Tunku Kudin in Selangor 1868–1878
J.M. Gullick’s 1986 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society examines the decade (1868–1878) during which Tunku Kudin (Dhiauddin) of Kedah held delegated authority in Selangor as “Viceroy” under Sultan Abdul Samad. The overarching thesis is that Kudin was an influential but never dominant figure who shared power with his opponents in the civil war, the Chinese miners, the Pahang Malays, and finally British administrators, and who in the end recognised there was no place for him and returned to Kedah.
Summary
Gullick frames the article as a character study of Kudin within the broader transformation of the Malay aristocratic class under pressure from European influence. Some rulers, notably in Kedah and Johor, adapted to European externals—Kudin habitually wore European clothes and drank alcohol—while others in Selangor and Terengganu doubled down on traditional habits. Kudin, like his brother the Sultan of Kedah, stood “with a foot in two different worlds” and was never secure in either, yet this very ambivalence made him a useful interpreter between cultures for British officials who needed a cooperative local partner (pp. 5–6).
The article reconstructs the complex political situation Kudin entered: Sultan Abdul Samad, a semi-usurper on the throne since 1857, was in need of help against Raja Mahdi, who had seized Klang by force in 1867 and refused to pay $500 per month from Klang revenues to the royal exchequer. The Sultan’s letter of 26 June 1868 granting Kudin authority is shown to be deliberately ambiguous—Gullick argues it did not constitute a constitutional delegation of sovereignty, since executive authority had already been devolved to district chiefs, and the Sultan could not give again what he had already parted with. Kudin exploited this vagueness to secure European recognition as “Viceroy,” a title that was in fact the invention of C.J. Irving during the July 1871 negotiations at Kuala Langat (pp. 6–11, 21–23).
The narrative then follows Kudin’s military and political career through the siege of Klang (1869–1870), the loss of Kuala Lumpur to Mahdi’s forces in August 1872, and the eventual recovery through Pahang levies in 1873. Gullick draws heavily on two Malay eyewitness accounts—Wan Mohamed Amin’s history of the siege and Penghulu Hamzah’s testimony recorded by Pasqual—to reconstruct the military details, including Mahdi’s floating cannon rafts and the improvised artillery that turned the tide. The article also examines Kudin’s financial ruin, his strained marriage to Raja Arfah, and his growing irrelevance after the imposition of British Residents in 1874–75, culminating in his departure in mid-1878 on a pension of $500 per month (pp. 12–36).
Key Findings
- The Sultan’s letter of 26 June 1868, the basis of Kudin’s authority, is ambiguous in its terms; the word “Viceroy” (Wakil Yam Tuan) was coined by C.J. Irving on the spot in July 1871 to avoid “troublesome territorial and constitutional questions” (pp. 10–11, 22–23).
- Kudin raised a force of 500 men in Kedah in 1869, transported by the chartered steamer Rembau and 72 praus and junks; his mother advanced him $60,000 towards his war chest (pp. 11–12).
- Klang fell to Kudin’s forces in March 1870; the decisive stroke was made by his French military aide De Fontaine, who loaded 18-pound carronades onto sampans and dragged them up slopes overlooking Mahdi’s fort (pp. 13, 16).
- Total war debts taken over by the Selangor government were of the order of $300,000–$400,000; Kudin was issued $30,000 in government bonds to cover his personal wartime expenditure, and his largest single creditor was Lim Tek Hee of Malacca at $105,118 (pp. 32–33, 35).
- The Davidson mining concession of 8 March 1873, granting exclusive rights over a large part of Selangor, was the factor that precipitated Colonial Office consideration of a Resident for Selangor; the project was killed when Clarke insisted the rights must be non-exclusive (pp. 28–29).
- Kudin’s post-war revenue at Klang amounted to perhaps $10,000 per month—about half the wartime peak—and he was given a fixed allowance of $1,000 per month (of which $700 represented surrendered Klang revenues) when Davidson took control of state revenues in 1875 (pp. 32–33).
Conclusion
Gullick’s definitive takeaway is that Kudin’s fundamental weakness was structural: as a Kedah interloper in a state where the Sultan’s sons, the Bugis chiefs, and the Sumatran miners all regarded him with suspicion, he could never consolidate a base of independent power. His European habits alienated him from the traditional Malay world, while his dependence on British goodwill made him vulnerable to shifts in colonial policy. Once the Residents arrived and the Sultan could be approached directly, Kudin’s intermediary role became redundant, and his “natural good-natured indolence” (Blomfield’s phrase) meant he could not adapt to the quieter, administrative demands of peacetime governance.
Context
- Primary sources include Straits Settlements Despatches (SSD), Colonial Office papers (CO 273, CO 882), Braddell’s report on the February 1874 negotiations, Swettenham’s Malayan Journals (1874–76), the Bloomfield Douglas diary, Ibrahim Munshi’s account of Klang (1872), and oral testimony recorded by J.C. Pasqual from veterans of the siege of Klang.
- The article’s historiographical contribution lies in its re-examination of the origin of the “Viceroy” title (showing it to be Irving’s ad hoc invention rather than a genuine Malay constitutional concept), its use of Malay eyewitness accounts to reconstruct military details of the siege, and its character-study approach that situates Kudin within the broader cultural transformation of the Malay aristocracy.