Abstract
We end today a nine days’ run through the Malay Peninsula during which we have been able to see something of the administration of the Straits Settlements (Crown Colony) and the Federated Malay States (nominally, only a Protectorate in which the inhabitants are not technically British subjects but entirely British-administered under the Governor of the Straits Settlements as High Commissioner).1 Through the introduction of Sir John Anderson, once a clerk in the Colonial Office with S.W.2 and lately Governor of the Straits Settlements,3 we have been most hospitably received by the Government — staying with the Acting-Governor or Chief Officer at Singapore, Seremban, and Kuala Lumpur respectively, and at Kuala Kangsur with a young Fabian who is second master at the Malay College there.
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Notes
J.M. Gullick, Malaya (London, 1963) p. 40, notes that The sheer tact of the British Residents played its part’ in winning the Malays over to British rule.
In 1800 the Malays had made up 90 per cent of the population of Malaya; in 1880, two-thirds; and by the time of the Webbs’ visit, some 51 per cent. The 1911 Census gives the total population of the Peninsula as 2651036, with 1416796 Malays, 915883 Chinese and 287159 Indians. There were 11085 Europeans. In the ten-year period 1911–21, the overall population was to grow by some 26 per cent; but the Malays increased only 15 per cent to the Chinese 28 per cent and the Indian 76 per cent. On Indian immigration, see K. S. Sandhu, Indians in Malaya, Some Aspects of Their Immigration and Settlement (Cambridge, 1969).
John O’May, Irish by birth and an Oxford graduate, assistant master at Malay College, 1907–18, and acting-headmaster 1918–19. His socialist beliefs appear to have cost him the headmastership. For anecdotal materials, see William R. Roff (ed.), The Wandering Thoughts of a Dying Man, The Life and Times of Haji Abdul Majid bin Zainuddin (Kuala Lumpur, 1978).
For background, see Yen Ching Hwang, The Overseas Chinese and the 1911 Revolution, With Special Reference to Singapore and Malaya, (Kuala Lumpur, 1976).
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© 1992 The London School of Economics and Political Science
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Feaver, G. (1992). Malay Peninsula. In: Feaver, G. (eds) The Webbs in Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12328-5_6
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