Article

The Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca, 1818–1843: its location and facilities

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

The Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca, 1818–1843: its location and facilities

Abstract

The Anglo-Chinese College was founded by British missionaries Robert Morrison and William Milne in the relatively well established Dutch/British colony of Malacca in 1818, and removed to the young British colony of Hong Kong in 1843. The first Protestant school in Asia, started by the first two Protestant missionaries to China, it produced a number of prominent ‘old boys’, both European and Chinese, and significant publications in Chinese and in English. Accordingly, it has generated considerable interest in academic and religious research, both in the West and in the East.

However, few of these studies have focused on the physical aspects of the institution, preferring to examine the personalities involved and the impact and influence of the school. Based on a study of relevant primary sources, this paper provides details about the original location of the College, gives a brief overview of the physical facilities on the school grounds, and examines the library collection of this early Western-style educational institution in Asia.

Summary

Paul Kua’s article addresses a persistent gap in the historiography of the Anglo-Chinese College (ACC), the first Protestant school in Asia, which has attracted considerable scholarly attention for its notable alumni and publications but has been largely neglected in terms of its physical infrastructure. The central problem Kua tackles is one of identification: the College’s Malacca site has been obscured by extensive land reclamation since the 1970s, and previous studies have offered vague or contradictory descriptions of its whereabouts. By triangulating contemporary missionary accounts, historical maps spanning the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British periods, and modern cartographic evidence, Kua resolves this ambiguity and pins the College to a specific location just outside the ancient Tranquerah Gate on the right bank of the Malacca River, facing the strait.

The second half of the article reconstructs the campus from two surviving engravings and written descriptions, revealing a walled compound with a two-storey main building, flanking rows of printing offices and residential quarters, a tropical garden, and a dispensary. The final section catalogues the library’s holdings, drawing on school reports, Milne’s literary reviews in The Indo-Chinese Gleaner, and donor lists to reconstruct a multilingual collection that, while modest by modern standards, was competitive with contemporary Western college libraries. Throughout, Kua relies heavily on primary sources — missionary correspondence, annual reports, personal memoirs, and period maps — to build a material picture of the institution that complements the well-trodden biographical and intellectual histories.

Key Findings

  • The College was situated approximately 300 feet west of the Tranquerah Gate (the northwestern gate of the old Portuguese/Dutch fort), on the right bank of the Malacca River, facing the strait along what is now Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock near its intersection with Jalan Kubu; the site is no longer seafront due to post-1970s land reclamation (pp. 71–74).
  • The main College building, completed by Milne in August 1820, measured 90 feet by 34 feet with a 16½-foot verandah, cost under 7,500 Spanish dollars, and was constructed of local Merbau wood with imported Chinese pavement tiles (p. 77).
  • The library held 2,850 volumes of Chinese books by 1823 and 1,575 non-Chinese volumes by 1835, totalling at least 4,425 volumes — a collection that compared favourably with American college libraries of the same period, such as Dickinson College (3,000 volumes, 1839) and the University of North Carolina (3,000 volumes, 1839) (pp. 80, 86).
  • The campus was sold at auction on 28 April 1843 to J. B. Westerhout, a Dutch merchant and assistant Resident of Malacca, for 2,120 Spanish dollars, following the LMS decision to relocate the College to Hong Kong (p. 74).
  • The site measured over 200 feet in width facing the coastal road and extended roughly half a mile (over 2,600 feet) northward to the riverbank, the rear portion being uncultivated swampy ground (p. 75).
  • Milne’s Dialogues between Two Friends (1819), published by the College press, was estimated by D. H. Bays to have reached several hundred thousand to perhaps two million copies in print by 1906, making it “probably the most frequently reprinted Chinese novel of any kind during the century” (p. 81).

Conclusion

Kua’s definitive contribution is the precise identification of the ACC’s former site in Malacca, which had been obscured by land reclamation and persistent confusion with the later Anglo-Chinese School (ACS, founded 1910). By combining primary missionary sources with historical cartography, he provides a fixable location that allows the physical environment of this pioneering institution to be understood in its urban and geographical context, and he frames this material reconstruction as a necessary complement to the biographical and intellectual scholarship that has dominated ACC studies.

Context

  • Primary archival collections: London Missionary Society (LMS) papers at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London; Arkib Negara Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur; Bodleian Library, Oxford.
  • Historiographical contribution: Fills a gap in ACC scholarship, which has focused on personnel and publications rather than material infrastructure; provides the first definitive identification of the College’s Malacca site using a multi-period cartographic approach.

References