Exporting goods from Bengal into the Malay world took a new turn with British imperial expansion. The EIC established monopolistic maritime trade, which reshaped the commercial network for the circulation of Bengali commodities across the Indian Ocean world, particularly in the intra-Asian markets around the rim of the Bay of Bengal. They transported Bengali commodities to long-distance seaports, including Europe, Africa, the Americas and Australia. The movement of these goods steadily increased, which integrated the market and facilitated Bengali mobility within the British colonies. Most of the formal professions undertaken by the Bengalis in the Malay world have been discussed in the preceding chapter. This chapter explores two other aspects related to Bengali migrant employment: the flow of products from Bengal and the involvement of Bengali migrants in trade and commerce. It mainly focuses on Bengali petty traders who played an essential role in shaping a transnational commercial space from the late nineteenth century.

Bengal Commodities across the Indian Ocean World

Before the advent of colonialism, seaports in the Indian Ocean, particularly those located between the coast of Bengal and the Malay Archipelago, were integrated into local, intra-regional and inter-regional networks of merchant communities and zones of commodity exchange. In other words, these commercial zones were structured in micro-, meso- and macro-regions. The increasing dominance of European, and especially EIC, shipping from the mid-eighteenth century did not change this spatial organisation of commercial activities around the seaports. After getting hold of Bencoolen, Bengal and Penang by the end of the eighteenth century, the British controlled the trade network across the northeastern Indian Ocean. During the early nineteenth century, the British took over Malacca and Singapore and formed the Straits Settlements, which included three main seaports: Penang, Malacca and Singapore. These seaports were made duty free for all merchants and were clearinghouses of intra-Asian and long-distance trade. A large quantity of Bengal commodities was transported from the Calcutta port to the ports of the Malay Peninsula, notably Malacca, Penang and Singapore. The EIC re-exported most of the commodities from these seaports to the eastern coast of the Indian Ocean, particularly Java, China, Thailand and Australia. Thus, the British created an exclusive commercial zone between South and Southeast Asia.

Most early colonial Bengali migrants travelled and worked under contract and experienced poor health, insecurity and desperation. Nevertheless, with the end of the indenture system, the government gradually introduced regulations to secure migrants’ welfare and interests. British Malaya offered new and extensive work opportunities in different plantations and mines, including rubber and tin mines. Though most workers were Chinese and Tamils, many came from northern India and Bengal. The ethnic identity of Bengali professionals and workers was often conflated with that of non-Bengalis, and their vocations were not officially recorded. However, piecemeal sources can help us to locate many Bengali professionals. This chapter examines various formal and informal occupations that Bengalis engaged in, shedding light on their vibrant presence in colonial and postcolonial Malaya.

At the Construction Site and Cattle Farm

The term ‘coolie’ is widespread in British colonial history in Asia. It broadly refers to hardworking labourers who performed menial jobs; however, the definition of coolie differs according to different perspectives and circumstances. I had used this term consciously and in a non-diminishing manner to reflect the professional category of labourers in colonial registers when they migrated as workers to British Malaya and other colonies. South Asian and Chinese coolies worked in construction sites and rubber estates in the Straits Settlements. Most South Asian coolies were Tamils, and most female coolies were ‘passive victims’ in the migration process and lived in the plantations. Alongside other South Asians, Bengali coolies worked in different sectors, including roads and railways, harbours and cattle farms. The Singapore Governor fully implemented the Indian Immigrants’ Protection Act in order to protect the well-being of labourers, in particular those who came from India and Bengal. L. H. Clayton, the Chairman of the Immigration Committee in Malaya, made provisions for social amenities for labourers and coolies. He showed a keen interest in employing Bengali coolies. However, he noted that the recruitment of Bengali coolies rested on the cooperation of the Indian government. I. R. Belilios (1846–1910), a cattle trader, recruited mostly Bengali5 clerks and coolies for his farm business, and their number significantly increased in the 1890s. Aristarchus Moses, an Armenian Jewish merchant, migrated from Calcutta to Singapore in 1820 and established a trading farm in 1840. Like Belilios, Moses employed Bengalis as stevedores and keepers at his house and warehouses.

The two worlds of Bengal and Malaya were connected through language, religion, maritime trade and colonial administration. In addition to being a trade route, the Bay of Bengal carried flows of migrants, information, ideas, cultural practices, pilgrims and soldiers over the centuries. However, this tie between the two worlds became more direct and extensive as British bureaucratic control spread over the Malay Peninsula from Calcutta, creating opportunities in various capacities for the Bengalis. By exploring the cultural contexts of migration, and the routes and nodal points of bonding with the Malay world, this chapter examines the administrative web that cemented existing flows of people, commodities and cultural practices from Bengal.

Linguistic and Cultural Links

The linguistic connection between Bengal and Malaya dates back to the early Christian era. In the Malay Archipelago and mainland Southeast Asia, Austroasiatic languages are widely spoken, which are also used throughout some parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal and the southern borders of China. Hindu and Buddhist preachers from the Indian subcontinent, including Bengal, spread their beliefs in Southeast Asia in Sanskrit and Pali, leading to Indian linguistic influences in the region. The influence of Bangla, in particular, can be seen through the use of a pre-Nāgarī script. Srivijaya, a Buddhist thalassocratic empire based on the island of Sumatra, also had religious, cultural and trade links with the Buddhist Pala dynasty of Bengal.

The Malay language has borrowed many Sanskrit words. The Bangla script and the Sanskrit language are found in the Sejarah Melayu (Figure 1.1). Lanman suggests that Sanskrit influenced not only the Malay vocabulary but also ideas. About 45 per cent of the total Bangla lexicon is composed of naturally modified Sanskrit words and corrupted forms of Sanskrit. Similarly, there are many Sanskrit loanwords in the Bahasa Melayu. Although Bangla belongs to the Indo-European languages family, while Malay belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian/Austronesian family, many common Sanskrit loanwords can be found in classic Malay and Bangla. Both languages have borrowed a good number of standard Arabic and Persian words (Tables 1.1 and 1.2).

One of the earliest references to Bengal in Malay texts is in Raja Culan's Misa Melayu (The Mass of Malay), dating back to the second half of the eighteenth century. It mentions that a British captain had come from Bengal.

Bengali migrants became distinctly visible in the Malay public space in the late nineteenth century. Their professional world has been discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, showing that they gradually created a diasporic space with other migrant communities, such as the Chinese and Tamils. When it comes to social spaces, the Bengalis carved them out in several ways: by maintaining intergenerational communication, fostering multiculturalism, continuing interaction with other diasporic communities and forming transnational families in Malaya. These multidimensional aspects of space-making made the Bengali diaspora an integral part of the Malay cosmopolitan world, a role only enhanced by the contributions to Malaya's decolonisation process after WWII. This chapter explores how the Bengalis carved out a place for themselves through interactions with other communities, political practices and involvement in making institutions of social and political importance.

Intergenerational communication

When Ramnath Biswas was travelling in Malacca, an elderly ‘Sundarban Bengkalis’ invited him to have dinner with his family. The Sundarban Bengkalis served eastern Bengal food and spoke in an unusual accent, prompting Biswas to learn more about the so-called Sundarban Bengkalis. He later had another opportunity to learn about them from a Bengali named Deepak, who spoke in the Barisal dialect and lived in a Portuguese mahalla (a residential area or unit). According to Deepak, when Buddhism declined in Bengal, many Bengali Buddhists from the Sundarbans migrated to Pulau Bengkalis. This dispersion continued during the Portuguese and Maghs plunder at the Bay of Bengal and Sundarban areas. This diffuse community was mostly composed of fishermen in Bengal. They upheld the same profession at Pulau Bengkalis. After fishing in the Straits, they brought the fish to sell in the Malacca market. Later, some settled in Malacca and converted to Christianity. Deepak said that the Bengalis who migrated from Pulau Bengkalis to Malacca were known as Sundarban Bengkalis. A few primary and secondary sources corroborate Deepak's narrative. For instance, Lloyd and Moore suggested that the Indians settled in the tiny fishing village and married local girls before the Muslim arrival. The Suma Oriental and the Report of Balthasar Bort, Dutch–Malacca Governor (1665–1677), both explain that the Bengali fishermen settled and engaged in the fishing profession in Malacca.

Henri Lefebvre's ideas concerning the production of space have been the subject of nuanced debates since the 1970s. These debates primarily focused on the relationship between physical space, capitalist flows and conscious human actions. This book has combined Lefebvre's notion of the capitalist production of space with the idea of space produced by transnational mobility. The Bengali diasporas and their transnational community in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei during the colonial and postcolonial periods form the central theme of this book, which has attempted to demonstrate the temporal and spatial dimensions of Bengali mobility, filling a significant gap in the historical migration literature on Asia.

This book has countered the impression that most South Asians in the Malay world were ‘Indians’, of whom the Tamils constituted a significant portion. The size of the Bengali community was remarkable. However, they were underestimated because many who settled in Malaysia and Singapore adopted Malay identities, forming a highly conspicuous and essential section of the middle classes. Their established ‘networks’ may promote present-day migration from Bangladesh, especially to Singapore and Malaysia. All these discussions have been categorised into two broad areas. Chapters 1–3 explored the background and processes of the emergence of the Bengali diasporic community in the Malay world and the masking of their identity within the generic term ‘Indian’. The second set of aspects, spanning Chapters 4–8, offers a detailed understanding of facets of Bengali space-making in British Malaya, dealing with the professional world, the domain of petty traders and the spaces of politics and civil society.

Historical migrations of diverse ethnic groups from South Asia, as seen today, were generally described as ‘Indian’ in the historical literature. In recent years, the dominant ‘Pan-Indian identity’ has been dissected as heterogeneous, with a focus on ethnic and linguistic aspects. In the context of recent trends in the studies of South Asian migration and diasporic communities within Asia, this book has explored the Bengali transnational community through multiple temporal and spatial contexts. Trans-regional connectivity between the Bay of Bengal and the Malay Sea has a historical pedigree. The British colonial authority introduced rules and regulations to govern the flow of human mobility.

On the cusp of the First World War, the global transition from coal to oil as the predominant energy source for technological, military, and industrial purposes markedly augmented the strategic value of oil, a prominence it retained for subsequent decades. In reaction, the British government, which possessed a 51 per cent stake in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, sanctioned a significant expansion of the industry within its sphere of indirect influence. As petroleum demand escalated during the conflict, this enlargement necessitated the prioritisation of workforce allocation and maintenance, essential for producing petroleum in its varied forms. In response, a novel labour recruitment policy was instituted in collaboration with the British Indian Raj, extending the scope of recruitment beyond the borders of Iran through the Persian Gulf. As the war intensified, the strategic significance of Iran – highlighted by its extensive oil reserves and the proximity of its oil fields and refinery to the Mesopotamian front – transformed it from a marginal theatre of war into a pivotal military operations centre, thereby rendering it a sustained zone of conflict. This shift profoundly affected the operations and security of the Iranian oil industry and markedly influenced the working and living conditions of the labour force throughout the duration of the war.

Initially neutral in the Second World War, Iran was drawn into the conflict due to its strategic location and economic importance, particularly its oil resources. After the German attack on the Soviet Union, Iran’s position south of the Soviet borders became crucial for supporting the eastern front. Consequently, British, and Soviet forces occupied Iran in August 1941, transforming it into the ‘Bridge of Victory.’ This geopolitical significance post-war laid the groundwork for the Cold War. The narrative then shifts to explore Iran’s role during and after the war, focusing on the Iranian oil industry. It delves into the working and living conditions of the oil workers, the organisation of labour, the rise of political radicalism, and the involvement of political parties. A detailed analysis of the bloodiest labour conflict in 1946 highlights the long-term impact of labour radicalism on the social lives of workers and probes the persistence of these radical movements. By connecting Iran’s wartime role to post-war developments, the analysis illuminates the profound effects of global conflicts on local industries and social structures.