[Malaysia] It depends on who is writing history

Malaysia Today
www.malaysia-today.net, 06 June 2005

It depends on who is writing history – Part One
Raja Petra Kamarudin

This is what Vaudine England said in his IHT article about Kuala Lumpur called ‘The city that beat nature by’.

Kuala Lumpur may be the capital of a country whose leadership calls it an Islamic state but the city wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for an astounding Chinese man from Guangdong.

Yap Ah Loy appears in early portraits as the archetypal "Chinaman" of the colonial imagination. Seated in a broad-armed chair in a floor-length gown with wide sleeves, he's wearing a long necklace and a conical bamboo hat, clutching a fan.

Yet Yap was a man of vision, strength and determination. Before he came along, KL was a collection of swamps and grotty shacks full of tin miners seeking riches before they succumbed to malaria. The miners were Chinese migrants.

The ‘natives’ in the area were not even that. Indigenous Malays were living far inland and far away, little seen by the new arrivals of the mid-1800s. Instead, the entrepreneurs who appeared to be the locals were in fact seafaring Bugis from what is now south Sulawesi in Indonesia, and a mix of ethnic groups from Sumatra.

The Bugis are renowned to this day as hard-nosed traders who will travel and fight for markets and new homes.

“Like Vikings they fought in corselets of chain mail and made their temporary abode where their ships were in port,” records JM Gullick, an expert who wrote extensively on the history of Kuala Lumpur.

Once displaced from the Maluku spice islands by Dutch traders, the Bugis moved westward to the thriving regional port of Malacca, long before KL was even imagined. Brutal wars of commercial competition ensued amid conflict between Malay Sultans for control of the growing riches. Bugis controlled the coastal areas but ethnic Malays - from Sumatra - lived inland and were at odds with them.

As a settlement, KL is only 150 years old. In the 1860s it was just becoming a flourishing village as traders moved north from Malacca, and world tin prices spurred a boom in demand and production. As seen in the name of the town - kuala means the mouth of a river; lumpur means mud, or mire - its importance derived from the use of the river
for transport.

On the eastern banks of the river, Chinese traders and headmen built homes, shops and godowns to take advantage of the tin trade. A vacant clearing on the west bank was used by vegetable growers. All around was jungle and swamp.

Almost all of the first batch of 87 Chinese miners who struggled up the river from the port town of Klang died from malaria soon after landing in 1857. Those men had passed Damansara and Petaling, to work at a place called Ampang.

Today Damansara is an upmarket neighborhood of large homes and government offices. Petaling Jaya is a modern satellite city of KL and 150 years of progress has brought residents manicured gardens, malaria-free homes and cute shopping centers featuring every latest brand product. The early exoticism of what was a pretty tough outpost is lost to the tourist.

In modern KL, it's hard to imagine the city as a collection of shanties and shacks, offering opium and good-time girls to worn-out miners and secret society membership to men far from home in need of welfare. Gambling took place in a large open-sided shed in what is now Old Market Square. Hygiene and decency were in short supply.

For the survivors, there was the thrill of hard-won riches and new land. Today's KL offers all the hygiene and decency once lacking, but perhaps offers a different kind of thrill.

For most of these early Chinese settlers, all the law they knew was that of their secret society, through which they paid off their recruiting fees, took out loans and gained personal security. Membership was mandatory and provided the towkays, or Chinese bosses,
with the means to control their labour force. But the societies also provided cash or food on credit, carried risks which individuals could not have borne alone and managed relations with the remote Malay sultans.

Out of this melee, Yap Ah Loy emerged in 1862. He'd been recruited from his Hakka village in Guangdong when he was 17, and mined first in an area near Malacca. With savings from his next job as a camp cook, he invested in a few pigs and sold pork from mine to mine.
Involved in fighting for control of the Rasah mines on behalf of his Hai San society, he rose through the ranks, and was then called by a friend to join him in KL. By the mid 1860s he was managing mines around KL. When his patron died in 1868, 31-year old Yap Ah Loy became Capitan China, the leader of the Chinese community of KL.

Chinese records of the time, quoted by Gullick [in his The Story of Kuala Lumpur 1857-1939, published in 1983], explain his success:

“He was not very big or tall but when he spoke his voice was sonorous. His temper was like fire and he had the strength of an elephant. He could support the weight of 100 katis [60.5 kilograms] on his two palms when he stretched two arms forwards ... on his
forehead between his eyebrows was a mark like a Chinese character ... His dignity frightened everyone into submission ...”

Yap Ah Loy is credited with saving KL at least twice, from civil war and then from depression, pestilence and fire. His support ensured the victory of the Malay leader Tunku Kudin as the indisputable ruler of Selangor, the home state of KL.

By the mid 1870s, fighting, floods and depressed tin prices left KL in a shambles. Historians credit Yap Ah Loy personally with providing the spirit and the practical wherewithal to rebuild.

“If those counsels of despair had prevailed, the capital of Malaysia would now be somewhere other than Kuala Lumpur. But by sheer force of personal authority, Ah Loy held them to it,” noted Gullick.

A famous future British Resident, Frank Swettenham, said later of Ah Loy: His perseverance alone has kept the Chinese in the country.

Yap Ah Loy travelled the area encouraging miners to start again and persuaded financiers in other settlements to provide credit. He personally guaranteed vast loans - at a whopping 20 percent interest - until the tin mines were back in production.

But tin prices couldn't be fixed by Yap alone and by 1878, his creditors were threatening foreclosure. A dose of luck saved him when the tin price doubled by 1879.

In one year, KL grew by a third and Yap Ah Loy became a rich man.

“Down to 1879, Yap Ah Loy was Mr Kuala Lumpur. It was his place,” noted Gullick. British colonial authorities visited perhaps once a month from Klang, and enjoyed Yap's hospitality, happy to leave the squalid town's management to him.

Vaudine England probably obtained his information from history books and novels written by Englishmen, many now probably long gone. I too have read the same books in my secondary school years in the 1960s and I understand why he would have this opinion of who founded Kuala Lumpur and how it was founded.

All the English history books on British Malaya say the same thing: a Chinese from Guandgong province founded Kuala Lumpur. But there is more to the story than what the British historians and writers reveal. Somehow, the British prefer the sensational version of history as it makes more interesting reading. Maybe this is because
sometimes the truth can be very boring.

Vaudine England did mention the Bugis in his article but he failed to mention that the Bugis were then the rulers of Selangor and that the First Sultan of Selangor, more than 100 years before Yap Ah Loy came to Malaya, was the grandson of the Bugis Yam Tuan Muda of Riau. Vaudine also mistakenly names Tunku Kudin as the ruler of Selangor. Actually, Tunku Kudin was the brother of the Sultan of Kedah (that’s why he was called 'Tunku' -- just like Malaysia's first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, who was also from Kedah -- and not ‘Tengku’ or ‘Raja’) and the son-in-law of the Selangor Sultan. And the Sultan owned all the land in Selangor including Kuala Lumpur, Ampang, Petaling and Damansara, which were all uninhabited jungles then.

Anyway, Raja Abdullah, a member of the Selangor Royal Family, wanted to mine the tin in Selangor and he teamed up (sort of joint-venture) with Yap Ah Loy who brought in the workers from China to do the work (as the Malays would never do such menial work, even until today). Almost all died within a short period of arriving in Malaya, so Yap Ah Loy had to bring in a new batch of victims, oops…I mean, workers.

For all intents and purposes, Yap Ah Loy was Kuala Lumpur’s equivalent of Chicago’s Al Capone and he controlled all the gambling, opium, prostitution and loan shark businesses, plus the supply of Chinese workers for the tin mines. The fact that some members of the
royal family also ‘indulged’ (in gambling and opium smoking), as did the British Tuans (Lords), meant that Yap Ah Loy could pursue his business activities unhindered and with the protection of the powers-that-be, who received a royalty...hmm Malay and British Royalty receiving royalty...makes sense doesn’t it?

Some time ago I wrote my version of how Kuala Lumpur came about and Yap Ah Loy was but one element in the whole thing. In part two of this piece we shall talk about the Battle of Ampang and the Battle of Kuala Lumpur where Yap Ah Loy’s triad (secret society) members and the Sultan’s Malay army played a prominent role in the power struggle that eventually saw the birth of what we know today as the Kelang Valley or Greater Kuala Lumpur. In short, Kuala Lumpur grew from the ashes of gang fights between two groups that fought over control of the rich tin fields. There is no guts and glory here, only greed and brutality. And that is the history of how Kuala Lumpur was founded.

It must be remembered, Yap Ah Loy’s army would have been wiped out had not the Selangor Royal Family assisted him. Vaudine England said in his piece above: ‘Yap Ah Loy is credited with saving KL at least twice, from civil war’. The truth is, Yap Ah Loy was about to be defeated when the Malay army came to his rescue. It was not Yap Ah Loy who saved KL from civil war. Yap Ah Loy started the civil war -- which was actually a Chinese triad war -- and it was the Malays who saved him instead of the other way around.

The Chinese were divided into two rival groups just like the Ghee Hin and Hai San secret societies of Perak. And the Royal Family too was split, one supporting Yap Ah Loy and, another, the rival group to Yap Ah Loy.

It was not Chinese against Chinese or Yap Ah Loy against his enemies. It was one Malay-Chinese group against another Malay-Chinese group. And Yap Ah Loy was there at the invitation of the Royal Family who, together with the British, offered him protection and an army with which to fight his enemies. Yap Ah Loy, on his own, would have been massacred.

In short, Yap Ah Loy was the first ‘Ali Baba’ arrangement in Malaysian history. He conducted business as a front for the Malays and, whenever he ran into trouble, the Malays would come to his rescue, very much like the Malaysia of today. But history mentions him as the man who founded Kuala Lumpur while failing to mention he could not have done it, in fact would have been killed, if not for the Malays who were backing him.

This piece is not about race but about putting history in the correct perspective. One man has been credited as the hero who founded Kuala Lumpur. He was in fact no hero but a gangster who controlled all the prostitution, opium, gambling and loan shark trade. And he was able to do this because he was backed be equally corrupt British and Malays who were only in this for the quick and easy money they received from Yap Ah Loy.

Yap Ah Loy had good PR. Other than pampering the Malay royalty, he also entertained the British colonial masters, so they left him alone to conduct his most shady business. This is referred to by Vaudine England in his piece, the excerpts which go as follows:

1) He personally guaranteed vast loans - at a whopping 20 percent interest - until the tin mines were back in production.

2) British colonial authorities visited perhaps once a month from Klang, and enjoyed Yap's hospitality, happy to leave the squalid town's management to him.

3) Involved in fighting for control of the Rasah mines on behalf of his Hai San society, he rose through the ranks, and was then called by a friend to join him in KL

Can you see now how Malaysia has not changed in 135 years? It is still a history of crime and corruption until today.

Anyway, stayed tuned for part two where we will reveal the correct version of the history of Kuala Lumpur -- a story of greed, corruption, manipulation, brutality and murder, perpetuated by those revered as heroes.


Raja Petra Kamarudin
Editor, Malaysia Today
http://www.malaysia-today.net