Swettenham: The Chinese are the ones who developed the Malay States to what it is today

Historical fact which was EXTRACTED from Swettenham’s book

Please circulate this historical record written by Frank Swettenham to all your Malaysian contacts.

Port Klang was once named Port Swettenham. Go to Google, Wikipedia, to get this fact confirmed.

Please don’t fail to read the extract from page 233 of the book mentioned in the last part of this message.

The Chinese are the ones who developed the Malay States to what it is today ! This is documented fact !

BRITISH MALAYA – An Account of the Origin and Progress of British Influence in Malaya ” – by Sir Frank Swettenham, K. C. M. G. (1850-1946).

Late Governor of the Straits Colony & High Commissioner for the Federated Malay States . LONDON : John Lane Page 231 “… I have said that the protected Malay States depended mainly on the tin mines for their revenue, and it was first care of the Government to foster the industry by every legitimate means.

As early as 1882 a French company began to mine tin in the Kinta district of Perak, and has extended its operations to the other States. Since then other Europeans have formed companies for the same purpose; but it was the Chinese who began the work, who have continued it ever since, and whose efforts have succeeded in producing more than half of the world’s tin supply.

Their energy and enterprise have made the Malay States what they are today, and it would be impossible to overstate the obligation which the Malay Government and the people are under to these hard-working, capable and law-abiding. They were already the miners and the traders, and more instances the planters and the fishermen, before the white man had found his way to the Peninsula .

In all the early days it was Chinese energy and industry which supplied the fund to begin the construction of roads and public works, and to pay all the other costs of administration. Then they will and still they are, the pioneers of mining.. They have driven their way into remote jungles, cleared the forests, run all the risks, and often made great gains. They have also paid penalty imposed by an often deadly climate. But the Chinese were not often miners, they were charcoal- burners in the days when they had to do their own smelting; they were wood-cutters, carpenters, and brickmakers; as contractors they constructed nearly all government buildings, most of the roads and bridges, railways and waterworks.

They brought all the capital into the country when Europeans feared to take the risks; they were the traders and shopkeepers, and it was their steamers which first opened regular communications between the ports of the colony and the ports of Malay States. They introduced tens of thousands of their countrymen when the one great need was labour to develop the hidden riches of an almost unknown and jungle-covered country, and it is their work, the taxation of the luxuries of they consume and of the pleasures they enjoy, which has provided something like nine-tenths of the revenue.

When it is possible to look back upon a successful experiment, it is always of interest to ascertain the determining factors, and how far each affected the result.  The reader should understand at once what is due to Chinese labour and enterprise in the evolution of the Federated Malay States . The part played by the Malay has already been told: it was mainly negative; how far the Government officials, the European planters and the Indian Immigrants contributed to the general development of the Country and the position it now occupies will be described in the subsequent chapter…..”