by Ganesh Sahathevan
Quoting Penny Wong Ying Yen, Foreign Minister Australia, The Age has reported:
Evoking her own family’s experience of British colonialism, the Malaysian-born Wong said countries such as Britain would not find common ground in the region if they stayed “sheltered in narrower versions” of their histories
“My father is descended from Hakka and Cantonese Chinese,” she said. “Many from these clans laboured for the British North Borneo company in tin mines and plantations for tobacco and timber. Many worked as domestic servants for British colonists, as did my own grandmother.”
That however is not the whole story. Equally important is how Chinese migrants and businessmen from China cooperated with the British in these ventures. As the writer of a letter reproduced in Sabah's Daily Express notes:
For attracting Chinese capitalists, planters, traders and coolies the territory is most favourably situated, being within four and-a-half days’ steam from Hong Kong whence, by the arrangements successfully inaugurated by Sir Walter Medhurst, the Company’s special representative at Hong Kong, coolies can be engaged without the intervention of the class of Chinese brokers, such as those in Penang and Singapore who have acquired fortunes from this lucrative business at the expense, partly of the planters of Province Wellesley, Johore, the Native Protected States and Deli (Sumatra), and partly at that of the coolies themselves.
Already influential Chinese agricultural companies have been formed and have taken up land on the East Coast of the territory and set to work.
For instance the China Sabah Land-farming Company, with a capital of 300,000 taels, has taken up 40,000 acres, on the banks of some of the rivers running into Sandakan Bay.
The British-Chinese collaboration was common throughout South East Asia, a described in by Australian academic Carl Trocki in his article Opium and the Beginnings of Chinese Capitalismin Southeast Asia
In Penny Wong's words:
END
TO BE READ WITH
Chinese masons cutting boundary stones in 1915
(May 1, 1883)
THE question is often asked, “I am well assured that for North Borneo and its inhabitants the advent of the company is the best thing possible, as the advent of the dynasty of Sir James Brooke has proved to be in another part of the island; but how does the company expect to raise a revenue out of the country in excess of the expenditure which will he required to carry on the government in such a manner as the sentiments and feelings of the nineteenth century demand?”
In the limits of a leading article it is hardly possible to discuss each available source of revenue, but it may be interesting to examine a few of the more salient and interesting sources whence the requisite taxation for carrying on the government may be expected to be obtained, so far as our brief experience and knowledge of what has been done enables us to forecast.
Take first the land, the most permanent source of wealth in all countries. The Company’s territory is roughly estimated to contain at least 20,000 square miles of land, or 12,800,000 acres.
Owing to the sparseness of the indigenous population and their want of energy, and of any desire to lay up wealth or provide more than is sufficient for their wants from day to day, a very large proportion of this acreage, especially on the East Coast, where the population is scantiest, is available for sale by the Company to European and Chinese planters and companies.
From this sale of land the government of the Company derives not only a direct profit — the price realised per acre - but indirect revenue derived from the population introduced by the planters directly and indirectly — coolies, and the storekeepers and traders who supply their wants.
The bulk of the coolies employed on the estate will, it is now certain, be Chinese, and the experience of Hong Kong, the Straits Settlements and of the Malay Peninsula teaches us that every Chinaman in the population is worth to the Treasury from $10 to $12 per annum, derived from their contributions to the excise farms of opium, tobacco, spirits, and in other ways we need not particularise here.
For attracting Chinese capitalists, planters, traders and coolies the territory is most favourably situated, being within four and-a-half days’ steam from Hong Kong whence, by the arrangements successfully inaugurated by Sir Walter Medhurst, the Company’s special representative at Hong Kong, coolies can be engaged without the intervention of the class of Chinese brokers, such as those in Penang and Singapore who have acquired fortunes from this lucrative business at the expense, partly of the planters of Province Wellesley, Johore, the Native Protected States and Deli (Sumatra), and partly at that of the coolies themselves.
Already influential Chinese agricultural companies have been formed and have taken up land on the East Coast of the territory and set to work.
For instance the China Sabah Land-farming Company, with a capital of 300,000 taels, has taken up 40,000 acres, on the banks of some of the rivers running into Sandakan Bay.
The geographical position of North Borneo with regards to Australia is also most favourable, Elopura (Sandakan) being within five day’s steam of Port Darwin, and this fact has already attracted the attention of capitalists in the colonies, Mr de Lissa having been the first to appreciate the advantages to be derived and having acquired 10,000 acres of land on the Sapagaya river, in Sandakan Bay, which is pronounced by many experienced in cultivation to be specially adapted for the culture of sugar.
A North Borneo land syndicate has since been formed in Australia, and has applied for 100,000 acres of agricultural land in North Borneo.
Friday, November 4, 2022
Singapore and the China opium trade -Nothing to be ashamed of, it was strictly business ,and led by the Peranakans
by Ganesh Sahathevan
In the words of Carl Trocki:
The founding of Singapore was a peripheral result of the India-China opium trade.1 That trade, portrayed in the works of David Edward Owen and Holden Furber, has been updated by Jonathan Spence, among others.2 Its details and history are integral to the history of the Singapore Chinese. For a full century, Singapore was "Opium Central: Southeast Asia." Opium was so common in nineteenth-century Singapore that most writers seem to take it for granted.
The following excerpt is from the Singapore Government NLB website:
The (British Colonial) government earned most of its revenue by franchising the opium trade to wealthy Chinese businessmen. Well-known names in the opium trade include Lau Joon Tek and Cheang Sam Teo, who made up the Lau-Cheang Syndicate, Heng Bun Soon, Tan Seng Poh and Cheang Hong Guan. Cheong Hong Lim and Tan Seng Poh were other well-known names who partnered with Tan Hiok Nee (Tan Yeok Nee) in spirit and opium farming. Opium, or chandu (Malay for cooked opium), was commonly inhaled or smoked. The ash or residue after opium was smoked for the first time was also recovered by shopkeepers and sold at a cheaper rate.
And this from the Government's National Heritage Board website, "Great Peranakans":
Peranakans initially worked for the large British trading companies as intermediaries, since they could speak Chinese dialects, Malay, and also English. They later set up their own companies to supply Chinese workers, grow gambier and other commodities, and run shipping companies. Several wealthy Peranakans purchased the government monopolies of opium, which proved to be extremely profitable.
The immigration of the first Hakka pioneers to Sabah was arranged by the British North Borneo Chartered Company in 1882. In order to increase its settler population, the North Borneo Company encouraged Chinese to enter the state by introducing a new immigration scheme in 1921, known as the ‘Free Passage’ or ‘Free Pass’......The new immigration scheme was popular among the Hakkas in the south of China and they took this opportunity to bring their families with them to Sabah.... This suggested that the Hakka immigrants planned to settle down in Sabah, unlike other Chinese immigrants who came as labourers, artisans or businessmen (Historical Sabah : the Chinese / Danny Wong Tze Ken)
https://jml.um.edu.my/index.
The Hakka's control Sabah.
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