Moorings

In the eastern end of the Indian Ocean, the hardening of racial boundaries from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards occurred under the aegis of a globalized imperial system. According to Dutch classification, every non-white person in the Netherlands Indies was part of a European empire. The vast majority of Indies population were of course Dutch subjects, but there were people relegated to the category of ‘Foreign Orientals.’ For example, Malays were often labeled ‘Britisch-Maleiers,’ even if in Dutch territory simply because the Malay peninsula, identified as place of origin for all Malays, had fallen under British influence in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century, Chinese subjects who originated from Taiwan were recognized as Japanese because the territory was colonised by Japan in 1895. South Asian populations in the Dutch colony on the other hand were alternatingly labelled ‘Britisch-Indiers,’ ‘Klingaleezen’ and ‘Bengaleezen.’ Because Dutch colonial censuses were not diligently undertaken, we do not know the proportion of the South Asian population throughout the colonial period; the only systematic colonial census published in 1930 put the population at 1-3% depending on their location in the vast archipelago. Evidently, urban areas in Padang, Medan and Surabaya had enough South Asians for them to have their own quarters with their own community heads.
    Yet the much older category of ‘mooren’ predated these categories, appearing in both VOC (Dutch East India Company) records and Dutch colonial government records before 1850 especially. Who were these ‘mooren’ exactly? A clue is provided by the fact that the term ‘klingaleezen’ was sometimes substituted for ‘mooren.’ By using the term ‘mooren,’ Dutch authorities linked South Indian Muslims with other Muslims much further away in Spain (who once ruled them) a few centuries before. But this link excluded non-Muslims from Malabar and parts of southern India. The ‘Hindoe-Klingaleezen’ were a “neglected” people the Dutch should pay more attention to, a Dutch newspaper lamented in 1918, which suggest that on its own, the term only referred to Muslims. Also, why did “Bengaleezen,” a label that applied to all Indians from northern India regardless of origin, remain a distinct but undifferentiated category too? Although nearly all references to ‘mooren’ after 1800 refer only to the Indian subcontinent, the term emerged out of Dutch experience in Sri Lanka from 1640 to 1796 referring to Muslims of Tamil descent who were living in Dutch Ceylon who were of mixed ethnicity. “But more likely, if not certain, is that they are descended from the 'Mooren,' or so-called Klingaleezen of the Malabar coast,” the reporter of Sumatra Courant noted in September 1871. They came mainly for trade, another reporter wrote in De Locomotief in 1873. The term, in other words had many layers some of which were shed by the Dutch colonial government who took over from the defunct VOC in 1800. By subsequently connecting the ‘mooren’ classification with the subcontinent only, the Dutch government got round the awkwardness of taking over corporate VOC rule by dint of forgetting their association with Dutch Ceylon by implying that those earlier ‘mooren’ are an artefact of an era that had recently ended. 'Mooren' in Netherlands Indies on the other hand were supposedly from the subcontinent instead. The question remains as to how the klingaleezen identified themselves since their voices are rarely found in the archives but in September 1927, a group classified as klingaleezen wrote to the colonial government requested that they not be referred as such anymore since the term is humiliating. The term “kling” had evolved into a racial slur by then in parts of Southeast Asia.
    The category of ‘Britisch-Indiers’ was taken literally. In 1886, the British government in India requested that the Dutch government accept the appointment of a ‘British-Indian Protector’ from the Straits Settlement of Penang to oversee south Indian immigrants (referred to as klingaleezen) in Deli in northeast Sumatra, the site of many tobacco plantations. The south Indian coolies who traveled to work in these plantations were not only claimed by British as subjects but made to sail from southern India to British Penang first before looping back to Deli across the Straits of Malacca although their passage was paid by plantation owners in Sumatra. Dutch authorities were aghast that their authority did not suffice, but British capital buoyed the Dutch tobacco industry and the advantage of having an interpreter in the form of the Protector enticed them to accept the appointment. This arrangement aligned with their imperialistic view of governance.
    Slightly up north, Siam challenged this conception of a world organized according to empires in the late nineteenth century as an independent nation not colonized by Europeans who nonetheless increasingly determined its borders. Through copious inter-imperial correspondence between Bangkok, Singapore and Batavia, the Dutch took it upon themselves to police the presence of Chinese, Malays and South Asians in Siam. The obsession led to the proliferation of “reispas” (travel pass) and travel certificates issued by Dutch consulates, both of which functioned as some kind of proto passport and visa, instruments that first emerged in the colonial world as the late Adam McKeown pointed out in his vast oeuvre. 
    Generally, it was impossible for most people to move freely in the Asia-Pacific region. Ultimately, colonial classification was an inscription practice obsessed with legibility and smoothness although normative confusion between categories persisted by design. Everything was coded and was capable of being endlessly recoded. While much of mobility research is preoccupied with the association between origins and destinations, we know we can move while staying still because one mechanism for mobility is paradoxically dispossession.
 

--Nurfadzilah Yahaya

Singapore's Token Conservation

Ann Hills examines the reconstruction of Singapore's 19th-century buildings to accommodate tourism.

Worldhistoryblogspot.blogspot.com - Under the arches of nineteenth-century houses along the Singapore River – only yards from where Sir Stamford Raffles landed in 1819 and founded the British colony – a barber was shaving a client. He has been in the same spot for thirty years, but within months he will be moved. The houses where generations of traders have lived alongside packed quays are being variously renovated as showpieces or destroyed to make way for developments in a tiny country short of land and with mixed views on preservation.

The riverside statue to Raffles is safe; so too is the nearest building – Empress Place, until recently an office for the immigration department. At a cost of nearly £4 million, the 1860s neo-classical structure with a central hall supported by a double row of Doric columns, is to become a museum of Chinese cultural relics by 1988. This is one of the first steps in creating a Heritage Link (linking sites of historic, notably colonial value). The proposals have the backing of Dr George McDonald, director of the Canadian Museum of Man in Ottawa. Didier Reppellin, leading French architect and official adviser to the government on historic buildings, was also summoned last autumn to advise on specific projects including Empress Place, and will monitor renovation.

The most famous of all the Singaporean buildings – the Raffles Hotel, which celebrated its centenary in 1986 – is likely to be restored to its original appearance enhancing its reputation, endorsed by the famous: Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward and Rudyard Kipling. More recently it was a setting in the wartime Tenko series. Visitors soon learn its history, including the hotel's role in providing shelter to people rescued from internment camps after liberation in 1945; the saga of the tiger shot under the billiard table, the origins of the Singapore Sling, and how the silver roast beef trolley was hidden from the Japanese, buried in the garden. A centenary brochure has been published.

Forty years after the war, the world's tallest hotel, the seventy- three storey high Westin Stamford has risen a stone's throw away on the Raffles City complex. It occupies the site of the Raffles Institution, founded in 1823. Ironically, too, the Archives Department and Oral History Department with a total of forty-two staff, is cataloguing a changing world as fast as possible. A few weeks ago, as houses and shops were being bulldozed in the street outside, a party inside marked the opening of Singapore lifeline: the river and its people – a photographic exhibition and book. Tapes are being made on vanishing trades, the cultural diversity, on the river-life that passes. I listened to the recording of a British survivor describing the sinking of the war- ships Repulse and Prince of Wales.

The river has been tidied up: that entailed removing all the bum boats, clearing store rooms, resurfacing quays and taking anti-pollution measures. Next September a fortnight of celebrations with fireworks and cruises will mark a decade of renovation. Gone from the vicinity are pig and duck rearing, boat yards, squatter colonies and hawkers. What do exist, are modern hawker centres where independent food traders are allocated space to serve meals and fresh fruit drinks through the day.

Nearby, Chinatown is still flourishing, even though newer buildings dwarf the bustling streets where families peer from shuttered balconies above crowded shops. The future of Chinatown is being- debated by a national steering committee whose members are said to be sensitive to traditional skills from medicine making, to specialist food stalls, calligraphy and fortune telling. But the government refuses to comment yet on steps being taken to amend rent acts, which have depressed the cost of living for tenants and restrained capital investment by owners in the past decades.

The old Indian sector retains its hectic oriental atmosphere, but rows of old houses are being torn down in side streets off Serangoon Road. Temples have better chances of lasting – like the extraordinary statue- studded 1844 Hindu temple called Sri Mariamman.

Some colonial buildings retain their functions: Victoria Hall is the concert hall, and across the road is the Cricket Club at one end of the sward with a backdrop of skyscrapers housing banks, offices and hotels. Modernisation continues in a country noted for its financial empire, vast expansion of hotels and emphasis on education under the rule of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Another area of investment is transport. Within a year or two the 2.6 million Singaporeans will have their own subway- the Mass Rapid Transit system, entailing massive excavations, tunnelling and raised routes.

History has to take a back-seat, allocated to the realms of tourism. Fort Canning Park, on a hilly, central site, is being developed with a 'historical zone' containing relics of an old Christian cemetary, the grave of the last ruler of ancient Singapura, Sultan Iskandar Shah with bunkers from the Second World War, and the site of Raffles' house.

Haw Par Villa, one of three; built by the Aw brothers for private residences, is being redeveloped at a cost of £10 million to offer visitors a sophisticated introduction to Chinese history, myths, legends and traditions with a mythological theme park, including 'encounters' with the spirit world through a ride in the dark, and incorporating the latest in laser and holographic technology.

Beyond the town centre, out in the diminishing countryside, the last of the Malay kampungs – tropical jungle villages – are threatened with the incursion of satellite towns with numerous blocks ten storeys high. A model kampung will be recreated in Geylang Serai, a still predominantly Malay-populated district, combining cultural and commercial activities from bird-singing contests to kite marking. The buildings, including prayer hall or 'surau', will be clustered and linked with covered walk- ways.

Second hand, nostalgic experiences may have to suffice for the visitor in future; such is the price of progress. Destruction is rampant – a fact the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board would prefer to turn a blind eye towards as they present packages for future conservation.

Lee Kuan Yew becomes Singapore’s Prime Minister

June 31st, 1959 - Richard Cavendish remembers how a former-British colony gained a long-serving leader. 

Worldhistoryblogspot.blogspot.com - After the expulsion of the Japanese in 1945, British plans for a united Malaya left Singapore, the island at the foot of the Malay peninsula, out because its population was heavily Chinese, not Malayan. It became a separate British colony run by a governor with a mainly appointed, mainly Chinese council. Pressure for independence grew and in 1954 the socialist politician Lee Kuan Yew founded the People’s Action Party (PAP).

Lee came from a rich Chinese family which called him Harry and brought him up speaking English, but he was bent on bringing an end to British rule.

In 1955 Singapore was given an elected legislature and its own administration in charge of all matters except foreign policy and defence. Lee’s party won only three seats in that year’s election. But in 1958 he helped to negotiate in London for a Singapore with a fully elected government responsible for all internal affairs. His party won 43 of the 51 seats in the subsequent 1959 election and, after securing the release of imprisoned communist colleagues, Lee took office as Singapore’s prime minister in June.

The PAP had called for union with Malaya and in 1963 Lee crushed the communists, who opposed it, and Singapore joined the new Federation of Malaya. It did not work. The island’s Chinese character proved an impossible obstacle and the federation asked Singapore to leave two years later. It became a separate, sovereign republic and in the elections from 1968 to 1980 the PAP won every single seat in the legislature. Lee became one of the most important political figures in south-east Asia and by the time he stood down in 1990 he was the world’s longest-serving prime minister.

Richard Cavendish is a longstanding contributor to History Today, having penned dozens of the Months Past columns. He is also author of Kings and Queens: The Concise Guide.