within the British government in India until 18673, when it became a Crown
Colony directly administered by the colonial administration based in London
until 1946.
While the British continued to maintain an interest in the various Malay
kingdoms or states from the Straits Settlements, there was no direct British
presence within the peninsula proper until 1874. A local succession dispute in
Perak allowed the British the opportunity to intervene in the state. The states
of Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang soon followed and in 1896, were
amalgamated into a larger administrative unit called the Federated Malay States.
The remaining states of Kedah, Perlis, Trengganu, Kelantan and Johor were
known as the Un-Federated Malay States, while British Borneo (present-day
Sabah and Sarawak) came under the auspices of the Brooke family.4
The state of political affairs remained until 1946 when the British established
the Malayan Union. This new administrative comprised of the Federated
and Un-Federated Malay states, and split the Straits Settlements. Penang and
Malacca were united with their sister states in the peninsula, while Singapore
was kept apart, to be administered directly as a Crown Colony. The city-state
remained politically separated from the Malay Peninsula, even as the latter
underwent further permutations as the Federation of Malaya in 1948 and
achieved independence in 1957. It was only in 1963, with the founding of the
Federation of Malaysia, when Singapore along with Sabah and Sarawak joined
the Malayan states to form Malaysia. It was to be an ill-fated short-lived union
as political tensions between Singapore and the federal government spilled over
into communal violence, forcing Singapore out of the Federation in 1965 to chart
its own path as an independent country.5 Such political and communal tensions
were an indirect result of the British colonial presence in the Malay Peninsula.
While pre-colonial Southeast Asia already had substantial non-Southeast Asian
populations plying their trades and living in the region, the establishment of
trading settlements which developed into colonial towns and cities saw an
influx of migrants, in particular from China and India. The increasing number
of Chinese and Indian migrants in British Malaya posed several political and
social problems throughout colonial times and arguably exploded in the political
flux and turmoil after the Second World War. The Chinese in particular had
always been influenced by developments in China and replicated the political
COLONIAL LEGACY IN SOUTH EAST ASIA -
THE DUTCH ARCHIVES
3 Turnbull's The Straits Settlements 1826-67 is still the best study of this period of Singapore's history based
on the archival records of the East India Company preserved as the Straits Settlement Records.
4 For a general history of Malaysia, see: Barabara Watson Andaya and Leonard Y. Andaya, A History of
Malaysia, 2nd ed.
5 Academic (Singaporean) perspectives on Merger in 1963 and Separation in 1965 are provided by Tan Tai
Yong, Creating Greater Malaysia and Lau, A Moment of Anguish.
6 In addition to the above histories, see in particular: Cheah Boon Kheng, The masked comrades and Cheah
Boon Kheng, Red star over Malaya.
7 500 copies of this compilation was published as a 'Special Edition' of the Journal of the Malayan Branch of
the Royal Asiatic Society 28/ii (March 1950) as it was 'represented that these documents might be of use or
interest to many outside the University or Malaya' as Cowan noted in his 'Editor's Note' to the publication.
8 The records are described in: Guide Sources History Singapore, 2-25.
9 Guide Sources Hitory Singapore, 27-42, also: atoska, Index to British Colonial Office.
10 C N Parkinson took up the Raffles Chair as a naval historian and during his tenure wrote British interven
tion in Malaya 1867-1877. He is better known for his series of books on Parkinson's Laws. K. G. Tregonning
drafted a doctoral dissertation published as The British in Malaya; The first forty years, 1786-1926. Wong
Lin Ken's doctoral dissertation on The Malayan Tin Industry to 1914 has also been published as Association
for Asian Studies Monogr. Papers XIV. Other studies include C. M. Turnbull's doctoral dissertation
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