Eighteenth and nineteenth century Chinese accounts of the Malay Peninsula
J.W. Cushman and A.C. Milner published this article in 1979 in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Vol. 52, No. 1), presenting English translations of excerpts from three Chinese-language geographical and commercial texts covering the Malay Peninsula in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The article argues that these Chinese sources, long neglected by Malayan historians in favour of European accounts, offer a distinctive commercial and administrative perspective on the peninsula that complements and occasionally challenges the Western record.
Summary
The article addresses a significant gap in the historiography of early modern Malaya: the systematic underuse of Chinese-language sources written after European powers entered Southeast Asia. Cushman and Milner select three texts of markedly different character and purpose. The first, the Hai-kuo wen-chien lu (preface dated 1730), was compiled by Ch’en Lun-ch’iung, a Fukien-born military official whose primary aim was to aid coastal defence administrators; his descriptions of the peninsula are brief, static, and drawn largely from second-hand reading. The second, the Hai-lu (published c. 1842), records the narrated journeys of Hsieh Ch’ing-kao, a Kwangtung merchant who spent fourteen years (1782–1795) trading in Southeast Asia; this is the only true eyewitness account among the three, and it provides the most detailed observations on local customs, legal procedures, taxation, and the internal geography of the east coast states. The third, Wei Yuan’s Hai-kuo t’u-chih (1842), is a massive compilation by a reformist historian who drew on both the earlier Chinese texts and Western sources, and whose dominant concern was the strategic threat posed by British expansion in the region.
The authors use these translations to explore several interrelated historical problems. First, they examine the nature and extent of Chinese commercial and settlement activity in the peninsula, showing that Chinese were not confined to port towns but penetrated deep into the interior for gold mining and pepper cultivation, with occupations divided along provincial lines of origin (Fukien people trading and growing pepper, Kwangtung people mining). Second, they investigate the political status of the Malay states vis-à-vis Siam, noting that the three texts disagree on the degree of Siamese suzerainty: Ch’en Lun-ch’iung portrays virtually the entire peninsula under Siam’s authority, Hsieh Ch’ing-kao distinguishes between dependencies and independent states, and Wei Yuan’s source material complicates the picture further by making Trengganu and Kelantan dependencies of Johor rather than Siam. Third, the article contributes to the study of Malay identity and Islam, observing that the broad application of the term ‘Melayu’ across the peninsula in these texts marks a relatively recent development, and that the Chinese authors’ descriptions of legal customs (ordeal by water, ordeal by hot oil) and the centrality of the ruler over Islamic religious authorities suggest a Malay world that differed substantially from the late nineteenth-century picture.
Throughout, the authors emphasize that the Chinese texts present a fundamentally different kind of knowledge from European accounts: they are descriptive geographies and commercial guides rather than narrative histories, rarely naming individual rulers or describing specific political events. Their value lies in the granular detail they provide on commodities, taxation, legal customs, and the material conditions of trade—information that European observers, focused on tin and pepper, often overlooked.
Key Findings
- Hsieh Ch’ing-kao’s Hai-lu records that several hundred Chinese arrived in Kelantan annually, with Fukien people concentrated in the port (trading, pepper cultivation) and Kwangtung people on the hilltops (gold washing); more than ten thousand Fukien and Kwangtung people had settled in Pinang to plant pepper (pp. 21–22, 31).
- Port taxation in Kelantan was structured as follows: large ocean vessels carrying heavy goods were taxed 500–600 foreign silver dollars (teng-t’ou chin), smaller vessels 200–300; a per-person annual tax of one silver dollar (ya-hsieh) applied to residents, and a goods duty (ma-tzu) was levied on cargo (p. 21).
- Kelantan and Trengganu each paid an annual tribute of thirty chin (catties) of gold to Siam; Trengganu additionally paid tribute to Annam and the Dutch at Batavia (pp. 15, 24).
- In Pinang, the annual tax on spirits, opium, and gambling houses exceeded 100,000 liang; the British garrison comprised 200–300 Englishmen plus over 1,000 hsu-po (p. 31).
- The Hai-kuo wen-chien lu records that Johor’s yearly trade supported only three or four ocean-going junks, and that the Chinese trade prohibition with Southeast Asia was lifted in Yung-cheng 7 (1729), after which trade with Johor, Songkhla, Patani, and other states resumed without interruption (pp. 11, 38–39).
- Chinese gravestone inscriptions bearing Liang dynasty (907–923) and Southern Sung (1265–1275) dates were reported at Pedra Branca (the Singapore area), evidence of Chinese presence in the region predating the nineteenth-century immigration surge (p. 41).
Conclusion
Cushman and Milner conclude that while the three Chinese texts provide little information on specific individuals or political events, they present a fresh and complementary account of conditions on the Malay Peninsula in the century before British rule was established. Their principal contribution is to demonstrate that Chinese observers—whether scholar-officials, merchant-sailors, or reformist historians—attended to the commercial, legal, and material dimensions of Malay society in ways that European accounts did not, and that their collective testimony enriches our understanding of Chinese settlement patterns, the development of Malay ethnic identity, the practical operation of Islamic law, and the complex political relationships between the peninsular states, Siam, and the emerging British presence.
Context
- The translations are drawn from three Chinese-language works: the Hai-kuo wen-chien lu (Taipei, 1958 edition of the 1744 original), the Hai-lu (Chung-kuo shih-hsueh ts’ung-shu hsu-pien edition, Taipei, 1975; annotated edition by Feng Ch’eng-chun, Shanghai, 1955), and the Hai-kuo t’u-chih (Yang-chou, 1852; 1875 reprint). Milner also consulted an unpublished romanized text of MS. Cod. Or. 7304 in the Leiden University Library, prepared by Dr R.R. Roolvink.
- The article’s historiographical contribution lies in redirecting attention from the well-trodden European sources toward Chinese-language materials for eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Malayan history, and in demonstrating how the three texts can be read in conjunction with one another and with the European record to produce a more complete picture of the period.