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SOUTHEAST ASIA ISSUE
Volume II, Number 2, August 1964
JOSEFA M. SANIEL Issue Editor
ANDRltS1. FERNA NDEZ Atan agi ng Edit or
MARTHA B. SEGlJERRA In-Cha rge, Circul at ion
Founded on an la te President Ramon Magsaysay, the Institute of Asian ished in 1955 as a s.ep ar a te unit of the Univer sit y of nd impetus and su bs ta nc e to the
Philippines' int At the sta rt it functioned to
coordin a te the ing disciplines in the arts and
socia l scie nces. cilities an d sta ff, and with the
encouragem en t, Dr. Carlos P. Romulo,.it is
an active cent ht and the results of research
<Jm o ng Asian a egarding Asia. It undertakes a
varied publication this journal is a part. Primarily a research unit, the ad m in iste rs scho larsh ips an d a degr ee program lead ing to the Master of Arts in Asian Studies in each of three areas of Asia: Southeast Asia , South Asia, and East Asia, as well as the Philippines as a spec ial area . All four programs are expected to be in full operation within five yea rs. The progr am of study is design ed to provide advanced training in research on Asian cultures and socia l sys- tems on the basis of an un de rgr ad u a te concentration in social science, humanities, or the ar ts, an d seeks to develop an ar ea or region al orient- ation. with an interdisciplinary ap pr oa ch as the primary mode of ana lysis.
RUBEN SANTOS CUY UGAN, Director JOSEFA M. SANIEL, Program Coordinator ANDRES I. FERNANDEZ, Administrative Assistan t
MESSAGE
from
Dr. Carlos P. Romulo
President, University of .the Philippines
These are difficult but challenging years for the Filipino or his fellow Asian. He wishes to speak out strongly, when before he was any- thing but articulate; he is asked to make decisions, when not so long ago he was not responsible even for his own needs. The magnitude of the transformation required of him defies estimation. Together, the Asian peoples comprise over one-half of the world's population; Asian countries cover one-sixth of the earth's habitable surface. Many of his fellows are wholly unprepared for the exactions of modern life; some are understand- ably wary of new influences.
Yet the sources of ingenuity and strength are rich, and have hardly been tapped. Some of the most successful social and cultural systems the world has ever known existed in this region; the Asian is aware of this and has begun to recall and reflect, with an eye to their contemporary relevance. On this basis alone there should be little doubt about the quality of the decisions-a matter ef universal concern-the Asian will have to take. His voice, which will be heard in more vibrant timbre in his own land and in world affairs in the days to come, shall be, we earnestly hope, urbane, wise, and informed. But for it to be so requires higher learning and the benefits of un-remitting scholarship.
To this end I have dedicated one more dimension to the expanding task of the University of the Philippines in this region-that of academic collaboration among all students whose interest is in Asia. Here, in this University, and especially in the Institute of Asian Studies, will take place a confrontation of ideas on equal and fraternal grounds.
No better way to inaugurate this new theme can be found than in the effort that has been put behind the present issue of the Asian Studies journal, devoted to Southeast Asia, and the succeeding number on South and East Asia. To our contributing authors from all over the world, a most cordial welcome. I wish you and our scholars success in the same spirit that brings you to Asia, and shall bind our efforts together: the de- sire to be of mutual assistance, to share in the joys of discovery, in order that the cause of humanity shall be served, impartially and in fulsome measure, throughout Asia.
August 1964
CONTENTS
Message
Carlos P. Romu'o
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SOUTHEAST ASIA ISSUE Volume II, Number 2
The Problem of In-Migration and Squatter Settlement in Asian Cities:
Two Case Studies, Manila and Victoria-Kowloon
D. J. Dwyer 145
Chinese Leadership in Early British Singapore
Lea E. Williams 170
How Germany Made Malaya British
K. G. Tregonning ,... 180
Trends in Regional Association in South East Asia
Michael Leifer 188
Muhammad Alimuddin I of Sulu: The Early Years
Horacia de la Costa, S.J. 199
'New World Contacts with Asia
Silvio Zavala 213
Latin Qualities in Brazil and the Philippines
Jose Maceda 223
Manuel L. Quezon and the American Presidents
Gerald E. 'Wheeler 231
Theoretical Aspects of Southeast Asian History. John Bastin and the Study of Southeast Asian History
Syed Hussein Alatas 247
A Bibliography of Materials Available in the Library System of the University of the Philippines on the Modern History of Southeast Asia L. Y. Coll:antes and J. A. Larkin... 261
CONTRIBUTORS 286
ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN THE ASIAN STUDIES DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF EITHER THE INSTITUTE OF ASIAN STUDIES OR THE UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES.
THE AUTHORS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED AND FOR THE ACCURACY OF FACTS AND STATEMENTS CONTAINED IN THEM.
ASIAN STUDIES IS PUBLISHED THREE TIMES A YEAR- APRIL, AUGUST AND DECEMBER-BY THE
INSTITUTE OF ASIAN STUDIES OF THE.UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES QUE iON CITY, PHILIPPINES.
CORRESPONDENCE ON EDITORIAL MATTERS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
MAY BE ADDRESSED TO THE MANAGING EDITOR ASIAN STUDIES, THE INSTITUTE OF ASIAN STUDIES, U.P. POST OFFICE, QUEZON CITY,
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$3.00 ELSEWHERE; SINGLE COP~ES1'2.50 IN THE PHILIPPINES; $1.50 ABROAD.
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ii
THE PROBLEM OF IN-MIGRATION AND SQUATTER SETTLE- MENT IN ASIAN CITIES: TWO CASE STUDIES, MANILA
AND VICTORIA-KOWLOON
D.
J.
DWYER1:-.: AUGUST 1963, THE MANILA COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE HANDED DOWN
a decision that in order to effect an abatement of public nuisance, squatters in the city could be required to vacate their premises.! This decision, based upon a provision in the city charter, circumvented a previous court injunction against the eviction of squatters which had prevented action by the city authorities. In December, following the failure of the squatters to vacate their premises voluntarily, the city authorities undertook a large- scale eviction operation within the walls of Intramuros (the original core and fortress part of the city) which, after its devastation during the sec- ond world war, had become largely occupied by squatters entering the city as part of a large scale movement of in-migration (Fig. I, Plates 1 and 2). Within two weeks, 2,877 shacks were demolished in the area and some 11,000 squatters moved to Sapang Palay, a small municipality of about 600 persons in Bulacan Province, some sixteen miles from Manila.
The squatter areas were completely razed by fire, in accordance with pre- viously announced plans for the restoration of the ancient Spanish walls of Intramuros, the re-paving of its streets and its transformation into a cultural center through the construction of a national museum, a city university, an open amphitheater, an art gallery, an auditorium and a convention hall.
Trucks carrying the squatters from Manila to Sapang Palay were at first turned back at the boundaries of several neighboring local govern- ment units, including the municipalities of Makati, Mandaluyong and Caloocan in Rizal Province and Quezon City (Fig. 2), on the ground~that some of the squatters might decide to settle in them. At Sapang Palay, the Manila Chronicle commented,s "There seemed to be no planning at all in the allocation of sites for squatters' new homes. They were just dumped anywhere around the community and left alone to themselves to build barong-barongs."3 A representative of the national government
i Details from the Manila Chronicle, December 1-14, 1963.
2Manila Chronicle, December 9, 1963.
3Temporary huts.
145
146 ASIAN STUDIES
claimed that the action of the Manila City authorities had taken it by surprise, though this may well have been intentional on the part of the national government because of a running conflict with the city author- ities as to whether squatters were primarily a local or a national respon- sibility. A government agency, the People's Homesite and Housing Cor- poration, with assistance from the army, thereupon started work upon rows of single-story wooden bunkhouses roofed with corrugated iron and partitioned off into fifteen by fifteen feet rooms, each room to serve as temporary accommodation for one squatter family. The delivery of additional water supplies to the site by tanker lorries was arranged, though little could be done for the 600 children of school age who should have been attending classes in Manila. On the spot investigation into the problem of providing employment for the squatters within the rural area into which they had been taken, were begun by officials of the national So- cial Welfare Administration, the Emergency Employment Administration and the National Cottage Industries Administration. The hope seemed to be that small-scale manufacturing and cottage industries could be started and the products sold in Manila. Subsequently, the President issued a proclamation transferring responsibility for housing at Sapang Palay from the People's Homesite and Housing Corporation to a steering committee led by the National Economic Council with a view, it was stated, to transforming the area into a model agro-industrial estate which would demonstrate the feasibility of systematic squatter relocation. A national Squatter Resettlement Agency was also established by a Presidential Exe- cutive Order, but has since been practically inoperative because of lack of funds.
Urbanization In the Underdeveloped World.
It is the theme of this paper to relate this somewhat confused situa- tion to a wider context, to outline some of the more important problems facing Metropolitan Manila through in-migration and to suggest lines along which answers might be sought. The barong-barongs of Manila, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the villas miseria of Buenos Aires and the barriadas of Lima are all part of a wide pattern of urban development:
illegal squatter settlements are a characteristic feature of the present rapid urbanization of the underdeveloped world. In Africa, and to a large extent in South America also, squatter settlements are more usually found in a peripheral distribution around the city limits on previously uninha- bited land. But in Asia, their growth on the peripheries of the cities has been limited by the fact that the land is often intensely cultivated up to the city limits, and squatters have therefore penetrated in large numbers
IN-MIGRATION AND SQUATTER SETTLEMENT IN ,ASIAN CITIES 151 into the hearts of the cities as, for example, in the Intramuros area of Manila. Besides sterilizing potential building sites, they have frequently occupied land within the cities that is unsuitable for permanent dwellings.
It may consist of swamps, as in certain districts of Bangkok, steep hillsides, as in Hong Kong, low ground subject to flooding, as in Kuala Lumpur, or even city refuse dumps.
Between 1800 and 1950, the population of the world living in cities of 20,000 or more inhabitants increased from an estimated 21.7 millions to 502.2 millions, or 2~ times.s During the same period, the total world population expanded only 2.6 times. The fact that the rate of world urbanization (that is, the proportion of population living in towns and cities to that of total population) shows no signs of 'slackening suggests that the end of this process' is not yet in sight, and that possibly the peak has still to be reached.f Nevertheless, within the general trend, there are two distinct facets. The industrialized countries are showing declin- ing rates. But because they embrace only one quarter of the world's popu- lation, this has not been sufficient to retard the trend. The massive popu- lations of the world's underdeveloped countries, in contrast, are still in the early stages of "an urbanisation that promises to be more rapid than that which occurred earlier in the areas of northwest European culture."G
Because of the size of its population, Asia-with about 13 per cent of its people resident in cities of 20,000 or more-is as yet the least ur- banized of the continents, except for Africa (9 per cent). Yet, already Asia has more large cities and more people living in them than any other continent. Moreover, the rate of urban growth in Asia during this cen- tury has far exceeded that of Europe or North America.? Paradoxically though, the rate' of urbanization in Asia and the size of its major cities are-as throughout the underdeveloped world-more expressions of lack of economic development than the results of it. In general, it appears that the recent rapid urbanization of the underdeveloped world has not been accompanied by proportional increases of workers in industry.s 'When the more developed countries were recording their highest rates of ur- banization, on the other hand, they were also showing substantial in-
4United Nations Secretariat, Bureau of Social Affairs, Report on the World Social Situu1tio/n (New York, 1957), p. 113.
5Kingsley Davis, "The Origin and Growth of Urbanization in the World,"
America:n Journal of Sociology, Vol. 60 (1954-55), p. 447.
6Ibid.
7P. M. Hauser (ed.), Urbanization in Asia 'and the Far East, U.N.E.S.C.O.
Tensions and Technology Series (Calcutta, 1957), Foreword (n.p.) ,
8U.N. Secretariat, Bureau of Social Affairs, op, cit., pp. 124-125.. For a dis- senting view see N. V. Sovani, "The Analysis if Over-Urbanization," Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. XII (1964), pp. 113-122.
152
ASIAN STUDIEScreases in their proportions of industrial employment. It also appears that the underdeveloped countries of today have less industrial employ- ment as a share of total employment than did the developed countries when the latter were at the same stage of urbanization. A large part of the urbanization of the underdeveloped world represents at present little more than the transfer-through in-migration of rural poverty into the cities-where it often becomes concentrated and conspicuous in squatter settlements.9
Of the many complex and integrated causes of the situation, three are outstanding for our purposes. The first is that in the present un- balanced state of economic growth in most Asian countries, in which a fragile superstructure of modern industry is being erected upon a found- ation of a stagnant agricultural sector, even a small increase in industrial development may cause disproportionate urban growth. From smaller towns, in which the effect of establishing one factory or other modern enterprise is observable, it has been reported that the increment in em- ployment resulting specifically from such a project may well be accom- panied by an increase in unemployment and in casual and irregular em- ployment within the town.i" This is because the new source of wealth attracts large numbers from the countryside seeking to obtain some benefit from it, usually indirectly in rendering services to those employed in the new enterprise.
Secondly, as the primate cities11 of Asia are still largely commercial and administrative centers, a relatively large population of their residents depends directly or indirectly upon the fortunes of trade with the more developed world. Thus, the continuing industrialization and mounting national income of the more developed countries provide indirectly a basi's for expanding city populations in Asia. The other side of the coin here is that imports of relatively cheap manufactured goods may damage village industries, throw the local weaver, blacksmith and potter out of work, undermine an important basis of village life and add to the char- acteristic poverty of the rural areas. This leads to the third point, which is that much of Asia's recent urbanization has not occurred in response to an economic need for large urban, population concentrations, that is, from employment opportunities in industrial development within the towns and cities. It has. primarily been the result rather of "push" factors arising
9U.N. Secretariat, Bureau of Social Affairs, op. cii., p, 112.
10Ibid., p. 126.
11See Mark Jefferson, "The Law at the Primate City," Geographical Re- view, Vol. XXIX, (1939), pp. 226-232.
IN-MIGRATION AND SQUATTER SETTLEMENT IN ,ASIAN CITIES 153 from the low level of rural development and, sometimes, from conditions of physical insecurity in the countryside.t-
It is extremely difficult to estimate the volume of rural-urban migra- tion and its precise contribution to the growth of Asia's cities because of the lack of official published data on the subject. Still, more difficult is it to estimate the numbers in each city who are illegal squatters. Some scattered estimates of the latter indicate, however, that the squatter ele- ment is considerable in most Asian cities. Thus, in 1961, Djakarta was said to have 750,000 squatters and they constituted 25 per cent of its total population.l3 Of Delhi's 1959 population, 200,000 are estimated to have been squatters (13 per cent of the total populationj.t- There were 100,000 squatters in Kuala Lumpur in 1961 (20 per cent of the total popu- lation)15 and 580,000 in Hong Kong in 1964 (17 per cent of the total population).16 Of the City of Manila's 1.4 millions in 1963, 320,000, or 23 per cent, were squatters.i?
The problems of the Manila area have been brought into sharper focus, within the changing matrix of population distribution in the Phil- ippines, by the publication of the 1960 national census of population.ts This has confirmed that there has been an unprecedented growth of popu- lation in the Philippines since the second world war and that, in fact, the rate for the period 1948-60 was 3 per cent per annum, which was one of the highest in Asia. Much of the growth of population has resulted from a falling death rate, but from the evidence available, it seems that the Philippines crude death rate is still above that of Malaya, Ceylon and Taiwan, the only Asian countries with higher rates of popu- lation growth during the 1948-60 period. For this and other reasons, therefore, a United Nations study has estimated that the Philippine rate of population growth could well accelerate to 3.9 per cent by 1977,19
The significance of this is that the rapidly increasing growth of popu- lation in the Philippines is resulting in important movements of people
12Hauser, op, cit., p. 33.
13W. A. Hanna, Bung Karno's Indonesia (New York,11961), p, 4.
14G. Breese, "Urban Development Problems in India," Annals af the As- sodation oj American Geographers, Vol. LIII (1963), p. 263.
• 15W. J. Bennet, "Kuala Lumpur: A Town of the Equatorial Lowland,"
Ttjdsohrijt Voor Economische En Sociale Geoarafie, Vol. LII (1961), p. 329.
16Speech of the Governor of Hong Kong to the Legislative Council, :as reported by Hong Kong Government Information Services, February 28, 1964.
17Manila Chronicle, December 3, 1963.
18See P. D. Simpkins and F. L. Wernstedt, "Growth and Internal Migra- tions of the Philippine Population, 1948 to 1960," Journal o] Tropicat GeO'graphy, Vol. XVI (1962), pp. 197-202.
19United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Growth and Manpower in the Phiilippinels, New York (1960), pp. 6-10.
154 ASIAN STUDIES
away from the most congested rural areas. The Philippine population is very unevenly distributed throughout the islands. The area of most concentrated settlement extends from the lIocos coast of northwest Luzon, southward through the Central Plain and into parts of the hilly country south of Manila; other areas of dense settlement are found in the Visayan islands, especially the narrow coastal plains bordering Cebu, Leyte, north- west Negros and southeast Panay. These densely peopled areas in Luzon and the Visayas comprise less than one-third of the total area of the Phil- ippines but contain two-thirds or more of the total population. Through- out much of them, according to Simpkins and Wernstedt,20 the point of rural population saturation has been reached, if not exceeded, at their present level of development. Population densities commonly exceed 1,000 persons per square mile of cultivated land, and fairly large numbers of the agricultural population are seriously underemployed. In Luzon especially, there are also tenancy problerns.s- and a state of physical in.
security existed over large areas of the Central Plain during the early part of the intercensal period due to the Hukbalahap rebellion.
The result over the 1948-60 period appears to have been a large measure of out-migration. The central Visayas, the north coast of Min- danao and the lIocos coastlands of Luzon, for example, increased in popu- lation at a much slower rate than the national average. Had their popu- lations increased at the same rate as the national average, two million more people would have been recorded in these areas in the 1960 census.22 This figure is a crude indication of the volume of population movement currently taking place. Part of the migration is to new land in central and southern Mindanao, Mindoro, Palawan and the upper Cagayan Valley of Luzon, but a significant part also is towards Manila and its suburbs.
It is not possible to be precise about the volume of rural migration into Metropolitan Manila because of boundary changes in its constituent local government units during the intercensal period. 23
Looking to the future, the United Nations study already mentioned suggests that as a minimum, the ratio of the population of Metropolitan Manila to the population of the Philippines as a whole can be expected
20Op, cit., p. 198.
21See D. J. Dwyer, "Irrigation and Land Problems in the Central Plain of Luzon: Comment on a, Sample Study," Geography, (in the press).
22Simpkins and Wernstedt, op, cit., p. 199.
23For details ~ee Carlos P. Ramos, "Manila, Quezon City and Suburbs, A Study on Metropolitan Growth," paper prepared for the U.N. Regional Seminar on Public Administration Problems of New and Rapidly Growing Towns held in New Delhi, December, 1960 (mimeographed), 'I'able 1, p. 3.
IN-MIGRATION AND SQUATTER SETTLEMENT IN !ASIAN CITIES 155
to increase from the 7.1 per cent of 1948 to 12 per cent in 1977 (that is, if a gradually 'Slackening rate is assumedj.s- This would mean a popu- lation of about 5.1 millions in Metropolitan Manila in 1977, compared with a 1960 figure of 2.1 millions. On the other hand, should the popu- lation of the Philippines continue to rise at its present high rate, and should the past trend in the ratio of the population of Metropolitan Manila to that of the total urban population of the country be maintained, then by 1977, Metropolitan Manila could well have 6.2 million inhabitants, or one-third of the total urban population. 'The latter projection could well be nearer the truth, for the United Nations considers that it may turn out to be the more realistic if Philippine industrialization continues to be highly centralized in the capital.w and there is no sign as yet of any stiffening in official attitudes on this point.
From these projections, a brief glance may be taken at the possible role of in-migration in the future growth of Metropolitan Manila. Na- tional plans for economic development in the Philippines call for a shift of workers from agriculture to manufacturing and other industries: this alone will almost certainly increase the proportion living in urban areas.
It has been estimated that, if development proceeds according to plan, an increase in the urban population of 10.5 millions, or 130 percent, can be expected during the twenty years, 1957-77.2'G As far as Metropolitan Manila is concerned, its population total for 1977 based upon a 3.2 per cent annual natural increase alone (the projected national average rate of population growth for the period 1955-77) would be 3.7 millions. If the United Nations "high estimate" of a total of 6.2 millions by 1977 proves true, therefore, there will be a net in-migration of 2.5 millions to be dealt with during the period. This would comprise not only migrants from the rural areas but also those from the smaller towns and thepobla- ciones.n Even the "low estimate" for Metropolitan Manila of 5.1 mil- lions by 1977, which seems unlikely, includes 1.4 million in-migrants. It will be evident from these calculations, as inexact as they may prove to be, that Metropolitan Manila's present urban problems, particularly those of squatter settlement, are not now as serious as they will undoubtedly become in the forseeable future, in the absence of any radical new attack upon them.
24United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, op, cit., pp. 14-15.
25Ibid., p. 15.
26iua; pp. 12-14.
27Each municipality, into which the provinces are divided, has a number of rural centers or barrios and one pobbacion.in which the municipal buildings are located.
156
ASIAN STUDIES The Problem In a National Context.The point has already been made that a large part of the problem of internal migration towards Asia's cities-as of the present Asian level of over-urbanization-is attributable to economic underdevelopment and particularly to the inbalance between efforts to develop manufacturing industry in the primate cities and the almost unchanging face of rural poverty in the countryside. The rural hinterlands of Asia's cities are rela.
tively untouched by modern farming techniques, by community develop.
ment projects or by those elements of an infrastructure that would facili- tate the wider distribution of industry. Hence the few great cities attract the bulk of new enterprise and continue as the only centers of modem production. As Mansani has written of India, "By rural standards all town dwellers, including industrial workers were a privileged class. While the bulk of taxation was borne by the agrarian classes, the State spent most of the money in the cities and towns."2& Clearly, in these circum- stances, a large number of the answers to problems of in-migration and squatter settlement must be sought on a national level. There can be no overall solutions except within a context of relatively rapid economic growth and, if the problems of the agricultural sector prove intractable, ways must at least be found of spreading some of the fruits of such growth in the towns into the rural areas.
Whether rural development can in itself be expected to decrease the volume of rural-urban migration is, however, highly questionable.w Unless there is a substantial (and unlikely) growth of village industries, for example, it would appear that a general improvement in farming tech- niques should increase productivity and therefore reduce rural manpower requirements. New roads will make it easier to market crops, but easier also to travel to the cities. There is some evidence that the provision of a few years of education is a powerful stimulant for young people to leave the villages for the cities. It has also been 'suggested that it is not neces- sarily the lowest levels of rural life that migrate, and that migrants in fact often came rather from the strata that is not overwhelmed by apathy and ignorance. Rural development can, nevertheless, contribute significantly to raising the overall level of national economic development since in many underdeveloped countries 'slow rates of increase in agricultural pro- duction are being offset by a high level of increase in rural population,
28M. R. Mansani, The Communist Party of India (New York, 1954), p. 14, quoted by R. 1, Crane in "Urbanism in India," American Journal of Socir>T;ogy, Vol. LX (1954-55), p. 465.
29See United Nations Secretariat, Bureau of Social Affairs, op, cit., pp.
128-129.
IN-MIGRATION AND SQUATTER SETTLEMENT IN !ASIAN CITIES 157 and imports of food for many of Asia's cities are absorbing capital that might otherwise be spent upon economic development. This is particu- larly true of the Philippines, which has one of the lowest overall yields of rice in Asia. Another, and in the long run more important, aspect of this situation is that with each increment of rural development, some expansion of the market for manufactured ~oods produced in the cities should occur.
Lastly, only within the framework of an infrastructure created as part of successful rural development can there take place the expansion of smaller urban centers, particularly those inland, that is necessary to pro- vide urban growth points alternative to those of the primate cities and capable of receiving a share of migration from countryside. As Watts has pointed out, in most countries, a proportion of migrants arrives at the metropolis after having stopped at one or more smaller towns on the way and failing to find employment in them.30 He contends that general liv- ing conditions for the migrant are likely to be better in all respects in a smaller town than a metropolis, but that the vital part of what the smaller towns lack at present is a measure of industrial employment. If this is so, a crucial question for each Asian government in respect of national policy towards rural-urban migration and the problem of squatter settle- ment then becomes whetheritis possible, politically as well as economical- ly, to encourage some of the new industries to seek locations in smaller towns rather than in metropolitan areas. The attractive advantages en- joyed by the primate cities in respect of industrial location are many, but they are not necessarily insuperable. A recent seminar on industrial es- tates convened by, the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East concluded that "Although the location of industrial estates in or neal metropolitan and other big cities offered a number of undoubted economic advantages, such as the availability of basic facilities at low cost, industrial climate and market near at hand, a point was reached beyond which coun- tervailing social considerations would make it necessary to locate estates at sufficient distance from the cities. Among these considerations were overstrained capacity of public utilities, population congestion, growing pressure on space and soaring land prices . . . location of estates in the rural areas presented problems of an opposite kind-comparative shortage or almost lack of basic facilities, difficulties of transport and absence of industrial atmosphere-but held out promise of providing employment and income to workers nearer their places of residence." 31
30Kenneth Watts, "Small Town Development in the Asian 'I'ropics, Prob- lems and Possibilities," Town Hanning Review, Vol. XXXIV (1963), p, 21.
31United Nations, KG.A.F.E., Report of the Seminar on Industrial Est(l)tes (1961), quoted by Watts, op. cit., 23-24.
158
ASIAN STUDIES The Example of Hong Kong.Even within a context of sufficient national economic growth, the fruits of which are well distributed, problems of in-migration and squatter settlement are likely to remain unsolved unless local situation are carefully analyzed and individual policies for each city well thought out, co-ordinated on a national level and speedily executed. In this respect, more has prob- ably been achieved to date in the Victoria-Kowloon urban area of Hong Kong than in any other of Asia's major cities." Hong Kong's pre-war popu- lation of 1.6 millions had expanded to 3.1 millions by 1961 due mainly to the influx of over one million refugees from Mainland China since 1948. Many of the refugees crowded into tenement buildings in the urban areas that were subdivided into minimal rooms, cubicles and even mere bedspaces (see Table 1). In addition, flat roof spaces were let, and many families found sleeping room on the pavements and elsewhere. The code plan for the 1961 census of Hong Kong included designations for cocklofts, staircases, passages, hawker stalls, caves, tunnels and sewers.sa But even such human infilling as this failed to accommodate the rising population, and from 1949 onwards camps of squatters-previously only a minor expression of the postwar housing shortage-began to mushroom in and around the cities (Fig. 3). As an official Hong Kong account put it, "Their need was so great and so pressing that they had no thought for the ownership of the land and it would have required an army of police to have restrained them. Virtually every sizeable vacant site that was not under some form of physical or continuing protection was occu- pied, and when there was no flat land remaining, they moved up the hill- sides and colonized the ravines and slopes that were too steep for normal development." 34
It has been estimated that between 1949 and 1956 the squatter popu- lation of Hong Kong rose from 30,000 to 300,000 persons;35 as has already been mentioned that by 1964, it had become 580,000. The total area of the Colony is only 390 square miles, and land was extremely scarce even for the squatter. The result was a density of settlement in single story huts that in places reached 2,000 persons an acre, and a proliferation of huts subdivided into mere cubicles, which in some cases held five or six persons in a space of 40 square feet. The largest of the squatter camps
32See! T. D. Vaughan and D. J. Dwyer, "Some Aspects of Postwar Popula- tion Growth in Hong Kong," Economic Geography, (in the press).
33K. M. A. Barnett, Hong Kong: Report on the 1961 C&nSU8, Hong Kong Vol. I (1962), p. xxv.
34Hong Kong Government, A Problem of Peopie (Hong Kong, 1960), pp.
12-13.
35Hong Kong Government, Hong Kong Annual Report 1956 (Hong Kong, 1957), p. 16.
IN-MIGRATION AND SQUATTER SETTLEMENT IN !ASIAN CITIES 159 became that of Shek Kip Mei on the outskirts of Kowloon (Fig. 3), which at its peak held 80,000 persons. Within the close, almost impenetrable density of this huge and squalid settlement shops, small factories, schools, opium divans and brothels flourished without the knowledge of the gov- ernment, and there was a continued risk of epidemics and fire. The for- mer fortunately did not occur, but squatter fires became usual with each dry season. In addition to fire, health, moral and possible political hazards, those squatter camps within the Victoria-Kowloon urban area sterilized land urgently needed for permanent housing and industrial development. Large concentrations of squatters had by 1954 brought the expansion of Kowloon almost to a stop. At its height, a belt of squatter settlement stretched in a six-mile "conurbation" of illegal camps across the northern fringes of the city, not only occupying valuable building land but also obstructing access to potential sites further out.
After an initial small-scale resettlement scheme, which was started in 1951 and had proved patently inadequate by 1954 (9,000 units of single story hutted accommodation were provided during this period and 30,000 persons resettled), the Government of Hong Kong began a major resettle- ment program which is still continuing.>" In it the Government de- cided to assume direct responsibility for the squatters and to enter the field of resettlement using public funds and its own constructional re- sources. Its immediate occasion was a fire in the Shek Kip Mei squatter area on Christmas night, 1953, which rendered 50,000 persons homeless but also cleared 45 acres for redevelopment. To deal with this situation, a new government department-the Department of Resettlement-was estab- lished with authority over registration, clearance and all the processes of resettlement. It was accepted that the problem could not be solved unless the squatters were rehoused in areas substantially smaller than they had occupied in squatter conditions, and this led to resettlement taking place in buildings of six or seven stories (Plates 3 and 4). The acceptance of this principle, and with it extremely high density housing (up to 2,000 persons per acre), has made it possible for the majority of the resettlement estates completed so far to be located in the suburbs of Kowloon, where the bulk of the squatter working population has been able to find employ- ment in Hong Kong's booming industries. Separate wholly industrial re- settlement blocks have. also been built to house squatter factories removed from land required for permanent development.
By February 1964, 605,000 squatters had been resettled in estates."
The resettlement blocks now being built consist usually of seven stories,
36 A Problem of People, op. cit., pp. 19-22.
37Speech 'Of the Governor of Hong Kong to the Legislative Council, as reported by Hong Kong Government Information Services, February 28, 1964.
IGO
ASIAN STUDIESwith flat roofs- strengthened and fenced so as to add space for recreation, and shops or schools occupying the ground floors. Communal bathing rooms on a scale of one to every 35 domestic rooms are provided; no water is piped into them, however, and washing must be done by bucket and scoop. The basic design of each: block is an H shape, the long arms ot the H consisting of separate rooms, one for each family, and the cross- piece containing communal water supplies, latrines and an open space for washing clothes (Fig. 4). There are four staircases, one at each corner of the building. Each room is 120 square feet in area and access is by a balcony running completely round the long arm of the H. Electric light is provided. The average density of resettlement is five adults to a room (a child of ten years or under counting as half an adult) and smaller families are required to share a room. As the Hong Kong authorities themselves state, "The allowance of 24 square feet to an adult may repre- sent a considerable degree of overcrowding by normal standards, but this was emergency accommodation; it was sanitary, weatherproof, and fire- proof, and it was more realistic to judge it by what it replaced rather than by arbitrary standards of what is desirable."38 It is worth noting that this attitude was recently endorsed by UNESCO and the United Na- tions Bureau of Social Affairs in considering problems of urbanization in Latin America. Urging experiments in mass housing involving some measure of departure from present standards of space and amenities, they contended that "Most housing agencies . . . may have no choice if they are to reach the masses of the shanty towns." 39
Besides the detailed squatter 'Survey, transfer and other resettlement methods employed by the Hong Kong Government's Resettlement Depart- ment, which are explained in its annual reports.w the economics of resettle- ment in multistory buildings may well prove applicable, at least in part, to other Asian cities. It has been found in Hong Kong that, given an efficient building industry, a seven story resettlement building can be completed in about eight weeks, once the piling is completed, and that it is possible to relate rentals to the cost of construction and still keep them within the means of the squatters.u 'The only subsidy the govern- ment gives the resettlement program is land for the schemes at one half the market price. It does, however, advance funds for capital expen- diture on a 40-year loan at 3.5 per cent interest per annum. In 1956 a block containing 432 rentable rooms could be constructed for 795,600 dol-
38Hong Kong Government, A Problem of People, op, eii., P. 25.
3'9P. M. Hauser (ed.) Urbanization: in Latin America, UNESCO (Paris, 1961), p. 318.
40See, for example, Anlnua.lDepartmental Report 1962-.'1, Commissioner for Resettlement Hong Kong Government (Hong Kong, 1963).
4J Hong Kong Government, A Problem of People, op. cit., pp. 26-27.
IN-MIGRATION AND SQUATTER SETTLEMENT IN ASIAN CITIES 161 TABLE 1
Classification of Accommodation Hong Kong Island and Kowloon (1961 Census)
No. OF PEIU;ONS
TYPE OF ACCOMMODATION TOTAL
HONG KONG IS. KOWLOON* NBW KOWLOON*
Space not in a building 11,441 7,004 10,228 28,673 Room, bedspace etc. in wooden house
or shack 52,103 28,276 55,194 135,573
Whole wooden house or shack 90,119 24,418 107,948 222,485 Whole concrete brick or stone house 51,270 36,202 53,917 141,389 Concrete brick or stone house:
1. Self-contained flat 228,326 119,372 82,074 429,772 2. Room or cubicle 436,152 389,464 480,490 1,306,106
3. Bedspace 67,197 47,861 22,637 137,695
4. Basement 9,338 1,763 919 12,020
5. Veranda or cockloft 23,484 28,387 14,050 65,921 6. Non-domestic living space 17,715 16,662 12,825 47,202
Roof 17,730 25,768 12,567 56,065
Total 1,004,875 775,177 852,849 2,632,901
*
The areas designated as Kowloon New Kowloon in the 1961 Census were together somewhat larger than the actual urban .area of Kowloon (see B.arnett, op. cit., Census Plan No.1). The proportional relationship of the figures. for the various groupings can, however, be taken as fairly representing housing conditions in Kowloon.Source: Barnett, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 1.
lars (i.e., Hong Kong dollars, six of which equal one U.S. dollar). It would require 23,000 square feet of building land which, at half price, might be valued at 230,000 dollars. A further 65,239 dollars covered such outgoings as amortization, crown rent, maintenance, administration and miscellaneous recurrent expenditure. To payoff these sums, a rent for each room inclusive of rates, of 12.5 dollars was necessary, but to this were added one dollar for water and 50 cents for bad debts, giving a total monthly rental of 14 dollars. Although the rents from multistory estates were running at that time at 3.5 million dollars a year, only 1,213 dollars had been written off as irrecoverable arrears.
166 ASIAN STUDIES The Situatioei in Manila.
It will be clear from earlier sections of this paper that if problems of in-migration and squatter settlement are to be tackled successfully, most of Asia's primate cities will, in the immediate future, probably be called upon to produce an effort not far short of that of the Hong Kong Govern- ment within the Victoria-Kowloon urban area. As far as Metropolitan Manila is concerned, there would seem to be a series of significant obstacles to an attack of such intensity upon, the problem (even if it is not to take place along the .same lines). These arise partly from fundamental differ- ences in forms of government and local administration between the Phil- ippines and Hong Kong, but in part also from the necessity of certain reforms and changes in attitudes within the Philippines.
A major and irreconcilable point of difference is that colonial rule in Hong Kong, which involves no measure of popular control, has enabled government officials to work within an atmosphere of benevolent despotism rather than one in which it is necessary to trim public policies carefully in response to pressure groups, the clamor of the most vocal sections of the population and the necessity for keeping at least half an eye on the next election. Further, in Hong Kong there is no division of interests be- tween the government of the cities and that of the colony as a whole, since separate city government is almost non-existent. As Szczepanik has pointed out, in Hong Kong the Urban Council does not enjoy the municipal func- tions usually associated with such a title.42 It has no revenue from rates or taxes; its expenditure is regulated as that of a government department;
in fact, it simply replaced the Sanitary Board in 1935 and exists almost solely to carry out its duties. All land in Hong Kong belongs to the Crown, Private development is through leases sold by auction, and the terms of these usually include a building covenant in order to prevent land being held idle for speculative purposes and to control its use. Since the second world war, a Town Planning Ordinance that was enacted before the war has been used by the Public Works Department to prepare and enforce zoning plans43 and to layout two new industrial towns adja- cent to Kowloon, which themselves have been used in part for sites for squatter resettlement estates.s-
42Edward Szczepanik, The Economic Growth of Hong Kong (London, 195,8), p. 15.
• 43See, for example, Director of Public Works, Hong Kong, City of Vic- toriai: Central Area Redevelopment: Pian. (Hong Kong, 1961) and Planning Di- vision, Public Works Department, Tsuen Wan and District o'utl'ine Development Plan (Hong Kong, 1963).
44See David C. Y. Lai and D. J. Dwyer, "Tsuen Wan: A New Industrial Town in Hong Kong," Geographical Review, Vol. LIV (1964), Pp. 151-169.
IN-MIGRATION AND SQUATTER SETTLEMENT IN !ASIAN CITIES 167 In the politically conscious and administravely highly centralized Philippines, in contrast, a major point currently at issue is the relationship between city administrations and the national authorities.w A Local Auto- nomy Law (Republic Act No. 2264) was passed in 1959, and a further attempt to decentralize functions and powers further to local government (S. No. 553) was introduced into the Senate recently. The mayors of twenty-four of the twenty-eight chartered cities in the Philippines are at present appointed by the national government, the exceptions being those of Manila, Ozamis City, Bacolod and Tacloban, who are elected every four years. Often, the appointed incumbents and the persons they bring with them into city government have more political than administrative virtues. If, as has happened, on the other hand, an elected mayor is a member of an opposition party, he can expect little co-operation from the national authorities. City charters are created, revoked or altered by Con- gress. They are often out of date, but change can easily be blocked in Congress by interested pressure groups. The city government of Manila is currently seeking to set up a new Social Welfare Bureau which is to deal in part with relocation and rehabilitation of squatters, but to do so it has had to seek to amend the city charter and has had to file a bill for this purpose (H. No. 8885) with Congress. Because of internal poli- tical jockeying, not only the quality but also the level of execution of city government is frequently low. Liaison men have in the past had to be employed in Manila to improve communication between the Mayor and the Municipal Board.w
As was indicated during the removal of the squatters from Intramuros to Sapang Palay, relations between adjacent local government units fre.
quently lack cordiality also. Metropolitan Manila is composed of three cities-Manila, Pasay and Quezon cities-and five municipalities belonging administratively to Rizal Province-Caloocan, Makati, Mandaluyong, Para.
iiaque and San Juan (Fig. 2.). There is as yet no body to co-ordinate their often diverging interests and to make overall policy decisions for the urban area as a whole. This kind of situation is by no means unusual in large cities-as a recent United Nations 'Study has stated, "The problems of administration and local self-government arising from the spread of cities beyond their nominal boundaries have not been solved even by the countries with the longest experience of urbanisation" 47_yet, perhaps Bogota could here provide an example for Metropolitan Manila. Faced
. 45See
J.
~. Romani and M. Ladd Thomas, A Survey of Local Government zn the Ph~hpptne8, Institute of Public Admirristnation, University of the Phil.ippines (Manila, 1954).
46Ramos, op. cie., p. 22.
47United Nations Secretariat, Bureau of Social Affairs, op, cit., p. 134.
168
ASIAN STUDIESwith similar problems of city growth, in-migration and 'Squatter settlement as are being experienced in Asian cities, the Colombian authorities created in 1954 a Special District to control the metropolitan area of Bogota; in the arrangement, certain functions were retained by the constituent municipalities.
A feature of Manila and other Philippine cities is that there are large tracts of unoccupied urban land obviously being held for speculative pur- poses. 'This is partly a result of the failure to levy and collect a realistic property tax, which minimizes the out-of-pocket costs of idle land.4 8 The maximum tax rates the cities are permitted to levy on property are set out in their respective charters. They are usually extremely low, but even so are not often levied in full. According to Golay, in 1956, the actual levy in 22 cities was only one per cent and only five cities levied the per- mitted maximum.w Quezon City, for example, imposed a tax of 1.25 per cent, whereas it could have taxed at a maximum of 2 per cent. The city of Manila (1.5 per cent) imposes the maximum permitted by its charter but, as in the case of other Philippine cities, its assessed values are fre- quently well below market values. Furthermore, it is general for large amounts of assessed property taxes to be waived for various reasons (includ- ing, in case, rat infestation,50), and high rates of tax delinquency are common. In Naga City, for example, 50-60 per cent of the property taxes have been delinquent in recent years.51 While landowning interests pre- dominate in both national and local politics, there are few grounds for expecting this situation to be fundamentally reformed.
Lastly, there is room for considerable improvement in national and local attitudes towards the physical planning of towns and cities and the implementation of such plans. Physical planning in the Philippines has for too long been at the mercy of political whim for any major city improvements to have emerged from its application. An Urban Planning Commission was created in 1946 to prepare general plans for the zoning and subdivision of urban areas.52 With the inauguration of a new national administration, the Commission was supplemented in 1947 with a Real Property Board to deal with problems involving real estate in connection with the planning of the city of Manila. Neither body, however, had any effect. A Capital City Planning Commission was created in 1948 and charged with the preparation and execution of a master plan for the new
48F. H. Golay, The Philippines: Public Polwy and National Economic De~
uelopment: (Ithaca, New York, 1961), p. 209.
49Ibid. p, 207.
50Ibid., p. 208.
51Romani and Thomas, op, cit., p, 105.
52Details from Ramos, op, cit., pp. 6-9.
IN·MIGRATION AND SQUATTER SETTLEMENT IN ASIAN CITIES 169 national capital at Quezon City. The plan was completed in 1949, but so far no action has been taken on it except for the purchase of a few lots for offices by the national government and the adoption of a zoning and subdivision ordinance by the Quezon City authorities in 1956.
'With a change of government in 1949, the Capital City Planning Commission, the Real Property Board and the Urban Planning Commis- sion were abolished and their powers transferred to an agency within the office of the President known as the National Planning Commission.
A master plan for the city of Manila was completed by the National Planning Commission in 1954.53 The Municipal Board of Manila con- ducted public hearings on the plan but has since failed to enact new zon- ing ordinances for the city. Ramos attributes this to internal dissension on the Board and points out that the city of Manila continues to grow on a 1940 zoning ordinance, which itself was based on a town plan designed in 1928, when about half a million people occupied an area that now holds more than twice as many.54 Meanwhile, the Local Autonomy Law of 1959 empowered local municipal boards and city councils to adopt their own subdivision and zoning regulations. Although the National Plan- ning Commission might be consulted, it reserved to local interests (in the Lase of Metropolitan Manila each of its eight constituent parts) the final decision on master plans prepared by the national government.
In a recent bill that has so far failed to pass Congress (H. No. 8518), the national government now proposes to create an Urban Development Authority to bring together the existing People's Homesite and Housing Corporation, the National Planning Commission and a new Urban Fi- nancing Commission in order to take charge of urban redevelopment and the floating of bonds for the purchase of the necessary land. It remains to be seen whether this proposed body will be able to provide the kind of radical reforms that are needed to solve the problems of in-migration and squatter settlement in Metropolitan Manila.
63National Planning Commission, Master Plan, City of Manila, (Manila, 1954) .
54Ibid. p, 7.
CHINESE LEADERSHIP IN EARLY BRITISH SINGAPORE
LEA E. WILLIAMS
EARLY IN 1819 SIR THOMAS STAMFORD RAFFLES COMPLETED negotianons with the local Malay authority and secured the island of Singapore as a base for the East India Company. The union jack was then raised over the tiny settlement to symbolize the new sovereignty.
For years, however, the British could not be regarded as exercising more than shadowy administrative control over Singapore as it grew from ham- let to town to city. Like their own modern constitutional monarchs, the British in Singapore reigned rather than ruled. De facto governing power in those distant decades lay in the hands of Asian leaders known and respected by their peoples. The situation was in part inevitable and in much smaller part due to the necessary adoption of indirect rule an- nounced by Raffles in the following instructions to the first Resident of Singapore:
The Chinese, Bugguese and other foreign sebtlers are to be placed under the immediate superintendence of chiefs of their own tribes, to be appointed by you, and those chiefs will be responsible to you for the police within their respective jurisdictions.t
As will be shown later, not all the "chiefs" were to be men chosen by and obedient to the Resident. Fearing competition in the contest for prestige and authority, the British soon sought to manipulate and indeed discredit the Malay notables on the island. When, after 1827, the Chinese had won the demographic dominance which soon would make Singapore an essentially Chinese city, the British were confronted with a continuing problem of dealing with a population both exotic and difficult. The Malay elite was neutralized by British pressure and pensions and by the weight of Chinese numbers; the leadership of the Chinese was to chal- lenge British ascendancy until well past the middle of the century. The precise date of the British winning of full political mastery in Singapore, if in fact such a triumph ever came, can of course not be fixed. Most students of the problem have selected the 1877 establishment of the Chi- nese Protectorate, headed by the first Chinese-speaking colonial officer, as the turning point. If that date can serve as an historical bench mark,
1Raffles to the Resident, Singapore, 25 June 1819, in "Notices of Singa- pore," Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern AS'ia, Vol. VII (1853), p. 333.
170
CHINESE LEADERSHIP IN EARLY BRITISH SINGAPORE 171 it is to be concluded that the first 58 years of modern Singapore were years of relative political impotence for the British. Symptomatic of this enfeebled condition is the' unreliable story that a Chinese, not a Briton, brought the flag of empire to Singapore. Though the tale is fiction, its telling suggests a shrewd assessment of past political realities and expresses a proud folk memory.
It was said that a certain Chow Ah Chee followed Raffles southward from Penang to Singapore. When the boat came near to Singapore, Ah Chee ventured to land with <the British flag while Raffles and his com- pany waited for Ah Chee to give the signal for safe landing. Ah Chee was said to be the person who planted the British flag 'on Singapore soil.
And for this action, Raffles later granted him two pieces of land flor his community.s
Imagination was required of those who could see a great emporium emerging from the swamps and jungle of Singapore island. Raffles, of course, had such a vision but thousands of Chinese, mostly nameless, were similarly inspired. It is the purpose of this short study to discuss the internal political organization and the leadership of the Chinese pioneers.
Before moving on to that task, some description of the origins and labors of these men must be offered as background.
Needless to say, the majority of the Chinese immigrants originated in China. All the ports of the China coast from Hainan island to the Yangtze river, cleared junks carrying men to Singapore, but most of the migrants sailed from the traditional seafaring centers of Kwangtung and Fukien. In the 1830's and 1840's, the fare for the trip, under US $15, was normally advanced by the immigrant's employer or hiring agent at Singapore. At that time, between six and eight thousand men arrived annually aboard as many as 100 junks which ran south before the north- east monsoon between December and ApriJ.3 Though the voyage ordi- narily took only ten to twenty days, it could be a horror for frightened and forlorn passengers. All the evidence suggests that few Chinese ever left home in high spirits. Little that was reassuring transpired on the voyage or during the process upon disembarking of being "bought" at perhaps US $20 for a craftsman down to a fifth of that sum for an in- valid.s The sturdier immigrants survived the shock of being transplanted
2Kwok Swee Sao, An Account of the Sources of Benevolent Assistance which Are Asian in Origin and Orgp-nization, (unpublished research paper for the diploma in social studies, University of Malaya, Singapore, 1954), p. 35.
3Siah U Chin, "The Chinese in Singapore," JIAEA, Vol. II (1848), p. 286;
Davidson, G. E., "Plan Proposed for Importing Chinese Mechanics and Laborers from Singapore to New South Wales," Chinese Repository, Vol. VI, no. 6 (Octo- ber, 1837), Pp. 299-300.
4"Notes on the Chinese, in the Straits," JIAEA, Vol. IX (1855), pp. 115-116;
"Notes on the Chinese of Pinang," ibid., Vol. VIII (1854), pp. 2-3.
172 ASIAN STUDIES
to a raw country and a demanding climate; but the process left them, according to both fact and legend, inclined toward avarice and recal- citrance.
Considerably more fortunate were those Chinese settlers in Singapore who came, not from China, but from Southeast Asian homes. The an- cient city of Malacca, where Chinese had sojourned even before the 1511 Portuguese conquest, furnished a major share of those early Singapore Chinese who enjoyed acclimatization by birth. Such men did not feel uprooted. They knew Malay and even commanded some English voca- bulary; they were familiar with European methods in business and gov- ernment; and, most important, they reached Singapore with resources in capital and skills. The fact that the British had briefly restored Malacca to Dutch rule just before Singapore's founding clearly stimulated the flow of migrants from the old town to the new. The conditions of trade in the British free port were magnetic. 'When modern Singapore was not a month old, the Resident could report: "Inhabitants are flocking in from every quarter notwithstanding the very active and I may add op- pressive measures which have been adopted by the Dutch Government of Malacca to put an entire stop to all intercourse with Singapore."5
The Malacca Chinese were impressively successful and for a time dominated Singapore. Relatively soon, however, immigrants from China rose to the top. Malacca with under 5000 Chinese in 1829 simply was Hot large enough to compete with China as a source of settlers." Yet, for a time, Malacca men were supreme.
The Chinese natives of [Malacca] who resort to Singapore in search of fortune . . . as merchants, shopkeepers and brokers are the life of that commercial town . . .7
The Malacca-born Chinese have a virtual monopoly ak Singapore, which has itself not yet be-en long enough established to have produced a genera- tion of .adult Chinese.s
The far more numerous immigrants from China normally began their Singapore lives in occupations more humble than those of the Malacca migrants. In 1827, for example, 6088 Chinese were reported in Singapore.
Of these, parenthetically, only 341 were women and the sex ratio was
5Resident, Singapore to Government, Fort William, 1 March 1819, in Cowan, C. D., "Early Penang anj the Rise of Singapore, 1805-1832," Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XXIII Pt. 2 (March, 1950), p. 91.
"Chang Li-ch'ien, Ma-liu-chia sh.ih. (A history of Malacca), (Skingspore;
shang-Wu yin-shu-kuan, 1941), pp. 326-327.
7Balestier, J., "A View of' the State of Agriculture in the British Posses- sions in the Straits of Malacoa," JIAEA, Vol. 2 (1848), p. 144.
~"Notes on the Chinese in the Straits," loc, cit., p. 115.
CHINESE LEADERSHIP IN EARLY BRITISH SINGAPORE 173 to remain of this order of disequilibrium for many decades. 5743 Chinese males were gainfully employed, while only 24 seem to have been without jobs. Of those working, 1222 were in agriculture, 2742 worked in com- merce, 1349 were artisans, 427 were "servants and coolies," and 3 were boatmen and fishermen." Ten years later, close to forty percent of the Singapore Chinese were established in rural areas as agricultural workers.
At that time, odd though it might seem to the highly urbanized Singa- poreans of today, the island was regarded as promising for the develop- ment of pepper and gambier plantations. Rural laborers worked like beasts of burden, lived under primitive conditions in areas unknown to British surveyors and officials, earned only three or four dollars each month, and faced the grisly hazard of having "a man a day taken by ti- gers." It is not at all surprising to learn that the rural districts of Singa- pore became infamous for lawlessness.'? Official alarm over the situation was first expressed in a communication of 1830.
The most important subject of a local nature which I have to submit to the attention of the Honourable Board is the unsettled state of the Popula, tion in the Interior; large and formidable gangs of Chinese of' the most daring land atrocious character are there assembled, who make irruptions into the Town at night; and in fact subsist by plunder, and set the Police at defiance. This evil is rapidly increasing from the annual influx 'Of additional numbers in the junks, while the means of subsistence do not advance in the same proportion. If the Island were wen intersected by Roads, and under efficient Police control, this state of things would be of less consequence . n
Singapore's great population of recent settlers needed to improvise arrangements to provide for their religious, social and communal needs.
The same was true to a degree for the thousands of transients passing through the city to other Southeast Asian destinations. Understandably, the first religious efforts of these men sought to secure the benevolence of deities in control of the sea and its terrifying forces. Two pioneers from Swatow are supposed by some to have founded a seaside temple in Singapore even before the arrival' of Raffles. Subsequently, all Swatow junks passing through the straits reportedly called at the island to per- mit their complements to propitiate the maritime gods. n
'9Inspector General to Secretaryto the Government, Singapore, 1 June 1827, Straits Settlements Record, "Singapore Diary," Vol. CLIV, P. 255.
10Newbold, T. J., Political and Statistical Account of the British Settle- meniein. the Straits of Malfacca (London: John Murray, 1839), Vol. I, pp. 28!)- 287; Siah, lac. cii., pp. 286-289; Bales-tier, lac. cit., p. 145.
11Minute by the Resident Councillor, Singapore, 2 March 1830, Straits Set·
tlement« Records', "Singapore Diary," Vol. 162.
12P'an Hsing-nung, Ma-lai-y.a, Ch'ao-ch'iao t'ung-chien (History of the Swa- tow People in Malaya), (Singapore: Nan-tao ch'u pan-she, 1950), p, 29; Goh Peng We, A Study of the Kinship Relations of Some Teocheio Nuclear Fa;milies
174 ASIAN STUDIES
Immigrants from the eight districts around Canton and Hakka set, tlers worshipped at a venerable shrine dating from 1821 also dedicated to the gods of the sea. Their temple, strangely enough, commemorated the drowning in the straits of a learned immigrant. Some seafarers be- lieved that sacrifices to the spirit of the lost scholar insured divine pro- tection. Respect for both the sea and scholarship was thus rendered.»
More elaborate religious activities came only when the Chinese po- pulation of Singapore could support an ambitious Buddhist temple. In 1837, the Fukienese in the new city established a temple known locally as Thian Bah Keng where, among others, the spirit of the Mmg dynasty admiral Cheng Ho, virtually canonized as the patron of immigrants, was worshipped. The estimated cost of the completed temple ran close to US $40,000, a vast sum for a community by no means universally affluent.
Such generosity is to be explained by the fact that the worshippers re- garded the investment as necessary in the appeasement of the controlling forces of the sea. We are told that when steamship travel made passages . to and from China safe and swift, attendance at Thian Bah Keng fell
perceptibly.t-
In a community of rootless men, many of them impoverished, and all but a few without families, there was also need for institutions to supply physical relief. The well-known secret societies, of course, exten- ded protection to their members.w Less sinister bodies served a similar purpose; of particular importance were various voluntary and charitable associations.
The two chief types of mutual support societies formed by the Chi- nese of Singapore and other overseas locations were those based on com- mon place of origin in China, city, county, province and so on, and on real or supposed kinship evidenced by shared surnames. Typically, these in Singapore (unpublished research paper for the diploma in social studies Uni- versity of Malaya in Singapore, 1960), p. 20.
• 13Yip Peng-Low, The Taai Paak Kung Chineee Temple', S~ngapore (unpub- lished research paper for the diploma in social studies, University of Malaya, Singapore, 195'8), pp. 10-13.
14Heino-chou shih-nien (Ten years of Singapore), (Singapore: Hsing-chou jih-pao-she, 1940), P'P. 922-923, 1109-1110; Gibson-Hill, C. A., "Six Wooden Images in the Cheng Hoon Teng, Malacca,"JMBRAS,Vol. XXVIII, pt, 1 (M-a-rdh, 1955), p. 176 citing MajOr[" James Lowe, "Extracts from an Unpublished Journal of a Residence at Singapore," Singapore Free Press, 16 December 1841.
15 So much has been written on the many poorly kept secrets of the secret societies that there is no need to go into detail here. Among the best major studies of the subject are: Gomber, Leon, Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya (Locust Valley, New York: J. J. Augustin, 1959); Schlegel, Gustav, Thiam 1'1 Hwui (Batavia: Lange, 1866); W,ard, J. S. M., Stirling, W. G., The Hung So- ciety or the' Socie,ty of Heaven and Earth (London: Baskerville, 1926); Wynne, W. L., Triad and Tabut (unpublished, Singapore: Government Printing Office, 194.1) .
