Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:04:41.978Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Stories from the margins: Indian business communities in the growth of colonial Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2020

Jayati Bhattacharya
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Colonial Singapore witnessed the movement and settling of Chinese, Malay, Indian, Arab, European and other mercantile groups as a free port and emporium of the British Empire. This social landscape was defined by boundaries between the different ethnic communities, often drawn up by the British, in contrast to the cosmopolitan exchanges of the market. This article focuses on the Indian business communities which had played a significant role in maritime trade networks since pre-colonial times and continued to be a part of Singapore's developing society and economy in the British period. A minority in the colonial era port city and largely confined within intra-ethnic economic and social circuits, Indians participated in the complex colonial structure of trade and credit alongside British, European and Asian traders and merchant houses, as brokers, agents, and retailers. British hegemony over the Indian subcontinent was both an advantage and a disadvantage for these Indian trading communities. This article brings to light the history of Indian networks in the colonial transnational flows of capital and entrepreneurship, and their patterns of integration into and role in the development of Singapore, a role marginalised in the scholarship and the national narratives alike by a focus on the large-scale Indian labour migrations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 521 - 539
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2020

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 Singapore's development as an entrepôt complemented and facilitated regional trade alongside the establishment of Hong Kong (after the Opium War) as a clearing house for China as well as extending commercial relations with the ports of Netherlands East Indies and French-dominated Saigon. The efficiency of the Singapore market is reiterated along with the participation of Chinese and Indian merchants in the Report of the Commission appointed by His Excellency the Governor of the Straits Settlements to enquire into and report on the trade of the Colony, 1933–34, vol. 1, pt-II, chap. 6 (Singapore: Government Printer, 1934), pp. 41–2.

2 Arasaratnam, Sinnappah, Indians in Malaya and Singapore (New York: Oxford University Press; London: Institute of Race Relations, 1970)Google Scholar; Sandhu, Kernial Singh, ‘Some aspects of Indian settlement in Singapore, 1819–1969’, Journal of Southeast Asian History 10, 2 (1969): 193–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sandhu, Kernial Singh and Mani, A., ed., Indian communities in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies [ISEAS], 1993)Google Scholar; Huff, W.G., The economic growth of Singapore: Trade and development in the twentieth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Turnbull, C.M., A history of modern Singapore, 1819–2005, repr. (Singapore: NUS Press, 2017 [2009])Google Scholar; Amrith, Sunil S., Migration and diaspora in modern Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Amrith, S.S., ‘Mobile city and the Coromandel Coast: Tamil journeys to Singapore, 1920–1960’, Mobilities 5, 2 (2010): 237–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Amrith, S.S., Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The furies of nature and fortunes of migrants (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

3 Keong, Neil Khor Jin, ‘Imperial cosmopolitan Malaya: A study of realist fiction in the “Straits Chinese Magazine”’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 81, 1 (2008): 27–47Google Scholar.

4 Tan Tai Yong and Andrew Major, ‘India and Indians in the making of Singapore’, in Singapore–India relations: A primer, ed. Yong Mun Cheong and V.V. Bhanoji Rao (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1995), pp. 1–20.

5 Christopher A. Bayly, Imperial meridien: The British Empire and the world, 1780–1830 (London: Longman, 1989), p. 209.

6 See further Claude Markovits, The global world of Indian merchants, 1750–1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

7 Though much less prevalent, such terms still survive in everyday notions of ‘Indians’ in Singapore, particularly among the older generation.

8 Claude Markovits, ‘Indian merchant networks outside India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: A preliminary survey’, Modern Asian Studies 33, 4 (1999): 894.

9 David Washbrook, ‘South India 1770–1840: The colonial transition’, Modern Asian Studies 38, 3 (2004): 479–516.

10 Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘Incorporation of the Indian subcontinent into the capitalist world-economy’, Economic and Political Weekly 21, 4 (1986): 28–39.

11 Sudipta Sen, Empire of free trade: The East India Company and the making of the colonial marketplace (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), p. 6.

12 Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the economy of Bengal, 1630–1720 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 221–56.

13 Om Prakash, ‘The English East India Company and India’, in The worlds of the East India Company, ed. H.V. Bowen, Margerette Lincoln and Nigel Rigby (Woodbridge: Boydell; National Maritime Museum, 2002), pp. 1–17.

14 Christopher A. Bayly, Rulers, townsmen and bazaars: North Indian society in the age of British expansion, 1770–1870 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 217.

15 Holden Furber, John Company at work: A study of European expansion in India in the late eighteenth century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948), p. 310.

16 Prakash, ‘The English East India Company and India’, p. 14. In 1773, the EIC assumed monopoly rights over opium, creating different complexities for opium growers.

17 Nawab was the honorific title usually given to semi-autonomous Muslim rulers by the Mughal emperors, a practice continued by the British. It was accompanied by land grants, cash allowances and important social and economic status.

18 Sen, Empire of free trade, p. 123.

19 Wong Lin Ken, ‘The strategic significance of Singapore in modern history’, in A history of Singapore, ed. Ernest C.T. Chew and Edwin Lee (Singapore: Oxford University Press; ISEAS, 1991), p. 31.

20 Tan and Major, ‘India and Indians in the making of Singapore’, pp. 3–5.

21 Kernial Singh Sandhu, ‘Indian immigration and settlement in Singapore’, in Sandhu and Mani, Indian communities in Southeast Asia, p. 774.

22 C.M. Turnbull, The Straits Settlements, 1826–67: Indian presidency to crown colony (London: Athlone, 1971), p. 47.

23 Tan Tai-Yong, ‘Port cities and hinterlands: A comparative study of Singapore and Calcutta’, Political Geography 26, 7 (2007): 854.

24 Adam McKeown, ‘Global migration, 1846–1940’, Journal of World History 15, 2 (2004): 155–89; Amrith, ‘Mobile city and the Coromandel Coast’, pp. 237–55.

25 Tan and Major, ‘India and Indians in the making of Singapore’, p. 7.

26 Turnbull, A history of modern Singapore, 1819–2005, p. 110.

27 Ibid., p. 111.

28 Tan and Major, ‘India and Indians in the making of Singapore’, p. 5.

29 John S. Furnivall, Colonial policy and practice: A comparative study of Burma and Netherlands India (London: Cambridge University Press, 1948), p. 304.

30 Robery Godfrey and Samuel Dhoraisingam, ed., Passage of Indians, 1923–2003 (Singapore: Singapore Indian Association, 2003), p. 8.

31 Walter Makepeace, Gilbert E. Brooke and Roland St John Braddell, One hundred years of Singapore (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 345.

32 The Chulias, Muslim trading communities from the Coromandel Coast, had resisted and posed a serious threat to Dutch monopolistic claims in the southern Bay of Bengal, which was sorted out between the Dutch and the English by the Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1784, thus pushing the Chulias to reorganise themselves. See Bhaswati Bhattacharya, ‘The Dutch East India Company and the trade of the Chulias in the Bay of Bengal in the late eighteenth century’, in Mariners, merchants and oceans: Studies in maritime history, ed. Khuzipallil Skaria Mathew (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995), pp. 347–61.

33 Gerald Sandford Graham, Great Britain in the Indian Ocean: A study of maritime enterprise, 1810–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), p. 14.

34 Turnbull, A history of modern Singapore, p. 46.

35 There were twenty British, six Jewish, five Arab, five Chinese, two Armenian, and two German merchant houses, and one Portuguese, one American and one Parsi merchant house each. Ibid., pp. 56, 58.

36 Ibid., p. 70.

37 Ibid.

38 Roderick Maclean, A pattern of change: The Singapore International Chamber of Commerce from 1837 (Singapore: Singapore International Chamber of Commerce, 2000), p. 14.

39 Markovits, ‘Indian merchant networks outside India’, p. 885.

40 Sharon Siddique and Nirmala Puru Shotam, Singapore's Little India: Past, present and future (Singapore: ISEAS, 1982), p. 13.

41 Colony of the Straits Settlement Blue Book, 1930 (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1931), pp. 114–20.

42 Turnbull, A history of modern Singapore, p. 125.

43 See the case study on the Kewalram Chanrai Group, Sindhis who had a significant presence in Singapore for more than three generations, in Jayati Bhattacharya, Beyond the myth: Indian business communities in Singapore (Singapore: ISEAS, 2011), pp. 258–74.

44 Report of the Commission appointed by His Excellency the Governor of the Straits Settlements to enquire into and report on the Trade of the Colony, 1933–34 (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1934), chap. 11, ‘Japanese competition’, esp. p. 55.

45 Report of the Commission, 1933–34, p. 59.

46 Devji Gopaldas Shah, Oral History Recordings. National Archives of Singapore (henceforth NAS), Accession No. A000796, Reel No. 1.

47 Report of the Commission, 1933–34, p. 60.

48 Bhattacharya, Beyond the myth, p. 34.

49 Devji Gopaldas Shah, Oral History Recordings, Accession No. A000549, Reel No. 1, NAS.

50 They were the biggest sago flour exporters (as Rajabali claimed) to Bombay. Other exports were gum benjamin, rattan, gambier, tin ingots, canned pineapples, etc., while imports included dates from Muscat, Bahrain and Basra, onions from Port Said (1923–30), timber from Jeddah (1934–41) and gunny bags from Calcutta. Rajabali Jumabhoy stated that the export–import firm of A.M.S. Angullia of Surat had preceded them in this trade. R. Jumabhoy, Multiracial Singapore: On to the nineties, rev. ed. (Singapore: Chopmen, 1990), pp. 39–40.

51 Kantilal Jamnadas Shah, Oral History Recordings, Accession No. 000094, Reel No. 2, NAS.

52 Minutes of the meetings of the Sindhi Merchants Association held in 30 May 1946, and 17 October 1946, unpublished records of the Sindhi Merchants Association (in Sindhi). The author is grateful to Mr. Chhatru Vaswani, an elderly Sindhi businessman and a member of the Sindhi Association, for the translations.

53 For details, refer to Jaswant Singh Bajaj, Oral History Recordings, Accession No. 000167, Reel No. 3, NAS.

54 Siddique and Puru Shotam, Singapore's Little India, pp. 27–8.

55 Lee Poh Ping, Chinese society in nineteenth century Singapore (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 69–70.

56 The Chinese name ‘Tek Kia Kha’ shortened as Tek Kah, meaning ‘foot of small bamboos’, possibly used in building the cattle pens, ‘kandang kerbau’. Siddique and Puru Shotam, Singapore's Little India, pp. 22–3.

57 Ibid., p. 26.

58 ‘The building plans and also business establishments were peppered with Chinese, European, and Eurasian names, such as Law Boon Seng, Wee Eng Guan, Hong Chye Hoe, Koh Choon Seng, G. Rappa, H. Desker, E. Cashim, M. Engter, R. Angler, B. d'Aranjo, and H.P. Cork. North/South, Hindu/Muslim Indian names such as Adamsha, Daud bin Mohamed, Hadjee Hassan Dawood, Paltradind, Rama Durgy, Madarsah, sieboo Gunny, Shena Meydin, Subdu Mistree, Meyappa Chitty, K. Marican, Magouse, Ena Januluddin, Shaikh Mattar, and N.C.Y. Beravan Chitty, reflect the diversity of Indian heritage.’ Ibid., p. 35.

59 S.R. Nathan, An unexpected journey: Path to the presidency (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2013).

60 Girishchandra Kothari, Oral History Recordings, Accession no. A000549, Reel no. 14, NAS.

61 Jayati Bhattacharya, ‘Less remembered spaces and interactions in a changing Singapore: Indian business communities in the post-Independence period’, in 50 years of Indian community in Singapore, ed. Gopinath Pillai (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2016), p. 85.

62 Ibid., p. 90.

63 Jumabhoy, Multiracial Singapore.

64 Girish Chandra Kothari, Oral History Recordings, Accession no. A000549, Reel nos. 7 and 8, NAS.

65 Bhagwan H. Melwani, Oral History Recordings, Accession no. 000146, Reel no. 1, NAS.

66 Amrith, ‘Mobile city and the Coromandel Coast’, p. 248.

67 Jumabhoy, Multiracial Singapore.

68 Carter, Marina, ‘Indians and the colonial diaspora’, in India and Indian communities in East Asia, ed. Kesavapany, K., Mani, A. and Ramasamy, P. (Singapore: ISEAS, 2008), p. 22Google Scholar.

69 Markovits, Claude, The global world of Indian merchants, 1750–1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Donald, and Moore, Joanna, The first 150 years of Singapore (Singapore: Donald Moore; Singapore International Chamber of Commerce, 1976), p. 235Google Scholar.

71 For further details, see Bhattacharya, Beyond the myth.