Article

A history of Selangor

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

A history of Selangor

The metadata identifies this document as R.O. Winstedt’s “A history of Selangor” (JMBRAS Vol. 12, 1934), but the primary source text provided is in fact the Catalogue of Books, &c., in the Library of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (January 1884) — a library inventory, not a historical monograph. The summary below reflects the text actually supplied.

Summary

The document is a bibliographic catalogue of the library holdings of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, compiled as of January 1884. It lists approximately 150–200 volumes and serials held by the Society’s library in Singapore, organised alphabetically by author or corporate body. The collection spans a wide range of subjects relevant to the colonial and scholarly community of the Straits Settlements: ethnography, geography, natural history, linguistics, and the history and administration of the Malay Archipelago, Southeast Asia, and the broader Pacific.

The holdings reveal the intellectual preoccupations of the late-Victorian colonial research establishment. A substantial proportion of the collection consists of German and Dutch ethnographic and geographic publications (Bastian, Meyer, Miklucho-Maclay, Robide van der Aa, the Bataviaasch Genootschap catalogues), reflecting the strong influence of European scientific societies on colonial knowledge production. Serials from the Paris Société de Géographie, the Bremen Geographische Gesellschaft, and the Bataviaasch Genootschap dominate the periodical holdings, alongside a few local and regional titles such as the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Nos. 1–11) and Eastern Asia (Singapore, 1875).

Several entries are of particular local significance: the Hikayat Abdullah (published in the Annals de l’Extrême Orient, 1883), the Maritime Code of the Malays (Singapore, 1877), Makota Radja-Radja (Bokhari of Johore, translated by Marbe, Paris 1878), and Singapore Sixty Years Ago (1883). These represent the Society’s engagement with indigenous Malay literary and legal traditions, even as the bulk of the collection is European-authored.

Key Findings

  • The catalogue covers holdings as of January 1884 and includes serials with specific missing-number annotations (e.g., Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris: missing Jan. and Nov. 1879; Jan. and Feb. 1880) (pp. 3–4).
  • The Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society is listed at Nos. 1–11, indicating the Society had published eleven issues by this date (p. 5).
  • The Hikayat Abdullah is recorded in its 1883 French publication in the Annals de l’Extrême Orient (Nos. 55, 58–65; Nos. 56–57 missing) (p. 2).
  • The collection includes the Maritime Code of the Malays (Singapore, 1877, 2 copies) and Makota Radja-Radja (Paris, 1878), evidencing early institutional interest in Malay legal and literary texts (pp. 5–6).
  • German-language ethnographic and zoological works (Meyer, Miklucho-Maclay, Bastian) and Dutch colonial publications (Bataviaasch Genootschap, Robide van der Aa) constitute a large share of the holdings, underscoring the transnational character of colonial scientific networks (pp. 2–8).
  • The catalogue includes works on New Guinea, the Philippines, Borneo, and the Malay Peninsula, reflecting the Society’s geographic scope across the broader Archipelago rather than a narrow Straits Settlements focus (pp. 4–12).

Conclusion

The 1884 catalogue documents the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society as a modest but cosmopolitan research library, its holdings shaped by the European (particularly German and Dutch) scientific establishment of the 1870s–1880s. It provides a snapshot of what colonial-era scholars in Singapore considered worth collecting: a mix of European ethnographic theory, geographic serials, and a small but significant core of Malay-language primary texts.

Context

  • This is a front-matter/inventory document (library catalogue) from the early history of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, predating the Malaysian Branch by several decades.
  • The catalogue is a useful prosopographical and intellectual-history source for understanding the research infrastructure and epistemic priorities of the colonial-era RAS in Singapore.

References