A PICTURE OF MALAYA

Evening Star, Issue 21129, 15 June 1932, Page 10

A PICTURE OF MALAYA

WHAT THE CENSUS SHOWS SOME FALLACIES DISCARDED (From ‘ The Times.’) Many -unconventional views on the Malay Peninsula, and much information on the distribution of its peoples, are contained in the report on the 1931 census, by Mr G. A. Vlieland, M.C.S., which is now published. The author has not confined himself to statistics and their direct meaning. A census, he argues, according to modern ideas, is something more than a mere count of heads. Rather he prefers to define it as “ a periodic survey of the demography of a country . . . to provide data Voi the purpose of checking and adjusting our ideas to the mode of change of the size and characteristics of the population. For demography is pre-eminently a dynamic, not a static science, and a picture of the community as it was at a given moment of time is of little use unless, wc are in a position to infer from it, with some approach to accuracy, the state of affairs at other moments.”

The picture which Mr Vlieland gives is, in many ways, an attempt to get away from that which tradition and some ignorance has coloured. There will, no doubt, be many readers who will learn with surprise that Malayan soils are poor; that the climate is “ quite different ” from the tropical typo; that the traffic congestion in Singapore is such that the streets recall London during an omnibus strike; and that land in the heart of Singapore is higher-priced than in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly. It may also cause surprise that the superintendent of this census had to evolve a system of enumeration for Malaya after consultation with the Director of Statistics in Coylon, and that he had to contend with a dearth of records of previous census operations. Practically nothing had survived except the printed reports on the census of 1921 and 1911._ This destruction of records is described as a “ wasteful principle,” since the new system of enumeration which had to be devised “ owed little to the experience of previous workers in the same field.” Mr Vlieland admits that it is extremely difficult to convey to the outsider anything resembling a true picture of British Malaya as it is to-day, with its magnificent road system, its railways, its busy towns, its trim villages, and its highly organised social services. It is all so different, he says, from the pictures of India and the East which have become traditional, and from the impressions derived from contemporary fiction, which, secure in the assumption of popular ignorance, still uses, as a picturesque and “ romantic ” setting, an imaginary Malaya as it may (or may bo not) have been half a century ago. The bulk of the British public has recently come to know something of Singapore as the site of a new naval base which has figured in English politics, but would he surprised to learn that' the base is many miles from the City of Singapore and scarcely affects its everyday life. It seems to Mr Vlieland that climatological errors and fallacies contribute more than any other factor to popular misapprehensions about Malaya. The word “ tropical,” therefore, is his first objection, and we learn that both in climate and vegetation Malaya is less unlike Cornwall or Kerry than Aden or the Thar Desert. The confusion of thought evident in the misuse of the word “ tropical ” produces far-reaching effects of practical importance by the use of the line of argument: “ In the tropics such-and-such a thing is the rule, and what could ho more tropical than Malaya?” A WRONG LABEL. The next misapprehension attacked by the report is the use of the terra “ monsoon ” as applied to Malaya. The report questions how far, if at all it is legitimate to consider the northeast and south-west winds which influence the rainfall of Malaya as mqnsoonal, but if the use of the term induces or encourages a belief that the climate has anything in common with that of the Western Ghats or the Khasia Hills of Assam, ‘‘it is utterly to bo condemned.” If there must be a label for the Malayan climate, Mr Vlieland suggests the term “ marine equatorial,” with the emphasis on the second word. There is close connection between these observations on the climate and the presence of the anopheliue mosquito which, “even if its powers of influencing the whole course of _ world history have been taken away, is still a potent factor in human affairs, and will continue to play one of the principal parts in the drama of Malaya’s future development.” Malaya, we are told, is only lightly afflicted by the curse of Beelzebub. There is in Malaya nothing corresponding to the tsetse fly of tropical Africa, the disease spreading fly of the arid tropics, or the insect plagues of summer in high latitudes. Before dealing with human geography, the report mentions the part which tin has played in the development of Malaya. This can be traced far back into the history and pre-history and is intimately connected with the association of the Chinese with this country. Malaya still produces over 45 per cent, of the tin of the world, and, while during the past two decades the immense profits made from rubber cultivation have tended to obscure the importance of tin, it may well be that in the future tin will again play the greater part. While tin is the abiding source of Malaya’s prosperity, says Mr Vlieland, it is the rubber-growing industry which has during the past twenty years had something of the effect of Mr Wells’s ‘ New Accelerator.’ The introduction of rubber into Malaya in 1877 by Sir Henry Wickham must rank as a major historical incident, though it was some thirty years before the results began to assume importance. From 1910 to 1920, when the inflated demand due to the Great War collapsed, rubber was a magician’s wand over Malaya. For a few years a scheme of restriction of export produced an appearance of prosperity, but the potential output remained far in excess of the world’s requirements. Bice and cocoanuts arc the other principal , agricultural products, but cultivation ol* these and other minor crops presented few attractions during the golden age of rubber, and even after the disillusionment of the 1920 slump peasant and capitalist cultivator alike had but one idea—to plant rubber, and yet more rubber, on any land, however unsuitable. To-day the area of land under cocoa nut cultivation is only about half a million acres, as compared with well over 2,000,000 acres of rubber, and the country is dependent on imports for the supply of its staple foodstuff, rice. The racial heterogeneity of Malaya is regarded as unique: “ The peace and security which came to Malaya with British administration; the aid of British capital and enterprise; the industry and economic genius of the Chinese: the labour of

the South Indian; the adaptability and social philosophy of the Malay—all these things have conspired to make of Malaya an El Dorado in the eyes of neighbouring peoples. So it comes about that there is a continuous stream of immigrants from China, India, Java, Sumatra, and other parts of the Dutch East Indies coming to seek their fortunes in Malaya, and only a Tittle over half the population is Malaya-born, and far less than half in any sense indigenous. . . . Immigration has continued steadily since the early settlements and is still extensive, and, if only those Malaysians whose foi’ebears had been in British Malaya for some generations were classed as “ Malay,” a very different picture of the Malay population would exist.” Mr Vlieland claims that the characteristics of all Malaysians very clearly show the effect of geographic control. “ Their mental outlook and philosophy, no less than their physique and mode of life reflect an enervating climate, a circumscribed horizon, and a bounteousness of Nature which minimises the necessity for effort.” “ There is nothing more symbolic, both of the adaptability of the native of the country and of the phenomenal rapidity of Malaya’s progress, than the picture of the Malay passing, almost at a step, from paddling a primitive canoe on a river winding its way through primeval forests to driving a car on a first-class tarmac motor road. Malaya has to-day nearly 1,200 miles of railway and approximately 3,700 miles of metalled roads, exclusive of the roads and streets of Singapore, Penang, and Malacca. There is nothing “ colonial ” about the roads, which have been described as the best in the Empire, with the possible exception of Great Britain. The increase in the number of motor cars in the past decade has made travel by car a commonplace in the life of all classes of the community, from the wealthy merchant of Singapore to the coolie on an estate or mine anywhere in the Western States.”

The total population enumerated at the 1931 census, and treated as belonging properly to British Malaya, was 4,385,346, as compared with 3,358,054 in 1921, an increase of 1,027,292, or 30.6 per cent. The dominant fact •in the growth of Malayan population is not, as in European countries, the excess of births over deaths, but the excess of immigrants over emigrants. The population of the Straits Settlements rose from 883,769 in 1921 to 1,114,015 in 1931, an increase of 230,246, or 26.1 per cent. Singapore showed an increase of 33.2 per cent., Penang an increase of 18.3 per cent., and Malacca an increase of 21.5 per cent. In tho Federated Malay States the population increased from 1,324,890 to 1,713,096, or by 27.7 per cent. The statistics of Chinese migration, says the report, have hitherto been subject to a “ colossal error,” and even if vastly improved will not servo as a basis for estimating population by direct addition. The classification of Chinese at this census is believed to represent a distinct improvement in accuracy. For British Malaya as a whole tho number of Chinese is computed to bo 1 ; 709,392. The Chinese population of Singapore Municipality in 1931 was nearly one-fifth of the total for the whole of British Malaya. The European population increased from 14,954 in 1921 to 17,768 in 1931; that is, by 18.8 per cent. As regards the future, Mr Vlieland considers that it must be mainly bound up with agriculture and mining, and, so long as the principal form of agriculture is the cultivation of rubber or any similar product on an estate or large-unit_ plan, there is clearly a stringent limit to the density of population over a great part of tho developed area of the country. The population of areas now open he regards as far nearer to saturation than is commonly supposed. “ Apart from the special case of Singapore, which is most favourably placed for the development of manufacturing industries, it is unlikely that Malaya can become to an appreciable extent a manufacturing country. ’ ’