The Future of Malaya

THE publication of the Report (Cmd. 4276) of Brigadier General Sir Samuel Wilson on his recent visit to Malaya (at the end of 1932) marks an important stage in the political evolution of Malaya. It provides also the opportunity of surveying the present difficulties and future prospects of the Malayan Straits. During the colonizing epoch of the 19th Century, British influence developed in the Straits in a zigzag, haphazard way, beginning with the Treaty of Pangkor concluded with the Chiefs of Perak in 1874. In the following twenty years British Residents were appointed at Selangor, Negri Semblian and Pahang, during which period a rapid exploitation of tin mines was taking place. Indeed, the industrial development was so swift as to leave behind the simple old-established agricultural system on which the Malayan civilization rested. The Malays witnessed in a passive way the emergence of this new and feverish form of life growing over their heads. Chinese and Indians, under the leadership of European capital, played the major role in this new industrial enterprise. Asiatic immigration developed. Under the rapidly changing circumstances, it was as inevitable as anything in history that the essential power in Malaya should gravitate into the hands of the British Residents. The Federation of the four States of Perak, Selangor, Negri Semblian and Pahang in 1895 is an expression of this process. In this Federation the high degree of centralization of authority, resting upon the new wealth-making processes, was bound to produce friction with the holders of conservative power of the traditional rulers of the several States, whose influence as feudal potentates was increasingly challenged and limited by the new order of facts around them. The establishment of a Federal Council of the four States in 1909, with its effort to coordinate the advice of Rulers, was a further effort to harmonize the position of the traditional Rulers with a rapidly changing situation. With rubber and copra exports booming, however, in addition to tin, the major energies of the peninsula up to 1914 were absorbed in economic rather than political affairs. Fortunes were rapidly made. Prosperity has a way of taking the sharp edge off many problems. This easy-going drift continued until the World War. For five years war duties submerged every other consideration. The new peace brought a resurgence of discontents across the [ 394 ]

Political science · Asian Studies and History · Maritime Security and History