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Richard James Wilkinson

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Richard James Wilkinson

A Man of Parts: Administrator, Lexicographer, and Scholar

Richard James Wilkinson (1867–1941) was a British colonial administrator and lexicographer whose career spanned the Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States, and Sierra Leone, culminating in the governorship of the latter colony. Best known as the author of the definitive Malay-English Dictionary, Wilkinson combined administrative capability with scholarly depth in a way that his contemporaries recognised but that has often been obscured by the enduring reputation of his lexicographical work. As J. M. Gullick observed, Wilkinson was genuinely “a man of parts” — a rare figure whose career illuminates the institutional development of Malay education, the evolution of the Malayan civil service, and the intellectual history of Malay studies in the British colonial period [1, p. 19].

Early Life and Education

Wilkinson was born on 29 May 1867 at Salonika, then in the Ottoman Empire but now one of the leading ports of northern Greece [1, p. 20]. His father, Richard Wilkinson, was the British Consul at Salonika, having begun his consular career at Syra in Greece before moving to Durazzo in the Adriatic and then to Salonika in 1860 [1, p. 21]. The Wilkinson family were expatriates who had established themselves in the cosmopolitan commercial world of the Mediterranean, with business connections centred on Smyrna (now Izmir) on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor [1, p. 20]. In this environment, several European languages were spoken, with French as much as English the dominant culture [1, p. 21]. Wilkinson was credited with speaking French, German, Spanish, Italian and Greek, and his French was outstanding [1, p. 21].

When Wilkinson was five years old, his father was posted to Malaga on the coast of Spain, where the family remained until he went to school in England at the age of fourteen [1, p. 21]. Wilkinson and his brother James Whittall entered Felsted School in Essex in September 1881 [1, p. 21]. The school was in a process of transition from a narrow classical curriculum to a broader range of subjects, and Wilkinson became a prefect at the age of seventeen [1, p. 21]. After a two-year interval, during which he may have travelled in Europe, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1886 [1, p. 22]. He read for the history tripos, rowed, and became president of the Union, the university debating society [1, p. 22].

Of particular significance was Wilkinson’s acquaintance, which became a close friendship, with Walter Skeat, then a student at Christ’s College, where his father was the university professor of Anglo-Saxon and a distinguished lexicographer who had collaborated with James Murray on the Oxford English Dictionary [1, p. 22]. Wilkinson later applied something of the historical method of the OED to his own dictionary, and it may be assumed that the Skeat connection of his Cambridge days had some influence on it [1, p. 22].

Wilkinson passed the history tripos with second class honours and sat for the combined civil service entrance examination for candidates for the Home, Indian and Eastern Cadet civil services [1, p. 22]. He passed high on the written papers and headed the list on the French paper, but failed the riding test required by the Indian Civil Service, a severe disappointment that led him to leave Cambridge without attending the formal degree admission ceremony [1, p. 23]. His results qualified him instead for an Eastern Cadetship, and he arrived in Singapore in 1889 to begin his service [1, p. 23].

Administrative Career in the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States

The early years of Wilkinson’s service in the Straits Settlements were marked by the peripatetic posting of junior officers, who were moved from one temporary duty to another — district office, audit work, the charge of a local post office, and the duties of sheriff — before becoming a magistrate [1, p. 23]. In this context, Wilkinson and two other bright young men, G. T. Hare and G. T. L. Litton, planned to leave the Straits Settlements civil service to join the consular service in China [1, p. 24]. Wilkinson applied himself to the study of Hokkien and passed the government examination in 1895 [1, p. 24]. However, William Maxwell, who had become Chief Secretary of the Straits Settlements in 1892, had already taken notice of Wilkinson’s abilities. Maxwell asked him to serve as Secretary to the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society during the absence on leave of H. N. Ridley, and brought him into touch with a number of workers interested in Malay [1, p. 24]. When Maxwell left for a West African governorship, he alerted the new Governor, Charles Mitchell, to the restlessness of these young men. Mitchell persuaded Wilkinson and Hare to continue their careers in Malaya [1, p. 25].

By 1895, Wilkinson was sent to act as Superintendent of Education at Penang, and also deputised for the Inspector of Schools in Singapore [1, p. 25]. His departmental annual report for 1899 impressed officials at the Colonial Office, who noted that it contained “many far-reaching observations” and that “Mr Wilkinson is certainly a very capable man” [1, p. 25]. In this report, Wilkinson gave a first indication of the ideas that would shape his policy on Malay education: “The limitation of the curriculum to the three elementary subjects prevents the growth of a class of educated men and allows no scope for the exercise of real influence upon the habits and modes of thought of the race” [1, p. 25].

The practical implementation of his ideas was tested by the foundation of the Teachers Training College at Malacca, which opened on 1 March 1900 after nearly a year and a half of squabbling between Governor Mitchell, who favoured a literary curriculum, and Frank Swettenham, then Resident-General, who advocated a predominantly practical and technical course [1, p. 25]. Wilkinson, as acting head of the Straits Settlements education department, had consulted on the matter but, as a deputy, could not have much influence on policy [1, p. 25].

During his home leave in 1900, Wilkinson went to Cambridge and completed the formalities of graduation as Bachelor of Arts — the only academic title he ever held [1, p. 11]. He was then posted as District Officer at Dindings on the Perak coast, “an unpopular station but a zoologist’s paradise”, where he collected shells on the seashore and sent them to the Raffles Museum for identification [1, p. 11].

Inspector of Schools and the Malay College Project

The sudden death of J. M. Driver, the first Inspector of Schools for the Federated Malay States, early in 1903 led to Wilkinson’s appointment as his successor and his transfer from the Straits Settlements to the Federated Malay States civil service [1, p. 11]. This marked the beginning of what Gullick describes as “a new era” in education and the high point of Wilkinson’s career as a scholar and educational reformer [1, p. 11].

The network of vernacular schools in the villages was expanding rapidly in response to Malay acceptance of lay education for their sons [1, p. 11]. Wilkinson gave priority to remedying the lack of suitable textbooks and reading material by establishing the “Malay Literature Series”, which made available for the first time a wide range of Malay histories and romances in printed form [1, p. 11]. He observed that the existing schoolbooks were mainly translations from English, and that “the poor bewildered pupil … is taught to calculate in pounds, shillings and pence”, and told that an English fox “is a sort of civet-cat” [1, p. 12]. Wilkinson launched a new textbook policy, though it was left to his successors, notably R. O. Winstedt, a decade later, to reap the harvest [1, p. 12].

The output of Malay schoolmasters trained at Malacca was pitifully inadequate: the total enrolment of sixty took a two-year course, and the annual output of about thirty trained teachers had to be divided between the colony and the states [1, p. 12]. Wilkinson instituted “normal” courses for the training of secondary school teachers, in which teachers in training observed or helped in the classroom and received instruction in their own classes [1, p. 12].

The most controversial of Wilkinson’s innovations was the Malay College at Kuala Kangsar, which he proposed as “a special residential school” where pupils would be a mixture of “boys of good family” and “boys of marked ability” [1, p. 12]. The project had the enthusiastic support of Resident-General Treacher, who prophesied that “a new era is opening for the Malay race in the Peninsula” [1, p. 12]. However, Swettenham was opposed to anything more than providing scholarships for Malays to enter existing schools in the Straits Settlements, and his successor as head of the Federated Malay States government, William Taylor, was by temperament disposed to say “No” to everything [1, p. 13]. Wilkinson was able to persuade William Hargreaves to take on the role of headmaster, but ill-health obliged him to go on a year’s leave just as the project was about to be launched [1, p. 13]. On his return towards the end of 1906, he found that Taylor had taken decisions adverse to the new project, and his protests were forwarded to the High Commissioner with a sneer that his remarks were the product of “disordered imagination possibly due to ill health” [1, p. 13].

The price of this confrontation was severe. The High Commissioner, Sir John Anderson, decided to merge the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States education departments under a single head, and Wilkinson was passed over in favour of Elcum [1, p. 14]. Thus ended Wilkinson’s direct involvement in education in Malaya [1, p. 14].

Secretary to Government and Resident of Negri Sembilan

Reposted by Taylor as District Officer at Batang Padang in Perak, Wilkinson found an unexpected ally in the Resident of Perak, E. W. Birch, who soon reposted him as Secretary to Government Perak, that is, Deputy Resident [1, p. 14]. Wilkinson was glad to see at first hand “the courts, pageantry, old official dignities and customary laws and systems of government” of an ancient Malay state, and counted it “good fortune” to serve under “the last real representative of the Residents of the school of Sir Hugh Low” [1, p. 15].

Birch and Wilkinson viewed with dismay the influx of a new type of administrator, typically an Oxbridge graduate, disposed to despise and ignore the Malays [1, p. 15]. Their campaign to restore a proper balance in the official perception of the Malay community had the invaluable support of Sultan Idris of Perak [1, p. 15]. The outcome was the Papers on Malay Subjects, a series of monographs on the history, law, language and culture of the Malays, which became the prescribed reading for cadets preparing for their examinations. Wilkinson became general editor of the series and wrote eight of the sixteen papers published between 1906 and 1910 [1, p. 15].

When Wilkinson became substantive Secretary to Government in 1909, his career was regaining momentum [1, p. 16]. A constitutional question arising in Negri Sembilan concerning the state seal of the Yam Tuan, who had begun to describe himself as “sultan”, brought Wilkinson to the attention of Anderson, who invited the Yam Tuan to a conference at Kuala Kangsar [1, p. 16]. Wilkinson contributed knowledgeable criticism of the royal pretensions and showed that he could cope with adat perpatih and related mysteries [1, p. 16]. He was sent to act as British Resident of Negri Sembilan and became the substantive Resident [1, p. 16].

As Resident, Wilkinson set in train the preparation of monographs on the custom of each local district of the state, and in his enquiries met with “attempts to tamper with historical truth”, sometimes “a mere hiding of the truth”, but in extreme cases a deliberate destruction of documents [1, p. 17]. He also inherited from his predecessor D. G. Campbell a novel experiment in putting a legal ring-fence around customary land tenure to protect it from the pressures of the rubber boom [1, p. 17].

Chief Secretary and Acting Governor of the Straits Settlements

The post of Chief Secretary of the Straits Settlements fell vacant in 1911, and the selection of Wilkinson to fill it was “rather unexpected” [1, p. 17]. Arthur Young, who had succeeded Taylor as head of the Federated Malay States government, was shrewd enough to discern Wilkinson’s outstanding ability, and his fourteen years of service in the Straits Settlements civil service must have been an additional qualification [1, p. 17]. Young accorded Wilkinson a free hand in the Straits Settlements, and the initial test came when Young went on leave within three months of Wilkinson’s arrival in Singapore in August 1911, leaving him to act as Governor [1, p. 17].

In the summer of 1914, Wilkinson was again acting as Governor when war broke out, and had to cope with the disruption incidental to it [1, p. 17]. His performance won high praise: “At this important crisis he had the exceptionally onerous task of preventing panic and disaster throughout Malaya … public opinion endorsed his method of dealing with the food and tin questions in which he went to the best authorities locally, and, having heard their views, brought to bear a keen critical faculty, and courageously accepted the responsibility of acting on his judgment” [1, p. 17–18]. The price of this tenure of high office was a decade in which Wilkinson’s duties suspended his activity as a scholar [1, p. 18].

Governor of Sierra Leone

The Colonial Office decided that Wilkinson, who would be fifty in 1917, should be given the final promotion of his career to a governorship [1, p. 18]. Since the Straits Settlements was a first-class governorship and there was no intention of removing Young until the war was over, Wilkinson’s governorship would have to be in a territory new to him [1, p. 18]. He accepted the governorship of Sierra Leone, a second-class governorship, and arrived at Freetown in March 1916 [1, p. 18]. In later years he told Winstedt that he regretted having accepted the offer “as it took him away from his Malay interests” [1, p. 18].

In wartime, Freetown was an important naval base and assembly point for shipping passing through the danger zone in convoys protected by the navy [1, p. 18]. When the war ended, the naval establishment was reduced and the convoy system no longer brought shipping into Freetown. Scarcity and high food prices added to the hardships of local unemployment, and the Levantine shopkeepers and traders became the scapegoats [1, p. 18]. Unrest and strikes among railway and public works labourers led to riots and serious damage to commercial property. Wilkinson had to call in the troops to restore order, and a subsequent enquiry imputed no blame to him and recommended the payment of compensation, eventually a modest £5,000, for damage to property [1, p. 19]. In the final, quieter period of his governorship, Wilkinson promoted the construction of feeder roads to widen the outreach of the railway system [1, p. 19]. Having completed the normal five-year term, he left Sierra Leone towards the end of 1921 on leave prior to retirement [1, p. 19].

The Malay-English Dictionary and Retirement

The compilation of Wilkinson’s Malay-English Dictionary had begun around 1895, in collaboration with his friend Walter Skeat, who had joined the Selangor civil service in 1891 [1, p. 9]. Wilkinson generously attributed to Skeat the initiative in proposing the dictionary project, though it was probably the product of several minds [1, p. 9]. The two young men began with lists of Malay words taken from contexts in the Malay classics; the Hikayat Abdullah alone yielded some 15,000 words [1, p. 9]. To widen the scope, Wilkinson paid “good prices” to obtain manuscripts, often specially copied to meet his needs, and in 1900 he gifted sixty-two Malay manuscripts to Cambridge University [1, p. 9]. He also referred to the work of Dutch lexicographers, enlisted a committee of three Malays from Singapore, Johore and Riau, visited workshops and boat-sheds to verify technical terms, and consulted experts at the Raffles Museum on fauna and flora [1, p. 10]. A shrew was named in his honour: Tupaia ferruginea Wilkinsonii [1, p. 10].

The dictionary, with the Malay words arranged in Jawi alphabetical order, was published in Singapore in two parts in 1901 and 1902 [1, p. 10]. It was immediately accepted as a valuable and definitive work, and an abridged edition appeared in 1908 [1, p. 10]. By this time Wilkinson had decided that a Rumi format was preferable to Jawi, but official work prevented him from attempting a Rumi version of the original two-volume text [1, p. 11].

After retirement, Wilkinson settled at Smyrna, a most inopportune choice given the political situation in the Aegean [1, p. 19]. When Turkish troops advanced on Smyrna in 1922, the Wilkinsons were temporarily absent. Wilkinson’s own account, written to the Cambridge University Librarian, is worth quoting in full: “My retirement from the Service is due in no way to ill-health but to my desire to devote myself to Malay work. For many years past I have been trying to perfect my Dictionary of 1901–1903. In 1918 I began rewriting it, and I finished it last March [1922]. There then only remained the task of posting up the additional material that had appeared from 1918 to 1922; and this was under way when I took a holiday, last summer, leaving my books and notes at Smyrna where I had spent the winter. In my absence the Turks plundered and burnt the place; and when I got there I found that my house had been looted thoroughly and was in possession of the General Staff. The Bashi-Bazouk has not much use for books; and I had hoped that my Dictionary might have been spared. In fact, apart from books, I lost everything that I had left there. Three eighths of my Dictionary had disappeared; of 71 notebooks only 13 were left” [1, p. 19].

In the end, Wilkinson decided to stay in the quiet retreat of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos [1, p. 20]. The completion of a revised edition of his dictionary, begun in 1918, filled the next ten years [1, p. 20]. The obvious contrast between the first and revised editions was the change from a Jawi alphabetical sequence to a straightforward Rumi order of words [1, p. 20]. Wilkinson took account of “many Malay texts published since 1903” and “much research especially in Dutch publications” [1, p. 20]. He wrote to the former Austro-Hungarian consul at Singapore, who supplied “a long list of new Batavia words”, and to Winstedt and A. W. Hamilton, who supplied “fresh material” and checked what Wilkinson sent to them [1, p. 20]. He also paid tribute to his wife, who looked up references, prepared drafts and typed the ever-expanding manuscript “from end to end when typists could not be got” [1, p. 20].

Getting the revised edition published was also a problem, as “Mytilene is a poor centre for Malay studies … where no compositor knows English, much less Malay” [1, p. 20]. Wilkinson found in Mr Salavopoulos a printer trained elsewhere and equal to his task [1, p. 20]. He realised that the dictionary had become an obsession — “I am doubtful whether this word-list is to be called diligence or obstinacy” — but was driven on by his continuing “heart-felt liking and a real admiration” for the Malays, to whom he dedicated the 1932 edition [1, p. 20].

Legacy and Documentation

Wilkinson’s death on 5 December 1941 at Izmir, just days before the Japanese invasion, attracted little notice in Britain [1, p. 21]. Winstedt wrote that “Hitler’s war made him a refugee from Mitylene … he died almost suddenly” [1, p. 21]. Shortly before his death, he made a will in haste, dated merely “September 1941”, a single sentence leaving all he had to his wife [1, p. 21]. His estate in England was valued at £1,886 [1, p. 21].

The principal source for Wilkinson’s life is J. M. Gullick’s comprehensive biographical study, “Richard James Wilkinson: a man of parts”, published in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2001 [1]. Gullick’s article draws on the Cambridge University Library manuscripts collection, the Skeat papers at the Institute of Social Anthropology, Oxford, Colonial Office records, and Federated Malay States and Straits Settlements government dispatches and annual reports [1]. It serves as a corrective to the relative neglect of Wilkinson’s administrative career in favour of his lexicographical reputation, and complements the work of R. Stevenson on education policy and J. S. Sidhu on bureaucratic structure [1].

Winstedt’s obituary, published in the Society’s journal in 1947, provides a brief personal tribute and confirms key biographical details, including the date of Wilkinson’s death and his regret at having been taken away from his Malay interests by the Sierra Leone governorship [2]. The Society’s journal also published Wilkinson’s own contributions during his lifetime, including his essay “Some Malay Studies” in 1932, which displays him at his best — erudite, witty, and always at home in the common and uncommon areas of Malay culture [1, p. 21]. His collaborative history of Perak with Winstedt, published in 1934, stands as a further testament to his scholarly range [1, p. 21].

Wilkinson’s Malay-English Dictionary remains definitive in the study of classical Malay, and the 1932 revised edition, completed under the most trying circumstances, stands as a monument to his determination and his “heart-felt liking” for the Malay language and people [1, p. 20].

MBRAS Sources

Bibliography

References

  1. J.M. Gullick (2001). Richard James Wilkinson: a man of parts JMBRAS 74(1): 19–42. Read on JSTOR
  2. R.O. Winstedt (1947). Richard James Wilkinson: Obituary JMBRAS 20(1): 143–144. Read on JSTOR