possible by the non-representative character of colonial rule. British policy was determined by two factors, the first of which was related to the geopolitics of the Cold War. A robust public housing programme ensured that informal dwellers removed from their land would be properly rehoused. It reduced the risks of civil disturbance, which might occur in the event of unpopular mass eviction. The British worried that the outbreak of social unrest in Hong Kong involving the informal residents, many of whom were refugees from the mainland, might precipitate the intervention of the newly installed communist government in China. The other factor was economic. The British state saw its control over land development as an important way to keep land prices high, maximise land revenues, and keep tax rates low (Smart, 1992, pp. 198–200; 2003, 214).

The political and economic factors explained why a “hyper-capitalist, colonial state would embark on a public housing programme that would eventually provide dwellings for more than half its population” (Smart, 2003, p. 211). The Hong Kong policy towards informal housing indicates how, as in the case of Singapore, semi-autonomous communities were socially and politically mobilised through rehousing. According to a 1955 Hong Kong government report, the real aim of the public housing programme was not to provide for the residents’ welfare but to maintain social order:

What was required was not primarily to improve the living conditions of that section of the community which happened to be breaking the law relating to the occupation of Crown land: the task was to devise a rapid and practical method, at a cost less than prohibitive, of removing, in the interests of the whole community, the fire risk and the threat to public health and public order presented by the worst squatter areas (Dwyer, 1975, p. 177).

As Alan Smart surmises, the expansion of public housing and of social welfare programmes in general in Hong Kong was really an attempt by the colonial state to confer a full set of citizenship rights and obligations onto the population. This policy was especially targeted at the migrants who previously had not viewed themselves as citizens of Hong Kong but as mere sojourners from the mainland, whom the British distrusted as politically unreliable or even pro-communist (Smart, 2008). For the British, the provision of public housing was an important way to socialise informal dwellers into becoming obedient citizens and remove any pretext for China to intervene politically in the colony. In 1950, in an example of the making of trans-colonial housing associations, the British were drawing disconcerting parallels between the communist insurgency in Malaya, supported by Chinese villagers, and the informal housing situation in Hong Kong:

Dense new squatter colonies are now astride or uncomfortably close to all the main approaches to Kowloon, and are being forced more and more towards Lyemun. It is of course dangerous to think that squatter colonies in Hong Kong are virtually the same as, or present identical problems to, the scattered and inaccessible hotbeds in Malaya. Nevertheless, even in the unlikely event of its happening in an

emergency that 90% of Hong Kong’s squatters proved not only to be peaceable but also to be co-operative with the authorities, the remaining 30,000 could constitute a very real potential threat (Smart, 2008, p. 229).

PubLIC HOuSInG PrOjECtS, POLItICAL PAtrOnAGE AnD rEHOuSInG StruGGLES

While it preferred some amount of public housing building to aided self-help, the central difficulty the post-war Southeast Asian state faced was its inability to accumulate (or apply) sufficient political power over a sustained period to enforce a large-scale programme of informal housing clearance and public housing for the urban poor. Such a situation was directly related to the strength of informal communities, which cooperated with non-governmental organisations or local and opposition politicians, in contesting or redefining official resettlement policies.

The different outcomes of housing policies in Southeast Asian cities could be traced directly to the nature of state-society relations (Ooi, 2005, p. 13). T. G. McGee has pointed out that urban planning in less developed countries was frequently the “plaything of politics”, heavily influenced by patronage relationships. As a result, housing programmes typically involved no more than “paper plans” of mere symbolic value and quickly superseded (Dwyer, 1975, pp. 79–85). The difficulty of informal housing clearance and public housing development in post-war Southeast Asia is typically blamed on familiar reasons such as the state’s indifference or impotence, the lack of proper coordination between agencies, dated legislation, and insufficient finances. The real factor, however, is the character of state-society relations in the country.

In Thailand, as we have seen, the relationship between state and society was akin to that between patron and client. The great challenges the Thai state faced in implementing a robust public housing programme are clearly illustrated in the difficulties of coordinating housing policy and acquiring land for public housing. In 1940, housing had been one of the responsibilities of the Department of Public Welfare. It was nine years before a Department of Housing was established but it initially lacked adequate staff and the authority to carry out a comprehensive housing programme. Other public housing agencies were subsequently added to the bureaucracy, such as the Housing Welfare Bank in 1952 and a Slum Clearance Office in 1959. But it was only in 1973, with the establishment of a democratically elected civilian government, that a National Housing Authority was established to coordinate housing on a national scale (Karnjanaprakorn et al., 1979, p. 68). As in other countries, there was legislation for the Thai government to acquire land for public purposes, but no parallel legislation to check the speculation in land values that would arise if the land slated for development were to be made public knowledge. As a result, the clearance of slums and informal settlements in Thailand was often complicated by the high costs of land (United Nations Mission of Experts, 1951, pp. 115–6, 121).

In the immediate post-war years, too, there was still no comprehensive map of Bangkok, indicating the lack of effort made by the municipal authorities in mapping out the capital. Its administration was divided among different public departments, making it difficult to coordinate housing construction with the overall development of the capital. The main umbrella agency, the City Hall, lacked the full powers of a municipal administration, while the police, water works and electricity services were officially under the Ministry of the Interior but partially independent of the ministry. Bangkok’s telephone services were likewise semi-independent of the Ministry of Communications. The Irrigation and Highways Departments controlled

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the canals and roads, while large tracts of land in the city belonged to the Crown or Ministry of Defence. Different government departments planned and built public housing estates while the Ministry of Industry managed industrial estates. This hampered the coordination of industrial and housing development (Sternstein, 1974, pp. 221–6). The housing problem in Thailand had a budgetary dimension but finances were not the key problem, since inadequate funding merely reflected the department’s priorities. Since 1940, nearly a fifth of the housing development in Bangkok was consequently temporary informal housing built by the residents themselves, the private sector and non-governmental organisations (which often assisted the residents against eviction) (Ooi, 2005, pp. 19, 21).

In Indonesia, similarly, both the colonial and Sukarno administrations were unable to address the urban housing crisis. As H. W. Dick surmises, regarding urban development in Surabaya, “‘[t]he period 1942 and 1966 can … be seen as a losing struggle to restore an ideal of good government that had been inherited from the colonial era, which people began to look back to more wistfully as the zaman normal (normal time)” (Dick, 2003, p. 208). The truth was that housing was not high on the agenda of both the colonial and post-colonial governments.

The Dutch colonial regime had begun to tackle the problem of informal housing after the war, albeit with limited success. A Central Institute for Reconstruction (Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw) was established after the war, which helped build the first satellite town in Jakarta, capable of housing 60,000 people. Despite this, the public housing programme was greatly hindered by political factors and there was no clear division or coordination between the central, municipal and other local authorities. As in Thailand, the Indonesian state possessed legislation empowering it to acquire land for public development, but the process was “so long and difficult that almost no use has been made of this power” up to 1951 (United Nations Mission of Experts, 1951, pp. 125, 128–9). In 1958, the Sukarno government seized some private Dutch housing in Surabaya, but it was five years before the accommodation was transferred to the control of the municipality for housing its citizens (Dick, 2003, p, 216). In the late 1950s, the government also made a modest start by establishing a Housing Section within the Department of Public Works, but it was not until 1969 when the new Suharto administration decided to launch a genuine public housing programme. Concurrently, Indonesia’s governments continued to experiment with an aided self-help policy through its kampong improvement programme (Ooi, 2005, p. 33). Both the Dutch and post-colonial governments built some public housing, but it was frequently beyond the means of the low-income working class residents of informal settlements.

The clearance of informal dwellers in Indonesian cities began in the 1950s, but was deeply politicised and proved difficult to accomplish. In Surabaya, because the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Kommunis

Indonesia) supported the rights of evicted residents, clearance operations became politically costly for the municipal authorities. The communists, who received considerable support from informal dwellers, also endorsed the act of squatting on public land. Clearance was tremendously difficult and at times resulted in violence. In 1953, R. Moestadjab Soemowidigdo, the mayor of Surabaya, decreed that vagrants and informal dwellers be rounded up and relocated to tolerated informal housing areas. In 1956, a riot broke out during a clearance operation in Pakis.

The 1960 Agrarian Law formally recognised that kampong land belonged to the occupants, but periodic clearances of informal housing by the local authorities still took place. Four years later, eviction struck informal dwellers at Pasar Turi railway station and on the banks of the Kali Mas. The evicted residents were

resettled at Dupak, but by the 1960s, this locality had itself become a collection of dense informal housing. As H. W. Dick observed, the lands of post-war Surabaya had become the battleground between the state and informal dwellers, between planned development and affordable accommodation. In 1966, when the anti-communist purges took place, the Suharto regime cracked down heavily on informal settlements for supporting the Partai Kommunis Indonesia. In terms of a new public housing policy, however, the dwellers of informal housing soon understood that there was only continuity between “the New Order” and previous administrations (Dick, 2003, pp. 210–1, 368–71, 469–70). In the Philippines, the influence of American-style democratic politics made the failure of a coordinated housing policy even more pronounced. As D. J. Dwyer surmised, the national government found it necessary to constantly “trim public policies carefully in response to pressure groups, the clamour of the most vocal sections of the population, and the necessity of keeping at least half an eye on the next election”. There was also no umbrella authority for the competing local administrations of each of the three cities and five municipalities of the massive metropolitan Manila area (Dwyer, 1976, pp. 138–9).

Richard Stone has aptly observed that the clearance of informal settlements in the Philippines was typically complicated by the personalistic nature of contractual relationships between the strong and weak, which was prevalent in the country. This was, in reality, a localised form of patron-client relationships — updated for an American-style democratic context in the Philippines — that was common throughout Southeast Asia. The Philippine informal dweller and politician established “an effective, if fragile symbiotic alliance” in which each one made use of the other for practical self-interest. In the history of rehousing in post-war Philippines, it was not surprising that “the intervening politician is an omnipresent factor in the squatter problem” (Stone, 1973, pp. 67–8, 76, 115). The Philippine state’s inconsistent policy towards informal dwellers has sometimes been attributed to sympathy for the poor, but the real reason is far more politically rooted.

In 1947, the Philippine president received a petition from informal dwellers who had built houses on vacant land, whereupon he agreed not to evict them but to accept their occupation (Juppenlatz, 1970, p. 90). In 1956, the government went further by legally recognising the rights of families who had built unauthorised houses on a strip of foreshore land in Manila. Underlying these seemingly benevolent acts, however, was the plain fact that the political leadership in the Philippines was not so much unwilling to forcibly remove informal dwellers as unable to do so. This was deeply ingrained in the contractual nature of politics and administration in the country. Provincial governors in the Philippines usually found themselves surrounded by patronage-seeking job-hunters who viewed their work as not serving the public interest but only their own and those of their clients.

The character of patronage politics in the Philippines is also reflected in a notable lack of suitable legislation, which would provide for a national public housing programme. Pre-war zoning and building regulations remained in place after the war, even though they hampered coordinated housing development at the local level. Opposition and political pressure from municipal politicians had rendered it difficult for the state to update the local bylaws in line with national housing plans (Ooi, 2005, p. 61).

Another feature of housing policy in post-war Philippines was the sheer variety of public bodies involved. In 1950, the National Planning Commission was established, replacing three autonomous government bodies that had existed before it. The commission had the power to coordinate the urban and economic

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development of the country but found much of its efforts in the early 1950s strongly opposed by the public. In addition, as in the case of Thailand, four different public housing agencies existed and competed with one another in the decade, duplicating work and making administrative errors: the People’s Homesite and Housing Corporation, the National Land Settlement Administration, the Rural Progress Administration and the Ministry of Labour. Not surprisingly, despite the large number of agencies nominally involved, there were usually inadequate public funds for a subsidised housing programme, which would meet the great demand (Abrams, 1966, pp. 81–4). The 1951 United Nations Mission of Experts lamented that “a well-defined national planning policy” was necessary for the Philippines (United Nations Mission of Experts, 1951, pp. 148, 150–1, 153, 162). Aprodicio Laquian’s insightful study of “administrative politics” in post-war metropolitan Manila throws light on the difficulty of formulating a coordinated public housing programme in the Philippines. As he argues, there existed a constant tension in Philippine politics between democracy and efficiency throughout the country’s colonial and post-colonial history. Most politicians in the Philippines were professional politicians whose overriding aim was to obtain a high political position and much less so to reform the system. This meant that, in Manila, both national and local politicians were bound together in a mutually beneficial relationship: both needed each other to win elections (Laquian, 1966, p. 118). They also aligned themselves with informal dwellers in pragmatic bids to win votes, while the residents themselves made use of such patronage to resist eviction and win from the state lawful tenure of their occupation (Laquian, 1966, p. 54). In addition, informal dwellers often further strengthened their own position by joining non-governmental organisations advocating their interests. In 1960, in one informal settlement called Fabie Estate, more than 30% of the respondents were members of one of more than 30 civic organisations working in the area (as cited in Laquian 1966, p. 55).

However, despite their social and political influence, the net effect of the collaboration between informal dwellers and politicians was not always positive: it usually led the latter to embark on small-scale, politically visible and labour-intensive projects, such as repair of wooden structures and road work, in order to amass popular support. Such work, however, was usually of a low quality and quickly abandoned when the funds inevitably ran out. Urban development in Manila, then, was politically rational — that is, for the professional politicians. But it was non-rational in the administrative sense because the basic issue of informal housing was never decisively tackled. Senior administrators themselves wielded much political influence and periodically intervened in Philippine politics, backing or undermining developmental projects that served their narrow interests (Laquian, 1966, pp. 132, 140, 144). In other words, the pragmatic nature of “administrative politics” and the contractual relationship between national and local politicians and informal communities forged a political structure that made it impossible for the Philippine state to be truly high modernist.

Aprodicio Laquian analyses the infamous resettlement of informal dwellers in Intramuros in December 1963: A presidential committee, which had formed in April to investigate “the squatter problem” and seek solutions on a national scale, had recommended the resettlement. The original plan was to physically prepare the new sites well in advance, organise the relocatees in self-help groups and provide them with housing lots for agriculture and pig- and poultry-rearing. However, the mayor of Manila decided to bring forward the operation. On 2 December, he prematurely ejected the dwellers on the reasoning that they were so deeply retrenched in the area that no official programme to prepare the site would serve any

purpose. More likely, though, he had acted quickly to forestall organised opposition from the residents (Juppenlatz, 1970, pp. 124, 128).

He sent in ”wrecker crews”, which summarily dismantled more than 2,800 informal houses and relocated 4,500 families to a resettlement area in Sapang Palay, a barren, hilly estate in Bulacan province about 35 kilometres from Manila. On the third day of the eviction, the authorities piled up the demolished debris of the settlement and burned it. The eviction operation then spread to North Harbour, Ayala Bridge and Ermita, from which a total of 15,000 families were removed. This swelled the population of Sapang Palay from an initial 600 to more than 3,000 families.

However, with the rapid surge of families into the estate, public amenities quickly became inadequate, while many of the residents lost their jobs, having been separated far from their workplaces (Laquian, 1966, pp. 151–69). A local newspaper charged that the Sapang Palay project was completely unplanned, and that the evicted families were simply “dumped anywhere around the community and left alone to themselves to build barong-barong” (Dwyer, 1976, p. 131).

The administration of the Sapang Palay project, as Aprodicio Laquian explains, underlines the professional character of public policy in the Philippines. A total of 29 agencies, both public and otherwise, pledged assistance to the relocated dwellers, including the People’s Homesite and Housing Corporation, the chief public housing agency which built rows of barrack-like wooden houses with corrugated iron roofs, partitioned into small rooms intended for one family each — not significantly different from the informal housing in Intramuros; the Social Welfare Administration, which distributed relief goods; the Emergency Employment Administration, which hired workers to improve the roads; and the National Waterworks and Sewerage Authority, which dug the wells. The administration was uncoordinated and even plainly competitive, with the agencies involved only in a “token manner” and only briefly giving “a try” in tackling the challenge.

A month before the clearance of Intramuros, the Philippine president, Diosdado Macapagal, established the Office of Presidential Assistant on Housing to coordinate a national housing programme, but at the time of the eviction, it did not have the staff or resources to assist substantially in the Sapang Palay project (Laquian, 1966, pp. 151–69). The president also issued an executive order to form a national Squatter Resettlement Agency but its work was also predictably hampered by a serious shortage of funds (Dwyer, 1976, p. 132). As Aprodicio Laquian observed, the large number of agencies which were haphazardly and ineffectually involved in the assistance programme were merely participating in the customary “administrative politics” in the Philippines: they were there to visibly demonstrate their concern for the rehoused families in order to find political favour with President Macapagal, who had indicated his commitment to helping the poor by launching a national housing programme. Much of the agencies’ interventions involved little more than political hot air framed in seductive language, such as the idea of an “agro-industrial” estate (Laquian, 1966, pp. 151–69).

It was only in March 1964 that the government set up a steering committee to plan the development of Sapang Palay into an “agro-industrial” estate and the provision of employment for the new residents. While it met to discuss and eventually produce a draft master plan and physical development plan, a typhoon destroyed about 90% of the makeshift dwellings in Sapang Palay in June (Laquian, 1966, pp. 151–69). By the end of 1965, about 600 out of the 3,415 families in the settlement had left. In the following

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year, the government established a training centre in Sapang Palay to study the problems of resettlement and rehabilitation for the informal dwellers. Nevertheless, the United Nations continued to view Sapang Palay as a project with much promise (United Nations, 1970, as cited in Desai & Pillai, 1970, pp. 240–1). Morris Juppenlatz, who was involved in the relocation operation, regarded it as one of its main benefits in dispersing the criminal elements in the Oxo and Sigue Sigue gangs. He added that he was pleased no one had died from illness and exposure due to the physical demands of the move (Juppenlatz, 1970, pp. 128, 135).

As a result of patronage and professional politics in the Philippines, rehousing struggles have persisted to the present day. Although the government was successful in evicting the residents of Intramuros in 1963, in other cases, organised residents effectively opposed them. In Davao, conversely, the informal dwellers had strong political connections; they were able to obtain legal rights for their housing, which was consequently of superior quality to those elsewhere in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia (McGee, 1970, p. 125; 1967, pp. 158–9). Between 1951 and 1955, the authorities simply cleared 1,333 families living in Bago Bantay, eight kilometres from the centre of Manila, and delivered them to their new site, without helping them to build their new homes.

At the site, there was also no water supply, road, drainage and other essential social amenities. By 1955, fewer than half of the families living there were gainfully employed, and were mainly engaged in causal labour. A decade after the initial rehousing, most of the original relocatees had left the settlement. In 1953, the government sold the rights to 652 lots in Bagong Pag-asa to informal dwellers, only to find out afterwards that many of them had simply returned to their previous informal housing in Manila, enriched by the transactions (Juppenlatz, 1970, pp. 92–3; Laquian, 1969, pp. 9–10). By 1970, due to inadequate political support for public housing, 10% of the population in Manila and 30% of those in Jolo City, Luzan, Visayas and Mindanao were still living in slums and informal settlements (United Nations, 1971, p. 49).

In post-war Malaya, the clearance of informal housing areas also proved tremendously difficult due to the half-hearted approach of both the colonial and post-colonial states. Tim Harper has aptly pointed to the role of colonialism as an important “social force” seeking to forge a new society (Harper, 1998, p. 8). On the surface, the administration in Malaya adopted a housing strategy similar to that in Singapore. In 1951, a Federal Housing Trust was created but had to share its authority with a number of other agencies at federal, state and local levels. These included the Federal Land Development Authority, which built rural housing; the Urban Development Authority; the Malaysian Building Society Berhad; and the Government Officers’ Housing Company (Karnjanaprakorn et al., 1979, p. 68).

Although the aided self-help policy was an integral part of the massive resettlement programme for Chinese villagers in the rural areas, there was no centralised housing and planning authority in the urban areas, while the country’s town planning office was small and purely advisory in character (United Nations Mission of Experts, 1951, pp. 99–100). In 1951, the colonial authorities began removing informal dwellers in Kuala Lumpur to Petaling Jaya, seven miles southwest of the capital, which was intended to become a self-contained satellite town with its own social amenities and employment providers. As in Intramuros, the Petaling Jaya housing was poorly built, while there was also inadequate employment for the new residents. Many of them continued to travel to Kuala Lumpur for work, defeating the basic idea of a satellite town. Three years later, the authorities conceded its failure in resettling informal dwellers and began to replan the satellite town as a centre for middle-class, rather than working-class, housing (McGee, 1967, p. 153; Lam,

1979, p. 281). By the mid-1960s, Petaling Jaya had become a place of fairly high living standards (McGee and McTaggart, 1967, p. 30). The influence of patron-client relationships produced a characteristically Southeast Asian housing policy that both reflected and served the visible role of the post-colonial state as the patron of its subjects. On public housing efforts in post-war Kuala Lumpur, Manila and elsewhere in the region, T. G. McGee and others have observed that “national prestige, more than national concern for the social welfare of squatters, has been the most active force leading to their shift in these two cases”, but this, in the final analysis, did not transform the housing situation (McGee, 1967, pp. 169–70; Keynes & Burcroff, 1976, p. 69). The Malaysian state evidently possessed such a philosophy in the literal use of public housing as “prestige projects”. In the mid-1960s, the Malaysian government complained that informal housing was not only illegal, a source of crime and a fire hazard, but also “tarnishes [Kuala Lumpur’s] image both at home and abroad in that the presence of squatter huts is not in keeping with the orderly development of the national capital”. But housing driven by such a pursuit of prestige aesthetics was no substitute for the political determination to create visually legible housing estates, characteristic of the high modernist mind. The Malaysian efforts to rehouse informal dwellers, as in the cases of the Philippines and Thailand, were frequently frustrated by political interference and patron-client relationships, and usually met with failure (Malaysia Kementerian Penerangan, 1971, pp. 6, 8).

By the end of the 1960s, the outcomes of the diverse informal housing clearances and public housing developments in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong were becoming clear. The percentage of the country’s population living in urban slums and informal settlements in the region had fallen appreciably in Hong Kong (8%) and Singapore (15%). But it remained high elsewhere: it was 33% in Kuala Lumpur and Manila, 25% in Jakarta and 20% in Bangkok-Thonburi. Clearly, it was the physically small city-states in the region that were fast becoming the exceptions to the norm in the history of rehousing in the post-war period (Laquian, 1979, p. 53).

tHE SOCIAL POLItICS OF FIrES AnD EMErGEnCy PubLIC HOuSInG

Finally, fire was yet another important dimension in the official campaign against informal settlements in post-war Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. In Singapore and Hong Kong, large fires occurred periodically in informal housing areas in the 1950s, dishousing thousands of families. In Manila, more than 70% of the fires also occurred in settlements of informal housing, although there was little follow-up in terms of public housing efforts (McGee, 1970, p. 126). The fires are important for understanding the social history of informal settlements and the relationship between urban planners and residents of such housing in several ways. For one, as some scholars have observed, urban disasters such as typhoons and infernos ought to be understood as a “trigger” to deeply rooted demographic, social, economic and political pressures (Blaikie et al., 1994, pp. 22–66; Pelling, 2003, pp. 16, 19). The failure of municipal administrations to deal with the fire threat should not be viewed as merely an administrative or technological issue but underlines the ambivalent relationship between the state and the semi-autonomous residents of informal housing.

At the same time, the fire hazard also reveals the social dynamism and community organisation of informal dwellers. The organisation of volunteer fire-fighting brigades for the prevention of fire has already been mentioned. Another aspect of community cohesion is the resilience shown by many fire victims in the

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aftermath of conflagrations. In 1968, within two weeks after a slum in Bangkok was destroyed by fire, the fire victims themselves rebuilt it, having nowhere else to go. Their social web of mutual self-help and strong patron-client relationships enabled the act of rebuilding the fire site — one that is commonplace among informal communities. The reconstruction of the Bangkok slum was precipitated by an informal community leader, who, in defiance of official notices, rebuilt his own house on the fire site, whereupon the other fire victims quickly followed suit (Rabibhadana, 1975, pp. 67, 275). Such tenacity in the revival of informal settlements after a fiery disaster constituted a major challenge to the planning and development efforts of the state. The most important issue surrounding the fires is that, by creating a state of emergency, they represented important opportunities for social transformation. From the point of view of the state and mainstream society, an inferno appears to be a non-political emergency that demands robust intervention by the state on behalf of the fire victims (Clancey, 2004, p. 45). This of course assumes, contrary to what has been discussed, that fire victims are incapable of rebuilding their lives after a disaster. The fires provide the state with both great practical expediency, in clearing the unauthorised housing en masse, and the moral mandate to provide alternative housing for the fire victims. In a single moment, a blaze removes the unauthorised self-built houses that have enabled the semi-autonomous community to contest the hegemony of the state at the margins of the city.

The 1961 Bukit Ho Swee fire, a pivotal event in the history of Singapore housing, is an excellent example of the transformation of a city-state and its “squatters” into socialised citizens. The fire destroyed a major informal settlement just outside the inner city and rendered nearly 16,000 people (see below) homeless, but enabled the newly installed PAP government to build an emergency public housing estate, eventually totalling some 70,000 flats, over the ashes of the fire site within a year. As a historical event, the inferno was crucial to the PAP in giving its housing planners both an initial site for an expanded public housing programme which would eventually clear the slums and informal settlements at the margins of the city, and the confidence to robustly carry out the project (Loh, 2009d).

Interestingly, Singapore’s experience can be compared with that of Hong Kong. On Christmas Day 1953, the Shek Kip Mei inferno rendered 50,000 people homeless and, according to official mythology, kick-started the British emergency public housing programme in the 1950s. Subsequently, as the official narrative states, the colonial regime in Hong Kong established a Department of Resettlement to consider matters of rehousing in the colony and commenced the building of six- or seven-storey “H”-shaped emergency housing with communal amenities. A decade later, 605,000 former informal dwellers had been successfully resettled in such housing. The “H”-blocks of emergency flats were severely overcrowded, accommodating up to 2,000 people per acre, but the British government justified the resettlement by explaining that they were “emergency housing” which were necessary to cope with the threat of fire. The British also pointed out that the emergency housing was, supposedly, “sanitary, weather-proof, and fire-proof” and that, in characteristic high modernist fashion, it should be judged by “what it replaced rather than by arbitrary standards of what is desirable” (Dwyer, 1976, p. 138). The Shek Kip Mei fire shares the same elevated historical role as the Bukit Ho Swee conflagration in Singapore, which, coincidentally, also occurred on a public holiday — Hari Raya Haji, in May.

However, Alan Smart, from examining the declassified colonial archives, has deconstructed the myth and demonstrated that it was not merely Shek Kip Mei, but an entire slew of conflagrations in informal settlements in the 1950s which brought about the birth and development of the British regime’s public housing programme in Hong Kong. He has argued convincingly that the early beginnings of the programme lay in the Kowloon calamity of 1950, while it took a full year after Shek Kip Mei, after a major fire at Lei Cheng Uk in October 1954, that the policy to resettle the fire victims in emergency public housing was substantially expanded. For informal housing built on rooftops of shophouses, it was only in 1956 that the British government decided to prohibit such new structures from being erected (Report of the working

party, 1963, p. 5). Nevertheless, while no singular blaze alone had that impact, the Hong Kong infernos in the 1950s did collectively create a continued state of emergency, which gave the British authorities the moral mandate to launch a full-scale public housing programme. As Smart observes, building emergency public housing in Hong Kong was “a learning process punctuated by a continuing series of crises” (Smart, 2006, p. 189).

In the Singapore case, the pattern of emergency public housing development was broadly similar. The first great post-war fire at Kampong Bugis in August 1951 was met with colonial indifference. But following two more fiery disasters in the vicinity in 1953, a modest number of emergency public housing units, located near the fire sites, were built to accommodate the fire victims, while the fire sites themselves were gazetted for low-cost public housing. In 1958, following another major fire at Kampong Koo Chye, the SIT built about 200 subsidised emergency public housing units for sale. The British-built emergency housing was not completely successful due to their high costs and unpopular locations, leading many fire victims to return to live in informal housing in the vicinity of their former wooden homes. However, the experience and practical lessons the British emergency programme gave the PAP government in dealing with the Bukit Ho Swee disaster in 1961 was vital. What distinguished Singapore and Hong Kong then was that while the Hong Kong regime dealing with the crises was a colonial government, in the case of Singapore, the outbreak of an unprecedented fire less than two years after the PAP government assumed the reins of power enabled the self-governing state to embark on a full public housing programme. The emergency housing programme provided the PAP with both the moral mandate to intervene in the lives of the citizenry and the opportunity to launch a housing programme to restore social order to the margins of the city-state (Loh, 2009d).

Castells, Goh and Kwok have also argued that the success of the Hong Kong public housing programme — which they termed the “Shek Kip Mei syndrome” — was influential in persuading the PAP government to substantially enlarge the British project in Singapore after 1959. However, they provided no archival evidence for the view, which disagrees with the previously discussed perspective, that the HDB was more strongly influenced by American housing ideas. In Hong Kong, the creation of a six-mile long belt of densely built wooden housing had made further development of land in Kowloon virtually impossible by 1954. The emergency public housing built after Shek Kip Mei solved this problem to a large extent: the subsidised housing helped to keep labour costs low, enabled the establishment of manufacturing industries over the burned-out sites of the informal housing, and encouraged mass consumption among the population. In the view of Castells and his colleagues, the Shek Kip Mei model of emergency public housing development in both Hong Kong and Singapore was not merely a means of providing social welfare for the unfortunate fire victims but also an important form of state intervention to promote planned economic development, social engineering and the overall hegemony of the state (Castells et al., 1990, pp. 1, 333). Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, states responded to fires and typhoons with much

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less ambition and according to their social goals. In Bangkok, the burning down of slums and informal settlements was simply a means by which the state could implement its limited “prestige projects” (Korff, 1986, p. 173).

Yet, at the same time, it should be noted that a social history of informal housing fires demands to be studied. Many of the fire victims themselves did not view the blazes to be non-political. Sometimes, they blamed the state for failing to bring the health hazard under control. But more frequently, they simply charged the authorities for having started the fire to evict them. In Singapore, there were numerous angry rumours in the aftermath of informal housing fires — particularly after the Bukit Ho Swee disaster — that they had been started by the government in a bid to evict the residents and develop the land. These rumours of arson were useful for various political parties that sought to win mass support by speaking on behalf of the fire victims and placing blame on the regime. Opposition parties such as the Barisan Sosialis did their best to ensure that arson remained in the popular imagination, by propagating the alleged links between fire and eviction and framing the fires as part of the government’s “underhand” and “oppressive” politics (Singapore Legislative Assembly Debates, 1964, p. 639).

I have argued elsewhere that such rumours continue to function socially as a powerful “counter-myth” which critiques, albeit in the private sphere, the claims and reality of high modernist development in contemporary Singapore (Loh, 2009b). In the fires in Hong Kong in the 1950s, rumours of government-inspired arson, too, were widespread, indicating how infernos in unauthorised housing settlements had become deeply politicised issues in the public mind (Smart, 2006, pp. 134–41). The persistence of these rumours over a long period of time (in the Singapore case, up to the present day) highlights their importance for studying the relationship between the state and the informal community. Whether the rumours are true is a separate matter, which is difficult to properly establish, but what is more important here, in the framework of social history, is that they existed and were circulated, and that the fire victims believed them. More archival and ethnographic work into the rumours and social memory of the fires needs to be done.

COnCLuSIOn

The history of informal housing in Southeast Asia after World War II was multifaceted. Only the region’s city-states successfully adopted policies of social governance that approached the high modernist model. The Singapore and Hong Kong states succeeded in overriding organised opposition to replace superficially “messy” informal settlements with visually legible modern housing estates. Both governments possessed the will to transform their subjects into model citizens towards achieving broader developmentalist goals. Both obtained effective political hegemony — one was a non-representative colonial state which did not have to contend with democratic politics, while the other was an elected post-colonial government which nevertheless tolerated little opposition and dominated domestic politics. Both also launched their public housing programmes in the context of major states of emergency occasioned by the outbreaks of great fires in settlements of informal housing.

Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, both the colonial and post-colonial governments shared much in common with the Singapore and Hong Kong states in their views towards housing: all feared the informal dwellers as liminal communities, discursively criminalised their housing and social life, emphasised economic

development and social stability, and had the opportunity to transform informal housing sites in the aftermath of destructive fires and typhoons. Southeast Asian states also received and accepted in part the advice of Western housing and planning consultants on the social and political danger posed by informal housing expansion and the need to subdue them in order to move towards building modern cities of the future, although individual states viewed the two options of public housing and aided self-help housing with varying degrees of enthusiasm. In the British colonies of Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaya, the colonial state in particular supported robust rehousing and public housing measures, and such an approach was effectively adopted and expanded by the PAP government in Singapore, and by Hong Kong. The post-colonial Southeast Asian state was typically the patron of the citizenry, including the informal communities, and failed to obtain the requisite political hegemony to push through unpopular housing reforms. The Philippine state was both too democratic and too traditionally reliant on the support of its clients. Informal dwellers, local politicians and senior administrators held too much political influence for the state to carry out a sustained campaign of eviction and resettlement. By contrast, the Thai, Indonesian and Malaysian states were not genuinely democratic. But they were also too reliant on patronage politics for political legitimacy to ignore the importance of votes found in informal settlements at the margins of the city. Added to the constant rhythm of patronage politics in these countries in the long run were political shifts that occasionally destabilised the polity in Thailand and the Philippines. The result of these complicated tangles of state-society relations was that most Southeast Asian states usually embarked on limited, short-term and visible “prestige projects”. At the same time, these efforts merely maintained the societal status quo, rather than revamping it. The region’s states floundered in tackling the informal housing issue in characteristic ways: forming numerous public agencies to disguise a lack of political authority and commitment, without being able to coordinate these agencies; and lacking comprehensive planning, sufficient resources and proper legislation and bylaws.

Is there, then, a “Southeast Asian” experience in post-war informal housing development? Other than in Singapore, a form of patronage politics that had its roots in the pre-colonial period undermined the other post-colonial states in the region. Continuity, then, appears to be an important theme in the region’s history of informal housing. The PAP in Singapore was the sole exception, where a high modernist bureaucracy state was established and wielded great power. The influence of patronage produced another aspect of continuity in the housing policies of both the late colonial and early post-colonial states after the war: the post-colonial governments either learnt from the philosophy, methods and practical experience of the colonial regimes, as in Singapore, or continued to be limited or frustrated in resettling informal dwellers.

The other major similarity in Southeast Asia’s housing experience lies in social history. The region shared common historical developments in informal housing growth after World War II, which greatly aroused the anxiety of the state. The movement of low-income families, because of both natural increase, and transnational and rural-urban migration, was a common feature of demographic and social change in post-war Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. Driven by the pragmatic need to house their expanding families in suitable accommodation that would still remain close enough to their workplaces, the new urban migrants settled into self-built temporary housing at the margins of the city on idle land that lay initially beyond the gaze of the state. In other words, such a “quiet encroachment of the ordinary” in post-war Southeast Asia has created a shared history of demographic and social change, which challenged the authority of the state and has survived into the present.

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The communities that emerged on such locations were fairly cohesive and dynamic and were able to deal collectively, although not always successfully, with the common threats they faced — fire, crime and eviction. Contributing to a part of this community cohesion were criminal gangs, which recruited from the settlements’ youths and which drew the ire of the state. In other ways, however, informal communities were integrated into the political and economic structures of the state. They were closely tied to the formal economy through either urban wage work or as semi-rural workers in the local sector. The communties also sought the support, variously, of local and national politicians, non-governmental civic and advocacy organisations and leftwing and communist organisations to defend their interests.

What Southeast Asia and Hong Kong shared, then, was the emergence of communities that were both semi-autonomous and semi-independent of the state in the post-war period. What was also common, as a result, was that the states in the region responded by criminalising these dwellers as “squatters” whose alleged inertia and illegality could spread and corrupt the entire city and state, like a contagious disease. In extreme cases, they were even feared as constituting a revolutionary mass. This highlights the post-war Southeast Asian state’s anxiety towards semi-autonomous communities living at the physical and social margins of the city. The fear was shared by both the late colonial and post-colonial states in the region but none, except Singapore and Hong Kong, managed to find the high modernist power to transform semi-autonomous dwellers into colonial subjects or model citizens.

The author wishes to acknowledge the contribution of Professor Alan Smart, Department of Anthropology

University of Calgary, in reviewing the paper.

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Malayan Women and Guerrilla Warfare, 1941–89By Mahani Musa

IntrODuCtIOn

The first Malayan Communist terrorist to surrender in Negeri Sembilan, Malaya on 15 September 1957 happened to be a woman. The accompanying photo that appeared in The Sunday Times received little note from the Malayan community with regards to the involvement of women in underground and guerrilla activities.1 It was only after the signing of the Hat Yai Peace Accord between the Malaysian government and the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) in 1989 — which brought to a close the guerrilla war the MCP had been waging for more than 40 years — that the story of women guerrillas began to attract the attention of both scholars and the public. Their voices began to be heard in print, along with men’s, and more recently, were also captured in video documentaries, websites and blogs. This purportedly encouraged other voices to come forward, and the public began to hear the “new truth” about this aspect of Malayan history, something different from what had been taught in schools and textbooks previously.2

These publications presented issues from the perspective of the Communists and they managed to garner a warm reception from the masses, especially among the younger generation. Videos were also specifically produced as a tribute to former MCP leaders and their supporters.3 While these new developments make Malaysian history seem more lively and exciting, the purpose of this article is to offer a historical and gender-based perspective on the involvement of Malayan women in underground and guerrilla activities. This provides new insights on how and why women were involved in such activities — traditionally considered to be neither in the biological nor cultural domain of women, —the challenges they faced as combatants, wives and mothers, and how they survived in the hostile jungle. This enables us to see how their involvement in guerrilla activities differed from men’s.

10.

1 The 22-year-old woman named Ah Ying was introduced by the District Officer of Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan at a big anti-Red (Communist) rally at Kuala Pilah on 25 September 1957. The Malayan Federation Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman attended the rally. See, 1957 Road to Nationhood, New Straits Times Special, 31 August 2006.2 The earliest publication on the lives of the former Malayan women guerillas is Life as the River Flows by Agnes Khoo (2004). The life of the Malayan guerillas (including women) currently living in southern Thailand can also be seen in three video documentaries: I Love Malaya (2006), The Last Communist (2006) and Apa Khabar Orang Kampung/Village People Radio Show (2007). Among widely viewed blogs on the Communists is matamin.blogspot.com, created by Mat Amin, a 60-year-old former guerilla from the 10th Regiment currently residing in the Sukhirin Peace Village in southern Thailand. In 2008, Fahmi Reza, a self-taught graphic artist and an activist, directed two documentary films on the left and the Communist movement, 10 Tahun Sebelum Merdeka and Revolusi 48. Both went uploaded on the Internet and were well-received by critics. 3 See “Malayan Communists go online” by Aniza Damis in New Sunday Times, 24 May 2009. The documentary, I Love Malaya, for instance, was produced “in memory of Salim and Rashid Maidin”. Salim, a police veteran, would welcome Chin Peng back into Malaysia as he saw the former Communist leader as an honest man who fought against colonial rule. Salim, as stated in the documentary, passed away on 16 August 2005 before he could give his affidavit in support of Chin Peng’s formal request to the Malaysia government to return to Malaysia. Rashid Maidin, leader of the 10th Regiment, passed away on 1 September 2006. Meanwhile Apa Khabar Orang Kampung/The Village Radio Show, directed by Amir Muhammad (also the writer for this semi-documentary) was a tribute to Pak Kassim (1920–2006), an equally important figure from the 10th Regiment, while The Last Communist (also directed and produced by Amir Muhammad) was inspired by the early life and legacy of Chin Peng.

tHE MALAyAn COMMunISt PArty AnD tHE rECruItMEnt OF WOMEn

Pierson provides two generalised feminist perspectives on the exclusion of women from war and organised violence, namely the broad exclusion of women from the formal societal apparatus of power and coercion, and their connection with motherhood (Pierson, 1987). This polarisation creates gender differences — with war and public life being viewed as a male domain, while women become a symbol of peace, the home and the protected society (Macdonald, 1987, p. 4). History, however, has shown that women have been involved in war in myriad roles; these range from those of war victims, interns and spies, to wives, daughters and lovers. Women have also played the roles of generals and war leaders, leading their people’s armies to war, such as in the case of Queen Boadicea (England) and Hua Mulan (China). In Malaya, throughout the MCP’s existence from 1930 to 1989, women became an important part of the party and its struggles, initially in fighting the Japanese, then the British, and after 1957, the Malayan (later Malaysian) government.

The earliest involvement of Malayan women in the anti-colonial movement took place in the 1930s. Although the MCP was established in 1930, its policy towards women was unclear. However, the 1937 Japanese invasion of China necessitated the party’s mobilisation of all Chinese, regardless of gender, to the anti-Japanese movement, especially in the period from 1941 to 1945. In the early phases, the women targeted by the MCP were educated, and thereafter, subjected to occasional propaganda. These women — the majority of them Chinese — began as underground MCP members. They acted as couriers, assisted the Communists in their propaganda, purchased food for their armed forces located deep in the jungle and carried out subversive activities that were assigned to them. By the end of the war, it was claimed that the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), also known as Bintang Tiga (three stars), had between 7,000 and 8,000 members (men and women) under arms, and thousands more supporters scattered among rural and urban labour groups (Freedom News, 2008, p. 6). The women were absorbed into eight different regiments located throughout Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Johor-Melaka, Perak, Pahang-Terengganu and Kedah. During his three and a half years as liaison officer with the MCP, living with the guerrillas in the Malayan jungle, Spencer Chapman saw the women of the MPAJA as great fighters who were committed to fighting the Japanese despite their small number (Chapman, 1963).

This group of educated Chinese women spread anti-Japanese propaganda to the rural areas, covering not only adults but also children (Suriani, 2006, p. 26). It was also through this group that the MPAJA and the MCP extended their influence to Malay villages where anti-Japanese sentiments were equally strong. After the surrender of the Japanese and the subsequent establishment of the British Military Administration (BMA) on 3 September 1945, the MCP legally became a political party. This greatly facilitated the spread of Communist ideology through various associations, while united fronts were formed with non-Communists to consolidate their influence. Ironically, the efforts of the BMA to improve the British’s post-war image through welfare work provided an opportunity for Communist women to strengthen the image of Communist organisations.

Under the BMA Emergency Relief Committee, representatives of various charities, Chinese businessmen, the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and Anti-Japanese Union (AJU) were co-opted under one roof. As the civil wing of the MPAJA, the AJU had already begun to register refugees at district centres in Singapore. Lee Kiu — the woman who represented the AJU in the relief committee — claimed that by 26

September, the AJU had registered 80,000 refugees (out of the 700,000 on the island). The AJU was later so

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inextricable from the official operation that by 8 October 1945, Communist or resistance associations were running eight out of the 18 relief centres (Harper, 1999, p. 66).

In the immediate post-war period, the MCP made Singapore the base for its “open and legal” struggles and began to penetrate youth groups, women associations, peasant groups and various workers’ unions. In the six months from December 1947 to May 1948, it was reported that 130 out of 335 labour associations were under Communist control while another 70 were under their influence (Ho Hui Ling, 2004, pp. 12–13). This contributed significantly to the strengthening of the Communist infrastructure in Singapore. The Communists also targeted both male and female Chinese middle school students and teachers. The party’s student committee penetrated these schools as early as 1948, with the aims of turning them into the “emergency nerve centre” of the MCP network in Singapore. These initiatives saw the active participation of female students. Interestingly, it was a Chinese woman who was responsible for directing and strategising all MCP activities in Singapore in the early 1950s, until she was caught by the authorities in October 1953 (CO 1022/207).

The anti-yellow culture campaign that started in early 1950 also saw active participation of women from the Singapore Women’s Federation. The campaign was directed against imported, degenerative culture that weakened and corrupted individual and public morality. The subsequent progressive movement began to take shape through this campaign. It was widely supported by student bodies, trade unions and radical politicians as well as Malay and Indian cultural associations including ASAS 50, the prominent Malay literary association (Harper, 1999, pp. 294–5). Notably, the campaign saw women as its main agents — the Singapore Women’s Federation, one of the sponsoring organisations for the campaign, was the first to promote the formation of a permanent body opposing yellow culture (PRO 27 330/56). However, the colonial government perceived the anti-yellow culture campaign to be Communist propaganda intended to raise political awareness and get support from intellectuals. The colonial government responded by arresting six people on 19 August 1956, including Linda Cheng Mong Hock from the Singapore Women’s Federation, who was also the chairman of the Singapore Anti-Yellow Culture Council (PRO 27 330/56).

When the government began to single out labour and trade unions as part of the anti-left drive in mid-1948, the Communist revolution, which was marked by sabotage and violence against imperial functionaries, began to stir. The emergency law was promulgated in Malaya on 18 June, and spread to Singapore by 24 June. On 23 July the MCP was banned; other organisations/political parties similarly affected were the MPAJA Ex-Service Comrades’ Association (MPAJESCA), New Democratic Youth League (NDYL), left-wing Malay organisations like Pembela Tanah Air (PETA), Angkatan Pemuda Insaf (API), Angkatan Wanita Sedar (AWAS), and Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya or Malay Nationalist Party (PKMM/MNP). June 1948 marked the start of the armed struggles between the MCP and the colonial government. On the Communist side, Freedom News, an illegal MCP propaganda newsletter which first appeared in 1949, reported the “glorious achievements” of the MCP regiments in the various states during the second half of 19504, although subsequent British counter offensives such as the “anti-bandit month”, “operation starvation” and selective curfews had affected the Communists considerably, resulting in them facing a shortage of arms, ammunition and food (CO 717/205 52932 1951). By 1953, security force operations including cutting

4 Freedom News, Issue No. 26, 15 June 1952 “Glorious war achievements of the 8th Regiment of our army stationed in Kedah during the latter half year of 1950”, as cited in Freedom News: The Untold Story of the Communist Underground Publication, p. 68.

off the Communists’ food supply and the promise of attractive rewards for guerrillas delivered dead or alive had shown their effect on the morale of the MCP members in the Malayan jungle. The ceaseless pressure from government security forces and the low morale among the combatants compelled Chin Peng to withdraw his headquarters to southern Thailand in the last week of 1953. The MCP relocations involved hundreds of female comrades.

rEASOnS FOr WOMEn’S InvOLvEMEnt In tHE unDErGrOunD AnD GuErrILLA MOvEMEntS

For the women of Malaya (including pre-1965 Singapore), there were various reasons as to why they became involved in the underground and guerrilla warfare. These included the influence of changing global ideology and the political progression that had taken place in the country or due to the surroundings. Kumari Jayawardena believes that in most countries that fell under imperialist domination, women’s movements did not occur in a vacuum, instead corresponding to and — to some extent — determined by the wider social movements of which they formed a part (Jayawardena, 1986, p. 10). This is most true when we look at the motives behind the involvement of women in the underground and guerrilla movements in Malaya since the 1930s.

For the urban educated women like Eng Ching Ming (alias Suriani Abdullah) and her progressive friends who were influenced by the Communist ideology at the Nan Hwa High School in Sitiawan, Perak (where Chin Peng also studied), the reasons for their involvement were liberation from British colonialism and liberation of women. They were born in the “cyclic era” (where there was socio-economic and political imbalance due to colonial domination), which required them to be involved actively in the labour associations. This subsequently led them into the jungle as guerrillas (Suriani, 2005, p. 10). Suriani, who officially became an MCP member in 1940, and a few other women comrades were sent to organise anti-Japanese activities; these activities started with women farmers in the Sungai Siput district (Perak) and were followed by women labourers at a nearby tin mine and cigarette factory. The group also conducted free classes in Kampar, Pusing (Teronoh), Putih and Ipoh, targeting the illiterate among civilians.

The MCP strategy of sending educated women to the grassroots was seen as the perfect plan in their attempts to control labour, which was female-dominated. The “Perak Tin Labour Association”, for instance, had 20,000 members and if family members were included in the count, the figure is much higher at between 50,000 and 60,000. Besides persuading the women, Suriani and her progressive female friends also organised strikes to demand for better wages. Suriani reiterated that their efforts were fruitful as the “women were more consciously aware of class and they became changed agents of labour associations” (Suriani, 2006: chapter 1). The surroundings also contributed to women’s involvement in the guerrilla war. As children, many had already lived in areas that were considered revolutionary zones (red areas) as early as during the Japanese Occupation. Chen Xiu Zhu, who was born in 1937 in Bukit Gurun, Kedah, relates the following story about what led to her involvement in the Communist movement:

It [Bukit Gurun] was known as the Cow Farm in Kedah. It was a very red area. From a very young age, I was always around the Communists, working together with them. I was a courier, sending letters here and there. I helped the comrades to buy things and gathered intelligence for them and so on. We saw how unjustly the Japanese

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and British Imperialists were treating the masses. We wanted to right the wrong, to take revenge, to crush British imperialism so that there would be better days ahead. That was how I developed my revolutionary consciousness and joined the movement.5

For the second-generation MCP women (second generation here refers to women comrades who joined the MCP after its withdrawal to southern Thailand) similar reasons led to their involvement in the guerrilla movement. For instance, Lou Lan (born in 1947 in Bentong, Pahang) and Zhao Ya Yin (born in 1955 in Batu Gajah, Perak), were both born into families that supported the revolution. Lou Lan’s father and his siblings were involved in the anti-Japanese army and after the Japanese surrender, they returned to the jungle to wage war against the British. Lou Lan’s paternal grandfather and grandmother had also supported the guerrillas. This family history of involvement with such movements became one of the reasons that prompted her to join the MCP’s armed struggle.6 Zhao Ya Yin’s family lived in Tronoh, which was regarded then as the revolutionary base for the MCP. Due to this, the family’s involvement in the party seems inevitable, but it was her youngest brother who influenced her considerably to join the revolutionary struggle. He instilled in her revolutionary ideas at a very young age (14–15 years old), and took her to watch movies with progressive themes. In 1972 or 1973, Zhao was already involved in the party as an underground member,7 and by 1976, at the age of 19, she moved into the jungle to join the guerrillas.8

From the above discussion, it is clear that the MCP benefited enormously from the existing social structures and values within Chinese society. According to Stubbs, kinship relations and friendship networks are important in Chinese society. This means family members or close friends who had joined the guerrilla movement would be given much support. Stubbs claims that in the initial stages of the Emergency, the strength of these friendship and family ties enabled the MCP to achieve a strong position (Stubbs, 2004, pp. 90–91). Malay women were also involved in the anti-Japanese movement. Influence over them was exerted through the propaganda works of the Malay nationalists and the MCP since the Japanese Occupation. In Malay villages along the Perak River where anti-Japanese sentiments were strong, the propaganda work was much easier with the Chinese from the MPAJA and the MCP helping the Malay nationalists. In Johore, a Malay guerrilla organisation known as the North Johore Brigade was already in existence before the formation of the MCP’s Malay regiment — the 10th Regiment — on 21 May 1949. This brigade was established on 12 September 1948 and was led by Jasman Sulaiman (Mahmud Embong, 2008, p. 101). Jasman and his wife had been actively involved in the anti-Japanese movement since May 1942. In Pauh of Arau district, Perlis, there was a family of Malay revolutionaries — Pak Saud and his wife Mak Tijah — who were actively organising Malay women groups to fight the Japanese. In fact, Arau was considered a strong base for the anti-Japanese movement (Abdullah C. D., 2005, pp. 192–223).

5 Cited in Agnes Khoo (2004), p. 67. 6 Cited in Agnes Khoo (2004), pp. 120–121.7 As an underground member, she worked as a party courier and lived in Tanjung Malim. To avoid British arrest, she disguised herself as a rubber tapper and construction worker.8 Cited in Agnes Khoo (2004), pp. 148–149.

Compared with the Chinese, the majority of Malays however, viewed the involvement of fellow Malays in radical movements as religiously wrong and many stayed away. Families who were openly involved in such activities were often looked at with deep suspicion, and this quite often led to ostracism by fellow villagers. In the end, many quietly joined the guerrilla movement.9 Siti Meriyam Idris (alias Atom) from Lubok Kawah, a Communist-controlled area in Temerloh, remembers her mother as an avid supporter of the MPAJA — but she did it quietly to avoid being ostracised by villagers. As for Siti Meriyam, she joined the MCP as she was attracted to the anti-colonial spirit shown by MCP Malay women cadres who had come to Lubok Kawah, like Zainab Mahmud and Shamsiah Fakeh. Siti Meriyam was among the women (most of whom were illiterate) who joined the guerrilla war without any understanding of the struggle, but who were inspired by the “heroism” of Malay leaders of the MCP, especially the women cadres, who spoke fluently. These women were good orators, hardworking, unafraid of guns, and had a strong anti-colonial spirit which reminded new recruits of traditional anti-colonial figures like Datuk Bahaman (Khoo, 2004, pp. 207–208).

The MCP Malay women cadres were somewhat different from MCP’s women leaders especially those from the 10th Regiment. For instance, Shamsiah Fakeh, who initially led the women wing of the PKMM (later known as AWAS [League of Aware Women]) before joining the 10th Regiment, cited the hatred of imperialism and colonialism, and the fight for women’s emancipation as the reasons behind her involvement in the anti-colonial struggle. Her experience in a number of bitter divorces had increased her awareness of the need to secure emancipation from feudal oppression. For Shamsiah, this was a heavy task and “a liberated country is the first step in bringing freedom to women” (Shamsiah Fakeh, 2004, p. 45).

With regard to AWAS, Abdullah C.D. reiterates in his memoirs that the MNP women’s wing was deeply influenced by the contemporary global women’s freedom movement. In particular, AWAS was very much influenced by similar movements in Europe, where Indonesian women who were actively fighting against the Dutch served as its role model. Since its establishment in 1946 and until its first congress, held on 8 March 1947, AWAS members exceeded three thousand (Abdullah C. D., 2005, p. 6). AWAS, which had attracted a number of educated women — many in madrasahs in Sumatra — urged Malay women to wake up and change their fate. In their efforts to eradicate illiteracy among women, AWAS members initiated the setting up of village schools for women, conducted talks on health, hygiene and midwifery, and provided assistance to marginalised women, like prostitutes (Harper, 1999, p. 72). Ahmad Boestamam, an important figure in the MNP, saw AWAS under the leadership of Shamsiah as “a women’s organisation that had its own constitutional structure and battle cry which, essentially, comprises one shout of ‘AWAS’ that is accompanied by a clasped right hand with one finger pointing upwards to indicate warning” (Ahmad Boestamam, 2004, p. 167). When the British banned AWAS in 1948, most of its members including Shamsiah joined the MCP guerrillas.

As a point of comparison, it is interesting to note that for the second generation of MCP women, socio-economic issues like poverty were more important than for the first generation. In the 1960s, when the party began opening its doors to “newcomers” in order to improve its security and strategy, more local Siamese joined the movement than Malaysians. In his memoir, Ibrahim Chik, one of the prominent leaders of the 10th Regiment, claimed that these locals were never wholeheartedly into the party struggle and

9 One Hassan bin Deraman, from Kuala Nerang, Kedah admits the villagers looked down on his family after it became known that his brother Ismail had joined the MCP. Interview with Hassan on 16 January 2009 at Kampong Baru, Padang Sanai, Kuala Nerang Kedah.

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had joined because of economic reasons. Poverty-stricken villagers saw life as MCP guerrillas to be more comfortable, with enough food to eat. Ibrahim Chik claimed that a few years after the MCP had moved to the south of Thailand, access to food sources had improved considerably because there were villagers who were supporting them. This attracted villagers to join the guerrillas in droves. A few even brought along wives and children in the search for a better life (Ibrahim Chik, 2004, p. 181).

Recent interviews with second generation MCP women combatants currently living in southern Thailand corroborate the description given by Ibrahim Chik. Because of poverty, 60-year-old Muna or Mek Pik (born in Pattani) became an MCP member in 1978, at the age of 29. She was in Natawee (Songkhla province) working as a rubber tapper when a group of MCP guerrillas approached her and asked her to join them. She was also pushed to join and live with the guerrillas by endless family squabbles.10 Poverty drove 55-year-old Chang Li Li to join the guerrillas. Chang was born in Betong and her family lived in extreme poverty, as their rubber plantation was no longer productive. She joined the MCP in 1971, at the age of 17. Initially she attended the lecture circuits conducted by MCP comrades within and outside the village before deciding to live in the jungle.11 The Communists successfully implanted the idea that Malaysians were living in poverty and that the government was not concerned about the poor. Ideas such as these certainly lifted the spirits of the listeners. Both Muna and Chang Li Li left the jungle life after 1989 with the signing of the Hat Yai Peace Accord.

For 68-year-old Khadijah Daud, her life before joining the party was one of poverty. However, she joined the MCP in the 1970s because she was accompanying her husband. She also thought that their life would be much better as she believed everything would be provided for. Khadijah claims most of her fellow villagers who had joined the MCP had not fully understood the objectives of the Communists, but nevertheless were impressed with the MCP leaders who always harped on British bias and discrimination towards the poor.12 Talks given by MCP members managed to attract many teenage girls (the MCP focused on those who were 13 years old and above) or even the wives of comrades who had entered the jungle to follow their husbands, even though they did not fully understand the essence of these talks.13 For the latter group, they were unable to withdraw for fear of assassination. 47-year-old Aishah or Suti (born in Sungai Golok) followed her husband to live in the jungle in 1977, at the age of 15, without fully comprehending the party ideology or its struggle. She admitted she was afraid to leave the party and continued to live in the jungle for seven years. She managed to escape from the jungle camp at the age of 22.14

“Xiulan” (pseudonym) joined the 12th Regiment on 14 March 1963, not because of poverty but because of persuasion by her lover (later husband) Zhizhen. With an inheritance from her father in the form of a small rubber plantation and a textile shop, Xiulan had led a reasonably comfortable life since childhood. It was her lover Zhizhen who persuaded her to join the Communists in the jungle, a move that was strongly opposed by her mother. Xiulan was also worried when told by Zhizhen that the Thai authorities

10 Muna or Mek Pik, 60 years old, was interviewed on 14 March 2009. Muna currently lives in a village near the Khao Nam Kheng Historical tunnel, Natawee, Songkhla, which was formerly the base of the 8th Regiment.11 Chang Li Li, 55 years old, was interviewed on 1 January 2009 at Betong Peace Village — Chulaporn Village No. 10, Yala.12 Interviewed on 25 February 2009 in Betong Peace Village — Chulaporn Village No.10, Yala.13 Maimunah aka Kamsiah was interviewed on 25 February 2009 at Betong Peace Village — Chulaporn Village No. 10, Yala. Maimunah was from Gherbing, Yala, and is at present 55 years old. She had joined the MCP when she was 17, as she had to follow her husband into the jungle. 14 Aishah aka Suti, 47 years old, was interviewed on 7 January 2009 at Betong Peace Village — Chulaporn Village No. 10, Yala.

were keeping an eye on her movements, and that she might be arrested and punished for helping the Communists. On one misty morning in February 1963, Xiulan left home, leaving a letter for her mother, saying that she was going to work in Bangkok. She lived to regret the move, for life in the jungle and the Communist struggle were not what she had expected (Xiulan, 1983).

Yet among the second generation of MCP women cadres there were those who had volunteered to join because they had understood the Communist ideology and military struggles, as claimed by 57-year-old Ya Mai. Ya Mai was an educated Kuala Lumpur girl and had helped her parents run a small business that provided her family with comfortable sustenance. After finishing her sixth form in the early 1970s, she worked as a clerk in a company for three to four years. During that time she and a few of her female friends were already interested in the MCP and its egalitarian ideology.15

From the discussion above, it is clear that women recruits joined the guerrilla war for myriad reasons, ranging from economic factors like poverty, to the loyal accompanying of their husbands, friends or lovers, even though a few of them had little or no understanding of the Communist ideology. Some joined for political and ideological reasons; such was more discernable among the first batch of women comrades. Others were forced to join the guerrillas and forcibly taken into the jungle. 84-year-old Rosimah Alang binte Mat Yen from Kampung Gajah, Perak, spent 52 years of her life living with the Communists after she was kidnapped at the age of 17. She was working in a rice field in Changkat Jering, central Perak, when she was caught by a group of Communist guerrillas (Utusan Malaysia, 30 May 2009).

tHE POSItIOn OF WOMEn In tHE GuErrILLA MOvEMEnt

History has shown that each guerrilla war has its own peculiar characteristics. However, a comparison made between different guerrilla wars shows that these wars do share some common traits. With regards to women guerrillas, the MCP guerrilla war shared some common characteristics with other guerrilla wars like the ones waged by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA) in the Philippines. In the case of the CPP and the NPA, women generally occupied a lower position in most military actions, as men generally did not think women were as capable of undertaking the functions as they were. Thus, men normally handled combat operations.16 This was an impediment to women who wanted to climb to higher positions in the party as combat experience — including the number of enemies killed — was normally taken into consideration for such promotion.

As in the CPP and the NPA, few MCP women comrades managed to move up to higher positions in the organisation although male MCP leaders continually claimed in their memoirs that women were important assets to the movement. The majority of women comrades remained as lower grade combatants with only a few being able to secure important senior positions. The prevalent belief among female comrades was that only those who were brave and intelligent could climb the ladder of success within the organisation. This statement is quite true if we look at the “success” story of well-known MCP women leaders like Suriani and Shamsiah.

15 Interviewed on 1 January 2009 at Betong Peace Village — Chulaporn Village No.10, Yala. 16 For more details of the CPP and NPA women combatants, see Anne-Marie Hilsdon (1995). Madonnas and Martyrs: Militarism and Violence in the Philippines. New South Wales: Allen & Unwin.

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Suriani (known as Eng Ming Ching before her marriage to Abdullah C.D. in 1955) began her rapid ascent through the ranks of the MCP in Ipoh when she was entrusted to lead a propaganda team comprising Chinese, Malay and Indian people, and train party cadres in a variety of tasks with the goal of educating people on the importance of liberating Malaya. Her charismatic way of handling and completing the tasks given to her, as well as her considerable wartime experience, led her to hold many important appointments within the MCP hierarchy. She was one of the party members sent by the MCP to liaise with the British on the fate of Malayans immediately after the Japanese retreat. She was despatched to Parit, Perak, to settle the Malay-Sino clashes that erupted after the Japanese surrender. She gave speeches in public gatherings within and outside Malaya and was directly responsible for the relocation of the 10th Regiment from Pahang to the Malaya-Thai border in 1953–54. Her Chinese background was an asset that helped to smooth out this relocation/resettlement process. In 1964, Suriani held the position of deputy secretary in a party committee and in 1975 was appointed member of the MCP central committee. She attended the signing ceremony of the Hat Yai accord as guest-of-honour.17

For Shamsiah, although her position in the party (in particular the 10th Regiment) was unclear, it was believed that her recruitment (she officially became an MCP member in 1948) was planned to attract Malay women to join the party especially after the establishment of the 10th Regiment.18 The formation of the Malay wing was an MCP strategy to attract participation from the Malay leftists, as it believed the struggle to liberate Malaya would not succeed without the involvement and support of the Malay people, who formed the biggest ethnic group in Malaya. By using Shamsiah’s influence as leader of AWAS, the MNP leaders, who had a close relationship with the MCP like Musa Ahmad and Wahi Anuar, were convinced that more Malay women would join the Communists.

Overall, women formed an important part of the fighting strength of the MCP. However, their exact number is unknown. However, it is clear from memoirs and oral sources that these female comrades played an active role in the armed struggles, especially before the MCP’s relocation to southern Thailand. Some even led platoons and fighting units. Many died during skirmishes with security forces. Interestingly, the leaders of the 10th Regiment viewed those who had perished in the war against the British as Srikandi Bangsa

(flowers of the nation) (Abdullah C.D., 2007), a label that was never accorded at the time by any other Malayan political movement to its women wing.

Although the number of Malay women comrades was small, they were not spared from carrying out heavy tasks that were assigned to them. When the MCP decided in 1951 to open up land for cultivation in Paya Luas, Bera district (Pahang), so as to overcome food shortages and starvation which worsened in that year due to the introduction of the Briggs Plan, women were among those in the forefront of this endeavour. The Briggs Plan was implemented in 1950 to cut the link between the Communists and the Orang Asli (aborigines) who subsequently became their main food supplier. The Communist foray among the Orang Asli was a cause of concern for the government, especially the military top brass, when it was reported in 1953 that 30,000 Orang Asli were already under Communist influence (Iskandar Carey, 1976, p. 311). As a result, the Briggs Plan was extended to them as well. Among the important steps taken was the relocation of the Orang Asli into “new villages” of their own, which were put under close government surveillance.

17 For more details, see, Suriani Abdullah, Memoir Suriani Abdullah. See also, Abdullah C.D., Memoir Abdullah C.D, Zaman Pergerakan sehingga 1948, chapters 27 and 31.18 Dewan Masyarakat, August 1991. See the investigation report of Shamsiah Fakeh by Fatini Yaacob (Final Part)

To solve the problem of food shortage, the MCP established a special unit consisting of 11 members to carry out cultivation in Paya Luas; three of these members were women — Habshah, Hitam and Zahurah. This special unit carried out military training and cultivated tapioca and vegetables before they were ambushed by security forces, resulting in the death of Hitam (Abdullah C.D., 2007, p. 227). Apart from this special unit, the MCP also created a separate unit to study the kinds of jungle produce that were fit for consumption. Numerous MCP platoons had experienced bouts of food poisoning caused by the indiscriminate consumption of jungle fruits. Through the efforts of this special unit, the guerrillas were able to eliminate starvation after more jungle produce safe for human consumption was found.

The “long march” towards the Malaya-Thai border (1953–54) was another important episode in the life of the women comrades. Safety and security were major factors for the relocation of the main MCP base in Pahang, as it was no longer safe due to constant harassment by security forces. At its peak, the relocation involved individual and group struggle, as members had to march through thick jungle, often at the risk of ambush by security forces, as well as lacking arms, ammunition, and food. The journey itself took one year and six months to complete, from Bentong, passing through Teras, before reaching Raub.19 By then, the food they had taken along was depleted. The Orang Asli could not provide much assistance either, because they were under government surveillance. As a result starvation was common. It became necessary for the comrades to depend on jungle produce; bananas and other jungle fruits became their main staple. From Raub they moved northwards in September 1953 through thick jungle heading for Cameron Highlands arriving at their destination in the following October. Here Suriani managed to make contact with local MCP members and the group was given assistance, including food. After three days in the jungle of Cameron Highlands, they were attacked by British soldiers. This forced the troops to detour to Gunong Kerbau in Perak.

Then they moved to Belum in upper Perak and found that the British had moved the villagers to Gerik; these villagers had been suspected to be strong supporters of the anti-British movement. From Kampung Belum, the MCP troops moved into Kampung Hala in Betong on the Thai side, ending the long march. In his memoir, Abdullah saw the long march “as an extraordinarily difficult journey unlike previous ones. Without any courier assistance we had to traverse areas where there were no humans and without the support of the Orang Asli food supply” (Abdullah C.D. 2007, pp. 300–302).

Do women suffer more than men in guerrilla warfare? As cited by Abdullah, Pak Kassim and other MCP male members, the long march of 1953-54, which took one-and-half years to complete, proved to be the toughest episode in their struggles. This was more so for the women comrades. The challenges faced by women cadres were enormous, as physically women are less strong than men. Only their high spirits and courage kept them going. These women comrades had to survive the inhospitable and hostile jungle, traversing the main range (Banjaran Titiwangsa), including Gunong Kerbau. They had to enter into the world of wild animals, poisonous snakes and plants, and diseases. Most of the time, they had no food. They frequently ran out of rice, and starvation became common during the long march.20

19 Apa Khabar Orang Kampong (2007). According to an important figure in the 10th Regiment, Pak Kassim, the long march from the MCP central base in Bentong, Pahang, to southern Thailand took one year and six months . 20 Apa Khabar Orang Kampong, video recording, interview with Pak Kassim.

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At that time, the exotics of the tropical jungle and death co-mingled. All women comrades had to carry heavy loads on their back. They had to live on the run to avoid British ambush. The situation was much worse for those who were pregnant. Zainab Mahmud (Musa Ahmad’s wife) was at an early stage of pregnancy when the long march began. When they reached Kampung Hala, Musa Ahmad and about 10 combatants remained behind to look after Zainab who was already in an advanced stage of pregnancy. A month later she gave birth to a daughter, who was given away to a local Thai-Malay for adoption (Aloysius, 1995, pp. 38–39). It is unimaginable how the women comrades dealt with their sanitary needs, especially during menstruation and birth. Without soap and cloth, their lives during such times must have been difficult, although the women came up with a method to delay or stop this biological process by consuming jungle plants. Others stopped menstruating because of the hardship. The women also found that some jungle plants were useful in preventing hunger and in facilitating abortion.21

LIFE In tHE GuErrILLA CAMPS

The word guerrilla itself connotes war and war-time conditions like difficult mountain and jungle terrain and the lack of arms and food. Being well acquainted with the local environment offers increased mobility to the guerrillas who favour hit-and-run tactics that inflict damage with less risk. It also provides time and opportunity to evade the enemy. Guerrillas also tend to enjoy local support, including from those living in the jungle, although at times this is secured through terror tactics — a necessity to prolong their struggles (Beckett, 1999). This definition fits the nature of the MCP armed struggles, which, from the perspectives of its cadres, were filled with hardship and difficulty. Its tactic was one of “attack and quick withdrawal”. Ibrahim Chik, one of the leaders of the 10th Regiment, shares a similar view when he reiterates: “the characteristic of war focusing on guerrilla tactics was an important agenda in the movement” (Ibrahim Chik, 2004, pp. 71–72). The ability to “hide” and “survive” became the main feature of the MCP guerrilla war, enabling the guerrilla’s survival until 1989. The strategy was to avoid excessive armed encounters, as these would risk exposing their position and those who provided supplies. The guerrillas lacked both arms and food. Hunger and starvation were part of their lives and they had to eat anything available from the jungle, including food prohibited by Islamic teachings.22 They also had to be constantly on the run and not camp for long in one place.

Under these stressful and uncertain conditions, both the MPAJA and MCP female guerrillas lived alongside their male comrades. The popular image of women as soft-spoken and protected by men changed according to the circumstances during the Japanese Occupation (1942–45), the Emergency (1948–60) and their struggles against the Malayan/Malaysian government until the 1989 Hat Yai Peace Accord. There were no clear gender boundaries or lines especially during wartime. Like the men, female combatants in the MPAJA and the MCP underwent similarly difficult times. They had to abide by party discipline, attend military training and political courses. They were exposed to offensives by Japanese intelligence and, later, British security forces, and were equally liable to be killed if caught by the enemy. Between the late

21 Interview with Leong Yee Seng on 14 March 2009 at the Khao Nam Kheng Historical Tunnel, Natawee, Songkhla, 14 March 2009.22 See, Apa Khabar Orang Kampong. Pak Kassim admitted that good food was necessary to stay strong but that they only ate meat that could be found in the jungle. He reiterated that the propaganda that Communists ate pork, elephants, tigers, snakes, frogs and so forth was meant to put them in bad light especially among Muslims. Interestingly, Pak Kassim admitted tacitly to having consumed these. As he had claimed, “how can Muslims eat pork? But if we were forced to, we would take it. It’s no big deal.”

1940s and early 1950s, the Straits Echo and Times of Malaya reported many cases of female bandits (as the guerrillas were termed by the government and the local newspapers) being caught while running errands as messengers, or killed or wounded by British security forces.

Interestingly, women showed they had more tenacity to face and cope with the hardship of guerrilla life than men sometimes did. Atom’s husband could not cope with the hardship and died while in camp,23 as did Nona Baker’s brother Vincent, the general manager of the Pahang Consolidated Mine at Sungai Lembing near Kuantan (Pahang), who had chosen to stay with the orang bukit or mountain people in the Sungai Lembing forest instead of withdrawing to Singapore during the Japanese Occupation.24 Vincent succumbed to severe emotional pressure (though he had believed that the war would be over soon and that he could go back to the mines). With his strength and spirit drained, he died of chronic malaria. Behind the enthusiasm in recalling their struggles, former-MCP leaders have not failed to highlight other aspects of their life including their suffering as women guerrillas. Suriani wrote of her underground experience in Chemor with 20 other female cadres during the onset of the Japanese Occupation. To avoid Japanese detection, they disguised as men, put on man’s clothes, and kept short hair (Suriani, 2006, p. 61). They were always on the run and were prepared for any eventualities, including combat and withdrawal.

Suriani, who was known as an “anti-Japanese fighter” among female international Communists, was captured in January 1945 while spreading Communist propaganda in the Tanjung Tualang area in Perak and was subsequently tortured by the Japanese. Suriani admitted the torture physically and mentally destroyed her sense of self as a woman, but that her spirit remained intact. Her life as a captive of the Japanese was horrible, and one she had to endure until the Japanese surrender in August 1945. Due to the poor food and poor sanitation, she suffered from rheumatism for the rest of her life. She had to endure bouts of chest pain and her menstrual cycle was also affected (Suriani, 2006, p. 56).

In terms of work division, the MCP leaders seemed to have fairly distributed the responsibilities among men and women. In the guerrilla war, especially during the Emergency and after, both men and women had to forge their collective energy to ensure victory. As combatants who had to always be prepared for armed encounters as directed by their leaders, female comrades had to carry out other tasks — namely, sentry duty and transporting food. Female guerrillas also had to undertake duties as nurses and medical assistants. Besides these specific tasks, women cadres had to deal with many aspects of daily life such as cooking (the kitchen team was entirely female), collecting and chopping firewood, and transporting food to the camp. Many female comrades considered these difficult tasks. Xiulan relates her experience below:

I will never forget my first experience in picking up supplies. The heavy load on my back seemed to make me move backwards. The ache on my shoulder was unbearable and both my hands were numb. On climbing uphill, the heavy load made my waist ache and my legs became feeble. I was dizzy and felt like vomiting. Every single step was a test in endurance. (‘Xiulan’ 1983, p. 12)

23 Cited in Agnes Khoo (2004).24 Dorothy Thatcher and Robert Cross, (1993), p. 74. Nona Baker, an English lady had lived in Sungai Lembing since 1935 to help manage his brother’s daily life. Her brother Vincent was known as Tuan Besar (big master) even in the jungle although the guerrillas had changed his name to “Phai Kher” while Nona was called “Pai Naa” — the Indomitable One and the White Nona respectively.

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During the days when there were no supplies to pick, the cadres would take part in shooting practice, laying landmines, studying military lessons on guerrilla warfare tactics and attending political classes.

Even though their jobs seemed to be equal to those of the men’s, some of the female ex-guerrillas claim women were actually given comparatively easier jobs because of their weaker physical built. That is why most of the women were given tasks relating to the kitchen, and tasks such as planting vegetables, breeding animals and sewing, and as nurses because the male leaders thought these jobs were less demanding and more suitable for women, whereas bearing firearms and going to war were given to the men. Except for Chang Li Li, most of the women interviewed (mostly from the second generation of MCP combatants) claimed they were never involved in any armed skirmishes. Women were the last to be taught weapon training. Women themselves acknowledged ambivalence with regards to combat; some doubted their ability to kill while others agreed that “we have to kill them before they kill us.”25 It is possible that the view that “women were incapable for combat”26 was quite prevalent among the males. Since their relocation to the south of Thailand and Chin Peng’s departure for China in 1961, the MCP’s approach focused more on strengthening the morale of the combatants through ideological and military training rather than armed struggles. The few weapons and little ammunition that were available were usually given to the male comrades rather than the women, except those who were selected for “infiltration” into Malaya in the early 1970s.27 Normally, the tasks were divided among males and females based on their abilities through the eyes of their superiors. For instance, Chang Li Li had entered Malaya twice in the 1970s as instructed by her superiors. Like Aishah, Chang Li Li also admitted that the combination of bravery and education would give female cadres more opportunities for promotion in the MCP.28

WOMEn AnD MOtHErHOOD

While the guerrilla war broke down certain gender boundaries, and many women grew accustomed to surviving in hostile jungle environments, female guerrillas were never far from reminders that they were women and/or mothers. In particular, their love lives (being in love and being loved); marriage; procreation; and having children are notable difficulties under these circumstances. For those who were married, how did they feel being separated from their loved ones — husbands (if their husbands were not with the guerrillas), children and relatives? Did they have the desire to “become women” again — to dress in feminine clothes, put on make-up, or at least to have access to proper sanitary care during menstruation? Did they miss the “outside” world from which they had come?

Despite living on the run and having to move each time their locations were uncovered, the guerrillas still managed to set up camp upon arrival at a new location. But living in a confined space in the jungle

25 Muna or Mek Pik, interviewed on 14 March 2009 at Ban Piyamit 5, Natawee District.26 Interview with Ismail Deraman on 14 March 2009 at his house in Kampong Baroh, Natawee District, south Thailand. He admits that most women in his camp in Khao Nam Khang were given jobs that were deemed suitable for them and seldom took part in combat. His wife Kalsom, for instance, was trained as a nurse (well-versed in acupuncture) in the camp. 27 The infiltration to the south (Malaya) had been launched twice, the first time in early 1971 and the second in March 1972, as an effort to lift the morale of the comrades and the party during that time due to the failure of the Baling Peace Talks and various catastrophes inflicted by the Thai armed forces.28 Chang Li Li, interviewed on 1 January 2009, at Betong Peace Village — Chulaporn Village No. 10. Yala. According to Chang, she was trained to use weapons not long after her entry into the camp because her superior saw her as a very brave woman.

was never easy. While all the basic needs were provided for, each camp conducted its everyday life in accordance with its own rules. While the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) practised a more liberal policy on sexual matters and other aspects of family life (which in the end created problems in the movement), the MCP seemed to have in place a general policy about family life within the camp. In the CPP, women had an equal right to court male comrades and female comrades had the right to choose their romantic partners. A couple would then be betrothed through a revolutionary marriage contract under the authority of the party. The CPP also supported division of responsibilities in marriage between both parties. However, this negatively affected the movement, as women became too engrossed in looking after their families. As child-rearing and housekeeping were women’s responsibilities, breadwinning and combat were assigned to the men. In the end, many female CPP guerrillas left their squads to have babies and to look after them (Hilsdon, 1995, p. 74).

The MCP seemed to accept that life in the camp was not an enjoyable one. They also seemed to accept that people needed soul mates. Thus marriage was accepted in the camp as long as the couple had secured prior permission from their superiors. All married couples had to live according to the rules of the regiment. In most MCP camps, there were two types of accommodation built for the comrades — barracks for the bachelors and barracks for married couples — which were actually communal dwellings. The quarters for married couples did not allow spouses to mix freely, as there were also other couples living in the same barrack. Instead the regiment would set up a special place termed “couple’s hut” or “honeymoon hut” for married couples to have their honeymoon and privacy. This hut was built on high ground and was often situated some distance away from the other barracks. They were allowed to spend two to three days together before having to return to their own individual quarters.29 Every time a couple wanted to meet privately, special permission had to be obtained from their superiors. This strict policy was implemented in all camps so as to avoid distractions from guerrilla missions and to avoid unwanted pregnancies. In fact, during wartime, working in the same camp was disallowed for husbands and wives so as to avoid “sexual complications”. Interestingly, as reported by Force 136 officers, these instances of segregation were unheard of during the Japanese Occupation (Chin & Hack, 2004, p. 7).

With regards to pregnancy, the MCP admitted that female members who bore children would hamper its struggles and this should be avoided at all costs, although the policy was never strictly enforced. Female comrades becoming pregnant was not uncommon in jungle life. While some women depended on jungle plants to prevent pregnancy, such methods were not always effective. Equally important were the attitudes of camp or regimental superiors. In the 8th Regiment, the rule on pregnancy was strictly applied. In the camp, women were simply not allowed to get pregnant. When it came to light that a woman cadre was pregnant, she would be forced to have an abortion by drinking soap water and consuming certain jungle herbs.30 In fact, one important duty that camp medical trainees and women doctors had to undertake was to conduct abortions and other related operations to prevent conception (‘Xiulan’, 1983, p. 33).

Health-wise, forced abortion not only jeopardised a woman’s life but also affected her emotionally. In most camps, it was lucky if a woman’s superiors allowed them to carry a pregnancy to term. These women

29 The 8th Regiment, which was based in Natawee district of Songkhla Province, and the 12th Regiment, which was based in Betong, adopted this policy. Interview with Leong Yee Seng or Hammitt, 14 March 2009; interview with Liu Po, as cited in I Love Malaya, video recording, Singapore: Objectives Film, 2006. 30 Pang Min Sang, 53 years old, interviewed on 14 March 2009, at the Kao Nam Khang Historical Tunnel.

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had to deliver their babies in the jungle with the help of their husbands and female comrades. But more emotional struggles were still to come because camps did not allow the presence of infants. Instead, the children would be given away before they reached one month of age, as camp superiors believed babies would only hamper the group’s movements. There was also the fear that the cries of babies would give away the guerrilla’s positions to the enemy, in addition to the fact that the jungle environment was deemed unsuitable for raising children.

Some women comrades considered themselves lucky if their children could be left with or given away to their own family members (sisters, mothers, mother-in-laws), or if they knew their baby’s foster parents — whom they might have met during the rounds of social work in neighbouring villages, or if fellow comrades knew the foster parents and there was a chance to look for them and their children in later years. However, there were many others who never had the chance to see their children again after giving them away for adoption. Ibrahim Chik, Rashid Maidin and Pak Kassim were among the lucky few who were reunited with children who had been given away for adoption earlier.

While some of the interviewed women tried their best to hide their real feelings at the time of their involvement with the guerrillas, most did not regret what they had gone through, while a few refused to recall or remember their lives in the jungle. A’Por, who was from Perlis, had entered the jungle in Baling, Kedah, and then drifted to Betong in southern Thailand. She followed her husband into the jungle and had to part with her 30-day-old baby daughter. The baby was given to one of her Malay friends in Perlis and she never saw it again. She did not know what had become of her daughter. A’Por, who became a guerrilla in her 20s (at present she is 87 years old), left the jungle camp after the Hat Yai Peace Accord and insists that she “never ever want [sic] to remember the old story”.31

Khadijah Daud or Mama admitted that she worried about and missed her children whom she had left in the village, and that the thought of running away from the jungle camp frequently came to her mind. Before joining the MCP, Khadijah had already had two children by her first husband. After she remarried and joined the guerrillas with her second husband, she subsequently gave birth to another child, but the baby was given away to a local Thai villager. However, a combination of personal grievances, hardship and dangerous jungle life led her to escape from the camp at the age of 40. The 68-year-old Khadijah had slipped into the jungle when she was 34 years of age.32 According to her, there were many women comrades in her camp who had expressed sadness at leaving their family behind, but did not have the courage to leave camp for fear of possible punishment. Especially those who were forced to join the MCP, these women had to stay in the camp and continue their lives as guerrillas.

73-year-old Huang Xue Ying, who hailed from Perlis and had spent more than half of her life in the jungle, admitted that life in the jungle had not been easy for her and most of her female comrades. It was fraught with deadly skirmishes, hard labour and, for her, even the misfortune of having had a baby. Currently she lives alone, having divorced her husband while still in uniform and given her only daughter away to a Thai villager soon after birth. When asked by the documentary interviewer about parting with her daughter, her face turned gloomy and she gave the following answer: “Those were terrible times. There were aeroplanes

31 A’Por, alias Wun Jun Yin, interviewed on 11 March 2009 at Piyamit 1, Betong, southern Thailand.32 Khadijah Daud aka Mama, interviewed on 25 February 2009.

and guns overhead. When she was carried away, I felt very miserable. But then I thought if I didn’t send her away, she wouldn’t have survived.”33

Interestingly, even though female comrades were often depicted as the most affected by the separation from their families and children, male comrades too experienced similar tribulations. However, the male comrades never revealed this aspect much, as they believed that dwelling on such poignant moments was unmanly and therefore inappropriate. Many male comrades only highlighted aspects that reinforced characteristics like bravery. That is why in most of the memoirs written by male MCP comrades — except for Ibrahim Chik’s, parting episodes were only casually recounted. Rashid Maidin’s memoir, for instance, does not tell much about the family he had left behind in a village in central Perak. He reiterates that his first wife, children and close family members were told of his plan at the time when he was caught and accused of being a Communist. The main focus of his memoir is on his struggle in the labour movement and his subsequent involvement in the 10th Regiment, even though he did briefly mention his marriage to a Chinese female guerrilla (who changed her name to Selamah) in the Sadao Camp (8th Regiment) in 1955. Rashid did not touch on his relationship with his wife and children from his first marriage. His memoir is mainly about his life with his second wife Selamah, and their children and grandchildren, all of whom were born in Thailand.34

On the other hand, Ibrahim’s memoir tells us in detail how he felt as a son and father who had to separate from his family when he became involved with the MCP. At the time, he felt that the prospect of returning home was non-existent. Ibrahim and his first wife Rahmah joined the MCP in early September 1948. At the time, his eldest son Jefri was only 11 months old. Ibrahim recalled in detail the moment of separation from his family in Lubok Kawah, Pahang: “Can anyone imagine the love parents had for their children? That was how my parents must have felt and that was how Rahmah and I felt in our hearts at the moment of separation from our own children …” (Ibrahim Chik, 2004, p. 78).

On the way to the jungle camp, Ibrahim reminisced:Rahmah and I did not speak to each other. I was still thinking of the little hands waving and the smile from my 11-month-old baby, as though he was still beside us. I can still remember my father’s advice at the time, “Don’t fight halfway.” Maybe Rahmah too was thinking along the same line. (Ibrahim Chik, 2004, p. 79)

The separation episode brought stress to Ibrahim’s later life. His feelings and emotions as recorded in his memoir show that he was under great pressure and grief at that time. He reiterates that similar feelings were experienced by other guerrillas. This was highlighted after Ibrahim and his group reached the jungle camp in Lubok Kawah to begin their new life as guerrillas. Ibrahim narrated the following story about the behaviour of a few women who had earlier joined AWAS, the radical Malay women’s organisation:

33 I Love Malaya, interview with Huang Xueying. 34 Rashid Maidin (2005). Memoir Rashid Maidin: Daripada perjuangan bersenjata kepada perdamaian. Petaling Jaya: Strategic Information Research Development (SIRD).

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It was not surprising to hear female comrades, telling one another about the hardships and feelings of agony they had to endure at the moment of separation from their young children and families. I still can hear their voices until midnight. (Ibrahim Chik, 2004, p. 80)

LOvE AFFAIrS

The accusations brought against Shamsiah of killing her son are probably the only known case of its kind in the history of female guerrillas in the MCP. However, illicit sex that led to unwanted pregnancy was nothing new in guerrilla life. These affairs caused considerable chaos and hatred among those involved and led to moral decline. This was unavoidable as ordinary mortals — whether male or female — could not be entirely devoid of certain feelings towards those around them. The MCP knew about this but was unable to set clear guidelines on the matter as MCP leaders themselves were involved in illicit affairs. Although there was strict party-control over marriage and relationships, the birth of illegitimate children regularly took place. This, to some extent, led to complicated situations in the party.

Some party members regarded illicit love affairs as a serious problem that contributed to the moral decline in the party. As those in the higher echelon of the MCP leadership were also involved, this gave others the impression that such behaviour was tacitly condoned. In 1955, when in his capacity as the political commissar of the 10th Regiment, Musa Ahmad briefed Chin Peng on the regiment’s long march from Temerloh to southern Thailand, he also reported the love affair between Abdullah and Suriani which took place during the same period. At that time Suriani was still the wife of Ng Ching Kee, a senior figure in the movement. Suriani was attractive and even a British officer was smitten by her.35 The affair, Musa claimed, had resulted in Suriani undergoing an abortion. The disclosure of the affair created chaos in the guerrilla camp. The angry Ng Ching Kee whipped out his pistol to shoot Abdullah but was stopped by Chin Peng’s timely intervention. As punishment Chin Peng directed that Abdullah be stripped of his position as commander of the 10th Regiment and his place was subsequently taken over by Musa Ahmad (Aloysius, 1995, p. 39). This affair went unmentioned by either Suriani or Abdullah in their memoirs.

In the fifth platoon of the 12th Regiment, which was based in Upper Rambong, Betong, illicit love affairs shocked regimental members as one such affair involved a military commander. In 1963, the platoon consisted of 35 members including seven women. In 1964, another two units joined the platoon, bringing the number to 70. This platoon had organised the first Party School of North Malaya, which was aimed at training the more progressive elements in these units. It also included efforts to correct undesirable thoughts and attitudes among the troops through a rectification campaign. During this campaign, which re-examined members’ past mistakes, all rank-and-file members were required to confess, repent and self-criticise, which created a tense atmosphere in the camp.

It was during this rectification campaign that Laosheng, a senior cadre, revealed his secret love affair with a woman comrade named Guiying. Although he realised he was a commander and she was his subordinate,

35 The journalist who made the video recording I Love Malaya noted that “one British Advisor was obviously smitten and could not help describing her charm and sex appeal in his report, noting her intense eyes which flashed with the fires of fanaticism”. Neither the name of the British Advisor nor the report was mentioned.

Laosheng claimed the feelings they had for each other were overpowering and went beyond ordinary friendship. Laosheng confessed he had thought of her in the course of performing his duties. He took a personal interest in her and put her welfare above the others (‘Xiulan’, 1983, p. 18). The revelation stunned all platoon members — that a man highly revered as a hero of the anti-Japanese war should be involved in such a shameful escapade.

The revelation put Guiying in severe distress and finally, she confessed her mistakes to the party. To fellow comrade Xiulan, the revelation by Laosheng surprised all platoon members although the mention of Guiying did not shock any of them. According to Xiulan, other camp members knew Guiying as a flirt who liked to attract men with her physical appearance. She liked to wear tight-fitting clothes and secretly put on make-up. Xiulan claimed that Guiying had many illicit love affairs with male comrades. These intimate relationships had led to the birth of several babies, without anyone admitting fatherhood. These babies were given away for adoption to local villagers (‘Xiulan’, 1983, p. 22). Xiulan claimed this situation was unavoidable because of the imbalance in the male-female ratio among the guerrillas. When men greatly outnumbered women, attractive females were especially subject to the attention from men, especially those from the ranks. On the other hand, there was also the impetus for women to attract male attention — notably from their superiors — for personal advancement and well being.

For the average male comrade — both unmarried, and married but separated from their wives — the desire to seek intimate relationships with female comrades was quite natural. According to Xiulan:

The unmarried women were thus looked upon as rare commodities. That was why no married women comrades ever knew what widowhood was, after her husband died. In fact the Party overlooked such relationships and made no regulations on discipline with regard to such behaviour. (‘Xiulan’, 1983, p. 22)

The 12th Regiment’s rectification campaigns ended within a month. Through a series of revelations, high-ranking leaders realised that many of these problematic relationships arose from the ratio imbalance of the sexes. Subsequently, the party leaders fixed the recruitment of men and women in the ratio of 6:10. The effort worked and, by 1968, most of the veterans had found life partners, gotten married and had children. As the party seldom staged armed skirmishes during this period, some of these “guerrilla children” were brought up by their parents inside the jungle while others were adopted by relatives outside the camp (‘Xiulan’, 1983, p. 23).

According to Ibrahim, the problem of illicit relationships started when the MCP tried to strengthen the party by “accepting newcomers”. Apart from resulting in official marriages involving both Thai and Malaysian members, this new situation also created the social problem of illicit love affairs. Additionally, senior cadres like Ibrahim claimed that Thai cadres inadvertently exposed the 10th Regiment to more dangers and sabotage (Ibrahim Chik, 2004, pp. 137–139).

Apart from recruiting new members among local Thais, the MCP did not have a clear method of recruitment. As a result, according to Ibrahim, they failed to differentiate the “good guys” from the “bad guys” in MCP eyes. On this point Ibrahim had written:

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A few people who were instructed by the colonial authorities to join the MCP were promised benefits from the very beginning. In short, they would be amply rewarded if they carried out tasks assigned to them. These included persuading MCP cadres to flee the camp for promised rewards, poisoning senior leaders and important cadres, and shooting cadres who were active in the movement. In addition, these infiltrators would also encourage the older members to engage in illicit affairs with them, with the aim of enlisting these older members’ support. In the end, husbands would allow their wives to have illicit affairs and, likewise, would indulge in such relationships with other female cadres. (Ibrahim Chik, 2004, p. 139)

Ibrahim claims that in these matters, women were manipulated as tools of sabotage against the MCP. They were sent by enemies of the party to create havoc from within the MCP and its related organisations through distraction tactics. Their objective was to ensure that the party management became engrossed in dealing with such matters as illicit love affairs to the detriment of focus on political struggles and ideology (Ibrahim Chik, 2004, p. 202).

WOMEn SPIES In tHE CAMP

MCP members also claimed that the enemy (Thai government forces) had used women to poison their leaders. As most of the female comrades were given kitchen tasks, this group of enemy women had been targeted to undertake such tasks through the offer of money and other inducements, and they had opportunity to insert the poison into the food in the course of its preparation. There were many cases of sabotage by poisoning highlighted in the memoirs of MCP leaders. Ibrahim, for instance, had claimed he had been was poisoned twice: the first time in 1952, and the second in 1962. On the latter occasion, he had been on his way from Bannag Setar to Weng (Narathiwat) when a female cook gave him a mug of coffee and a biscuit (Ibrahim Chik, 2004, pp. 140-142). In the 1970s, Abdullah, similarly, had experienced sabotage through poisoning which left him terribly sick and feeble while his wife Suriani (who had also been poisoned, but was still healthy enough to work) had to take over his duties in the 10th Regiment (Rashid Maidin, 2005, pp. 83–84). Each of these incidents coincided with the recruitment of locals (mostly from southern Thailand) as new MCP members.

The issue of spies (including women spies) infiltrating the MCP caused considerable chaos among party members. In 1968, the 12th Regiment devised a plan to capture these spies, which saw 35 members massacred, 200 others “exposed and criticised” and another 70 sacked from the party. Orchestrating this mission were a few leading figures of the North Malaya Bureau at the 2nd District headquarters under the leadership of a female leader by the name of Ah Yen. As a result, a few suspected “backstabbers” were arrested. Ah Yen admitted violence was used to get the truth from those arrested. In some instances, suspects were tortured and even killed. Ah Yen agreed that the cleansing drive was not an easy task because the spies knew how to hide behind pretences. Ah Yen recalled that girls were also brought in for questioning. She recounted the story of two girls — one aged 16 and the other 20 — who had been brought in on suspicion of their being spies:

They waited for their turn to be tried by us. At the time, the rain was very heavy. We had to bring them into a room just like an underground meeting room. The condition of that room was poor but suitable for the undertaking of a trial. The room looked more like a prison. They were blindfolded, cotton was stuffed in their ears and their mouths were sealed with towels. Their hands were tied behind their backs. Their legs were chained with iron shackles. They were not given any food or water. They were not allowed to go to the bathroom. Their pants were wet with urine and excreta.36

Both girls were terrified to the core. Ah Yen discovered that the Thai government had sent them, as the government knew that there was a female leader (Ah Yen) at the MCP headquarters. However, Ah Yen managed to expose the enemy’s simple strategy: when female leaders were absent from their quarters, the spies — who had access to the leaders’ rooms — would search these rooms for valuable information and party secrets.

The efforts to expose and punish the spies in the 12th Regiment had created a very awkward situation among both the male and female combatants. After the alleged spies were apprehended, senior officers would hold meetings to announce the names of suspects. Women cadres reported that they were very scared whenever they came to know of impending visits by regimental representatives to their camp. It is probable that the climate created by this situation was related to the changed nature of camp life over the years. After a while, new recruits and women cadres who had previously been active as combatants were no longer as dynamic, which resulted in a stressful and gloomy camp life.

The drive to “capture spies” in the 12th Regiment in 1968 created cracks in the MCP because some party leaders claimed that many combatants had become victims of unproven accusations. After the series of spy arrests had ended in the 12th regiment, a similar drive was targeted at the 8th Regiment. In February 1969, Ah Yen visited the 8th Regiment, which was located far away from the central camp. There, she then read out the official report on the spy operation that had been conducted in the 12th Regiment.

After Ah Yen’s visit, between January and February 1970, the 8th Regiment was inundated with telegrams from the central camp, requesting that the 8th Regiment conduct internal operations against spies. After much pressure, the 8th Regiment relented, even though there were unhappy voices from regimental leaders with regards to the anti-spy drive. The 8th Regiment leaders going against the central camp led them to be labelled as traitors, although, to be fair, one also has to look at the increasing split into factions that had been taking place within the MCP since the 1960s. In the end the campaign split the MCP into three factions — the MCP central faction (the old MCP), the 12th Regiment breakaway faction, and the Marxist-Leninist and the MCP Revolutionary Faction (formerly the 8th Regiment).

36 Bei Ma Ju Po Huo Di Jian Zheng Xiang [The truth behind the detention of spies by the Northern Peninsular Department] 1999. Thailand: Committee of the Kao Nam Khang Historical Tunnel, p. 23. Ah Yen released the report that the MCP had succeeded in their efforts to arrest 22 spies in February 1968.

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COnCLuSIOn

The intrusion of women into war, which is largely a male-dominated domain, is often seen as a threat to masculine politics. As guerrillas, women fought the same war and endured similar hardships during unfavourable times. War might have broken certain gender boundaries between men and women, as both had to fight together for survival and victory. But in actuality, female comrades never really detached themselves from the essentiality of being women, even for those in the combat units. In the confined world within the hostile jungle, women still maintained their own individuality and kept to the domain of the female. They still wanted to be in love and to be loved. They were never totally bereft of the sadness of being detached from motherhood — be it in the forms of being disallowed to raise children in the camps, separated from their families or divorced — or the feeling of missing out on the “outside world”, which led many to escape. All these factors were part and parcel of the camp life of female guerrillas, although the MCP leaders and some scholars have taken much effort to project only their heroism.

The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Dr Cheah Boon Kheng, Honorary Editor, Journal of the

Malaysian of the Royal Asiatic Society (JMBRAS), in reviewing the paper.

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Tanaka, Y. (1999). Intorduction. In M. R. Henson, Comfort women: A Filipina’s story of prostitution and slavery

under the Japanese Military. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Thatcher, D. & Cross, R. (1993). Refugee from the Japanese. Kuala Lumpur: The Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Turner-Gottschang, K. & Phan, T. H. (1998). Even the women must fight: Memories of war from North Vietnam. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Xiulan. (1983). I want to live: A personal account of one woman’s futile armed struggle for the Reds. Petaling Jaya: Star Publications.

Yoji, A. & Mako, Y. (Eds.) (2008). New perspectives on the Japanese occupation in Malaya and Singapore, 1941–

1945. Singapore: National University Press.

Zhou, M (1995). Elizabeth Choy: More than a war heroine. Singapore: Landmark Books.

newspapers & Magazines

Dewan Masyarakat (1991, February–August).

New Straits Times Special (2006, 31 August).

New Sunday Times (2009, 24 May).

Straits Echo and Times of Malaya (1949–1951).

Utusan Malaysia (2009, May 30).

videorecording/CD-rOM

Chan, K. M., Len, C., Ho, C.H., Lau, E., Wang, E. E. (Directors) (2006). I love Malaya [videorecording]. Singapore: Objectifs Films.

Amir, M. (Writer & Director) (2007). Apa khabar orang kampong [Village people radio show] [videorecording]. Singapore: Objectifs Films.

Amir, M. (Producer & Director) (2006). The Last Communist [videodisc]. Singapore: Comstar Entertainment.

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Interviews

Aishah @ Suti, personal communication, January 7, 1998.

A’Por @ Wun Jun Yin, personal communication, March 11, 2009.

A’Ling @ A’Yu, personal communication, March 11, 2009.

Chang Li Li, personal communication, January 1, 2009.

Hassan bin Deraman, personal communication, January 16, 2009.

Ismail bin Deraman, personal communication, March 14, 2009

Khadijah Daud @ Mama, personal communication, February 25, 2009.

Leong Yee Seng @ Hamitt, personal communication, March 14, 2009.

Maimunah @ Khamsiah, personal communication, February 25, 2009.

Muna or Mek Pik, personal communication, March 14, 2009.

Pang Ming San, personal communication, March 14, 2009.

Shiu Yin, personal communication, March 14, 2009.

Ya Mai, personal communication, January 1, 2009.