Rice in Malaya

Preface

Preface The importance of rice in the life of the great majority of Asians needs no emphasis. For most, rice is literally “food” and other comestibles are something to be eaten with food. Thus for Malays, nasi is food in general as well as cooked rice in particular. Moreover, the great majority of Asians not only eat rice as the staple food, but most of them, except in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent and in northern China, also grow it. In this the peoples of Malaya, now Peninsular Malaysia, are exceptional in that the descendants of the Chinese and Indian immigrant communities, neither now nor in the past, have taken a significant part in rice-growing. Even amongst Malays, the growing of rice plays a much smaller role than it does, for instance, amongst Javanese, Khmers or Vietnamese. It was not always thus. In pre-colonial and early colonial times in Malaya rice was of overwhelming importance as a crop, except amongst some aboriginal shifting-cultivators. Occupied land was largely rice land. Permanently-developed land was rice land and land development meant development for the growing of rice. As the Malay states successively came under imperial control these generalizations became increasingly less true with the notable exception of the north-west where, especially during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, production on the Kedah plain expanded enormously under the influence of the Penang market and at the direction of enlightened rulers. It is with the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that this book is primarily concerned since it is for this period that adequate source materials exist. Nevertheless, one question in all historical studies is, how did this situation arise? Thus, partly because it has not been attempted elsewhere, and partly because of plain curiosity, an attempt has been made to draw together what little is known or can be reasonably conjectured about earlier periods. In this, the Peninsula has been viewed in its broader regional context since to do otherwise would have not only drastically curtailed discussion but would also have left much unexplained. Since the number of sources increases with time in something approaching a geometrical progression, a broad view has been adopted at the outset, followed by a narrower and more detailed region-byregion focus towards the end of the period under study. xi xii Preface The choice of the end of the first decade of this century as a terminator requires some justification. At that time government interest in rice-growing was minimal. Official attention was directed largely towards the modern sector of the agricultural economy, as is evidenced by the overwhelming attention devoted to commercial crops in the Agricultural Bulletin of the Malay States and the Straits Settlements. Except for brief spasms of official interest first during the First World War, when rice imports were vulnerable to enemy action and again in the 1930s when rubber smallholders suffered severely from the effects of the world-wide economic depression, rice-growers were left largely to their own devices. It was only after Independence in 1957 that a number of the development schemes proposed in the 1930s were actually implemented along with further major works aimed at making the country substantially independent of rice imports. But these are modern developments worthy of full treatment in themselves. Moreover, since 1910 the Malay rural economy, while remaining peasant in orientation, has nevertheless changed very markedly. Furthermore, although virgin lands have been developed for rice since 1910, that year roughly marks the end of colonization activities by individual entrepreneurs whose function later came to be largely replaced by formal governmental agencies. In studying the development of rice agriculture in Malaya, several problems arise. The major one is an imbalance of sources both in space and in time. Thus the main sources for the three most important rice-growing states in the north of the country, Kedah, Perlis and Kelantan, are official reports published at the very end of the period. The Kedah State Archives contain much interest in other contexts but, according to Dr. Sharom Ahmat, little relating to rice. Duplicates of land grants formerly held in the Kelantan Land Office are of considerable potential value, but are in too poor a state of preservation to be used. There may also be useful materials in the Thai Royal Museum archives, but despite a journey to Bangkok for the purpose, it proved impossible to gain access to them. For the rest of Malaya there is a large corpus...