The research for this paper was funded by Universiti Sains Malaysia for whose support, both financial and in released time, I am extremely grateful. I also wish to express my appreciation to the staff of the National Archives of Malaysia for providing assistance during the course of my research, and to John Butcher, Jean DeBernardi, Khoo Khay Jin, Cheah Boon Kheng and F. Loh Kok Wan for providing comments on preliminary drafts.

¹ Hai, Ding Eing Tan Soo also noted that “There were no written rules to prohibit non-Malays from growing rice.” The Rice Industry in Malaya 1920–40 (Singapore: Malaya Publishing House, 1963), 17–19.Google ScholarNess, Gayl, writing that government policy had “attempted to reserve smallholding rice production for the Malays, and also to keep Malays in this form of production,” cites this publication as his source. See Bureaucracy and Rural Development in Malaysia (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 31.Google Scholar

² Chong-yah, Lim, Economic Development of Modern Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1967), 175.Google Scholar

³ Ghee, Lim Teck, Peasants and their Agricultural Economy in Colonial Malaya, 1874- 1941 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1977), 186–88.Google Scholar

⁴ Stenson, Michael, Class, Race and Colonialism in West Malaysia (St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1980), 4.Google Scholar

⁵ Selangor Secretariat (Sel Sec) file 4599/1923.

⁶ Grist, D. H., Malayan Agricultural Statistics, 1940, Table 32.Google Scholar

⁷ Report of the Rice Cultivation Committee, 1931, I, 1. In 1891, W. E. Maxwell told the Royal Colonial Institute: “… if we are going to make the Malay States under our influence blossom like a garden, it must be by means of a population drawn from some other place, or else the development of rural districts must be of very slow growth.” Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, vol. 23, 1891–1892, pp. 28–29.

⁸ Birch, E. W., A Memorandum upon the Subject of Irrigation (Kuala Lumpur: Selangor Government Printing Office, 1898), 11–14. E. W. Birch was the son of J. W. W. Birch, the first British Resident of Perak who was killed in that state in 1874. (Formally, the chief British official, called the “British Resident,” in each of the Federated Malay States (FMS)–Perak, Selangor, Pahang, and Negri Sembilan–was advisor to the Malay ruler of the state, but the Residents and the official in overall charge of the FMS, called at various times Resident-General, Chief Secretary, and Federal Secretary, ran the administration with little reference to the rulers.) The younger Birch came to Malaya in 1878 and was appointed British Resident in Negri Sembilan in 1897. His memorandum on irrigation, prepared at the request of the Resident-General, was printed by the Government and had a wide circulation.Google Scholar

⁹ Standard works on the history of rice cultivation in Malaysia include R. D. Hill, Rice in Malaya, Ding Eing Tan Soo Hai, The Rice Industry in Malaya, 1920–40, Siok-hwa, Cheng, “The Rice Industry of Malaya: A Historical Survey,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Malaysian Branch (JMBRAS), 42: 2 (12 1969)Google Scholar, J. C. Jackson, ”Rice Cultivation in West Malaysia,“ Ibid., 45: 2 (1972), Ghee, Lim Teck, Peasants and Their Agricultural Economy in Colonial Malaya, 1874–1941Google Scholar, Goldman, R. H., Staple Food Self-Sufficiency and the Distributive Impact of Malaysian Rice Policy, Food Research Institute Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3, 1975Google Scholar, and Jomo, K. S., ”Class Formation in Malaya: Capital, the State and Uneven Development,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1977.Google Scholar Lim Chong-yah's Economic Development of Modern Malaya includes a long and useful section on rice, and S. Selvadurai, Padi Farming in West Malaysia, surveys the situation in the early 1970s. The history of irrigation policy is examined in Short, D. E. and Jackson, J. C., “The Origins of an Irrigation Policy in Malaya,” JMBRAS 44, 1 (1971).Google Scholar

¹⁰ The observation is found in a series of Reports on Rice Cultivation laid before the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements as Paper No. 6 of 1893, Cl 11 and C128. This Paper will be cited hereafter as “Rice Reports, 1893”.

¹¹ Ibid., C116, C172.

¹² A laborer consumed about 50 gantangs of rice per year, for which he would have paid between 27¢ and 31¢ per gantang. Negri Sembilan Secretariat file 2520/1918. Calculations on the profitability of rice cultivation are taken from Jack, H. W., Rice in Malaya, Department of Agriculture, Federated Malay States, Bulletin No. 35 (1923), 44–45.Google Scholar

¹³ High Commissioner's Office, file 880/1917.

¹⁴ Negri Sembilan Secretariat file 2520/1918. The Controller of Rice Mills was R. J. B. Clayton.

¹⁵ Negri SembiIan Secretariat file 2520/1918.

¹⁶ Based on a discussion with rice farmers in the Krian District, Perak, 3 December 1978.

¹⁷ Conditions in Malaya, where rice was not a major crop, clearly provided little stimulus for commercial rice production, but Chinese immigrants also rarely became rice farmers in Siam or Cochin China, were rice was the major export product. In Siam, for example, rice cultivation apparently gave a return as good as, or better than, most alternative employment. For a discussion of possible explanations for Chinese avoidance of rice planting in Thailand, see Ingram, James C., “Thailand's Rice Trade and the Allocation of Resources,” in The Economic Development of South-East Asia, Cowan, C. D., ed. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964), 114.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Wan, Loke Kar, “How the Hakka of Ayer Itam Village in Penang Became Hillside Vegetable Farmers,” unpublished course paper, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 1979.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Courtenay, P. P., A Geography of Trade and Development in Malaya (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1972), 93.Google Scholar

²⁰ Sel Sec file 3923/1903. Salary figures are from the Perak Civil List and List of Federal Officers in the Federated Malay States for 1900.

²¹ Choong Mui Hong, “Migration from Kuo-cho-leow, Chao-yang, Kwangtung, to Hale Street, Ipoh, Perak,” unpublished course paper, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 1979. Part of the attraction of rickshaw pulling was that payment was immediate and in cash; there were no problems with credit or debts.

²² The immigrant population of Malaysia has been the subject of a number of studies. R. N. Jackson's Immigrant Labour and the Development of Malaya, deals with the workforce generally, and T. E. Smith's Population Growth in Malaya, discusses demographic trends. For the Indian population, K. S. Sandhu, Indians in Malaya, and S. Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia and Singapore, are standard works. Sandhu discusses Indian smallholding agriculture in some detail on pp. 263–277 of Indians in Malaya. C. N. Parmer, in his Colonial Labor Policy and Administration, has examined the estate workforce and government labor policy. Victor Purcell 's The Chinese in Malaya is more in the nature of a memoir than a history, but it remains the standard work on the subject. Additional information can be found in Blythe, W. L., “Historical Sketch of Chinese Labor in Malaya,” JMBRAS 20, 1 (1947), Wong Lin Ken, The Malayan Tin Industry to 1914, and Yip Yat Hoong, The Development of the Tin Mining Industry of Malaya.Google Scholar

²³ Nathan, J. E., compiler, The Census of British Malaya, 1921, based on Tables 33–38.Google Scholar Although about 23 percent of those enumerated in 1921 did not furnish occupational information, the 1931 and 1947 censuses give no clearer picture of the occupational structure of the country, having been distorted by the depression and by the effects of the Japanese Occupation respectively. Export figures are found in Yah, Lim Chong, Economic Development of Modern Malaya, 325.Google Scholar

²⁴ Sel Sec file 831/1904; stress in the original.

²⁵ Rice Reports, 1893, C171.

²⁶ Krian Monthly Report for November, 1893, in the Perak Government Gazette, 1894, 38.Google Scholar

²⁷ Bulletine de I'oeuvre des Panants, 18 January 1893, p. 652Google Scholar: Fee, Fr. Rene Michel Marie, “Kampong Padre: A Tamil Settlement near Bagan Serai, Perak,” JMBRAS 36, 1 (05 1963), 153–81.Google Scholar

²⁸ Rice Reports, 1893, C133–C134: Sel Sec file 2499/1925.

²⁹ These projects are described in Rice Reports, 1893, C132–C136.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Sel Sec file 3923/1903.

³² Sel Sec file 2710/1907.

³³ Sel Sec file 4223/1923. Accounts of the Sitiawan Foochow settlement can be found in Geographica 6 (1970)Google Scholar: Chan, K. E., Khoo, S. H. and Cho, G., “Foochow Settlement in Sitiawan, Perak: Preliminary Investigations,” 65–71Google Scholar; and in the Journal of the South Seas Society 8, pt. 1 (1952)Google Scholar: Liu, Chiang, “Glimpses of the Chinese in Sitiawan,” 4–7.Google Scholar

³⁴ High Commissioner's Office file RG1299/1901. The government also took no action on a proposal made in 1919 to use Tamil labor to open the Briah portion of the Krian District, and then to allot land to the laborers. Sel Sec file 4791/1919.

³⁵ Sel Sec file 3468/1903.

³⁶ Perak Land Registers, Ipoh, Perak; Interviews with Mr. Khor Joo Choong, Tanjong Piandang, Krian, Perak.

³⁷ Sel Sec file 5659/1912; Sel Sec file 3464/1914; Sel Sec file 260/1918; FMS Government Gazettes of 7–7–16 and 1–8–19.

³⁸ Sel Sec file 2309/1922.

³⁹ Rice Reports, 1893, 26.

⁴⁰ Proceedings, Federal Council of the Federated Malay States, 13 November, 1917, B44.

⁴¹ High Commissioner's Office file 1466/1917.

⁴² Proceedings, Straits Settlements Legislative Council, 1919, B157-B158

⁴³ Grist, D. H., Malayan Agricultural Statistics, 1933, calculated from Table 19.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ High Commissioner's Office file 118/1919.

⁴⁵ Grist, , Malayan Agricultural Statistics, 1933, Table 19. Proceedings of the Federal Council of the Federated Malay States, 1920, Paper No. 11.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Annual Report, Chief Secretary, Federated Malay States, 1921, p. 21. CO 273/516. Guillemard to Churchill, 14 April 1922. Figures are in Straits dollars.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Chong-yah, Lim, Economic Development of Modern Malaya, p. 76.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Proceedings, Federal Council of the Federated Malay States, 30 November 1920, B66.

⁴⁹ Sel Sec file 3089/1920.

⁵⁰ Sel Sec file 1666/1922.

⁵¹ Proceedings, Straits Settlements Legislative Council, 1921, B221, B241. As a result of Campbell's proposal, W. G. Maxwell, the Chief Secretary of the Federated Malay States, initiated an inquiry into why efforts to settle Tamils on rice land had been unsuccessful, but little useful information was obtained. Sel Sec file 5362/1921.

⁵² See, e.g., Sel Sec file 4599/1923.

⁵³ Sel Sec file 4599/1923.

⁵⁴ Sel Sec file 5362/1921.

⁵⁵ Sel Sec file 2410/1919.

⁵⁶ Sel Sec files 4361/1922, 3718/1923, 100/1924, G712/1395.

⁵⁷ Sel Sec file 3813/1925.

⁵⁸ Sel Sec file 5125/1925.

⁵⁹ Sel Sec file 2710/1907. The adaptability of foreign Malays was repeatedly emphasised. See, e.g., Negri Sembilan Sec file 3192/1925; Parmer, , Colonial Labor Policy, 109.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Sel Sec file 5557/1903.

⁶¹ Sel Sec file 2710/1907.

⁶² Parmer, , Colonial Labor Policy, 48–51Google Scholar; Sandhu, , Indians in Malaya, 85–86.Google Scholar

⁶³ Parmer, , Colonial Labor Policy, 108–113.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Sel Sec file 1638/1927.

⁶⁵ Sel Sec files G8/1929, G712/1935.

⁶⁶ Maxwell, C. N., Rider to the Report of the Rice Cultivation Committee, 1931; Vol. I p. 51. Two years later The Straits Times cited this passage as representing a view that would be accepted widely by officialsGoogle Scholar (The Straits Times, May 19, 1933).Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Tempany, H. A., “The Economics of the Rice Situation,” Malayan Agricultural Journal 18(1930), 229–31.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ See, e.g., Report of the Rice Cultivation Committee, 1931, Vol. I, 47ff, Vol. II, 48ff, 16ff, 178ff.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 34–35, 46; Vol. II, pp. 176–184. Some members of the Committee visited a mechanized rice plantation operated in southern Thailand by Chin Leong and Company, a Penang firm. The report on this visit, which deplored the fact that the enterprise had been unable to secure land in Malaya, is appended to the main report of the committee and was also published in the Malayan Agricultural Journal, 18 (2 12 1930), 583–86.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Minutes, Perak State Council, 3 November 1930, 18 December 1930, 12 January 1931.

⁷¹ Minutes, Perak State Council, 12 January 1931. The issue was also debated, inconclusively, in the Selangor State Council on 9 July 1931; Sel Sec file G1260/1931.

⁷² Proceedings, , Federal Council, Federated Malay States, 1931, B86, B91, B92.Google Scholar

⁷³ See Loh, Francis Kok-Wah, “Beyond the Tin Mines: The Political Economy of Chinese Squatter Farmers in the Kinta New Villages, Malaysia” (Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University, 1980), 38–54.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ The Straits Times, May 19, 1933, p. 10.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ The Straits Times, June 24, 1933, p. 20.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ The Straits Times, September 2, 1933.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Sel Sec file G712/1935. See also Sandhu, K. S., Indians in Malaya, 111–12.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ The previous Resident of Pahang, however, had supported non-Malay rice cultivation: “I am very much in favour of allowing Chinese to plant padi. They are excellent planters and would, I think show the Malays how padi can be grown on a big scale, and as a commercial crop.” Pahang Secretariat, Confidential file 108/1935.

⁷⁹ Sastri, V. S. Srinivasa, Reprint of a Report on the Conditions of Indian Labour in Malaya, 1937, p. 16.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Ibid. A brief description of Indian settlements in the late 1930s can be found in an anonymous article entitled “The Settlement of Tamil Labourers on the Land,” in The Malayan Agricultural Journal, 26: 11 (11 1938), 451–57.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Malay Mail, August 5, 1939.Google Scholar

⁸² Ibid., August 8, 1939.

⁸³ The Straits Times, August 5, 1939.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Reported in The Straits Times, August 10, 1939.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ The Malay Mail, August 8, 1939; The Straits Times, August 9, 1939.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ The Malay Mail, August 5, 1939.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ The Straits Times, August, 1939.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ See, e.g., The Malay Mail, 23 November 1940.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Prof. Narkswasdi, Udhis and Selvadurai, S., Economic Survey of Padi Production in West Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives, Malaysia, Bulletin No. 120, 1968)Google Scholar; Selvadurai, S., Padi Farming in West Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Malaysia, 1972)Google Scholar; On April 15, 1979, the New Sunday Times published an article on Indian rice farmers at Tanjong Karang. The community profiled, at Parit Empat, consisted of some 200 families who worked about 700 acres of land. The article reported that some Indian families had abandoned rice planting after the war to work on estates, and as a result portions of the area had passed out of Indian hands. The Indian headman said that his own parents had not had a rice growing background, and he believed the same was true of most families in the community.

⁹⁰ Agricultural Office, Perak North, file 111/46.

⁹¹ On this point, see Rudner, M., “Agricultural Policy and Peasant Social Transformation in Late Colonial Malaya,” in Jackson, J. C. and Rudner, M., Issues in Malaysian Development (Singapore: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia), 1979).Google Scholar

⁹² Ratnam, K. J., Communalism and the Political Process in Malaya (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967), 72–101, 109.Google Scholar

⁹³ Resident Commissioner, Selangor, files 533/1947, 761/1947, 1021/1947, and 143/1948.

⁹⁴ Malayan Union file 3447/1947, emphasis in original. See also Agriculture Office, Perak North, file 15/1953.

⁹⁵ Sel Sec file 939/1949.

⁹⁶ Sel Sec file 1415/1953.

⁹⁷ Resident Commissioner, Selangor, file 1021/1947; Sel Sec file 1415/1953.

⁹⁸ Resident Commissioner, Selangor, file 1021/1947

⁹⁹ Selvadurai, S., Padi Farming in West Malaysia, 7–17.Google Scholar Post-war Malaysian rice production is also discussed in Chong-yah, Lim, Economic Development of Modern Malaya, 144–178Google Scholar, and briefly in Lim, David, Economic Growth and Development in West Malaysia, 1947–1970. Various development activities undertaken after Malaya became independent in 1957 have altered the economic situation in rural Malaysia, but the economy is still characterized by a pronounced ethnic division of labor derived from patterns created during the colonial period.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Lim, David, Economic Growth and Development, 235.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Third Malaysia Plan 1976–1980, 294; Laporan Ekonomi 1979/80, Kementerian Kewangan Malaysia, 122–23.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Selvadurai, S., Padi Farming in West Malaysia, 19.Google Scholar