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Singapore A Cosmopolitan Community
As Singapore prospered and grew, the size and diversity
of its
population kept pace. By 1827, the Chinese had become the
most
numerous of Singapore's various ethnic groups. Many of the
Chinese
came from Malacca, Penang, Riau, and other parts of the
Malay
Archipelago to which their forebears had migrated decades
or even
generations before. More recent Chinese immigrants were
mainly from
the southeastern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian and
spoke either
the Hokkien, Teochiu, Cantonese, or Hakka dialects. In an
extension
of the common Chinese practice of sojourning, in which men
temporarily left their home communities to seek work in
nearby or
distant cities, most migrants to Singapore saw themselves
as
temporary residents intending to return to home and family
after
making a fortune or at least amassing enough capital to
buy land in
their home district. Many did return; more did not. Even
those who
never returned usually sent remittances to families back
home.
To help them face the dangers, hardships, and
loneliness of the
sojourner life, most men joined or were forced to join
secret
societies organized by earlier immigrants from their home
districts. The secret societies had their origin in
southern China,
where, in the late seventeenth century, the Heaven, Earth,
and Man
(or Triad) Society was formed to oppose the Qing
(1644-1911)
dynasty. By the nineteenth century, secret societies in
China acted
as groups that organized urban unskilled labor and used
coercion to
win control of economic niches, such as unloading ships,
transporting cotton, or gambling and prostitution. The
same pattern
extended all over Southeast Asia, where immigrants joined
secret
societies whose membership was restricted to those coming
from the
same area and speaking the same dialect. Membership gave
the
immigrants some security, in the form of guaranteed
employment and
assistance in case of illness, but required loyalty to the
leaders
and payment of a portion of an already meager wage.
Although the
societies performed many useful social functions, they
were also a
major source of crime and violence. By 1860 there were at
least
twelve secret societies in Singapore, representing the
various
dialect and subdialect groups. Invariably friction arose
as each
society sought to control a certain area or the right to a
certain
tax farm. Civil war in China in the 1850s brought a flood
of new
migrants from China, including many rebels and other
violent
elements. Serious fighting between the various secret
societies
broke out in 1854, but it remained a domestic dispute
within the
Chinese community. Although not directed at the government
or the
non-Chinese communities, such outbreaks disrupted commerce
and
created a tense atmosphere, which led to the banning of
secret
societies in 1889.
Just as the European merchant community used Chinese
middlemen
in conducting their business, the Straits government
relied on
prominent Chinese businessmen to act as go-betweens with
the
Chinese community. In the early years, the Baba Chinese,
who
usually spoke English, served in this capacity. By
mid-century,
however, immigrant Chinese from the various dialect groups
had
begun to act as intermediaries. Some, such as Seah Eu
Chin, who was
the go-between with the Teochiu community, were well
educated and
from respected families. Seah, who made his fortune in
gambier and
pepper plantations, was an early member of the Singapore
Chamber of
Commerce, established in 1837, and a justice of the peace.
Probably
the wealthiest and most prominent Chinese immigrant in the
nineteenth century was Hoo Ah Kay, nicknamed "Whampoa"
after his
birthplace, who served as a go-between with the
Cantonese-speaking
community. Hoo came as a penniless youth and made his
fortune in
provisioning ships, merchandising, and speculating in
land. He
later became the first Asian member of Singapore's
Legislative
Council and a member of the Executive Council. Despite
their close
connections to the European ruling class, Seah, Hoo, and
other
prominent Chinese carefully retained their Chinese culture
and
values, as did the less prominent immigrants.
Most Chinese immigrants fared far less well. If they
survived
the rigors of the voyage, they were forced to work at hard
labor
for a year or more to pay off their passage. Some were
sent
directly to the gambier plantations or even to the tin
mines of the
Malay Peninsula. Others were sent to toil on the docks or
become
construction workers. After paying off their passage, they
began
earning a meager wage, which, unless diverted for opium or
gambling
debts, was sent as a remittance to families back in China.
Wives
were in short supply, since very few Chinese women came to
Singapore in the first few decades of the settlement. Even
by the
mid-1860s, the ratio of Chinese men to women was fifteen
to one.
Until about 1860, Malays were the second largest group.
The
followers of the temenggong mostly moved to Johore,
where
many of them died of smallpox. The orang laut by
mid-century
merged with other groups of Malay, who were drawn from
Riau,
Sumatra, and Malacca. Generally peaceful and industrious,
the
Malays usually worked as fishermen, boatmen, woodcutters,
or
carpenters.
Most of the Bugis sea traders migrated to Macassar
after the
Dutch made it a free port in 1847, and by 1860 the Bugis
population
of Singapore had declined to less than 1,000. Small
numbers of
Arabs, Jews, and Armenians, many of them already
well-to-do, were
drawn to Singapore, where they amassed even greater
wealth. Another
small group numbered among Singapore's upper class were
the Parsis,
Indians of Iranian descent who were adherents of
Zoroastrianism.
Indians had become Singapore's second largest community
by
1860, numbering more than 11,000. Some of these people
were
laborers or traders, who, like the Chinese, came with the
hope of
making their fortune and returning to their homeland. Some
were
troops garrisoned at Singapore by the government in
Calcutta.
Another group were convicts who were first brought to
Singapore
from the detention center in Bencoolen in 1825, after
Bencoolen was
handed over to the Dutch. Singapore then became a major
detention
center for Indian prisoners. Rehabilitation rather than
punishment
was emphasized, and prisoners were trained in such skills
as brick
making, carpentry, rope making, printing, weaving, and
tailoring,
which later would enable them to find employment.
Singapore's penal
system was considered so enlightened that Dutch, Siamese,
and
Japanese prison administrators came to observe it. Convict
labor
was used to build roads, clear the jungle, hunt tigers,
and
construct public buildings, some of which were still in
use in
1989. After completing their sentences, most convicts
settled down
to a useful life in Singapore. As with Chinese and
Europeans,
Indian men far outnumbered women because few Indian women
came to
Singapore before the 1860s. Some Indian Muslims married
Malay
women, however, and their descendants were known as
Jawi-Peranakan (see Glossary).
The highly unbalanced sex ratio in Singapore
contributed to a
rather lawless, frontier atmosphere that the government
seemed
helpless to combat. Little revenue was available to expand
the tiny
police force, which struggled to keep order amid a
continuous
influx of immigrants, often from the fringes of Asian
society. This
tide of immigration was totally uncontrolled because
Singapore's
businessmen, desperate for unskilled laborers, opposed
restriction
on free immigration as vehemently as they resisted any
restraint on
free trade. Public health services were almost
nonexistent, and
cholera, malnutrition, smallpox, and opium use took a
heavy toll in
the severely overcrowded working-class areas.
Data as of December 1989
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