Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T06:52:03.976Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Singapore Rickshaw Pullers: The Social Organization of a Coolie Occupation, 1880–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Jim Warren
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article integrates the history of the experience of rickshaw coolies into the larger history of Singapore in the period from 1880 to 1940. These were decisive years. They witnessed the extraordinary economic development of the vast potential for tin, rubber, oil palm, and tobacco in the Malay peninsula and on the east coast of Sumatra under colonial rule, and the evolution of Singapore as a “coolie town”, with a colonial administrative heart and an entrepôt port, with the birth of the rickshaw and a stream of emigrants from China who poured in faster and faster to pull it. This floodtide ofsingkeh singkeh (newcomers from China) came to Singapore with the hope of forming a foundation for a new and prosperous life. Expanding Singapore, especially at this stage of its growth from the third quarter of the nineteenth century, was often considered by the migrants as a place of hope and betterment. There were in Singapore tens of thousands of Cantonese, Hengwah, Hockchia, and Foochow sojourners who hoped to find a pipeline to prosperity since the second half of the nineteenth century, when dire poverty and overpopulation plagued Southeast China.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 “Commission of Enquiry into the State of Labour in the Straits Settlements and Protected Malay States” (Singapore, 1890).Google ScholarBlythe, W.L., “Historical Sketch of Chinese Labour”, Asiatic Society XXX, 1(1947): 64–114Google Scholar.

2 “Commission of Enquiry”, pp. 8–14. Fong, Mak Lau, The Sociology of Secret Societies: A Study of Chinese Secret Societies in Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 22.Google ScholarFreedman, Maurice, The Study of Chinese Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979), pp. 73,82Google Scholar.

3 “Commission of Enquiry”, p. 10. Fong, Mak Lau, p. 46.Google ScholarEe, Joyce, “Chinese Migration to Singapore, 1896-1941”, Journal of Southeast Asian History II (1961): 41–42Google Scholar.

4 Ihav e rounded the figures off. The exact number of Chinese immigrants leaving Hong Kong for Singapore are 37,341 in 1881 and 102,997 in 1913. See Straits Settlement Government Gazette, 1881, Table B, p. 323, and Straits Settlement Annual Report (SSAR), Chinese Protectorate, 1913, Table A, p. 52.

5 Many emigrants still relied on the traditional mode of emigration from South China to the Nanyang during the transition period from sailing junks to steam navigation at the end of the nineteenth century. The bows of the Amoy junks were painted green, while those from Swatow were varnished red. Hence, the emigrant ships were popularly called the Green junks and the Red junks. Chen, Ta, Emigrant Communities in South China. A Study of Overseas Migration and its Influence on Standards of Living and Social (New York: Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1940), p. 261Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 262. Ee, “Chinese Migration to Singapore”, p. 33. SSAR, 1884, p. C147, “Passenger Ship Amendment Bill”.

7 Fong, Mak Lau, p. 45. Freedman, The Study of Chinese Society, p. 174.Google Scholar

8 The language of Freedman, ibid., p. 72.

9 Baker, Hugh D.R., Chinese Family and Kinship (London: The Macmillan Press, 1979), pp. 164–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 , Freedman, The Study of Chinese Society, p. 74.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., pp. 74-83. Ching-hwang, Yen, “Early Chinese Clan Organisations in Singapore and Malaya, 1819-1911”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12,1 (1981): 65-67,75–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 , Baker, Chinese Family and Kinship, p. 170.Google Scholar, Freedman, The Study of Chinese Society, pp. 76,135–36Google Scholar.

13 , Yen, “Early Chinese Clan Organisations”, pp. 75–76.Google Scholar, Freedman, The Study of Chinese Society, pp. 136, 183.Google Scholar, Baker, Chinese Family and Kinship, p. 171Google Scholar.

14 Straits Settlement Opium Commission, 1908, evidence of Hooper, Mr, p. 26.Google Scholar

15 Singapore Municipal Annual Report, Jinrikisha Department, 1898, p. 102.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., p. 30.

17 Straits Settlement Opium Commission, evidence of MrFoodland, 1908, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

18 Ing, Low Ngiong, Chinese Jetsam on a Tropic Shore (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1974), p.73.Google Scholar

19 Housing Commission Report, 1918, evidence of Mr Hooper, p. B91.Google Scholar

20 The estimates have been compiled from the annual reports of the Jinrikisha Department. See Singapore Municipal Annual Report, Jinrikisha Department, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1894, 1897, 1900, 1902, 1904, 1908,1917.Google Scholar

21 Housing Commission Report, evidence of Mr Hooper, 1908, p. B91.Google Scholar

22 Singapore Municipal Annual Report, Jinrikisha Department, 1919, p. 2–E.Google Scholar

23 British Malayan Opium Commission, 2/12/1933, p. B-28.Google Scholar

24 This table was compiled from data on Rickshaw pullers in the Singapore Coroners Inquest and Inquiries, 1902-1939. An even more age-specific breakdown into groups is as follows: 11-15, 0; 16-20, 3; 21-25,12; 26-30,18; 31-35,11; 36-40,21; 41-45,14; 46-50,14; 51-55,7; 56-60,2; 61-65,1; above 66,0.

25 Singapore Coroner Inquest and Inquiry of Lim Phua Sim in No. 597,2/12/33.

26 , Mak, The Sociology of Secret Societies, pp. 29,60.Google Scholar, Freedman, The Study of Chinese Society, p. 174Google Scholar.

27 Singapore Municipal Annual Report, Jinrikisha Department, 1904, p. 3.Google Scholar

28 Housing Commission Report, evidence of Hooper, Mr, p. B-90.Google Scholar

29 Ibid.

30 Interview with Ng Kar Eng, Archive and Oral History Department, Singapore, Reel 3.

31 , Simpson, Report on the Sanitary Conditions of Singapore, 1908, pp. 17–24.Google Scholar

32 Ibid.

33 British Malayan Opium Commission, evidence of Choon, Lee, 1924, p. C-47.Google Scholar

34 Straits Settlement Opium Commission, 1924, pp. 32,279.Google Scholar

35 British Malayan Opium Commission, 1924, pp. B-29, C-47.Google Scholar

36 Singapore Coroner Inquest and Inquiry of Ong Teck Cheng in No. 174,4/4/29.Google Scholar

37 Singapore Municipal Annual Report, Jinrikisha Department, 1890.Google Scholar

38 Singapore Municipal Annual Report, Jinrikisha Department, 1902, p. 30.Google Scholar

39 Singapore Municipal Annual Report, Jinrikisha Department, 1898, p. 102.Google Scholar

40 Straits Settlement Opium Commission, 1908, the evidence of Hooper, Mr, p. 28.Google Scholar

41 , Freedman, The Study of Chinese Society, p. 242.Google Scholar, Yen, “Early Chinese Clan Organisations”, pp. 63, 80–81Google Scholar.

42 DrGeek, Yap Pheng, Scholar, Banker, Gentleman Soldier, The Reminiscences of Dr Yap Pheng Geek (Singapore: Times Books International, 1982), p. 10.Google Scholar

43 For a fine discussion of this approach see Chevalier, Louis, Labouring Classes and Dangerous Classes During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), pp. 320–50Google Scholar.

44 Turnbull, C.M., A History of Singapore 1819-1975 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 116.Google Scholar

45 She, Lao, Rickshaw (the novel Lo-T'o Hsiang Tsu), translated by James, Jean M. (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1979), p. 233.Google Scholar