FREEMAN SUMMER RESEARCH GRANT FINAL PAPER

Started during the heydays of the Roman Empire the east-west trade in spices was among the most profitable ever carried out. The delicate clove buds, pungent pepper vines, and adaptable nutmeg plants, seen as everyday cooking ingredients in the East, rose almost exponentially in value on the long overland trip from Asia to the Mediterranean and Europe. Clove added flavor and was credited with miraculous medicinal value, pepper masked bad meat while improving taste, and nutmeg could help in the preservation of easily spoiled foodstuffs. Like tea and coffee, it was as expensive health food that spices first made their appearance in Europe. Equally important however, was the social status that the use of spices afforded its consumers. Nobility and middle-class alike were united in their demand for the social prestige which the pungent spices conferred on their households, and demand grew throughout, unhampered by the fall of kings, or even civilizations.

Despite the overwhelming popularity and profitability of the spice trade, European traders were continuously looking for a sea route to the storied lands of Asia. In periods of war, the trading routes were the first to be affected, and even during peacetime the rulers of kingdoms along the trading routes liberally raised taxes and fees for weary traders. The map of Europe though, was an ever changing one, and no country was ever settled enough to allow for a full fledged expedition of the East. The Chinese and Malays in the Far East, the Indians and Arabs in the Middle East, and the Levantines in the near west traditionally controlled most of the spice trade. As the 15^th century approached completion however, advances in nautical technology and the ever growing spirit of intellectual curiosity perpetuated by the Renaissance, led to a number of intrepid explorers setting out in search of the promised sea route. The Portuguese, early masters of the sea, led off, with Bartholomew Dias rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, whilst in search of India (Interestingly enough, Dias wanted to call it the Cape of Storms, on account of the turbulent weather, but changed the name to please his benefactor, the king, since the rounding of the cape offered good hope to the search for India). In 1492, Columbus set his sights due west and found the New World, an event that would prove to be far more important than the search for cheaper pepper, but still no way to India had been found. Finally on July 8, 1497, with the blessings of King Manuel I of Portugal, an explorer by the name of Vasco da Gama set off to the east. After arguing with what seemed like every Muslim trader in the civilized world, da Gama arrived at Calicut on May 20, 1498. The spice route had been discovered, and Portugal had the early lead amongst the European naval powers.

As the 16^th century progressed Portugal pressed its trading advantage with the result that almost the entire western spice trade was controlled by them. With the greater economic and political freedom afforded by the open sea route the Portuguese were able to sell their spices at a cheaper rate than that afforded by those involved in the land trade. After pausing to ensure a Papal bull that granted them sole shipping rights along their proposed sailing routes, the Portuguese built a number of heavily fortified bases encompassing the entire shipping route from Persia to Malacca, and set about controlling the entirety of the spice trade for almost the whole of the 16^th century. The Spanish briefly threatened in the Philippines but were dealt with quickly and effectively. The English, no longer under the supervision of Rome, were putting their own house in order, the Dutch were struggling with new found independence, and the rest of Europe quite simply didn’t care. Elizabeth I’s insistence on peace with Portugal also helped the Portuguese traders—the English, and also the Dutch, left the sea routes open and didn’t compete with them for the rapidly growing trade. All this was to change however with the ascension to the Portuguese throne of Philip II of Spain.

In 1580, Philip II of Spain inherited the kingship of Portugal, and immediately announced the suspension of all diplomatic and trading ties between Portugal and any of Spain’s enemies. While Elizabeth’s court balked at the new diplomatic union, English merchants rubbed their hands in unexpected glee. Francis Drake, soon to be knighted, had just returned from a trip around the world, and had stopped at Java on the way, picking up a rich cargo of cloves. The new route was met with instant approval in England, which till then had been determinedly sending its explorers into the Arctic Circle, hoping in vain for some way through the ice-locked oceans. Little headway was made, somewhat understandably, but the English chafed at adopting the routes used by the Spanish. The Papal Bull had given the Iberians the power to use any force deemed fit to deal with interlopers who attempted to usurp their sea route, and the English, with their much smaller ships, were understandably afraid of the huge Portuguese ‘carracks’ and powerful Spanish ships. Thusly backed by Rome, Philip II decided, primarily for religious reasons, that conquest of England was a further step in the Catholicization of the entire civilized world. The steady inflow of silver from the Spanish holdings in the New World, as well as the added strength of the Portuguese navy having emboldened him, Philip II sent an armada of 130 ships to attack England across the English Channel.

The English though, had not been sitting idly, and trained by Drake, had devised an entirely new and unique form of naval warfare. Their smaller, better manned ships outmaneuvered the hitherto ‘Invincible Armada’ almost completely at the Battle of Gravelines on 8 September, 1588. While only 4 Spanish ships were sunk, and just one captured, the stirring victory had given the English a lot of confidence regarding their naval abilities.

Among the English fleet at the great battle, was a ship named the Edward Bonaventure, under the captaincy of a young man named James Lancaster. In 1591 the Bonaventure, once more under Capt. Lancaster, set off in search of the East Indies but met with calamity upon calamity, finally sinking to an inglorious end, hopelessly lost in the West Indies. It would take more than a mere shipwreck to dissuade the doughty Capt. Lancaster however, and within months he commanded a fleet to Brazil. Again, trading did not offer any great reward, but armed with Her Majesty’s tacit approval of piracy, Lancaster plagued the Spanish and Portuguese ships returning from the New World. Back in England, Lancaster had earned enough respect as a naval commander on the Brazilian expedition to style himself as a merchantman. Pointing to the successes of the Dutch in the East Indies, and rubbishing the criticism aimed at the Bonaventure’s disastrous voyage east, Lancaster, along with 217 others, raised funds to finance a trip to the East Indies in 1599. After a year long delay, ‘The Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies’ received permission from Her Majesty, and armed with an introductory letter from the Queen, Lancaster set off with four ships in February 1601. Besides the Red Dragon, flagship for the venture, the Hector, the Susan, and the Ascension made up the fleet. Stopping en route at India, Lancaster loaded up on Indian cottons, which turned out to be tremendously popular in the equatorial south-east Asian countries. Having nearly doubled the value of his cargo, Lancaster befriended Alauddin Shah, the Sultan of Aceh, and after impressing the Sultan with his behavior, proceeded to trade freely with the good people of Aceh. While Lancaster ensured a second triumphant homecoming for himself, the investors were less than amused. The news that they would have to reinvest not only a substantial portion of their gains, but also part of their initial investment, did not sit lightly with the near-thinking members of the London business class. The failure of the next voyage did not improve the image of the ‘Company’, and it was only the Third Voyage, under the command of a Captain Keeling, that cemented the Company’s value as a trading power. By now the English and Dutch were working together, an uneasy truce that led to frequent complaints of high-handedness and a rash of insults being traded between individuals on both sides. Unlike the Dutch and the Portuguese, the English presence was a purely mercantile one, with no attempt being made to establish permanent bases or indulge in any sort of hostile activity. The Company in fact, under the stewardship of Sir Thomas Smythe, previously of the Levant Company, and the Muscovy Company (the 2 main purveyors of Eastern trade), made sure to warn their captains not to risk any enmity with citizens of any other European country. The English East India Company, always on the edge of having its charter revoked by a nervous monarch, could not risk any potential spanner in the frantic diplomatic works of early 17^th century Europe.

It was against this backdrop then that William Hawkins, aboard the Hector, landed at Surat on August 28, 1608. There were immediate howls of protest from the Portuguese. While their power eastwards of the Bay of Bengal had waned since the arrival of the Dutch, they were still supreme from Goa till Hormuz (in Persia). However, a patient approach on the part of the English, and rampant infighting amongst the Mughal noblemen on the East coast, led to the establishment of the English as a trading power. The Indian nobility, keen to extend the ‘royalties’ and ‘privileges’ they received from the Portuguese, cheerfully played the traders off against one another, and put the extra money into their retirement funds.

While the trade remained lucrative and grew as a result of the added Indian trade, the individual missions of the Company themselves were hampered greatly by the nature of their financiers, with regular missives from Company headquarters criticizing nearly every decision being made by the ships captains. The profits were rarely large enough to sustain a rapidly growing economy like England’s, and the inability to set up a permanent base in the East led to the traders being dependent on the whims of oriental potentates who changed their minds on an almost daily basis. The English Civil War too threatened to derail the Company, but the discovery of saltpeter as a trading commodity eased Oliver Cromwell’s initial pressure on the Company Directors. When Cromwell embarked on the 1652 Anglo-Dutch war, using the eastern trade as one of the reasons for hostility, the Company believed that their fortunes, recently flagging, would be greatly revived. But Cromwell turned out to be for himself only, and on one occasion refused even to send warships into the Persian Gulf to help the floundering trading ships. The Company, realizing that they could not rely on kingly charters or oriental patronage decided to fortify its base at Fort St. George in Madras and add it to its holdings in the east (the little nutmeg producing island of Bulo Run in the East Indies was its other important territorial holding).

Despite the interest in carrying on trade eastwards, the English couldn’t cope with the far more ambitious Dutch and Portuguese and for a while it seemed like, despite the profits turned in by their trading missions, the English would have to take a backseat to the other continental powers and concentrate its attention towards the New World. The war of 1652 forced the British to hand over their territory of Bulo Run to the Dutch, and in exchange they received the small territory of New Amsterdam, along with the rocky, barren island of Manhattan. In years to come, New Amsterdam would turn out to be a much bigger apple in history’s eye, while Bulo Run would fade from public consciousness, but at the time England quite clearly got the worse end of the deal. With the loss of Bulo Run, the English had no territories in the East Indies, and the decline of the Portuguese presence in the region ensured that the Dutch were the sole claimants to the trade. England’s tenuous peace with Holland also stopped the English from poaching on Dutch trade routes, and the demise of Drake’s swashbuckling generation ensured that piracy was no option. Handcuffed by their government’s indecision and indifference, and by their own lack of consistent economic success, the Company filed for liquidation in the cold January of 1657.

Such a tide in the affairs of men could not last however, and in 1660 the Stuarts regained the throne. The re-formed Company (which had spent a paltry 7 months in limbo) greeted Charles II with a loan of ₤4000, and backed it up with further loans totaling another ₤150,000. Both were solemnly agreed to cast their further support with the Catholic nations of Iberia, rather than the ‘rascally’ Dutch. In 1661, the Stuarts formalized their commitment to the Catholics, by wedding Charles to Catherine of Braganza, and receiving in part, the dowry of a small fishing village, a hundred miles or so north of Goa. Bombay would, in time, become one of the three great cities of British India, but at the time Charles II was a little miffed with this part of the dowry. In 1667, on the urging of the Company, he granted the East India Company a lease to settle Bombay, at the rent of ₤10 a year, for all perpetuity. The EIC, as of early 1668, was officially a sovereign power, with its own land.

Over the next decade the Company set about fortifying its holding in Bombay. A church was built, as was a hospital, and British India’s first mint. Land was reclaimed from the sea, and the ‘castle’ was fortified. The conferring of land at Bombay was important to Company fortunes as it reduced the dependence on the Surat factory, twice raided by Shivaji (in 1664, and later in 1670). As the 17^th century melted into the 18^th, British power in India, and the world increased. France’s presence in India, negligible till the early 18^th century, quadrupled in value between 1720-1740, and was almost half of the old Company’s stake. The war of Prussian succession in Europe, in which England and France fought on opposing sides, led to the first Anglo-French war in India in 1748.The French took over Madras in 1746, though order was restored by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle two years later. Noting the growing threat of the French in the east, as well as the continued strength of the Dutch in the south-east, the English increased armaments and presence in India.

In 1757 the Company’s forces, under Robert Clive, defeated the Nawab of Bengal at the famous Battle of Plassey. After getting the Diwani of Bengal in 1765, the East India Company found itself morphing from a group of joint-stock merchants into a colonial enterprise, ruling a large swathe of people in one of the most prosperous regions of the world. For the first time, the Company was reaping the benefits of the considerable land taxes that Indian peasants were made to pay, and the healthy addition to the Company coffers in London led to a sharp decrease in complaints about high operational overheads in India. At about the same time, the race for spices began slowing down, the frantic clutter of Dutch, Portuguese, French and English traders having supplied Europe with larger quantities of spices than could be reasonably consumed. Ever alert, the English traders identified the next major ‘cash’ crop that could be exported westwards—tea.

Tea made its first appearance in England in the 1660’s and demand grew steadily till the early 1700’s. Primarily used for its perceived medicinal properties, the price ranged from a high of 60 shillings a pound, down to 16 shillings a pound by 1710. By 1720 however, trade had grown to nearly half a million pounds, and continued to rise unabated till well into the 1760’s. As political presence in India grew by leaps and bounds, the Company found that the new commercial hub for their activities was the fabled land of China. The extension of British interests into China was supported, not only by the Directors of the Company, but by the English government, which saw tea contributing 10% of Britain’s import duties by 1755. The Government thereby lowered import duties on tea, counting on the fact that the higher turnover would more than offset the lower duties.

While the move was a financial success, the British could not exploit the Chinese trade as they had the Indian. Unlike in India, where warring princes and an unstable Mughal Empire had eased their transition into political power, as well as afforded them territorial ambitions, in China the ‘foreign barbarian’ was not allowed even to approach Peking, unless carrying gifts for the Manchu Emperor. All trade outwards was controlled through the Canton ports and was strictly regulated by the Emperor’s mandarins. There was, in fact, a strict list of rules governing the trade into the Canton ports. Among these the most important were:

While following these rules to secure part of this lucrative trade the English traders were stymied by the fact that they had no outposts in the Far East, and indeed Madras was their closest home port. The continuing tension with Portugal also stopped the English from using the port of Macao, which the Portuguese had been using for nearly two centuries at the time. They therefore had no recourse to a place to refit their ships on the long trip from Madras to Canton and back again. The strict nature of Chinese laws also made it impossible to establish a directorate or factory to regulate the China trade, and compelled the company to depend almost entirely on the Chinese mandarins to control packing, loading, refitting etc. Thus in 1793, armed with a letter of introduction from King George III, Lord Macartney, former Governor General of the now flourishing Madras Presidency, arrived in Peking with an aim to seeking a British embassy in Peking. The Emperor, puzzled by the strange request, was convinced that there was a misunderstanding, writing to George III, "O king, it may be that your proposals have wantonly been made by your ambassador on his own responsibility," and rejecting out of hand the suggestion of the embassy with a message that stated, quite baldly, "your request to send one of your nationals to stay at the Celestial court to take care of your country’s trade with China, is not in harmony with the state system of our dynasty and definitely not permitted." The Emperor also refused to allow the British to trade anywhere except the assigned ports, saying that as no Hongs (Chinese ambassadors) had been established elsewhere, there was no point for the English to attempt to land anywhere else.

Macartney relayed the message back to London, and a year later the English put in a tentative request for "a small, as yet unidentified island near Chusan for the residence of English traders, storage of goods, and outfitting of ships." Again the Chinese refused, saying that there was no need for the English to land and refit anywhere but in Macao. Stymied, the English continued to conduct the tea trade in China strictly in accordance with Chinese directives and rules. The fact that the Chinese had no interest in any of the goods that the British cared to trade meant that the tea trade resulted in a drain of valuable silver bullion from England, a fact noted, with not a little asperity, by the Prime Minister.

Wounded, the English returned their attentions to India, where the area under their political control grew steadily. By the last decade of the 18^th century, the British had a large presence on the subcontinent, and many officers knew that they were going to live in India for a considerable time. Not only was India a major territorial holding it was the main stop on the trading route from China and the Far East to the West.

Back in Bengal, the English civil servants, unencumbered by the constant quixotic search for commerce, looked elsewhere for fulfillment and leisure, and inevitably hit upon sport. While the rank and file would play football (soccer), much to the amusement of locals, the senior officers, more genteel in their upbringing, began playing cricket, which caused even more amusement to the locals. In 1792, some Old Etonians began the Calcutta Cricket & Football Club, the first official cricket club outside the British Isles. These beginnings were inauspicious however, and only Europeans played the sport, with locals continuing with their attitude of bemused tolerance.

There was much else to do for the Bengal locals than immerse themselves in British sport. In the 1770’s the British had discovered the growing, though illegal, demand for opium in China, and immediately sensed a way to seek a redress in its disadvantageous trade balance of silver. The plentiful labor in Bengal, under the political rule of the Company, was forced to start growing opium for the ‘insatiable appetite for the narcotic’ that the Chinese seemed to have. Between 1796 and 1826 the supply shot up from around 4000 chests to 9621. Demand was said to be even higher, but the imperial edicts against opium, as well as the high bribes extorted by the Chinese mandarins at Canton ports slowed trade down somewhat. It was the corruption of the Chinese mandarins that allowed for the emergence of a new private class of merchants, unallied with any company, who began importing opium into China. The Company, following its strict policy of staying in favor with local governments formally ordered its merchants to stop dealing in opium. The trade however had become lucrative enough for individual captains to either turn rogue and continue dealing opium, or for ships to smuggle a small quantity of opium into China alongside the legal goods. It must also be understood that while the Company did not allow the smuggling of opium, there was a tacit understanding that small quantities of it be carried on board ship as bargaining chips with Chinese mandarins.

It was the continuance of this opium trade that eventually led to the First Opium War and the acquisition of Hong Kong in 1842. There was a trade option for the English though, which if fully exploited would not require them to sell opium or pay for expensive tea with silver bullion. That was the re-routing of South-East Asian goods to China, where there was a high demand for animal skins, gold, shark fins, pepper and spices. The search for South-East Asia and its spices would become relevant again, and no island would be as immediately important as the tiny harbor of Singapore.

The East India Company was originally founded to take advantage of the already existing spice trade, but soon found that demand for large shipments of pepper and cloves was severely limited. Accidentally almost, they discovered the trading benefits of Indian cottons, and the tremendous demand for Chinese tea. In India the Company became a colonial power, with the government, already dealing with colonial revolt in the Americas, unwilling to burden itself, or its exchequer with a monetary commitment to India. The Company therefore grew up with a seeming split personality—on the one hand they were a colonizing force, controlling vast swathes of land in Bengal and South India, extracting land taxes, and controlling governance, forgers of the first flush of ‘empire’. At the same time, their roots as traders insisted on their ‘empire’ being at sea, and they functioned solely as traders in the South-East and China, merely shipping goods and bullion in exchange for other goods. By the 1770’s however, with Bengal and Madras emerging as ports of international importance, and with the emergence of the China tea-trade, the Company realized the heightened potential of the south-east Asian trade route. With this in mind, the Directors began searching for small islands in the south of the Bay of Bengal where English ships could stop for refitting, restocking and rest. In the 1750’s a captain by the name of Alexander Dalrymple (who is most famous for having been passed over when the exploratory journey to the south Pacific was announced. He was replaced by one James Cook) attempted to establish the small island of Balambangan in North Borneo. A lack of funds, and a disastrous earlier attempt at Negrais in modern day Myanmar, led to the Company being less than enthusiastic about Dalrymple’s idea. The China trade however was too important, and the continued hostility of the Dutch necessitated that the search for a suitable port continue. While Dalrymple died a disillusioned man, the British looked at islands as far afield as Aceh, Ujangi, Salang, Andaman and Nicobar, and Kedah. Madras was unsuitable in the monsoon and too far away from Canton to be reasonable in any case. Unable to find land of their own the English leased the land at Penang from the Sultan of Kedah, with who they were on favorable terms. While Penang was an unsuitable commercial site, the British had an established presence in south-east Asia, and could look for Dutch weaknesses in the region.

It was here that Singapore entered the British consciousness. Its first mention was actually as early as 1731, when a certain Captain Hamilton wrote, in his New Account of the East Indies that, "in the year 1703 I called at Johore on the way to China, and he [the king of Johore] treated me very kindly and made me a present of the island of Singapore but I told him it could be of no use to a private person, though a proper place for a company to settle in, lying in the center of trade, and accommodated with good rivers and a safe harbor so conveniently situated that all winds served shipping both to go out, and come into these rivers." There is no mention of the small island of Singapore after that till a young clerk from England, Stamford Raffles entered the Company’s service at Penang in 1805. Born aboard ship, off the coast of Jamaica, in 1781, Raffles was possessed of an ambitious and enquiring mind, and put himself to learning Malay while serving in Penang. He impressed his superiors enough to be left Lieutenant Governor of Java after Lord Minto had quelled the French threat in the Archipelago. Soon after, in 1818, he was deputed to the island of Bencoolen when, after the Battle of Waterloo, Java was handed back to the French. Malacca and Rhio were both handed back to the Dutch which now had a monopolistic control over south-east Asian trade. Raffles took over the governorship of the little factory outlet of Bencoolen, but recognized that it was unsuitable for the natural harbor and landing dock that the Company had envisaged. He wrote to his friend, the Duchess of Somerset, "the object is not territory; it could be confined to a simple commercial station with a military guard, and when once formed would soon maintain a successful rivalry with the Dutch, who will be obliged either to adopt a liberal system of free trade, or see the trade of these seas collected by the British flag."

Raffles’ enthusiasm was not misplaced. Later that year, having fortified himself with permission from Lord Cornwallis in Calcutta to set up a, "central station within the Archipelago southward of Malacca and to secure free trade with China through the Straits of Malacca," he came across the island of Singapore.

The tiny island of Singapore composed, at the time, of 150 Orang-laut fishermen, and was little more than a fishing outpost, under the control of the Sultan of Johore. On February 6, 1819, after speaking to the two ‘native chiefs’ at Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles signed a treaty allowing the British to settle Singapore. There were immediate howls of protest from the Dutch who had been granted the rights to the Malaysian ports of Rumbow, Sunger, Ujong, Johore and Nanning as far back as 1758. Recognizing the British threat to their shipping dominance in this region the Dutch complained to the Sultan. Owing to a regency fight however the two claimants to the throne of Johore supported different factions, with Prince Hoosain firmly in Raffles’ court, while Prince Abdul-Rahman supported the Dutch claim. The situation was defused however by Abdul-Rahman’s decision to become a priest and complain about having been forced to take over the throne in the first place. The Company thereby officially took over control of Singapore.

Within months Raffles had masterminded a small harbor and port and by June 10, 1819 was writing to the Duchess of Somerset informing her that, "it is my intention to make this my principal residence and to devote the remaining years of my stay in the East to the advancement of a colony which, in every way in which it can be viewed bids fair to be one of the most important, and at the same time, one of the least expensive and troublesome that we possess. Our object is not territory but trade; a great commercial emporium and a fulcrum, whence we may extend our influence politically as circumstances may hereafter require. One free port in these seas must eventually destroy the Dutch monopoly."

With the shipping trade pouring into Singapore, Raffles continued with his plans for the city. The most important concern was to fortify the harbor, thereby inuring it from naval attack. By early November he had cause to brag to the Duchess, saying, "you may take my word for it, this is by far the most important station in the East; and as far as naval superiority and commercial interests are concerned, of much higher value than whole continents of territory." Later in the month he said, "Our station completely outflanks the Straits of Malacca, and secures a passage for our China ships at all times, and under all circumstances. It has further been my good fortune to discover one of the most safe and extensive harbors in these seas with every facility of protecting shipping in time of war. In short, Singapore is everything we desire." By 1822 the newly founded territory of Singapore was already dealing with trade worth several millions of dollars and by 1825 had far outstripped the other British holdings of Penang and Malacca—the trade figures for 1825 were thus: Malacca- $2,500,000, Penang- $ 8,500,000, and Singapore- $22,185,000. The secret of Singapore’s success in trade lay basically in its geographical position. It straddled the main east-west trade route and it was simple for the manufactured goods from Europe and India to be landed at Singapore for transshipment to China and distribution throughout modern-day Vietnam and the East Indies. The main reason for Singapore’s quick success was the fact that it had a natural harbor, with no moles or breakwaters. The harbor was well sheltered and had two entrances, one from the north, and one from the south. Perhaps most importantly, the British ensured that the Singaporean port remained a free one, thereby greatly increasing the trade that was routed through it. The Dutch, from Batavia [Djakarta] charged a variety of duties which the independent traders, who flocked Singapore, found unwelcome and avoidable.

As Singapore continued growing, it gradually became a settler’s colony. Significantly, the main settlers were Chinese and Indian in nature, rather than Malay, and for a long time most settlers came only to earn money to send home. We see therefore that from the beginning the non-Europeans in Singapore were there primarily as indentured servants. As the ASEAN’s official website notes, "The migration flow was organized and exploitative, with male Chinese signed on as indentured laborers. In the nineteenth century the Chinese population of Singapore was predominantly male. Most came to Singapore hoping to make a fortune, send money back to families in their home villages in China and one day themselves return home, to marry, buy land and live as prosperous farmers. Some succeeded. Most lived and died in Singapore as coolie laborers, reliant on prostitution for female company and dependent on Secret Societies, opium dens and gambling parlors."

Life for English settlers was little less tiresome, though they had always the option of returning home. By 1833, with the East India Company’s monopoly charter having been revoked, independent British firms started settling in Singapore. With the flourishing, though illegal trade, in opium into China, several British merchants made their initial offices at Singapore, choosing to ship the opium into China through Singapore. Since the operation needed to be a delicate one, the independent merchants preferred using small Chinese junks, which they could charter only in Singapore. By 1840, nearly 250 junks a year would be smuggled into Canton by these independent merchants. In 1842 however that would change as a result of the first Anglo-Chinese war.

Even though the English had secured the rapidly growing base of Singapore, they still needed a territory closer to Canton where they could build a port. The strict rules imposed by the Chinese Emperor Chi’en Lung meant that the British merchants could not spend time outside the ghettoes near their factory within China. There was also the problem of non-trading months, when foreigners weren’t allowed into the Canton ports, as well as the fact that women were not allowed to accompany the traders. The Chinese court refused to listen to British requests for land, and compounded their sins (in British eyes) by making the laws for smuggling opium even stricter than before, and sending the Emperor’s uncle to Canton as commissioner. In 1839, Commisioner Lin arrested 16 British merchants for smuggling in opium, and confiscated and destroyed their shipments. Immediately the British were up in arms, with merchants demanding that Whitehall respond to this outrage. Two warships were sent and within days the HMS Cornwallis had trained her guns at the walls of Nanking. Puzzled by the ‘barbarian’s constant interest in commerce’, the Chinese emperor sent Commissioner Lin back to negotiate with the English. Capt. Elliot, who was in charge of the British command had been asked to negotiate for the island of Chusan, but preferred to vacate Chusan in exchange for the small, sparsely inhabited island of Hong Kong (1840 population was approximately 6500), writing back to Lord Aberdeen (British Foreign Secretary) that, "personal experience of Chusan has convinced me, contrary to my previous predilections that it was a totally unsuitable position for our objects in China. The navigation was perilous, and indeed almost impossible by any other than powerful steam vessels. [However] the island of Hong Kong has advantages of a large and safe harbor, abundance of fresh water, and ease of protection by maritime ascendancy and no more extent of territory or population than may be necessary for our convenience." When harried by the government back home, and asked why he didn’t choose one of the established, mainland Chinese ports Elliot wrote to Lord Auckland (Governor-General of India) defending himself by saying that "I take the liberty to record my opinion, that a treaty which consigns British merchants and ships to the ports of Amoy, Ning Po and Shang-hai-heen [Shanghai] will do no more than place very valuable hostages in the hands of an irritated government, with what must be taken to be a certainty, that the impatience of our own Merchants, and the perfidy of the Chinese will rapidly produce new troubles… It seems very plain to me… that Her Majesty’s Government must keep the island of Hong Kong… and the immediate organization of the settlement upon a firm and comprehensive footing is not a question, but in strictest terms a necessity…"

Sir Henry Pottinger, commander of the HMS Cornwallis agreed with Elliot after a closer look, writing home in late 1842 saying, "The retention of Hong Kong is the only single point in which I intentionally exceeded my modified instructions, but every hour I passed in this superb country has convinced me of the necessity and desirability of our possessing such a settlement."

The Chinese were again puzzled by the seemingly bizarre decision of the English, but it is widely agreed that the request for Hong Kong instead of a request for an established, already existing port helped the British in the long run. While a trifle miffed at losing some of their territory, the Chinese Emperor had plenty to spare and the fact that Hong Kong was very much part of the backwaters probably helped him cope with the loss.

The British now had two important trading ports en route from China to India, and there were many similarities between the two. Once the Company had settled in they began to build the two cities ground up, and this included installing bureaucrats and a fair system of governance. At the same time, both cities saw a number of settlers, European and Asian, and there was need for recreational activities for all of them. We shall therefore now turn our attention to the history of one of these recreations—the sport of cricket—while studying the growth of these two ports.

As Singapore and Hong Kong began to flourish, a small number of Company men, and post-Queen Victoria’s Proclamation, Government bureaucrats, started making their way to these two ports, mainly to administer the trade being carried out. Singapore, especially in the early days, rose to prominence at a rapid level, with the tonnage of ships using Singapore port nearly tripling, from 600,000 tons to 1,600,000 tons, between 1870-1880. As N.J. Ryan notes, in his book The Making of Modern Malaya and Singapore, "Singapore became [even] more prosperous with the opening of the Suez canal shortened the trade route between Europe and Asia and freight charges decreased similarly. Moreover the trade was now re-directed through the Strait Settlements of Singapore and Penang, and stopped again at Hong Kong on the way to China. At the same time Hong Kong too was growing at an alarming rate, its trade increasing from $3,000,000 in 1844, to $35,000,000 in 1877. The two cities grew similarly in population, both attracting large numbers of Chinese migrant workers looking to escape the life of peasantry at home and earn quick money under foreign masters before returning home. However, the Canton Register, the only English-language newspaper in early Hong Kong, noted that, "most of the newcomers are single men, recruited by labor contractors, who had no intention of settling in Hong Kong," a case similar to the one Singapore was experiencing.

Thus, while the number of people in both ports was increasingly rapidly, few were there for ‘the long haul’. The decision of the Whig government, in 1833, to revoke the East India Company’s sole trading rights in south-east Asia had also led to a large number of independent trading houses being formed in Hong Kong. Besides the British, Americans, Dutch, French and Spanish traders all set up businesses in Hong Kong, mainly to exploit the Chinese trade.

There was not much to do in Hong Kong or Singapore though, and as early as 1848, a certain George John Mansfield complained of "a sort of sickness and disgust at the place (Singapore) induced perhaps by the greatest monotony of my life." The white community at Singapore at that time numbered around 500 people, whereas in Hong Kong the corresponding number was around 2500. With little to do in the evenings, and fewer people to do it with, the attentions of the young Englishmen in both ports drifted to sport. By 1850, there had been appearances of cricket, skittle-bowling, duck hunting, and other manly pursuits in both ports, and in 1851 the Hong Kong Cricket Club (HKCC) was officially founded. The following year, interested parties, including perhaps the disgruntled Mr. Mansfield, began the Singapore Cricket Club (SCC), which concentrated its activities in the Padang, the large spacious green in the town center, akin to the Maidans found in British India. There were few members, owing to the small number of interested parties, and unlike in India, there were no locals (see Appendix A) willing to play the game. The Chinese migrant workers were not able to play the game owing to finances, and the businessmen were simply not interested, choosing gambling and drink as their leisure choices. The result was that by 1858 there were only 26 members of the SCC. The HKCC was doing a little better, but with merchant houses frowning at ‘frivolsome’ young clerks (McEwan & Co. sternly asked a clerk, ‘to refrain from the playing of sports to the detriment of commercial duties’), dedication to cricket was not possible. In 1866 the HKCC played Shanghai in the first Interport match, but besides the 400 or so Europeans who dotted the fringes of the crowd, "the men dressed in clothes more to chilly England’s taste", and the women holding parasols and sipping warm tea, there were few spectators. In Singapore, the club spent its time playing various garrison teams and visiting ships. Since the Singapore garrison never contained more than 800-1000 soldiers, except in times of war, visiting teams such as the 40^th Madras Native Infantry were invited to play (for interest’s purposes, the Club beat the regimenters by 76 runs in 1860, and didn’t deign to play with them again till 1878).

Singapore then put together a combined team with other Europeans in Penang, and the ‘Strait Settlements’ ventured to Hong Kong in 1890. This led to the beginning of a regular Inter-Port tri-series between the three British settlements, but with little other regular competition, the sport began to stagnate in both Hong Kong and Singapore. By 1898, the SCC membership had grown from the 29 founding members to a meager 98. At HKCC the membership was up to just over 100. Matches, when not the bi-yearly Inter-Port games, were restricted to being conducted against passing trading ships. The issue, as President AP Talbot remarked, in an 1892 meeting, was that, "there are problems with fixtures for our players. There are not enough of them, and we must strive for more games." The situation was similar in Hong Kong, and even with the addition of the New Territories (modern day Kowloon and outlying regions on the Chinese mainland), the pool for cricketers could not be expanded. One of the reasons was that the two were so isolated geographically that any ‘friendly’ game required at least a week of travel, and most firms were apt to look somewhat askance at employees who requested such liberties. Army men could not go desert their posts either since neither Singapore nor Hong Kong ever had a garrison larger than 1000. This lack of matches can also be partially attributed to the fact that, unlike in India, which saw large garrison forces, as well as fully equipped bureaucratic services in each of its Residencies, there were simply no Englishmen in South-East Asia, and no incentive for them to come there. Those that came, quietly conducted their business as they were affiliated with one of the large business houses, and played cricket purely as an evening social exercise at their club. There was no interest in increasing the playing base, and unwanted by the English, the locals saw no reason to play. Again, unlike India, there was no community which identified more with the British than with the locals—almost everyday in Hong Kong and Singapore was a settler, and therefore felt no connection to the land, seeing the cities merely as a place of commercial enterprise. This spirit extended to the locals, who saw their term there as a purely temporary one, with the aim of maximizing their respective firms’ profit margins, then returning home to the country cottage in Kent or Surrey, where cricket could be played seriously again.

Even though more firms began operations in Singapore and Hong Kong in the early part of the 20^th century, the local populace, with the exception of the small Eurasian community, chose to ignore the game of cricket completely. They were aided in this by the fact that the British clubs resolutely refused to let non-white members join them on the field. Those Chinese locals who chose to take up the way of the foreigners, though they played in their own clubs, were branded comprodores, a class considered as traitors, ‘running dogs of the foreigners’, and shunned by their community. In this the structure of the cities might have played a part—in Singapore at least, Raffles had built the city on somewhat divisive lines, with separate quarters of the city laid out for Europeans, Chinese, Malays, government buildings, the harbor area, and open greens. This led to an immediate division between the communities, and the locals being largely non-sporting communities, the greens were ignored by them and left largely to the burly Europeans who chose to vent their extra energies by running around. Since the Europeans lived close to each other there seemed no apparent need for mixing with the locals, a case very different from the English experience in India where the Indian armies and far-flung natures of the land occupied by the English led to a much greater immersion into local culture. As Helen Camdee noted, with some dissatisfaction, in the early 1900’s, life in Singapore as a Britisher entailed that, "you live there in an English hotel with English people about you, and English motor cars driving up to the entrance below your balcony. Across the square is an English club, and standing within the wide stretch of trees and lawn is an English cathedral with English chimes that ring out the English hours." In 1891 the Singapore Recreation Club, started by the Eurasian community, attempted to redress some of the imbalances, but members comprised only of individuals who were in some way already allied with the British, and the effects did not filter down to the whole community, unlike the Parsees in India. On more than one occasion in Hong Kong it was noted that the. "Chinese often wander across the cricket pitch, believing that such inactivity signifies that the game must be over." We must also note that in India other communities were quick to join the Parsees in challenging the English to cricket matches, something that did not spread widely in Singapore. The Chinese community started the Chinese Club in 1900, but cricket was not one of its most popular sports, and games against the SCC were few and not much supported by the larger Chinese community, as similar games were in India. There was no overwhelming feeling of oppression against the Europeans; they were seen as administrators not bureaucrats.

In Hong Kong the situation was similar with few outside the European community bothering to play. Even the Europeans other than the English could not be persuaded to play, choosing to display their sporting prowess in games such as tennis and cards. While the Inter-port tournaments continued, the names on the scorecards were distressingly similar and it was not considered uncommon for teams to be chosen based on seniority rather than talent and form.

While the game ‘grew’ in the 20^th century, with more clubs being formed, they were mostly a result of the larger number of expatriates settling down in Singapore and Hong Kong, rather than as a result of a greater number of players taking up the game in the individual ports. Even schools cricket was limited to the English-speaking schools. The few Asians who wandered into these schools joined in the sporting spirit, but the vast majority remained untouched. There was one other major reason however, why cricket never attained the wide popularity in Singapore and Hong Kong that they did in the Indian sub-continent.

The first was the nature of the British holdings in these two regions. As I have explained before, the growth in India was a more organic growth, where the British arrived as traders, but ended up as rulers, in part because they needed military backup to fortify their trading factories. These military installations led to local interventions, and the ensuing battles resulted in the British succeeding to large tracts of land. In time their holdings increased, and they took over as governing body as a result of the great land under their control. Their holdings of Singapore and Hong Kong however, were secured solely for their potential as trading outposts, as I have shown above. There was no intention of counting these places as part of a large colonial Empire—they were outposts, not colonies, and fed more into the British ideal of a ‘nation of states’ rather than as a ‘world empire’. Raffles mentioned, as early as 1826 that, "the British connection with the islands of the Malay Archipelago stands on a very different footing from that with the people of India. However inviting and extensive their resources, it is considered that they can best be drawn forth by the native energies of the people unfettered by foreign regulations, and that it is by the reciprocal advantages of commerce and commerce alone, and that we may best promote our own interests and their advancement. A few stations are occupied for the security and protection of our trade, and the independence of all the supporting trades is not only acknowledged but maintained and supported by us." The nature of the British connection with the South-East Asian region is the best example of Britain’s priorities. India was an exception to the rule, and they did not want China to become another India. As Nicholas Tarling writes, "The general aim was not to take on additional territorial responsibilities, except in so far as they were essential to provide strategic support for Britain’s naval and commercial interests." It was further important to note that Britain’s power in the early 20^th century was directed towards serving its economic interests rather than building a huge territorial Empire, and the large number of island holdings on major sea routes illustrated this point.

With this in mind we can reasonably assert that Singapore and Hong Kong were settled with trading posts in mind, a factor that led to their being almost no sense of belonging for the Europeans who settled there, and led to an almost complete lack of interest in promoting the game.

Despite this lack of interest there was a slow, but steady, growth in the game, though it did not end up winning the race. By the early 1930’s nearly 25 ‘clubs’ played the game in Singapore, and a further 17 in Hong Kong. However it must be mentioned here that very few players played the game outside the club system, and therefore the player base was never larger than about 500 players.

With the Second World War however, things changed rapidly. The Pacific front opened up by the Japanese saw the two cities being taken by the Japanese and between 1941 and 1945 there was no cricket played at the two centers. When the war ended, the cricket playing public in both centers was a little shocked, and the post-war British attitude was to grant its colonies their Independence. With this in mind Malaysia was separated from Singapore and granted its independence in 1956. There were two reasons for this: firstly, that the Chinese-majority Singapore would ruin the racial balance of Malay-majority Malaysia, and secondly the fact that the English wanted to hold on to Singapore as it remained a valuable naval base from which to control operations in the south-east Asian region.

However, history was not to be denied, and in 1959 Singapore was granted full self-governance. Within a few years the English had granted the Singaporeans full independence and in 1965 they left the port town that had added so much to their wealth and prosperity. With the departure of the British, Lee Kwan Yiew took over the reigns of government. One of the first decisions made was to confiscate the grounds occupied by British armed forces garrisons, partially as a result of the white-only policy that the major cricket club had followed for many years. Since 24 of the 30 cricket grounds in Singapore were owned by British armed forces, this was an immediate hit to cricket’s already limited popularity. With most clubs now unable to secure grounds to play at several closed their cricket teams, and for some seasons the game died out almost completely. Lee Kwan Yiew also banned the game in schools, thus drying up the talent pool from which the clubs could wean players. For the larger part of two decades it seemed like cricket in Singapore had finally been pushed into the funeral pyre over which it had for so long lingered. In Hong Kong, there was no official banning of the sport since the British had signed a 99 year lease on the island in 1898. However the continuing commercialization of the small port city and its conversion from small, colonial town into sky-scrapered city forced the abandonment of several cricket grounds and the loss of many fine players—there was no longer an idle bureaucratic class which could play the game even at the limited level in which it was played in the past. In 1997 the city was officially handed over to the Chinese government, though it was officially a Special Administrative Region (SAR) for another 50 years, thereby allowing the sport to continue for a few more years.

Cricket continues in both dusty outposts of the Empire, but action is limited to expatriates, mainly from the Indian community of software professionals. The HKCC and the SCC, bastions of the game, continue in their unhurried and placid way, their membership still mostly European, their games played in front of the proverbial ‘three men and a dog’, and arousing little enthusiasm in the locals. There is movement afoot to raise the level of awareness, and funding from the International Cricket Conference (ICC) has helped in the appointment of foreign coaches, regular training camps etc. Cricket is allowed in Singapore’s schools again, though still forbidden in the army, where all Singaporean males serve for 2 ½ years between the ages of 18-21. Much talent is lost at this level in Singapore, and Singapore still struggles to put together a competent national team, despite the seeming strength of its club system, which has grown now to encompass 40 teams, though only 8 actually have grounds. There is also the issue of the Singapore Cricket Association, governing body of the game in the country, not having its own ground, but depending on a yearly lease from the government, with the result that no permanent stadium may be built from which to promote the game. In Hong Kong there are more grounds, but fewer players, and though the moderately popular ‘International Cricket Sixes’ are held here every year, bringing some international players to the city, they are not enough to build a love of the game in locals who have never understood it, and now see no need to. Hope though always exists, as Stephen Houghton, former captain of the Singaporean national team, says, and the small but vibrant cricket community in Singapore hopes that the reintroduction of school cricket in 1997 will inculcate the love of the game in the country’s youth. There are small signs of life as the numbers of children involved have seen a gradual growth, and in Hong Kong too the schools game is showing signs of stirring from its slumber. In cricket, as in life, ‘it ain’t over till the fat lady sings’, and while she may be clearing her throat still, the elegy has not yet taken flight.

When cricket in India officially started in 1792, at the Calcutta Cricket & Football Club, it was played solely by the Company officers who happened to be stationed there. However, the quick increase in territory covered and the new dominions brought under British influence over the first half of the nineteenth century saw a gradual but marked influence in the number of Europeans in India. As a foreign game it did not find many followers till the Parsees, the displaced Zoroastrians of Iran, who had managed to keep themselves unassimilated from mainstream Indian culture, took it up in the 1800s. There are many fine studies of the history of Indian cricket and therefore I will not go into details here, but offer a short summary of the growth of Indian cricket. After the Parsees, who considered themselves un-Indian to a certain degree, and hence saw more in common with the English, began playing the game in earnest in around the 1840’s, and they improved enough to plan a tour to England in 1866. The game, limited, at start, to Europeans, quickly gained popularity among native Indians, and in the early nineteenth century, was increasingly noticed by the various Princes, Nawabs, and Maharajas who dotted India’s political landscape and were under the influence of the British. Under their patronage the game began to grow in popularity amongst India’s surprisingly un-sporting masses. In the directly English ruled provinces too, the regular appearance of impeccably clad European soldiers and sailors had influenced locals to take up the game, and in Bombay the Parsees had established over 30 clubs by the 1860’s. "The emerging Parsee bourgeoisie supported cricket as a means of strengthening ties with the overlord," an important step against their Hindu rivals when currying official favor at Bombay’s trading docks. The Hindus, though, were not to be left behind, and their first official club, Bombay Union was founded in 1866. The Muslims, sponsored by the Luxmani and Tyebjee families, began their involvement in the 1870’s. Several princes who were under indirect British supervision also began patronizing the game as they recognized the British as their supreme masters in the new order, and were keen to prove their loyalty and worth by taking up the same leisure activities. By the late 1890’s, with the Parsees playing annual games against the British, the Hindu and Muslim communities took up the game, mainly to prove themselves worthy rivals, and soon a ‘Rest’ team arrived, thereby involving all members of the Indian community. The freedom struggle gave a fillip to the popularity of cricket, and by the time freedom arrived, in 1947, cricket was one of India’s most popular sports. Since Independence cricket was always seen as a way of asserting Indian independence to the former colonizers and hence continued gaining in popularity.