-
The Imperial Locomotive: A Study of the Railway System in British Malaya 1885–1942
- Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
- Chapter
- Additional Information
The Imperial Locomotive: A Study of the Railway System in British Malaya 1885–1942 LIM TSE SIANG Abstract The origin of the British railway system in the Malay Peninsula can be traced to the laying of its first tracks between Taiping and Port Weld in Perak in 1885. It was to take another half a century before the network in the British protectorate reached its fullest extent. Together with the technologies of the steamship and telegraph, the railway revolutionized transportation and communications in the nineteenth century. Its significance within the imperial framework is generally perceived to lie in accelerating economic exploitation and growth through the enhancement of existing infrastructure for agriculture, industry and trade. As some historians have noted, the development of railways in British Malaya was indeed closely connected to the tin and rubber industries and the emergence of an export economy situated on the western coast of the Peninsula. Nonetheless, the railway functioned not just as a tool which served the colonial economy but also as an instrument of imperial rule in British Malaya. British imperial rule in the Federated Malay States (FMS, comprising Selangor, Perak, Negri Sembilan and Pahang) was consolidated through the establishment of a railway system that connected its constituent states together into a political unit; thus the Federated Malay States Railway (FMSR) facilitated the dissemination of British authority. As the railway became a site of imperial contestation and control over sovereignty in the Unfederated Malay States (UMS, comprising Johore, Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Trengganu), the assertion of British dominance over the Peninsula railway facilitated the drawing of these states into the orbit of British imperialism . At the same time, the railway also became a cultural technology of rule as it diminished the indigenous political system of the kerajaan in the Malay states. 161 162 FIG. 1 Sketch map of Malaya showing principal stations on the Federated Malay States Railways. Source: Federated Malay States Railway, Fifty Years of Railways in Malaya 1885–1935 (Kuala Lumpur: Kyle, Palmer, 1935), p. 135. [44.199.212.254] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:45 GMT) Introduction The British railway network on the Malay Peninsula (i.e. the Federated Malay States, Unfederated Malay States and the Straits Settlements) not only functioned as a utilitarian means of servicing and developing the colonial economy, but also served as an instrument of empire which projected imperialism into these states and consolidated British rule. Nevertheless, the present study does not concern itself with the railway system as a component of an exploitative colonial system which served the economic objectives of the imperial metropolis. Just as economic dominance was but one of many facets of imperialism in Malaya, the railway cannot be characterized solely as an arm of British economic ascendency. Yet the impact of the railway system on Malayan colonial society and its role and influence as an imperial institution in British Malaya have yet to be explored in detail. Hence, this study seeks to address these aspects of the railway system in the Malay Peninsula within the context of British imperialism. The study of the railway under Western imperialism has generally focused on it as an isolated object of historical study itself, or on its socioeconomic effects on colonial society. This can be attributed to the scholarly tradition of examining imperialism through specific issues without an accompanying comparative or broader analytical approach, which has led to the ‘retreat of imperial history into narrow specialization’ by historians who ‘failed to apply ideas and interpretations developed in the fields of inquiry parallel to one another’.1 This ‘specialization’ in the study of imperial history persisted in postcolonial historiography of the railway and gave rise to the body of academic work which generally followed the two abovementioned approaches. The approach which takes the railway as an object of historical study can be found within the works of scholars who sought to write a commemorative history of the system, in response either to popular waves of nostalgia, memory and heritage, or to a need to construct or impose an overarching national narrative on the railway, appropriated by the nation-state and reconstituted as a ‘national’ industry. Ric Francis and Colin Ganley’s work on the history of municipal transportation in Penang2 and J. A. Stanistreet ’s research on the history of the Malayan Railway3 adhere to the former, while Simryn Gill’s guidebook to the Tanjong Pagar railway station in Singapore for the Singapore Biennale,4 the Singapore Archives and Oral History 163 1 Bowen (1996...