Secret Societies Reconsidered: Perspectives on the Social History of Early Modern South China and Southeast Asia by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781315288031
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

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Chinese Culture and Polity in Nineteenth-Century Malaya: The Case of Yap Ah Loy

Sharon A. Carstens

On a side wall in the ancestral hall of the Yap Clan Association, located in the heart of Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown, hang pictures of the last three Chinese kapitans of nineteenth-century Kuala Lumpur: Yap Ah Loy, Yap Ah Shale, and Yap Kwan Seng. The latter two kapitans are shown clothed in the embroidered gowns and conical hats of Mandarin officials; Yap Ah Loy wears a plain black tunic top, wide white trousers, and a small dark circular cap. These two styles of dress caught my attention on my first visit to the Yap Clan Association, their iconography suggesting tantalizing variations in Chinese leadership styles during this period of Malayan history. A closer look at the lives of these men, particularly that of Yap Ah Loy, shows that these variations reflect competing and overlapping views about social status and political legitimacy in nineteenth-century Malayan Chinese society.1

The style of leadership most widely written about and clearly dominant in the Straits Settlements by the later decades of the nineteenth century was that of a wealthy, philanthropically oriented Chinese merchant elite (Turnbull 1972; Wang 1981; Yong 1967). At the same time, Chinese leaders in the interior parts of the Malay peninsula between 1830 and 1880 appear to have been men of a different type. In the highly risky and often tumultuous world of the gambier estates of Johor in the 1840s and 1850s, or in tin mining camps in areas of Melaka, Negri Sembilan, Selangor, and Perak from the 1830s to 1880, the leaders were often men known more for their fighting skills and their ability to organize others than for their comparative wealth. Appointed to official positions as kapitan or kangchu2 by local Malay royalty, these Chinese strongmen served simultaneously as military leaders, mediators between the local Chinese and Malays, and private entrepreneurs who eventually amassed considerable wealth for themselves and their families. This wealth, however, did not usually translate into leadership positions for their sons or other kin, as often happened among Chinese kapitans and wealthy merchant leaders in Melaka and Singapore; it was more likely to be passed on to another strongman, often a close associate who had served as bodyguard and partner in various endeavors.

One common interpretation of the relationship between these interior kapitans and the wider political and economic order suggests that dialect-based secret societies served as the connecting link between Straits merchant leaders and leaders of the interior communities.3 In a classic statement of this model, Gullick (1955, 12) describes how wealthy financiers in the Straits Settlements controlled secret societies, arranging for newly arrived immigrants to be inducted into the appropriate secret society (corresponding with their dialect group) and sent to the interior tin mines funded by the financier. These mines were in turn operated by secret society leaders, including among them the local kapitan, who relied on the Straits merchants for capital and for manpower and who organized the coolies in defense of the mines against challenges from other secret societies in the same area.

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