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Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in nineteenth-century Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Maurice Freedman
Maurice Freedman
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
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Extract

The society built up by Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia has always been remarkable for its wealth of voluntary associations. In the various historical and sociological studies of Southeast Asian Chinese which have appeared the importance of associations has been duly stressed, although in respect of only two settlements have we been given full treatment of their structure and significance. In this paper I shall consider the associations which Singapore Chinese created and modified in the course of the nineteenth century. Studying this earlier period of Singapore history we can see how the Chinese members of the colonial society adapted their social organization to the conditions of a trading settlement in which, while they often amassed great riches, they were not their own political masters. At the end of the paper I shall consider the Singapore evidence within the wider setting of Southeast Asia and put forward certain general conclusions which may be taken up in other papers on the same theme.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , October 1960 , pp. 25 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1960

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References

1 See Ju-k’ang, T’ien, The Chinese of Sarawak: A Study of Social Structure. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology (London, 1953)Google Scholar; and Skinner, G. W., Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History (Ithaca, N.Y., 1957)Google Scholar, and Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Thailand (Ithaca, N.Y., 1958)Google Scholar. For Indonesia see Cator, W. J., The Economic Position of the Chinese in the Netherlands Indies (Oxford, 1936)Google Scholar; and Eng Die, Ong, Chineezen in Nederlandsch-Indië (Assen, 1943)Google Scholar. Some forms of association are discussed in Freedman, M., Chinese Family and Marriage in Singapore (London, 1957)Google Scholar. For the region as a whole see Purcell, V., The Chinese in Southeast Asia (London, 1951)Google Scholar. The general historical background to the material of this paper is to be found in the last work and in Purcell, V., The Chinese in Malaya (London, 1948)Google Scholar. I should like to thank Mr. J. M. Gullick for criticising an early draft of this paper and for making a number of historical and sociological comments, and Mr. W. L. Blythe, C.M.G., for his expert advice on a number of matters, especially those touching the secret societies. Part of the work on which this study is based was made possible by a grant from the Department of Sociological and Demographic Research, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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30 Singapore Chinese played a prominent part in the Amoy uprising of 1853. See Hughes, G., “The Small Knife Rebels (An Unpublished Chapter of Amoy History)”, The China Review, I, no. 4 (1873)Google Scholar.

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36 Comber asserts that the Triad Society was the “common ancestor of all Chinese secret societies in Malaya … ” Op. cit., p. 147. Another view was put forward by Wynne, M. L. in Triad and Tabut, A Survey of the Origin and Diffusion of Chinese and Mohamedan Secret Societies in the Malay Peninsula A.D. 1800–1935 (Singapore, 1941)Google Scholar. Wynne's thesis was that there were two groups of secret societies, always at loggerheads, one deriving from the Triad, the other from the “Han League”. The fact that the Hai San society stood apart from the Ghee Hin group for a long period may perhaps mean that some variation of Wynne's thesis may prove on further investigation to be valid.

37 Comber seems to think that the various societies were coordinated, for he speaks of the Triad society in Malaya and Thailand having a headquarters which “only moved to Singapore about 1850”. Op. cit., p. 149.

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42 Vaughan, op. cit., p. 93.

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55 See e.g. SSAR 1897, p. 224.

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57 SSAR 1897, p. 228. And cf. SSAR 1895, p. 344.

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65 Ibid., p. 31.

66 Ibid., pp. 35–45.

67 Ibid., pp. 45–57.

68 Ibid., pp. 54–68.

69 Ibid., pp. 17f.

70 Ibid., pp. 10, 24.

71 Ibid., p. 19.

72 See Freedman, , Chinese Family and Marriage in Singapore, pp. 92ffGoogle Scholar.

73 See de Groot, J. J. M., Het Kongsiwezen van Borneo, eene Verhandeling over den Grondslag en den Aard der Chineesche Politieke Vereenigingen in de Koloniën, met eene Chineesche Geschiedenis van de Kongsi Lanfong (The Hague, 1885)Google Scholar; Schlegel, G., “Het Kongsiwezen van Borneo …” (compte rendu of de Groot's book), Revue Coloniale Internationale, I (1885)Google Scholar; Ward, B. E., “A Hakka Kongsi in Borneo”, Journal of Oriental Studies, I, no. 2 (Hong Kong, 07 1954)Google Scholar; and Purcell, op. cit., pp. 489–94.

74 De Groot, op. cit., pp. 1f.

75 Ibid., p. 21.

76 Purcell, op. cit., p. 491.

77 See Ward, op. cit., pp. 365ff.

78 De Groot, op. cit., pp. 172–93.

79 Ibid., p. 177.

80 Cf. Freedman, , Lineage Organization in Southeastern China, pp. 119ffGoogle Scholar.

81 Skinner, , Chinese Society in Thailand, p. 141Google Scholar, puts great emphasis on the “divisive force” of the secret societies in Thailand; I am suggesting that there is another, and opposite, aspect of secret society conflict.

82 Cf.ibid., loc. cit: “Membership was almost exclusively along speech-group lines … ”

83 Cf. the remarks by Hare, op. cit., p. 9 on Kwangtung.