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Greed, guns and gore: Historicising early British colonial Singapore through recent developments in the historiography of Munsyi Abdullah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2020

Kelvin Lawrence
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Abstract

Munsyi Abdullah and his better-known writings, Kisah Pelayaran Abdullah (1838) and Hikayat Abdullah (1843), are much-discussed in the historiography of early British colonial Singapore. However, Amin Sweeney's efforts to historicise some aspects of Abdullah's life and writings have established that Abdullah was much more than a sharp social critic of Malays and their rulers. He is better understood as a subtle critic and even a manipulator of his European interlocutors who craftily used his occidental contacts and connections alongside his local knowledge to preserve his role as a cultural intermediary in a burgeoning port settlement. Sweeney's efforts bring into focus a multifaceted imperial experience where notions like ‘interactions’ and ‘connections’ become viable descriptive categories in making sense of the intersections of Abdullah and empire, thereby strongly resonating with networked conceptions of imperial space propounded by ‘new’ imperial history. Taken alongside the recent literary and theoretical efforts of Jan van der Putten and Sanjay Krishnan respectively on Abdullah, and the carefully circumscribed historical efforts of Ian Proudfoot, the recent historiography of Abdullah offers fresh interpretive possibilities of early colonial Singapore. Leveraging such developments to engage with Mary Turnbull's scripting of a gruesome episode in 1823 indicates that Turnbull's historiographical dominance of Singapore's early colonial history can be transcended to better represent British coloniality, warts and all.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 507 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2020

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References

1 Turnbull, C.M., A history of modern Singapore (Singapore: NUS Press, 2009), p. 41Google Scholar.

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3 Turnbull, A history of modern Singapore, pp. 53, 133. Turnbull is quoting Wright, A. and Read, T.H., The Malay Peninsula: A record of progress in the Middle East (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912), p. 136Google Scholar.

4 Some recent examples include Caroline Elkins, Imperial reckoning: The untold story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006); Shashi Tharoor, An era of darkness: The British empire in India (New Delhi: Aleph, 2016); Sultan Nazrin Shah, Charting the economy: Early 20th century Malaya and contemporary Malaysian contrasts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). While this article refers to ‘early’ Singapore colonial history roughly coincident with Abdullah's adulthood, there are insightful works on other parts and aspects of Singapore's (and Malaya's) British past beyond the Turnbull paradigm, for example: James Warren, Rickshaw coolie: A people's history of Singapore (1880–1940) (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986); Jomo Kwame Sundaram, A question of class: Capital, the state and unequal development in Malaysia (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986); Philip Holden, ‘The littoral and the literary: Making moral communities in the Straits Settlements and the Gold Coast in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’, in Singapore in global history, ed. Derek Heng and Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011), pp. 89–110; Charles Hirschmann, ‘The meaning and measurement of ethnicity in Malaysia: An analysis of census classification’, Journal of Asian Studies 46, 3 (1987): 570–82; and Philip Holden, Autobiography and decolonisation: Modernity, masculinity, and the nation-state (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), pp. 3–38, 168–88.

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6 Justin Corfield, ‘Introduction’, in Cyril Skinner, 1924–1986: Orientalist, linguist, historian, scholar: A collection of essays and reviews, ed. J. Corfield (Clayton: Monash Asia Institute, 1996), p. v; Cyril Skinner, ‘Shaer Kampong Gelam terbakar oleh Abdullah b. Abdul-Kadir’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JMBRAS) 45, 1 (1972): 21–56; Ibrahim bin Ismail, ‘Newbold's Malay manuscripts in India’, Kekal Abadi 5, 1 (1986): 5–8; Ian Proudfoot, ‘An expedition into the politics of Malay philology’, JMBRAS 76, 1 (2003): 1–53; Ian Proudfoot, ‘Malays toying with Americans: The rare voices of Malay scribes in two Houghton Library manuscripts’, Harvard Library Bulletin 11, 1 (2000): 54–69; Ian Proudfoot, ‘Malay materials in the Houghton Library, Harvard’, Kekal Abadi 19, 1 (2000): 1–14; Amin Sweeney, ‘A man of bananas and thorns’, Indonesia and the Malay World 34, 100 (2006): 223–45.

7 Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munsyi, ‘Syair Singapura terbakar’, in Karya lengkap, vol. 2, pp. 93–143.

8 The Singapore Chronicle and Commercial Register Advertiser (henceforth Singapore Chronicle), 11 Feb. 1830, p. 1.

9 Some examples include Walter Makepeace, Gilbert E. Brooke and Roland St. J. Braddell, eds., One hundred years of Singapore: being some account of the capital of the Straits Settlements from its foundation by Sir Stamford Raffles on the 6th February 1819 to the 6th February 1919 (London: J. Murray, 1921), pp. 324, 342, 462; Charles Burton Buckley, An anecdotal history of old times in Singapore (Singapore: Fraser & Neave, 1902), pp. 97–100; Anthony Milner, The invention of politics in colonial Malaya: Contesting nationalism and the expansion of the public sphere (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Hadijah Rahmat, In search of modernity: A study of the concepts of literature, authorship and notions of self in ‘traditional’ Malay literature (Kuala Lumpur: Akademi Pengajian Melayu, Universiti Malaya, 2001); Kwa Chong Guan, ‘Why did Tengku Hussein sign the 1819 treaty with Stamford Raffles?’, in Malays/Muslims in Singapore: Selected readings in history, 1819 to 1965, ed. Khoo Kay Kim, Elinah Abdullah and Wan Meng Hao, pp. 1–35; Stephen Dobbs, ‘The Singapore River/Port in a global context’, in Heng and Khairudin Aljuneid, Singapore in global history, pp. 51–65.

10 Sweeney, ‘Komentar mengenai kisah pelayaran Abdullah ke Kelantan’, in Karya lengkap, vol. 1, p. 61.

11 Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (henceforth Singapore Free Press), 3 May 1838, p. 1; Singapore Free Press, 3 May 1838, p. 2; Abdullah, Kisah pelayaran, pp. 98, 165.

12 Letter from C.T.B. Kohann, Singapore Free Press, 3 May 1838, p. 2.

13 Abdullah, ‘Kisah Pelayaran’, pp. 98, 165; Sweeney, ‘Komentar mengenai Kisah Pelayaran Abdullah ke Kelantan’, in Karya lengkap, vol. 1, p. 61.

14 Kelvin Lawrence, ‘Towards a history of Malay intellectuals: Envisioning Abdullah, Al-Hadi, Kajai and Za'ba as intellectuals’ (PhD diss., The Australian National University, Canberra, 2014), pp. 104–14.

15 Ibid.

16 Abdullah, Syair Kampung Gelam terbakar, in Karya lengkap, vol. 2; Abdullah, Kisah pelayaran Abdullah ke Mekah, in Karya lengkap, vol. 1.

17 See for example, David Lambert and Alan Lester, ‘Imperial spaces, imperial subjects’, in Colonial lives across the British Empire, ed. D. Lambert and A. Lester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 1–16.

18 Sweeney, Karya lengkap, vols. 1–3; Lawrence, ‘Towards a history of Malay intellectuals’.

19 Singapore Free Press, 3 May 1838, p. 1.

20 Milner, Invention of politics in colonial Malaya, pp. 31–2, 59–60.

21 Anthony Milner, ‘Malay identity in crisis?’, at launch of the 2016 edition of his classic, Kerajaan: Malay political culture on the eve of colonial rule, Malaysian Studies Programme Seminar, Yusof Ishak Institute of Southeast Asean Studies, 8 Nov. 2016.

22 Diana Carrol, ‘The contributions of the Malacca missionaries and the Hikayat Abdullah to the British concept of Malay Studies’, in Rethinking Malaysia, ed. Jomo Kwame Sundaram (Hong Kong: Asia 2000, 1999), p. 151; Hashim Awang, ‘Munshyi Abdullah dalam arus perkembangan kesusasteraan Melayu’, Jurnal Pengajian Melayu 6 (1996): 127–8; Wan Hashim Wan Teh, ‘Gambaran Abdullah mengenai masyarakyat Melayu Pantai Timur dalam Kisah Pelayaran Abdullah’, paper presented at Kolokioum ATMA IV: Karya Agung Munsyi Abdullah, 19 Dec. 1996, Institut Alam dan Tamadun Melayu, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, pp. 30–33; Ungku Maimunah Mohd. Tahir, ‘Antara kemodenan dan nilai sastera: Satu kejanggallan dalam penokohan Munshyi Abdullah sebagai bapa kesuasteraan Melayu’, in Kolokioum ATMA IV, pp. 2–5; Anthony Reid, Imperial alchemy: Nationalism and political identity in Southeast Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 102–3; Ahmad Murad Merican, ‘Telling tales, print and the extension of media: Malay media studies beginning with Abdullah Munsyi through Syed Shaykh al-Hady and Mahathir Mohamad, Kajian Malaysia 24, 1–2 (2006): 52–69; Mohd. Yusof Hasan, Kesinambungan gelombang keintelektualisme Melayu global dari Munshi Abdullah dan Za'ba (Shah Alam: Pusat Penerbitan Universiti, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 2008), p. 33.

23 Ian Proudfoot, ‘Abdullah vs. Siami: Early Malay verdicts on British justice’, JMBRAS 80, 1 (2007): 1–16.

24 Abdullah, ‘Kisah pelayaran’, pp. 160–65.

25 Proudfoot, ‘Abdullah vs. Siami’, pp. 2–3.

26 Proudfoot, ibid., pp. 6–9.

27 Alfred North, The journal of Alfred North, 1 August 1835–27 July 1836, transcribed by Ian Proudfoot (2007); Malay Concordance Project, http://mcp.anu.edu.au/proudfoot/North.pdf (accessed 19 Feb. 2019).

28 Lawrence, ‘Towards a history of Malay intellectuals’, pp. 110–12.

29 Raffles to Minto, 10 June 1811 (Raffles 1835: vol. 1, pp. 98–9), cited in Proudfoot, ‘Abdullah vs. Siami’, p. 3.

30 C.M. Turnbull, The Straits Settlements, 1826–67: Indian presidency to crown colony (London: University of London, 1972), pp. 24, 28, 38–9, 45; Edwin Lee, Singapore: The unexpected nation (Singapore: ISEAS, 2008), pp. 8–9.

31 Jan van der Putten, ‘Abdullah Munsyi and the missionaries’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 162, 4 (2006): 435–8.

32 Krishnan, Sanjay, ‘Reading globalization from the margin: The case of Abdullah Munshi’, Representations 99, 1 (2007): 46–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 56–8.

33 Ibid., p. 46.

34 Ibid., p. 48.

35 Ibid., p. 50.

36 Ibid.

37 Abdullah, ‘Hikayat Abdullah’, pp. 391–403.

38 Krishnan, ‘Reading globalization from the margin’, pp. 63–5.

39 Miller, H.E., ‘Extracts from the letters of Col. Nahuijs’, JMBRAS 19, 2 (1941): 195Google Scholar; Buckley, Anecdotal history, pp. 97–100.

40 Turnbull, A history of modern Singapore, p. 41. See also Turnbull, , A history of Singapore, 1819–1988 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 24Google Scholar, for a similar depiction.