99

The Founding of Singapore and the Chinese Kongsis
of West Borneo (ca.1819–1840)
Ying-kit CHAN*

Abstract
Many historians have examined why Singapore failed to be a major trading
center before the nineteenth century. This paper revisits the current scholarly
literature on the founding of Singapore to make two arguments. First, I argue
that we cannot understand the founding of Singapore and its role in the
British Second Empire without delineating Singapore’s role as a forest- andmarine-goods metropolis in the precolonial Chinese trading networks ofSoutheast Asia. Second, I try to show how the Chinese kongsis 公司 of West
Borneo turned Singapore into a forest- and marine-goods metropolis, formed
their own political and social institutions, and collectively functioned as athird autonomous pseudostate power alongside the British and the Dutch. This
reconceptualization enables us to see the founding of Singapore as a joint
enterprise, and not a solely British achievement.
Keywords: British Empire, Chinese kongsis, forest and marine goods,
Singapore, West Borneo

Introduction
Britain contested with France for naval mastery in the Atlantic, theMediterranean, and the Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century. At the end of
the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), the main reservoirs of British strength in
the Indian Ocean were in Bengal and on the Coromandel Coast. The Seven
Years’ War and subsequent wars between the British and French were foughtin continental Europe, Canada, the West Indies, India, and the Philippines.
From these experiences, the British realized that their economic and military
security rested on a continental balance of power and global naval
supremacy. It became obvious that to defend India from French ambitions, theBritish required an all-year lease in the Bay of Bengal, but the British holdon the Dutch base at Trincomalee was a precarious one. The Dutch, uninvolved in the Seven Years’ War, were on the French side in the next War of* PhD student, Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University

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American Independence (1778–1783). The initial effort to find a suitableeastern base for its navy resulted in the founding of a British settlement in
Penang (1786) and the occupation of the Andaman Islands (1788). The
British seemed to have grasped the operational significance of the Strait ofMalacca for the defense of India—the beginnings of their Second Empire. It
was in this context that the founding of Singapore, located at the southern tipof the Malay Peninsula southeast of the Strait of Malacca, was strategicallyimportant for the British.1
The search for an eastern naval base coincided with an equally if not more
important search for an eastern entrepôt. After the Seven Years’ War, the East
India Company had difficulty in paying for its expanding exports of silk andtea from Canton and sought to limit its shipments of silver to China by using
Southeast Asian produce as an alternative form of payment. The East India
Company also hoped to attract Chinese junks to an entrepôt outside theCohong 公行 monopoly, where the terms of exchange would be more favorable to the British.2 Notwithstanding Penang’s success, the East India
Company still sought a place more central to the Strait of Malacca and to theSouth China Sea. The British sought Singapore already in the failed 1787
Anglo-Dutch negotiations after the Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784), but theDutch held out until the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, at which point they
formally recognized the massive infiltration of British country traders in the
Malay Peninsula from the 1760s, concomitant with increasing British control
over India.3
Many historians have asked why Singapore failed to be a major trading
center before the nineteenth century.4 For Carl A. Trocki, Singapore rose, as
1 Wong 1991, pp. 21 23. The Dutch defeat of the Bugis of Riau and Selangor frightened
the British, who feared that the Dutch were about to dominate the Strait of Malacca.
This impelled the Bengal administration to accept the Sultan of Kedah’s offer ofPenang in 1786 (see Bassett 1964, pp. 197 198). Although the East India Company
had established a factory and garrison in Bencoolen (Palembang) on Sumatra’s
southwest coast as early as 1685, Bencoolen was not on any major sea lane plied by
Arab, Chinese, or European traders. The East India Company also tried to establish
a factory in Balambagan in the Sulu Archipelago, where interethnic rivalry, pirate
raids, and threats of Dutch and Spanish attacks doomed the settlement from the start(see Hack and Margolin 2010, p. 17, and Warren 1977, pp. 73 93).
2 Bassett 1964, p. 197.
3 The country traders were private traders under license to trade east of the Cape ofGood Hope. It was they who developed the opium trade, for the East India
Company refrained from a trade interdicted by the Qing authorities. These traders
were also encouraged to breach the Dutch monopoly of trade in the Dutch East
Indies (see Wong 1978, p. 51). On British control over India, see Hack andMargolin 2010, p. 17.
4 Heng 2011, p. 27.

The Founding of Singapore and the Chinese Kongsis of West Borneo (ca.1819 1840) 101

a free port, only because opium revenues from British India provided lucrative and reliable flows of cash to the British and Dutch colonial governmentsof the East Indies.5 Another salient reason that historians have cited to explain
its founding is that Singapore was the most convenient port of call for ships
sailing from an Indian port down the Strait of Malacca or past the Sunda
Strait and bound for China, Indochina, and Siam.6 Both explanations emphasize the relevance of India to the British colonization of Singapore. In thispaper, I revisit the founding of Singapore to make two arguments. First, I
argue that we cannot hope to understand the founding of Singapore and its
role in the British Second Empire without defining Singapore as a forest- andmarine-goods metropolis in the context of precolonial Chinese trading
networks of Southeast Asia. Second, I attempt to show how the Chinese
kongsis of West Borneo, which formed their own sociopolitical institutions,functioned collectively as a third autonomous pseudostate power alongside the
British and the Dutch to help make Singapore a forest- and marine-goods
metropolis in the context of competing, existing Dutch monopolies. With thisgroundwork, we can reconceptualize Singapore’s founding as a joint enterprise, rather than as a solely British endeavor.
The West Borneo Chinese link to Singapore, “already plugged into some
network, some process of circulation,” was one of the “fragile threads” thatconnected the globe.7 Anthony Reid, to whom some scholars allude, regards
the South China Sea as the “Asian Mediterranean,” in which predominantly
Hokkien Chinese—“merchants without empire”8—formed business andkinship ties with other Hokkien communities around the South China Sea. In
doing so, they created a trade diaspora that linked a part of southern China
with Southeast Asia.9 Yet, we ought to be aware of the parochialism of areastudies, which often uncritically assume the unity of China, India, SouthAsia, or Southeast Asia in terms of some perceived cultural, ethnic, linguistic,
and physical characteristics,10 even while acknowledging that Southeast Asian
trade was part of a much larger commercial network around the Indian Ocean
and South China Sea.11 Nor should we take for granted that Southeast Asia
was part of Greater India, lest we fall prey to the same teleological divisions
that, by emphasizing differences or exceptionalism, have plagued the historiography of modern nation-states. Taking as its point of departure Sanjay
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

Trocki 2002, p. 298.
Wong 1991, p. 44.
Subrahmanyam 1997, p. 762.
Wang 1990, pp. 400 421.
Reid 1993; Li 2004, p. 2; Lockard 2010, pp. 219 228.
Subrahmanyam 1997, pp. 742 743.
Lockard 2010, p. 226.

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Subrahmanyam’s notion of connectedness, this paper reinforces the argumentthat the activities of non-Europeans were crucial to the overall effectivenessof European empires as global systems sustaining regional and interregional
networks within them.12 The Chinese communities in Borneo—largely Hakka,
not Hokkien—were hardly insulated from global developments, including thefounding of Singapore, from which they derived renewed strength to resist
increasing Dutch dominance in Borneo.
A word is in order regarding my sources. This paper is an opinion piecethat proposes placing Singapore in a key position in West Borneo’s trade ofthe early nineteenth century. It is based only on secondary sources: noarchives, no empirical data, no eyewitness descriptions, and no statistics.
Nevertheless, it refers to an earlier period when Singapore was important forWest Borneo. We already know from the current scholarly literature that
Singapore played a pivotal role in West Borneo’s colonial economy in the latenineteenth century and during much of the twentieth century. From suchpremises, this paper reconsiders the establishment of Singapore by the British
from a wider, global, economic perspective and relates the Chinese kongsis ofWest Borneo to this setting. I aim here to inspire archival research into therelationship between the founding of the first kongsis (ca. 1740) and thefounding of colonial Singapore (1819), and into where trade was focused. The
kind of goods involved in Singapore-West Borneo trade—foodstuffs, forestand marine products, gold, and labor—also deserves attention, but must await
further studies for a more comprehensive treatment.

Chinese Trading Networks and Early Colonial Singapore
The idea that networks are crucial to linking human societies together hasreceived much attention in past decades.13 However, some questions remain.
In contrast to the usual emphasis on the role of merchants, how did Chineselaborers and indentured servants (coolies)—usually seen as mere commodities—figure in these networks? Did Chinese capitalism, or some form of it,
ever lubricate these networks? Did the Chinese networks constitute a modernity parallel to European developments? Attempts to answer these questions
may enable us to appreciate the role of Chinese trading networks in Southeast
Asia.
To be sure, Chinese coolies did not enter Southeast Asia until after theOpium War (1839–1842), which allowed the British access to the Chineselabor force.14 Before that, when the Chinese entered Southeast Asia as
12 Frost 2005, p. 30.
13 Curtin 1984; Chang and Tagliacozzo 2011, pp. 1 2.
14 Farley 1968, pp. 257 270; Lockard 2013, p. 771. The Chinese and Indian reservoirs

The Founding of Singapore and the Chinese Kongsis of West Borneo (ca.1819 1840) 103

laborers rather than as traders, they were often miners in the service of native
polities. In many parts of Southeast Asia, kings and nobles had mined,
smelted, and worked copper, gold, iron, and tin into ornaments, utensils, andweapons since the first century, although copper and iron remained relatively
scarce on the islands of Southeast Asia.15 A considerable supply of theworld’s tin was concentrated in the hills from eastern Burma to the Malay
Peninsula, while gold deposits existed in Borneo, Sumatra, and the Malay
Peninsula.16 From around the seventeenth century, Chinese laborers arrived in
Batavia and Manila to produce sugar for regional markets. During the MingQing transition, thousands of Fujian and Guangdong Chinese escaped to
Cochinchina, Cambodia, and the Gulf of Siam, where they grew pepper, rice,and other cash crops to cater to the demand of the South China market. Localkings or sultans usually arranged for Chinese farmers and miners to pay anannual lease or a percentage of their yields, and obliged Chinese to buy their
supplies of arak, food, opium, and tools at inflated prices from themselves,
although by the late eighteenth century, the Chinese started procuring theirprovisions from Southeast Chinese traders, who in turn paid import duties tothe local rulers.17
Trocki contends that the growth of Chinese capitalism in nineteenthcentury Southeast Asia was connected to Chinese merchants’ participation in
the financing and operation of opium farm concessions. According to him,
before the nineteenth century, production for export was inevitably handworkthat yielded the actual producer little cash income for labor. Without
commercial forms of production, finance, banking, and legal protection,
which the Europeans would later provide, wealth could not effectively exist
without the protection of power elites from the absolute and arbitrary rule oflocal kings and sultans.18 But Trocki’s argument is, in essence, a reiteration of
the European justification for colonization, which alleges that colonized societies did not possess the institutions and laws of “civilized nation-states” andthat Europeans needed to mobilize their labor and resources for capitalist
competition.19 In reality, however, across early modern Asia, Europe, and theAtlantic, imperial sovereignty was less a uniform system than a composite
patchwork of competing and overlapping empires, governments, and jurisdic-

15
16
17
18
19

of indentured servants, amid much criticism in Britain, became important after theabolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834 (see McKeown 2011, p. 67).
Reid 2011, pp. 22 23.
Reid 2011, pp. 25, 27.
Kwee 2013, pp. 19 20.
Trocki 2002, pp. 297, 299.
Duara 2008, p. 326.

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tions.20 If capitalism and capitalist economic organizations could not exist
apart from Western capitalism, then the history of precapitalist economic
organizations ends with the coming of capitalism in the guise of colonialism,
imperialism, dependent development, or commercial capitalism.21 But thisargument is problematic because Chinese capital did fuel the efficiency ofChinese industry in South China, and this pushed the maritime European
nation-states toward specialization in commercial services, not the other way
round.22
More than a decade ago, Subrahmanyam argued that scholars neglected
the history of institutions in Southeast Asia and engaged in a “near-systematic refusal” to analyze social groups or types. As a result, according to
Subrahmanyam, historians have largely followed Anthony Reid’s lead in
making only two distinctions for the region’s social organization: between
males and females, and between slaves and freemen.23 Since then, few
scholars have taken Subrahmanyam’s cue to study the social organizations inSoutheast Asia, let alone reconciling Southeast Asian studies with China
studies.24 Although Craig A. Lockard discusses the trade diaspora of Chinesemerchants who linked southeastern China with Southeast Asia, his focus falls
on the Hokkiens, whom he regards as the main drivers of cultural andeconomic exchanges between South China and Southeast Asia.25 Hence, athird distinction between the Chinese (not necessarily the Hokkiens) and indigenes, while not entirely accurate, is useful for placing subjects in perspective.26
Mark Frost points out that Chinese born or permanently settled beyond
20 Elliot 2006, p. 118; Subrahmanyam 2007, p. 1359; Stern 2013, p. 26.
21 Hamilton and Chang 2003, p. 174.
22 Pomeranz 2000; Chaudhuri 1978, pp. 153 160. For the Indian case, especially in the
cotton industry, see Parthasarathi 2011. Trocki arrives at his conclusion because he
did not consider South China in his analysis of Chinese capital in Southeast Asia.
Nevertheless, he does acknowledge that European institutions did not interface with
Southeast Asian economies, and that the Chinese were largely the ones who createdcapitalist institutions and forms of organization in the region in the nineteenth
century (see Trocki 2002, p. 299).
23 Subrahmanyam 1998, p. 98.
24 Kwee Hui Kian (2007) is a clear exception. Eric Tagliacozzo (2011, pp. 433 434)
has raised a similar concern. A dated yet relevant study (Yen 1986, pp. 35 109)
yields the impression that nineteenth-century Chinese communities of Southeast
Asia, more specifically those of Malaya and Singapore, were largely characterized
by clan and dialect organizations.
25 Lockard 2010, pp. 219 247.
26 The conceptual polarity of Chinese versus indigenes is inaccurate, for the division
was blurred in all parts of early modern Southeast Asia from Siam to Vietnam (seeSubrahmanyam 1998, p. 98).

The Founding of Singapore and the Chinese Kongsis of West Borneo (ca.1819 1840) 105

mainland Chinese borders, such as those “domiciled in the increasingly
Chinese city of Singapore,” freely interacted with newer Chinese arrivals
across a whole range of public institutions and spaces. He thus shifts ourattention away from creolized or hybrid intermediary communities such as theStraits (or Peranakan) Chinese.27 So many Chinese migrants arrived inSoutheast Asia in the eighteenth century that Trocki has dubbed it a “Chinese
century” in the regional economies.28 As Chinese trader-settlers received more
capital from the Europeans, they started to buy more opium from India andsold ever more ceramics, silks, and tea from China in large quantities. A partnership between local-born Straits Chinese, who interacted with Europeans,and new Chinese arrivals, who supplied products, became more established.
Through much of the nineteenth century, Chinese junks continued to beheavily involved in transshipment across the South China Sea, carrying
human cargoes of migrant labor on their outward voyages and products on the
return leg. Attracted by trade in Singapore free of Qing Chinese and Dutch
restrictions, junk traders and merchants relocated to the newly founded
British settlement from southeastern China, the Malay Archipelago and
Peninsula, the East Indies, and other parts of Southeast Asia, encouraging
more trade along existing Bugis and Chinese trade routes linking theseplaces.29
After the Napoleonic Wars, the British restored the East Indies to the
Dutch and tolerated the Dutch reimposition of its monopoly on almost all
trade with the archipelago. As the British saw it, spoils from the East Indies
were essential to rebuilding and stabilizing Holland, a buffer state in continental Europe, ravaged during the wars.30 To enforce that monopoly, theDutch often harassed foreign ships in their waters and refused to serve thosethat entered foreign ports. Both the East India Company and the British
country traders suffered from the Dutch monopoly, and Singapore’s founding
provided them and regional merchants an alternative trading site to break
Dutch control.31 On his part, Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore,created a system of government with nearly all real power in the hands of thecolonial governor. Raffles also made Singapore an entrepôt, rather than a
27
28
29
30

Frost 2005, pp. 33 34.
Trocki 1997, pp. 83 101.
Frost 2005, pp. 34 37.
Tagliacozzo 2004, p. 29. Country traders, quite naturally, had a different opinion,
preferring to pillage all the marine products of the East Indies over sharing
London’s geopolitical considerations (see Keay 1991, pp. 442 443).
31 Yet, the British did not end their search for an eastern entrepôt with Singapore. They
contemplated for a while whether they should form an emporium in the Gulf ofSiam, which was closer to the large Chinese and Siamese markets (see Crawfurd
1915 [1821], p. 164).

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place where many goods were produced, and hence relieved it of the need forthe coercive labor-control measures widely used in Java and India.32
Chinese merchants conducted the trade of Cambodian, Siamese, andVietnamese polities with Singapore. Rulers of these polities generally
distrusted the armed Europeans and preferred to entrust trade almost entirely
to the Chinese. On their part, they provided the Chinese with cheap materials
and workers to build shipping vessels.33 Siamese and Vietnamese rice, salt,
and sugar flowed into strategically placed Singapore in exchange for British
and Indian cloth, opium, and manufactures.34 British country traders too could
unload their cargoes in Singapore, where they could trade with Chinese andother merchants without fear of the depredations of local rulers and statemonopolies. In addition, Singapore lies strategically between Bangkok andBatavia along a north-south axis, where most of the major kongsi settlements
in Southeast Asia were located. In short, Singapore became the center of theChinese economy of Southeast Asia.35

The Chinese Kongsis of West Borneo
Trocki defines kongsi 公司 as a generic Chinese term for a range of
economic and social configurations that includes everything from business
partnerships to clan and regional associations to secret triad societies—a kindof corporation or “company” in which a group of individuals pooled
economic resources and thus received a share in the enterprise.36 Many
32 This was different from how the East India Company ruled its possessions. Essentially,
the East India Company acted over a coalition of landlords, merchants, and princes.
East India Company governors styled themselves as merchant princes, who often
consulted with indigenous elites (the “cannibals”) and obtained trade goods by direct
force against local, nonelite populations rather than free contracting. Country traders
were the ones pressuring London to keep Singapore no matter what the Dutch saidor did (see Pomeranz and Topik 2006, pp. 58 62). The founding of Singapore
evolved from Raffles’s keen awareness of the island as the site of an ancientcommercial center for the Malay world, from which the British could centralize
Malay revival (see Skott 2010, pp. 155 184). Not all of Raffles’s contemporaries
shared his view that Singapore had been an ancient site. For one, John Crawford(the ship’s captain who came with Raffles on his first voyage, not the second
Resident of Singapore) argued that no remains were seen to prove that Singapore
was an ancient city and fort (see Miksic 2013, pp. 412 414).
33 It cost Chinese shipbuilders only half as much to build their vessels in Siam as it didin Fujian or Guangdong (see Reid 2004, p. 31).
34 Wong 1960, pp. 134 143.
35 Trocki 2011, p. 93.
36 As a short synthesis of past studies, suffice it to say that the earliest gold and tin
miners who arrived in Southeast Asia from China operated in shareholding partnerships, to which each worker would contribute his labor and a sum of money. The
pooled capital was used for construction materials for lodgings and drainage facili-

The Founding of Singapore and the Chinese Kongsis of West Borneo (ca.1819 1840) 107

kongsis were formed as partnerships between laborers at one mine or plantation and the investor who supplied capital in the form of provisions, tools,
and transport.37 Yen Ching-hwang narrows his definition to dialect associations that served the political, religious, and social needs of their constituentsin Southeast Asia.38 A useful definition here, offered by Lockard, has it that akongsi is a self-governing community based on clan relationships with ademocratic spirit, with members electing representative assemblies and agoverning council—a definition that is neither too broad nor too narrow.39
In 1885, the Dutch colonial official and sinologist J. J. M. de Grootpublished the Chinese text and Dutch translation of the history of Lanfang
Kongsi, arguing that the kongsi federations were not secret societies. De Grootappealed to the Dutch to retain the kongsi federation as a form of indirect rule
for the Chinese, just as the Dayaks and Malays of Borneo were under indirect rule through local chiefs. Since he exaggerated the “republican” nature of
the Chinese settlements, De Groot failed to realize that kongsis were first andforemost economic enterprises and farmers were second-class members, aswere indigenes. One or a few family names controlled most federations,
headmen remained in office for years, and the job sometimes passed fromfather to son or son-in-law. Suffice it to say that while sultans controlled themouths of rivers, where Malay settlements were located, and the Dayaks
populated the interior, the kongsis by the end of the eighteenth century came
to control the upland river valleys north of Borneo. By the early nineteenth
century, the larger kongsi federations were virtually independent of the sultans,
who had invited the Chinese migrants to mine in the first place.40

37

38
39

40

ties, as well as foodstuffs and other provisions throughout the mining period (seeKwee 2013, p. 20).
Trocki 1990, p. 11; Trocki 2002, p. 301. As Trocki elaborates, the kongsi was a uniquely
Chinese institution that evolved to conduct every kind of business. The term firstcame into use in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, referring to mostsettlements of Chinese laborers in Southeast Asia around 1700 and later for any
kind of shareholding enterprise. Kongsis were essentially organized for economic
purposes, legal or not (see Trocki 1990, p. 12, and Trocki 2007, p. 3). Kwee Hui
Kian subscribes to Trocki’s definition and understands kongsis as organizations (seeKwee 2013, p. 618, n. 7).
Yen 1986, pp. 44 56.
Lockard 2013, p. 771. “Democratic” can be a problematic term because Chineseexperiences were obviously different from Western ones. Nevertheless, this definition serves the purpose here of explaining kongsi as an economic and political organization independent of state control.
Heidhues 1992, pp. 68 88. For excellent studies on Chinese kongsis in Borneo basedlargely on Dutch East India Company sources, see Heidhues 1992, Yuan 2000, andHeidhues 2003. For concise studies on Lanfang Kongsi per se, see Zhu 1960 and
Luo 1961.

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The Lanfang Kongsi, or Lanfang Republic (1775–1884), was arguably
the most prominent kongsi in West Borneo. It was established by Luo Fangbo(1738–1795), who arrived in Pontianak in western Borneo with a group of
Hakkas from southeastern China, forged cordial relations with the local
sultans, divided territories, settled disputes, collected taxes, built roads,
supplied fresh water, and provided security. The “ritual brotherhood” that Luo
Fangbo pioneered was soon emulated in other parts of West Borneo, and thekongsi system became effective in administering local governance. To put theestablishment of the Lanfang Kongsi in perspective, West Borneo was marredby armed conflicts between Chinese factions, often based on dialect and homearea in China. Luo Fangbo’s effective governance gained him more followers
over time and augmented his power through a mix of military conquests andpolitical alliances.41 The longevity of the Lanfang Kongsi is telling of its
effectiveness: it did not fall to the Dutch until 1884.42
The Hakkas were latecomers on the scene of South China and had encountered hostility and discrimination from early settlers of the Chinese coastal
area and Southeast Asia. Thus for them, group consciousness became stronger
than in other dialect groups in the region. A particular group of Hakkas, from
Jiaying in South China, the hometown of Luo Fangbo, were arguably thefounders of the “republican” kongsi system, which, according to Yen (1986,
p. 44), stimulated the migration of Hakkas not only to West Borneo but also
to other parts of Southeast Asia, including Malacca, Penang, and Singapore.43
However, we have no figures or accounts to prove that Hakka migrants
arrived in Southeast Asia because of the success that they saw in the Borneo
kongsis. Nevertheless, it seems that a constant stream of Hakka Chinese toWest Borneo did provide the Lanfang Kongsi with both scholars (largely failures in the civil examinations, like Luo Fangbo) and miner-laborers (whowanted to escape from abject poverty in mainland China). Throughout its
history, Lanfang Kongsi enjoyed an uneasy alliance with the Sultan of
Sambas, who possessed the gold mines and demanded taxes from the kong41 Blusse and Merens (1993) extensively document the activities of Luo Fangbo.
42 Yuan 2000, pp. 47 55; Trocki 1990, p. 16; Reid 2004, pp. 24 25; Lockard 2013, p.
771. The British did not make serious attempts to sustain the lucrative traffic
between Borneo and Singapore in the context of Dutch monopolies in the East
Indies after 1824, and especially after the Opium War, when forest and marine
products became less important than opium in the British trade with Qing China.
The gradual success of longtime, persistent Dutch embargoes hampered BorneoSingapore trade even further (see Earl 1971 [1837], pp. 289, 305 307).
43 The West Borneo kongsis consisted almost entirely of people from four of the Hakkaspeaking districts in China’s Guangdong Province: Jiaying (Meixian), Dapu, Jieyang(Hepo), and Huilai (Hailu-feng) (see Chin 1981, p. 17). Yuan Bingling (2000)
straightforwardly calls the Borneo kongsis “Chinese democracies.”

The Founding of Singapore and the Chinese Kongsis of West Borneo (ca.1819 1840) 109

sis.44 At times, Lanfang suppressed local rebellions of Dayaks and otherkongsis for the Sultan. Other times, Lanfang held its own elections of officials (although elected men were always influential, rich men in individual
villages) to head or staff the customs offices, tribunals (according to the Qing
legal code), gold mines, and even arsenals. Lanfang and some other kongsis
manufactured their own cannons, guns, and ammunition, much to the chagrin
and suspicion of local rulers. Lanfang also threatened local rulers’ monopolyof food supplies by acquiring its own food supplies, which it made available
to miners of its own and other Chinese settlements at much lower prices. It
also competed with local rulers for forest produce to build roads, maintainwaterways, and exploit natural resources.45
The largest existential threat to the kongsi always came from the Dutch,
and not the local rulers. For instance, for several decades in the nineteenth
century, the Dutch, in order to maintain their monopoly of the spice trade in
the East Indies, tried, to little avail, to dissuade the Borneo sultans fromselling pepper, which the Chinese would export to China and other parts ofSoutheast Asia, to the kongsis.46 The Dutch attempted to blockade the West
Borneo coast and interdicted commercial intercourse between Chinese territories and foreign countries, except through the medium of their settlements in
Pontianak and Sambas.47 In May 1853, the Dutch military command of West
Borneo, with the tacit, coerced support of the local rulers, finally succeeded
in imposing an embargo on opium, rice, salt, and other foodstuffs supplied to
the kongsis, threatening harsh punishments on violators of the embargo and in
the process criminalizing the kongsis as “rebels.”48 Till then, however, thekongsis benefited from a prosperous trade with the newly founded British
44 The Dayaks served as valuable part-time workers in the gold mines (see Reid 2011,
p. 26).
45 Lanfang had only an informal social contract mutually understood by all. Luo Fangbo
entertained the idea of attaching his realm to Qing China, but the Qing court neverinvested him with any title or formally recognized him as the ruler of West Borneo.
Nevertheless, throughout Lanfang’s history, scholars from China were invited toWest Borneo to teach the Confucian classics (see Chin 1981, pp. 17 21, and Reid
2004, pp. 24 25). The inhabitants of Chinese commercial and mining towns were
almost exclusively Chinese (see Earl 1971 [1837], pp. 210, 222).
46 Chin 1981, p. 8. Capitalizing on succession disputes and power intrigues in native
politics, the Dutch first gained a stronghold in Borneo in 1785 through treaties withlocal rulers (see Crawfurd 1971 [1856], p. 65).
47 Earl 1971 [1837], p. 212. According to G. W. Earl (1971 [1837], p. 244), “the Chinese,
unwarlike except in defense of their property, and unacknowledged by a mothercountry which could protect them from the aggressions of a cruel and rapacious
enemy [the Dutch], were soon reduced from a state of affluence and prosperity, tothe most abject poverty and wretchedness.”
48 Yuan 2000, p. 231.

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Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 7 2016settlement of Singapore, which had, to some extent, prolonged their existence, especially that of Lanfang.

Trade between Early Colonial Singapore and the West Borneo Kongsis
The second British Resident of Singapore (1823–1826), John Crawfurd(1783–1868), wrote,[The Chinese] are found in scattered numbers in every part of the coastof Borneo, but it is only on the western side, attracted thither by its goldand diamonds, that they exist concentrated and in large numbers. A
portion of these is subject to the Dutch rule, paying a capitation-tax; but
the majority are virtually independent, living under a kind of rude
republic, governed by elective chiefs who administer the laws of China.
No females, as is well known, emigrate from China; but the settlers havefound wives among the women of the Dayaks, and hence many of thepresent colonists are a mestizo or mixed race; the original blood being,
however, to some extent kept up by annual immigrations from China.
The original settlers, as well as the present immigrants, are natives of theprovince of Canton, and all of the lower or working classes of society.
The Dutch authorities have estimated their numbers, on the western coast
alone, at 130,000.49
One interesting observation made by Crawfurd—arguably the real founder ofSingapore50—was that despite local rulers’ expulsion of the British from theirfactory in South Borneo in the early eighteenth century, in the first half of thenineteenth century there was British trade with Borneo “which is carried on
chiefly with the free port of Singapore, and which not only far exceeds invalue the Dutch and English trade of the 18th, but the trade of the Dutch in
the 19th century, although [the Dutch are] exercising sovereign authority over
two-thirds of the island.”51
When Singapore was first established as a regional entrepôt, trading
vessels sailed regularly from Borneo to Singapore with various jungle
produce: beeswax, bird’s nests, camphor, pearls, pepper, sago, and tortoise49 Crawfurd 1971 [1856], p. 62.
50 Ernest C. T. Chew (1991, p. 39) asserts that it was not Raffles but Crawfurd who,
after the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, received the necessary authorization from
British India recognizing the British position in Singapore. Crawfurd’s treaty with
the Malay rajas, finalized on August 2, 1824, secured the cession of Singapore in“full sovereignty and property to the East India Company, its heirs and successors.”
51 Crawfurd (1971 [1856], pp. 65 66) concluded that all European attempts to establish
territorial dominion in Borneo would be baffled by “the insuperable obstacles of an
uncongenial climate, a stubborn soil, a rude and an intractable population, and theabsence of all adequate financial resources.”The Founding of Singapore and the Chinese Kongsis of West Borneo (ca.1819 1840) 111

shells. In 1824, forty prahu from Borneo called at Singapore. Bugis and Malay
traders from Borneo also participated in this trade with Singapore. Borneo’s
cargoes were sold off to Straits and South Chinese merchants in Singapore in
exchange for Madras cloth, iron, steel, Chinese gold thread, Bengal andEuropean chintzes, and long cloths—all to be retailed in the interior of
Borneo. It was estimated that Singapore’s trade with West Borneo amounted
to around 60,000 to 70,000 Spanish dollars annually. The kongsi mining
settlements of Sambas, Mampawa, and Pontianak exported gold dust to
Singapore, for which they received smuggled opium, weapons, and salt.
Without Singapore, the Dutch could have turned salt and opium—necessities
for Chinese miners—into lucrative revenue monopolies.52 In other words, atthe fortuitous moment of Dutch expansion in Borneo, which threatened theexistence of the kongsis, Singapore allowed the Borneo Chinese to bypass the
Dutch and local rulers to obtain higher-quality, cheaper supplies of essential
goods.53 The West Borneo Chinese intensified their efforts at establishing a“permanent commercial intercourse” with Singapore in the 1830s, andChinese merchants in Singapore were also eager to sell their opium, tea, andother articles for the produce of the gold mines, among other commodities, ofBorneo.54 Chinese traders also sought after Borneo’s camphor and rice,
reputed to be of the highest quality.55
Indeed, as a result of its proximity to Singapore and hence British influence, West Borneo quickly became a source of concern to the Dutch in the
East Indies. However, Dutch ambitions were thwarted by the increasingly
powerful kongsis, which circumvented their trade embargoes and restrictions
and acquired Western arms and Southeast Asian raw materials mainly fromSingapore. Heavy cannons of Arab origin and armaments from Singapore
allowed the Chinese to resist the Dutch in armed conflicts.56 The growing
importance of the traders from Singapore also damaged the interests of Malay
merchants, who had been allowed to monopolize the trade in opium. At theinsistence of the Sultan of Sambas, Dutch patrol boats intercepted Chinese
smuggling boats in a major offensive in 1831. As a result, not without some52 The West Borneo Chinese sold gold dust in terms of silver dollars, the price dependingon the presumed purity of the gold, which differed according to where it was mined(see Heidhues 2003, p. 50). For a concise description of the Borneo-Singapore trade,see Daniel Chew 1990, p. 58, and Heidhues 2003, pp. 78 79.
53 Archaeological evidence reveals that the main items that circulated in the Singapore
trade were ceramics and glass, which written sources barely mention (see Miksic
2013, p. 415).
54 Armenians in Singapore also tried to forge trade links with the Borneo Chinese (seeEarl 1971 [1837], pp. 199 200, 316 317).
55 Earl 1971 [1837], pp. 248 250, 310 311.
56 Yuan 2000, p. 84.

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irony, the Chinese asked the Sultan to mediate between them and theDutch.57 Nevertheless, Chinese smuggling activities continued, and Chinese
sojourners and traders started to trade their coastal or trading products in themain towns and rural up-river areas—the Malay sphere of influence in
Borneo—and Malay commerce experienced a gradual demise by the midnineteenth century.58
Qing Chinese intense demand for cheap, foreign silver—largely the resultof domestic rejection of worthless paper currency and a monetary system inwhich economic transactions were conducted and tax payments were made in
silver—led to a steady rise in silver imports into China in the first half of theeighteenth century. However, after 1750, when the value of silver declined in
China in comparison with Europe, Europeans, such as British merchants whoarrived in Canton for tea, quickly pivoted and brought in Indian opium
instead. Robert Hellyer argues that steady demand from China for forest andmarine products, either unavailable at home or not produced in sufficientamounts to satisfy Chinese consumers, played an equally if not more prominent role in trade than simple fluctuations in the value of silver. According to
Hellyer, Chinese demand for such goods shaped maritime trade throughout
the South China Sea and Pacific from 1750 to 1850 and continued to do soeven after opium gained increasing significance after 1820. Southeast Asian
products included seaweed, sea cucumbers, shark’s fins, abalone, bird’s nests,
sandalwood, Borneo camphor, and tortoiseshells.59
In Southeast Asian trade, we have to distinguish marine products, spices,and “all things Southeast Asian.” The Dutch East India Company monopoly
in the East Indies greatly affected the world spice trade. Yet, scholars havelong established that despite the monopoly, the spice trade was indeed pivotal
to the global trade of premodern times. Here I limit my discussion of past
China–Southeast Asian trade to the western half of the Malay Archipelago, amuch neglected cousin of the famed Spice Islands. The islands of Borneo,
Java, and Sumatra produced their fair share of spices and, more important,forest and marine products, as noticed by some scholars.60 After 1750,
demand intensified, first for Southeast Asian products that could be sold in
China or Europe and then for goods that could be sold to the newly established communities of Chinese producers within Southeast Asia itself.
Chinese and Europeans intensified their involvement to the exclusion of indi57 Yuan 2000, p. 146.
58 Daniel Chew 1990, p. 60.
59 The Japanese also participated in this maritime trade by supplying silver or transshipping Southeast Asian products (through Ryukyu) for sale in China and viceversa (see Hellyer 2013, pp. 394 401).
60 Lieberman 1997; Tagliacozzo 2004; Hellyer 2013.

The Founding of Singapore and the Chinese Kongsis of West Borneo (ca.1819 1840) 113

genes, including the Bugis, who had earlier ousted the Malays in Riau andSelangor.61 Kongsis displayed the most economic and political independenceof Chinese communal organizations in Southeast Asia from the enfeebled
Malay polities around them. In fact, according to Victor Lieberman andTrocki, Singapore’s founding sealed an informal compact between the
Chinese and the British, with the Malay chiefs and their Bugis clients (among
others) losing all legitimate claim to political power and status in Singapore
and the area around it after 1824.62 As both Southeast Asian Chinese andBritish traders were grappling with the declining value of silver, forest andmarine goods of the “West” East Indies provided them with an answer tomaintain their China trade profits while allowing them to circumvent Dutchmonopolies.
One main competitor, other than Japanese traders in Ryukyu, was the Sulu
Sultanate, which, through the combination of free and forced labor, created alucrative system for acquiring marine products.63 The Europeans, especiallythe British, demanded marine goods acceptable in Chinese markets and thus
drove a rapid expansion in the Sulu economy in the second half of the eighteenth century. As Hellyer succinctly notes, the British decision to reduce
silver in its trade with China, the British demand for more tea, and thelimited Chinese demand for British cotton and woolen manufactures together
caused socioeconomic ripples throughout Southeast Asia.64 Such ripples led
Alexander Dalrymple (1737–1808) to develop the first plan for an entrepôt, inBalambangan near Sulu to attract Chinese, Bugis, Malay, and neighboringtraders to bring forest and marine products to Balambangan.65 When the
Balambangan settlement failed, the British regrouped in the Strait of Malaccaand joined with the Dutch and Spaniards to extinguish “piracy” and hence
Sulu—a main obstacle to their China trade.66
Eric Tagliacozzo calls Singapore a “marine goods metropolis”—anextended Indian port that allowed other British traders to bypass the East
India Company monopoly on the China trade since the seventeenth century.
European cargoes in Singapore in the 1820s included marine goods picked up
61
62
63
64
65
66

Lieberman 1997, p. 44.
See Trocki 2007, pp. 65 74, and Lieberman 1997, p. 44.
Warren 1981; Hellyer 2013, pp. 397 399.
Hellyer 2013, p. 399.
Warren 1977.
Lieberman 1997, p. 44. As Trocki (2007, p. 6) noted, Malay and other Southeast Asian
seafarers were not “pirates” in the European sense of the word. I would add that
Europeans and other peoples had different legal systems that authorized or legitimated certain “privileges” or “rights” by prosecuting or “outlawing” those of others.
Legal pluralism, the coexistence of two or more legal systems, is a nascent field thatdeserves our interest (see Benton and Ross 2013).

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in small entrepôts and feeder centers all over the Malay Archipelago tosupplement the staple goods of trade already stowed below from Europe andIndia.67 Chinese junks and Bugis prahus docked at Singapore with shark fins,pearls, sea slugs, and live turtles from all over the East Indies: Bali, Flores,
Lombok, New Guinea, Sumbawa, and Timor.68
One possible reason why the Borneo Chinese could succeed in the regional
trade of forest and marine products—other than the natural endowments of
their environment—was that the forest and marine commodities, with theclear exception of pearls, were particularly difficult to manage and subject tomonopoly. Highly localized spice production was especially amenable tomonopoly, while forest and marine goods had dispersed collecting zones andmultiple potential exchange sites. The Chinese might not do the collecting
themselves, preferring to procure the products from local collectors,
harvesters, and fishermen—an act that the Europeans condemned as “smuggling.” The Dutch could not break into the commodity chain at any level. Not
only were the Dutch ineffective in controlling production zones, they also
could not compete in the various markets, ranging from beachside barter towholesale deals in ports.69
To benefit from the vast Chinese market, the people of Borneo living in
inland mountains began to harvest more forest products for Chinese
consumers, including beeswax, Borneo camphor, and bird’s nests. Trade
expanded because of the constant demand from European merchants for silver
substitutes.70 Such developments coincided with the “industrious revolution”
of northwestern Europe and North America roughly from 1650 to 1850, in
which a growing number of households reallocated their productive
resources—chiefly the time of their members—to increase market-oriented,
money-earning activities and goods offered in the marketplace. When tea wasincorporated into European social patterns and meals, demand grew exponentially, rising from negligible levels in 1700 to almost one million kilograms
per year by 1720. With the opening of direct trade of tea from Canton,
imports rose at a rate of 3.9 percent per year until the 1790s, when European
consumption averaged 14.5 million kilograms annually.71 The impetus toinnovate could be seen in the West Borneo Chinese (or anyone in Southeast
67 Tagliacozzo 2004, pp. 29 32.
68 Tagliacozzo 2004, p. 31.
69 Holding onto the principle of buying cheap and selling dear, the Dutch East India
Company capped the amounts officials could offer, so the Chinese always outbid
them (see Sutherland 2011, pp. 178 184).
70 Hellyer 2013, p. 401.
71 De Vries 2008, pp. 10, 156. See also Pomeranz 2000 for an explanation of a similar“industrious revolution” in late imperial China.

The Founding of Singapore and the Chinese Kongsis of West Borneo (ca.1819 1840) 115

Asia hoping to profit from the maritime trade around them), who wereaddicted to the market and hence more willing than subsistence producers towork intensively for long periods. In short, consumption mattered. It
produced new forms of state and systems of knowledge linking major global
societies in economic, ideological, and social development.72 What Europeans
as a whole did was to connect and subjugate industrious revolutions of otherparts of the world, and it was for this large purpose that the British founded
Singapore.
To recapitulate, with the founding of Singapore, Chinese, Bugis, Malay,
and other regional traders started to supply Singapore with island products—
forest and marine goods—suitable for reexport to China and elsewhere. These
traders then supplied the islands of Southeast Asia with Chinese goods andwith products of European industrial technology when such products wereavailable in Singapore. Philip D. Curtin explains how the British experimentof replacing chartered companies, armed trade diaspora, and coercive monopolies with a free-port and trading-post empire worked in Singapore. The
system developed through stages: Singapore first became a major node for
Cantonese and Hokkien trade diasporas; it then started to serve as a base forthe economic enterprises of local Chinese capitalists exploiting the resourcesof the Malay Peninsula; and it later became a settlement for southernChinese.73 British imperialism was a global phenomenon governed by global
conditions, with power derived less from the assertion of imperial authority
than from the fusion of several disparate elements. This intricate web of
British connections was constantly under the stress of geopolitical change. Achange in one area could have a ripple effect on other areas, if not the whole
empire. Hence, the British Empire, seen in this light, is better understood as
the British world-system.74 As an entrepôt colony, Singapore was part of thissystem. As active agents and carriers of Singapore’s entrepôt trade, especiallyin the regional trade of forest and marine products, the West Borneo Chineseand kongsis as well were under the stress of geopolitical change.

Conclusion
Speaking of British trade in the first half of the nineteenth century, Sir
John Robert Seeley wrote,
Our trade . . . continued to be insignificant in spite of all our conquests[in India] until about 1813, and it began to advance with great rapidity
soon after 1830. These dates point to the true cause of progress in trade,
72 Bayly 2004.
73 Curtin 1984, pp. 166, 240 242.
74 Darwin 2009, pp. xi xii.

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and they show that it is wholly independent of progress in conquest, forthey are the dates of the successive Acts of Parliament by which theCompany was deprived of its monopoly. Thus it appears that, while it
was by the East India Company that India was conquered, it was not by
the East India Company, but rather by the destruction of the East India
Company, that the great trade with India was brought into existence. Ourconquests in India were made by an exclusive chartered Company, but
our Indian trade did not greatly prosper until that Company ceased practically to operate.75
Similarly, though the East India Company seized Singapore—more accurately, Raffles secured Singapore for the East India Company without thecompany’s knowledge—the China trade prospered for British country traders,
Chinese kongsis and middlemen, and Bugis and Malay traders in the free portof Singapore, without the constraints and coercion of semiofficial company
monopolies.
One question remains unanswered: how should we understand the West
Borneo Chinese who settled in a foreign land and established a configurationof forces and means to govern themselves? As Timothy Mitchell puts it, moreglobal pictures of cases such as Singapore make possible a less Eurocentricaccount of the formation of the modern world, an account made necessary by
the fact that modernity had its origins in networks of exchange and production encircling the world and was born not in the West but of interactions
between West and non-West.76 One site of such interactions was the East
Indies. In the creation of the kongsis and the free port of Singapore, the “decisive nature of the distinction between European and non-European” wasfixed.77 Though modernity can claim to be universal, we can see in the
kongsis an alternative, parallel institution that had its origins in old, established Chinese trading practices and new geopolitical exigencies in the frontier region that had adopted them.78 The Chinese and other regional traders
had always engaged in free trade of some form, and as mentioned earlier, thefounding of Singapore was actually a formalization of events and trends that
had been going on for centuries.
Are we then to call the establishment of the free port of Singapore a
75
76
77
78

Seeley 2005 [1891], p. 265.
Mitchell 2000, p. 2.
Mitchell 2000, p. 3.
Chinese nationalists, for the past century, have been calling the Lanfang Republic
the first republic in the world (see Zhu 1960, p. 1, and Luo 1961). The urge to see
the “sprouts” or even “origins” of democracy somewhat betrays their intent to argue
that the Chinese do not owe the West their notions of democracy and freedom, andhence modernity.

The Founding of Singapore and the Chinese Kongsis of West Borneo (ca.1819 1840) 117

modern innovation? The founding of Singapore was an obvious example of
how the British appropriated local, indigenous systems not by militaryconquest but by compromising and negotiating with existing local economic
and political power brokers. To head back to Subrahmanyam’s notion ofconnected histories, modernity historically is a global, conjunctural phenomenon, “not a virus that spreads from one place to another.”79 Having briefly
delineated some of the global processes that brought the otherwise isolatedsocieties of Borneo, Singapore, and other parts of the East Indies into closer
contact in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, we may want totry justifying Tagliacozzo’s argument that forest and marine goods—as indigenous products instrumental to increasing British trade with China—provided
Singapore with some advantages over the monopolized markets of Batavia
and other neighboring ports, and helped transform it into the successful port
it still is today.80 It is interesting to note that Singaporean authorities, in recent
years, have taken an interest in the historical links between Singapore and theWest Borneo Chinese.81 The legacy, it seems, is here to stay.
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