A Drug on the Market Opium and the Chinese in Southeast Asia, 1750-1880

J O U R N A L O F C H I N E S E OV E R S E A S | V 1 N 2 147 A Drug on the Market: Opium and the Chinese in Southeast Asia, 1750–1880 1 CARL A . TROCKI This article traces the early stages of Chinese migration to Southeast Asia and examines the relationship between the Chinese pioneers in the region and the opium trade of the British. The article stresses the importance of the “Water Frontier” settlements in the Gulf of Siam and the Malay Peninsula. It suggests that opium changed the relationship between Chinese merchant- capitalists and Chinese laborers in the region and acted as the basis for a long- term partnership between the merchants and the colonial powers with wealthy Chinese merchants acting as opium revenue farmers. In particular, it argues that the peranakan Chinese or locally-born Chinese, particularly those in Singapore and the other Straits Settlements, emerged as the key figures in the opium farming syndicates that grew up in Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century. Introduction THERE HAS LONG BEEN A PROBLEMATIC RELATIONSHIP between the Chinese and opium, however many dimensions of this relationship have escaped serious attention from scholars. The issues, so far as most historians have been concerned, have revolved around a limited range of topics. Much work has been done on the opium trade to China in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; the “opium wars” between China and Britain; and the campaigns to suppress the opium trade to and in China around the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century (Booth 1996; Chang 1964; Coates 1911; Collis 1968; Fairbank 1953; Fay 1975; Greenberg 1951; Johnson 1975; Le Fevour 1968; Owen 1934 rep. 1968; Scott 1969; Spence 1975; Stelle 1938; Tan 1974, 1978; Wakeman 1966; Waley 1958; Walker 1991; Waung 1977; Wong 1998). Until recently, there have been relatively few studies of the opium trade in the context of the Chinese diaspora, particularly within Southeast Asia. I argue here that Carl Trocki is Professor of Asian Studies at Queensland University of Technology. His email address is c.trocki@qut.edu.au © J O U R N A L O F C H I N E S E O V E R S E A S 1 , 2 ( N O V . 2 0 0 5 ) : 1 4 7 – 1 6 8 C A R L A . T RO C K I | D RU G O N T H E M A R K E T 148 opium, both the opium trade and opium use, have played a major part in the formation of the culture, economy and politics of the Chinese in Southeast Asia. I would like, with these general remarks, to sketch in a number of these influences and their long-term significance for the history of the Chinese presence in the region. The historical moment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Southeast Asia can be characterized as the meeting of two great waves of global expansion. On the one hand, coming from the east were the Chinese junk traders in search of cargoes of pepper, spices and the products of the forests and seas of Southeast Asia. On the other, from the west, were the British: the East Indiamen coming to buy tea in China and alongside them, the “country traders,” based in India coming with increasingly large cargoes of opium. We all, I think, know the story of how the opium trade came to finance the tea trade, since opium was an import for which the Chinese would pay silver. By the early nineteenth century, opium purchases by the Chinese had come to equal the cost of tea purchases by the East India Company. The issue under study here, however, is the role of opium in Southeast Asia, and its interaction with the Chinese migration. This is less well understood. What I aim to do with this paper is to look first at the beginnings of the Chinese migration to Southeast Asia and its overall context. Secondly, I will look at the nature of British imperial adventures in China, and by extension, in Southeast Asia, since they were both part of the same general movement and impulse. Thirdly, I will look at the intersection of these two waves particularly in regard to their economic and political interactions in Southeast Asia, since it was here that opium came to have its most significant impact. Finally, I would like to examine the role of the British colony and trading port of Singapore, whose influence, I believe, was crucial in creating the Sino-British opium economy of Southeast Asia. The Context of Chinese Labor Migration The junk traders who had been coming to Southeast Asia were a relatively old phenomenon. Chinese traders, mostly based in Fujian, had been sailing to various parts of Southeast Asia since Song times (Wolters 1967, 1970). The chaos that swept China during the Ming collapse and the Qing takeover disrupted this trade and the role played by maritime Chinese. Particularly, the rebel leader Zheng Chenggong added yet another problematic element to the situation (Yamawaki 1976). When the dust had settled and the Qing government permitted a resumption of trade with the region, there appears to have been a considerable demand for the products of tropical Southeast Asia, a demand that could not really be met by the production of Southeast Asian labor on its own. As a result, a new J O U R N A L O F C H I N E S E OV E R S E A S | V 1 N 2 149 element entered the situation; this was the introduction of Chinese labor into Southeast Asia for the purpose of producing those goods (Trocki 1997, 1990). It is important to understand that the migration of “coolie labor” from China to Southeast Asia is a relatively recent phenomenon. There is no record of Chinese laborers coming to the region until the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century (Blussé 1981). It is also important to understand that this migration seems to have begun largely as a response to the growth of the Chinese domestic economy and an increasing demand, in China, for products such as tin, gold, pepper and sugar. During the period 1680–1720, we find the first appearance of settlements of Chinese laborers in various parts of Southeast Asia who came there expressly to produce these commodities for shipment back to China. The earliest of significant Chinese colonies seems to have been the settlement of Ming refugees in southern Vietnam, in what was then really Cambodian territory, but which the Nguyen rulers of Dang Trong saw as “open” land. This was the region known to Europeans as Cochinchina. Of particular interest here was the trading settlement and virtually autonomous city-state of Hatien2 (Ste. Vierge 1770), located at the top of the western coast of the Camau Peninsula. The Cantonese refugee/pirate/tax farmer, Mac Cuu, founded this sometime around 1690 (Gaspardone 1952; Puangthong Rungswasdisab 1994; Sakurai 2004; Sellers 1983). At some point, Mac Cuu paid tribute to the Cambodian king, who recognized him as the gambling farmer of the town. Apparently to hedge his bets, the Chinese adventurer also, at various times sent tribute to the Nguyen ruler and to the Siamese king. There is no record that Hatien was actually a center for the production of any specific commodities. Rather, in the tradition of Malay port-polities in the region, it graduated from what was apparently a pirate center into an entrepot. During the eighteenth century, the town became an important trading center for the products of Cambodia, Cochinchina, and possibly for the Siamese towns around the shore of the Gulf of Siam, and even for centers in Borneo, Sumatra and Java. This was the core of what a group of scholars are now calling the Chinese “Water Frontier” (Cooke and Li 2004). Ng Chin Keong’s ground-breaking study of the “Amoy Network” looks at the commerce of Xiamen, or Amoy, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It was then one of the main ports trading with Southeast Asia. Ng reports large numbers of “emigrants” on board the ocean junks leaving China after 1683. Each junk generally carried between 200 and 300 migrants. These were not members of the crew and they were not traders, so it seems logical to assume that a considerable number of them were laborers. So numerous were those going abroad in this manner that the government attempted to stop, or at least reduce the number of ships sailing to Southeast Asia, but the movement of people, legal or not, continued. By 1729 there were 21 ships leaving Amoy on the northeast C A R L A . T RO C K I | D RU G O N T H E M A R K E T 150 monsoon. This number increased considerably in succeeding years. In 1733, 28 to 30 junks left Fujian and in 1755, 74 vessels returned to Amoy from the Nanyang. This migration, together with the trade conducted in these ships represented “a commercial boom which surpassed any in the past” (Ng 1983: 56–57). Although there is no clear statement in the sources, it seems logical to assume that the commerce was to a great extent generated by the products of the migrant laborers. By the 1780s a quick look at the map of Southeast Asia (see map) shows that a number of similar settlements had popped up all around the Gulf of Siam, the coasts of the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Sumatra. Of particular note were the pepper and gambier planters in Riau, tin miners in Bangka, gold miners in Sambas and Pontianak, sugar planters in Kedah, and pepper planters in Brunei, Chantaburi, and elsewhere in the region. In addition to the production and export of these products, Chinese traders were increasingly involved in developing the rice trade between Southeast Asia and China (Trocki 1997). Chinese Labor Organization One of the key features of these early settlements was their organizational structure. While it is difficult to make blanket statements about all of them, so Map 1. Major Chinese Settlement Areas in Southeast Asia ca. 1820, and the Major Opium Trading Centers in South and East Asia J O U R N A L O F C H I N E S E OV E R S E A S | V 1 N 2 151 far as we know, a number of them had developed some sort of self-rule organized around the “kongsi” principle. That is, since most of these were in isolated areas, particularly the mines, Chinese settlers were left very much on their own and often had to provide for their own defense. Even though many of them were founded with the support and cooperation of local Malay or Siamese rulers, they often stood outside the domestic political and economic life of the local state. What is more, as they grew, they often came to represent a presence of greater strength and solidarity than many of the local governments. There was thus a tendency for them to become autonomous, and even independent, self-governing settlements. Hatien, despite maintaining some sort of “tributary” relationship with Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam, appears to have been largely independent during the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century. Mac Cuu was recognized as its ruler, establishing a dynasty and passing government to his son, Mac Thien Tu, on his death. Although the Cambodian and Vietnamese kings treated them as a “governors,” they were essentially sovereign monarchs. We hear nothing of kongsis in Hatien. Forms of government in the more remote centers, however, often varied widely. Following Wang Tai Peng’s observations on the Borneo kongsis and my own research on the kongsis in eighteenth-century Riau and nineteenth-century Johor, it seems that a unique organizational framework may have characterized many of these settlements in the initial stages (Trocki 1990; Wang 1995). Mary Somers Heidhues has also studied the kongsis of Bangka as well as those in Borneo (Heidhues 1993). According to Wang, the kongsis were originally set up as partnerships in which all or most of the laborers and taukehs, or headmen and capitalists, were members. They espoused egalitarian principles, which were often at odds with conventional Confucian orthodoxy. Finally, these partnerships were often confirmed as ritual brotherhoods which drew on the mythology, ceremony and popular religion of the peasants of South China (Heidhues 1993). From the point of view of outsiders, there was little to distinguish them from secret societies, and in fact, there was little difference. These kongsis, however, were not usually involved in criminal activity, but they did begin to take on the trappings of a state over time, and were thus seen as a threat by local government authorities. Likewise, they were not necessarily secret except in a ritual sense. Where they formed the basis of community, as they did in Borneo, Riau, Bangka and nineteenth-century Johor, they were in fact, very public bodies (Trocki 1997, 1979). Wang argues that the kongsis oversaw relations among the planters, or miners and the capitalists who financed them. Each had a share in the profits of the venture whether he contributed labor or capital. In the early stages, these kongsis were usually made up of men who were related to one another or who came from the same villages; and initially, the kongsi could be quite small. My own work C A R L A . T RO C K I | D RU G O N T H E M A R K E T 152 on Johor indicates that kongsis were often formed by a group of men all bearing the same surname (Trocki 1979). A typical pepper and gambier kongsi in Johor would thus begin with a small group of closely associated planters and usually with a capitalist or taukeh. Each member would hold at least one share and the taukeh might hold five out of ten. Generally speaking, in Bangka and in Borneo the headman of a kongsi was usually known to Europeans as teko or taiko, which appears to be a corruption of “big brother,” a title typical of the head of a secret society in later times. In the Hakka gold-mining kongsis of western Borneo, the small kongsis that ran each mine ultimately consolidated into very large kongsis that collected taxes, raised armies and fought wars. Early nineteenth-century reports, such as that by George Windsor Earl, describe these as “democratic” in that decisions affecting the group were taken only after extensive public discussion and votes (Earl 1837 rep. 1971). Wang too agrees that these represented a native form of Chinese democracy. He argues that there was a strong egalitarian ideology underlying the kongsi principle and that it was rooted in the popular beliefs of ritual brotherhood that were common among Chinese peasants. He also associates the origins of these kongsis with the officers and crews of the ships in Zheng Chenggong’s navy (Wang 1995: 46–47). James C. Jackson, who has studied the kongsis both in Borneo and those on the tin island of Bangka, generally agrees with the idea that the mines were communal and democratic (Jackson 1970, 1969). Newcomers could come to the mining fields, work for a while, and once they had paid off their passage, they too could acquire shares in mines. They could also join with their colleagues and open new mines as joint ventures. In all of these enterprises, capital was necessary. It was necessary for the miners to have food and provisions to support them until such time as the mine paid off. These matters were arranged with a taukeh who would “stake” the miners with provisions in exchange for his own share in the mine and often with a guarantee that he could purchase the produce at a fixed price. While the kongsis may have been ritually egalitarian, economic relations were characterized by inequality. One of the key features of these settlements is that most of them were not self-sufficient. They were commercial outposts and were dedicated to the production of export products. They thus also needed to import most of their consumer goods. These came largely from China, with the exception of rice. They were thus linked to the overall commercial system of Southeast Asia from which they imported most of their food and other provisions. The arrangements for financing and providing support for these mining and planting communities were usually to the disadvantage of the laborers. Foodstuffs and other supplies were provided at inflated prices, sometimes four to six times their market value and the products of the mines and plantations were usually undervalued by nearly the same proportions (Trocki 1975, 1979).3 Nevertheless, J O U R N A L O F C H I N E S E OV E R S E A S | V 1 N 2 153 it was still possible, at least during the peak periods of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for the laborers to make enough to satisfy their ambitions and many were able to gather together enough profit to return home wealthier than when they had left. If capital was scarce in the mining fields, so too was labor. The miners and their backers, whether they were Chinese merchants or Malay chiefs, needed each other. Despite the technological advances that Chinese miners brought to Southeast Asia, mining was still a labor-intensive business and the whole purpose of bringing Chinese laborers to the region had been to fill the labor shortage in the first place. Labor was expensive, not only because of its scarcity, but also because with organizations like the kongsis, workers could use their solidarity to demand at least a living wage. While they may not have had direct access to the market, they were not far, and they at least had to be paid enough to cover their living expenses. Laborers could easily strike or simply walk off the job and find another mine; moreover, as their numbers increased, they could and did organize their own military forces. By the late eighteenth century, these mining and planting settlements had become considerable establishments. Jackson estimates that the tin mining com- munity in Bangka had come to number about 25,000 people and was producing about 3,500 tons annually (Jackson 1969). In the early nineteenth century, the Chinese population of the west Borneo gold fields was probably in the neighborhood of 40,000 (Jackson 1970). I have estimated the population of pepper and gambier planters at Riau in the 1780s as about 10,000 as well (Trocki 1979). When Phraya Taksin arrived in Chantaburi with a ragged force of 500 men, he was able to raise an army of 5,000, with which he returned to Thonburi to oust the Burmese invaders (Nidhi Aeusrivongse 1986).4 One must assume that the majority of these were the pepper planters who had settled there earlier in the century. Not only were the numbers of Chinese laborers large, but they were beginning to have an impact on the politics of the region. This tendency toward autonomy distinguished them from other forms of labor in Southeast Asia at the time. Europeans remarked on the difficulties of dealing with Chinese labor, particularly those organized in kongsis. They found these communities quite different from those of wealthier merchants and traders who inhabited the port cities. Ultimately, Europeans came to identify the kongsis as dangerous societies and identified them with the secret societies which were also banned by the Qing government. T.J. Newbold, who wrote about the British settlements in Malaya in the early nineteenth century observed: It is not unreasonable to infer that the Chinese colonists at Malacca, in Java, Borneo and other parts of the Indian Archipelago at an early period after emigration would find the advantages of binding themselves together as a means of defence and self-protection in a foreign land. Many of them had probably been members … in their native land. Henceforth C A R L A . T RO C K I | D RU G O N T H E M A R K E T 154 numerous “Kongsees” or public clubs with which we find them invariably linked particularly in the mines and plantations in the interior (Newbold and Wilson 1841). Certainly, as Europeans established governments of their own in the region, it was natural that they would see these organizations as a threat. By the middle of the nineteenth century there were movements by both colonial and indigenous governments to check the power of these groups. Interestingly, these came at the same time that the control of opium began to become a major issue