Colonial Discourse in Perspective: The Malay Peninsula in John Crawfurd’s Ideas on Ethnology and World History

By Wilbert Wong Wei Wen

Introduction

Studying colonial writings, let alone understanding them, is a complex undertaking. Ideas were relative to the author and could change over time with global historical and intellectual developments. An author’s perception could also change with age, experience and exposure to new knowledge material. These features can be observed in the vast writings of Dr John Crawfurd (1783–1868), Singapore’s second Resident, who served with distinction from 1823 to 1826. Yet there is a tendency for scholars to generalise their findings after reading selections or passages of an author’s works. Examining only a fragment of an author’s writings will often yield the expected results – a partial picture of the author’s ideas.

Mary Quilty’s Textual Empires: A Reading of Early British Histories of Southeast Asia provides excellent coverage of the writings of key early 19th-century colonial writers on the Malay Peninsula, such as John Leyden (1775–1811), Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826), William Marsden (1754 –1836), John Anderson (1795–1845) as well as Crawfurd. She goes to great lengths to underscore the characteristics of their works and the intellectual influences that shaped their ideas and how their works influenced the findings of others.¹

Quilty’s analysis of Crawfurd’s writings, however, is limited to just three of his publications. Her conclusion might have been different had she read his other works. In total, Crawfurd wrote more than 70 books, periodicals and articles in the course of his life. Nonetheless, given that her research was published in 1998, Quilty might not have had the opportunity to access Crawfurd’s other writings, as she would have today thanks to digitisation. In spite of this, Gareth Knapman’s recent research on Crawfurd has shown that Crawfurd’s opinions are still misunderstood – Crawfurd’s writings were selected out of context and used to simplify 19th-century thought to the point of misrepresentation.²

This paper seeks to explore Crawfurd’s diverse intellectual works to determine how the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula fit into his ideas on ethnology and global views on history, and how he sought to apply these concepts to chart the region’s history. Discussions regarding the traditional homeland of the Malay Peninsula’s inhabitants, especially the Malays, are a regular feature of his writings, and he would tie his hypothesis regarding their origins to his ethnological view on the multiple origins of mankind. As would become clear in his later ethnological articles, he explains the history of the Malay Peninsula’s civilisational development in terms of his biological, geographical and cultural understanding of the progress of mankind.

This paper will also examine how his ideas about the region were developed. This offers us a glimpse of how British colonial discourse functioned, at least during the 19th century. Some of Crawfurd’s knowledge was drawn directly from his experiences and observations in the region, while others were obtained from secondary readings and correspondence with his network of scholars and sources in Europe and Asia. Although the Malay Peninsula during Crawfurd’s time was already home to multiracial communities, only his views on what he considered the natives of the region – the Malays and Aslian communities – will be covered in this study for reasons of scope. His ideas about the mixed-race communities of the Straits, however, will be touched on because of their connection with the local populace.

Among the 19th-century British scholar-administrators of the Malay Peninsula, Crawfurd was one of the most accomplished in the intellectual sphere. He was widely recognised by the scholarly community of his time for his formidable intellect and his works on Asia (especially Southeast Asia), as well as his contributions to the fields of ethnology and linguistics.³ The Spectator noted in 1834 that “Crawfurd [was] well-known by his writings on Eastern manners and statistics, and his exertions to open the British trade with China and India”.⁴ Sir Frank Swettenham (1850–1946), former governor of the Straits Settlements and commissioner for the Federated Malay States, found that of Raffles, Marsden and Crawfurd, the latter wrote about the Malay language with “probably the highest authority”.⁵

Crawfurd’s writings on Southeast Asia provided a wealth of information for those with an interest in the region, especially merchants, intellectuals and imperial civil servants (both aspiring and serving). They are still appreciated for the insights they provide into Southeast Asia’s past, however flawed they may be from today’s standpoint.⁶ In his intellectual pursuits, Crawfurd, like many of his contemporaries, sought to understand the interplay between mankind and its history. The inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula were often featured in his extensive writings on ethnology and (what would now be termed as) world history. Crawfurd would, furthermore, use his understanding of the Malay Peninsula’s inhabitants – racial features, languages, their place in the civilisation scale of mankind and how they got there, and communities that emerged out of interracial marriage – to support his scientific position on human nature and their history, as well as his views on polygenesis.

A Sketch of Crawfurd’s Life and Career

John Crawfurd was born on 13 August 1783, on the island of Islay in the west of Scotland.⁷ His father, Samuel Crawfurd, was a medical doctor from Ayrshire, known to be “a man of sense and prudence”, and his mother was Margaret née Campbell.⁸ Crawfurd was educated in a village school in Bowmore, Islay. In 1799, he enrolled in medical school in Edinburgh; medicine was a field for which, “he never had much taste, having been chosen for him”, according to his 1868 obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald.⁹ It later became evident that Crawfurd’s interests lay in languages, history, ethnology, natural sciences and political administration.

At the conclusion of his studies in 1803, he left for Calcutta, India, as an assistant surgeon in the East India Company’s Bengal medical service, being assigned to the army.¹⁰ In 1808, after five years of active service in the northwestern provinces of India, Crawfurd was appointed to the medical staff of Prince of Wales Island (present-day Penang), where he used his time to study the Malay language and its people.¹¹ In 1811, together with Thomas Stamford Raffles and John Leyden, Crawfurd was invited by Lord Minto (1751–1814, also known as Gilbert Elliot, then Governor-General of India) to accompany him on a military expedition against the Dutch in Java.¹²

This marked a major turning point in Crawfurd’s career; he would become, as the anthropologist Ter Ellingson would best describe him, “a doctorturned- colonial-diplomat”.¹³ He held various senior administrative posts during the British occupation of Java (1811–16) because of his command of the Malay language, eventually becoming Resident at the central court of the Sultan of Yogyakarta.¹⁴ Crawfurd studied both ancient Kawi and contemporary Javanese and befriended the Javanese aristocratic literati.¹⁵

Upon his return to Britain in 1817, he became a fellow of the Royal Society. The advantage of Crawfurd’s position and local connections in the Malay Peninsula and Java enabled him to acquire a number of local manuscripts.¹⁶ He would later compile the information he had gathered during his sojourn in Southeast Asia and publish his widely-acclaimed three-volume History of the Indian Archipelago in 1820.¹⁷ This seminal work, according to an article a few decades later in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, placed “him in the first rank of ethnographers”.¹⁸

In 1821, Crawfurd left England again for India; this time he was assigned to head a mission to Siam (present-day Thailand) and Cochin China (now Vietnam), with the chief objective of establishing trade. This mission did not succeed because of suspicions raised among local authorities, and he was unable to expand the East India Company’s commercial relations beyond the status quo.¹⁹ On 9 June 1823, Crawfurd succeeded William Farquhar (1774–1839) to become the second Resident of Singapore – Crawfurd had first visited the island in 1822 en route from India to Siam – and remained in office until 1826.²⁰ He continued to be active in the British East India Company after serving as Resident in Singapore, undertaking diplomatic assignments in Burma, before retiring from the Company in 1827.²¹

Crawfurd attempted to run for Parliament, but was unsuccessful in his election campaigns in Scotland and England.²² Although he had left the region for good, he continued to take a great interest in matters concerning the Far East until the end of his life, as evident in his continued publications on the region. He also became the first president of the London-based Straits Settlements Association on 31 January 1868.²³ Crawfurd passed away on the night of 11 May 1868, at his residence in Elvaston Place, South Kensington, London, at the age of 85, and was survived by his son and two daughters.²⁴

Crawfurd’s Studies and the Workings of British Imperial Knowledge

Crawfurd’s obituaries tell us that his literary fame continued to rise even after he ended his career in Asia, to the extent that it seemed to have outshone his civil service accomplishments in the Far East.²⁵ In spite of his unsuccessful attempts in getting elected into the House of Commons, Crawfurd continued making headlines in the scholarly world by producing notable publications such as A Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language (1852) and A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands & Adjacent Countries (1858), as well as through his journal contributions to the scholarly periodical of the Ethnological Society of London – which he led in 1861 as president.²⁶ As a leading ethnographer and expert on Southeast Asia, he was well known among prominent intellectuals of the time, and was counted among Charles Darwin’s circle of friends.²⁷

Crawfurd’s publications on the Far East were the result of his extensive journeys and voyages during his time in the region, where he amassed diverse materials on ethnology, natural history, local history, geography and geology.²⁸ Examining his major publications on Southeast Asia, such as History of the Indian Archipelago, Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language or A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands and Adjacent Countries, would allow one to grasp how he developed his knowledge about the region and, more importantly, the features of British imperial knowledge.

Much has been said since the publication of Edward Said’s remarkable 1978 work, Orientalism, which highlighted the issue of Euro-centrism in Western writings on the rest of the world and its literature as a means of justifying superiority over non-Western peoples (in other words, imperialism).²⁹ To accomplish these agenda, Said demonstrated how the East had been projected in a way that differentiated it from the West, hence making it the “other”.³⁰ As expected, the result was inaccurate, sensational and exaggerated portrayals of the East in Western discourse.

Orientalism, nevertheless, only reveals one aspect of imperial literature, and must not be taken as representative of all colonial writings about the outside world. They were more than just about creating tales to satisfy imperialistic agenda. Discussing British knowledge productions of India, Christopher Bayly underscored that they arose from natural curiosity and the desire to understand the world as it was, as well as from the simple aim of domination.³¹

We must move beyond the fashionable notion of “knowledge is power” and consider the diversity of knowledge. To be more comprehensive, attention should be given to the author’s intention or purpose of writing, and to examine whether the publication was intended as a fictional work, to advance scientific knowledge, to collect commercial data, for administrative purposes (such as population census and surveying reports), to serve as official information on the region (for instance, literature on travel, science, and history), or as a medium to support a policy.

The knowledge produced by Crawfurd belonged to the category of formal, or “factual”, information, where accuracy was of key concern. The reputation of his publications rested on how others measured the quality of information provided. Any inaccuracies or unfaithful representations would degrade the reputation of his work and scholars who produced these kinds of literature were well aware of that. Fictionalising foreign places and their inhabitants would not serve the interest of the author and his readers, whose primary concern was to obtain factual information on the region. Reviews would appraise these works for the quality of information they provided, as evidenced in a review of Crawfurd’s 1858 dictionary by the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia: “[It is] a ready source of accurate information of the most varied and substantial kind, conveyed in an agreeable, condensed and lucid style, the book is invaluable”.³²

Quilty has shown that scholars of the Malay world such as Crawfurd, Raffles and Marsden had the same desire for their works to educate the public and help expand their general knowledge of the world.³³ They were not interested in creating sensational stories about the Far East, and this was explicitly stated in Crawfurd’s positive remarks on Marsden’s History of Sumatra (1818): “He was the first literary and scientific Englishman who, with the advantages of local experience, treated of the Malayan countries; all our knowledge before him being confined to the crude narratives of mariners and voyagers”.³⁴

If misinformation was provided, it was also often done so unintentionally. Inaccuracy could stem from the inability to gain access to the desired information, and scholars often had to resort to other means of obtaining it, such as hearsay, the accounts of travelling merchants, explorers and travellers, and from studying literature about the region – both antiquated and recent. In many respects, these works are not very different in their approach from contemporary scholarly literature.

Reading Crawfurd’s publications on Southeast Asia would reveal that his main concern was the search for truths. This is not to say, however, that the knowledge produced by colonial scholars such as Crawfurd were free from misconceptions, as evidenced in the response by Indian nationalist, politician and scholar, Dadabhai Naoroji (1827–1917), towards Crawfurd’s article, “On the Physical and Mental Characteristics of the European and Asiatic Races of Man”.³⁵ Naoroji rebuked Crawfurd’s description of the supposed mental inferiority of Asians to Europeans, saying that this “superficial observation and imperfect information” was one that was typical of foreign travellers and writers.³⁶ Nonetheless, the fact that Naoroji’s criticism of his work was read to and published in the Ethnological Society of London’s periodical suggests that there was interest among its members to test the strength of Crawfurd’s hypothesis.

As a historian, Crawfurd would assess the quality of his information to determine its reliability, compare it to other available sources and discuss its contents.³⁷ Where the accuracy of the information was in question and he had no alternative sources, Crawfurd would caution his audiences to give the source the benefit of the doubt. In a footnote in History of the Indian Archipelago, for example, he warned his readers to take the account of the introduction of Islam into Macassar by the 17th-century French merchant and traveler, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, with a grain of salt, because he “generally found Tavernier a superficial and unfaithful narrator”.³⁸ Crawfurd would also admit his lack of knowledge in subjects he was unsure about, as shown in his 1866 ethnological paper on the physical and mental characteristics of the “Negro”: “Of the social condition of the small Negroes of the Malay Peninsula and the Philippine Islands we know too little to enable us to give any authentic details”.³⁹ In A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands and Adjacent Countries, he also acknowledged that his works might not be free from mistakes, which suggests that he was leaving room for others to improve on his findings, although he did not directly express this:

Some of the articles are meagre from want of materials, and others, without doubt, imperfect and unsatisfactory from defective knowledge or skill in the writer… it will, at all events, lay the foundation for a more perfect superstructure by those who may follow the Author in the same direction.⁴⁰

This shows that Orientalists such as Crawfurd were well aware that the information they had on the outside world was far from perfect, questioned its validity, and sought to improve and add new insights to its existing pool of knowledge.

Crawfurd was not an Orientalist who drew his conclusions about the Far East by merely theorising about the region from the comforts of his study. When writing about Southeast Asia and its inhabitants, he drew some of his ideas from personal observations, experiences and surveys conducted in the region, as well as from materials he collected there, such as indigenous manuscripts.⁴¹ His emphasis on history in his writings and in forwarding his arguments made him stand out as a historian, and he relied on both indigenous and European historical sources when writing about the inhabitants of Asia and other parts of the world.

On unfamiliar topics, Crawfurd would refer to the works of other scholars such as Marsden, Raffles, Anderson, Thomas John Newbold (1807–50) and James Richardson Logan (1819–69), as well as the writings and accounts of European adventurers and explorers to the region such as James Cook (1728–1779) and William Dampier (1651–1715) despite his dismissive comments (as mentioned earlier) about the crude narratives of some mariners.⁴² Some of his information was obtained directly from locals and from questioning local tradition and beliefs, essentially demonstrating that indigenous knowledge was a feature of imperial knowledge of the outside world and was not solely a Western construct.⁴³ In Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China (1828), for instance, Crawfurd revealed that he relied on his Malay interpreters in his travels to furnish him with local knowledge.⁴⁴

Crawfurd’s low opinion of indigenous historical sources has been singled out by scholars as an example of dismissive Western attitudes toward Eastern histories.⁴⁵ However, his concern was the search for reliable historical information on the region that he unfortunately found lacking in indigenous sources, and he had at least consulted and even cited them rather than side-lining them outright.⁴⁶ He dismissed them for the same reason he dismissed unreliable Western histories, not merely because they were indigenous histories.

The difficulty of finding reliable local historical texts was stressed by Crawfurd when writing about Malacca in his 1858 dictionary. He noted, “the native history of Malacca is as usual full of obscurity… There is too much reason to believe that the greater part of the story is a fabrication of comparative recent times, and indeed, there is sufficient internal evidence of its being so”.⁴⁷ Even today some scholars are of the opinion that Malay “historical” works, such as Sulalatus Salatin, or the Malay Annals, should be regarded as literature rather than a historical record. In the words of Malay scholar Muhammad Salleh Yaapar, “It does not have reliable dates, and its narrative lacks logic”.⁴⁸

Both his and Crawfurd’s words are strikingly similar. Crawfurd had also criticised Western sources that he found questionable and furthermore pointed out that the Malays’ ignorance of historical composition and lack of historical records should be expected from those who were in that “state of society”.⁴⁹ Even the British, Crawfurd reasoned, had to rely on Roman records for their early history.⁵⁰ Those who have criticised his low regard for Asian history seem to have missed out on this sentiment.

British imperial knowledge of foreign places has to be seen as a collection of individual ideas, because not everyone had the same understanding of the world. Crawfurd, for instance, would often contest views that he did not agree with, such as the commonly perceived notion of laziness among the inhabitants of the Indian Archipelago.⁵¹ In History of the Indian Archipelago, Crawfurd pointed out that laziness was not an innate characteristic of the natives, noting that their attitude was understandable because there was no encouragement to work hard and accumulate wealth in a society where there were no laws protecting private property.⁵²

As already suggested, Crawfurd’s ideas were not developed solely from his own personal reasoning, but also drawn from studying the works of others, just as the findings of researchers today are shaped by the study of scholarly literature and their own findings. Besides texts, Crawfurd also maintained his own global network of scholars and sources with whom he would exchange knowledge and information. He would, time and again, thank these individuals who had furnished him with details and offered feedback on his work. This can be observed in A Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language with a Preliminary Dissertation, where Crawfurd thanks his friend Marsden for his help by sending Crawfurd his dictionary; Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford Horace Hayman Wilson (1786–1860) for his assistance with Sanskrit etymologies; and Logan and his journal for the information they furnished on the region of his interest.⁵³

Such exchanges were another way Crawfurd addressed the gaps in his knowledge and developed his ideas. Tracing his networks of intellectual correspondence provides further insight into an aspect of how imperial knowledge was developed, where ideas, information and knowledge were drawn from different parts of the empire. Knowledge during Crawfurd’s time was global and imperial writers did not develop their ideas solely within the narrow confines of their own regions.

Discussing the framework in which imperial knowledge operated through Crawfurd’s example is useful in helping us understand how he developed his ideas about the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula. It was through a combination of his personal experiences and reasoning, observations, study of historical sources and the findings of others, as well as his engagement with scholars through his intellectual networks. His purpose of study was to ascertain the truth, not unlike the objective of contemporary scholarly pursuit.

The Malay Peninsula in Crawfurd’s Writings and Debates on Ethnology and World History

Mixed Races

As an active participant in the lively 19th-century scientific and philosophical debates on the nature of mankind, Crawfurd took advantage of his observations in Asia to roundly debunk the idea that offspring produced by the union or “commixture” of two different races would become sterile and incapable of producing healthy children themselves (like mules that are a hybrid between two opposite species of the same genus of lower animals).

In his article published in the journal of the Ethnological Society of London, “On the Supposed Infecundity of Human Hybrids or Crosses”, which was read in 1864 and published in 1865, Crawfurd highlighted the theory that “mongrels resulting from the union of two different races of the human family” were sterile. The idea, he noted, had “lately sprung up” and was beginning to obtain currency in France and America.⁵⁴ Crawfurd saw this theory as one that was “without a shadow of foundation”, as evidenced by the mixed-race communities in Asia, “which multiply just as fast as do the parent stocks from which they derived”.⁵⁵ He would have also drawn this conclusion from his observations of the mixed-race communities in the Malay Peninsula – as suggested in his other ethnological article, “On the Commixture of the Races of Man as affecting the Progress of Civilisation”.⁵⁶ Here, pointing to the Peranakan communities of the Malay Peninsula, Crawfurd wrote that:

The intercourse and settlement are still in progress, and out of it has sprung a cross-breed known, as in the colonising Arabs and Chinese, by the term Páranakan [sic], with the national designation of the father annexed, and literally signifying “offspring of the womb”, a word of the same import as the Moplay or Mopilla referred to.⁵⁷

In Malacca, which had been colonised by the Portuguese since 1511, he observed that a cross-race of Eurasians had sprung up, and they had “so much of Malay blood as to be hardly distinguishable from the Malays themselves”.⁵⁸ Crawfurd’s position on the children of mixed racial unions can be seen in this article – they would be an “intermediate” offspring, superior to the race of the “inferior” parent, but inferior to the race of the “superior” one.⁵⁹ When discussing the Peranakan communities of the Malay Peninsula, he pointed out that “these half-castes speak the language of the father as well as that of the mother, and are distinguished from the pure Malay by superior intelligence”.⁶⁰

In History of the Indian Archipelago, Crawfurd noted that Chinese who intermarried “with the natives of the country, generate a race inferior in energy and spirit” to the Chinese.⁶¹ Therefore, “the result of the union of a Chinese and a Malay – one of frequent occurrence – is a deterioration in the Chinese and an improvement in the Malay”.⁶² This was the reason why Crawfurd, in History of the Indian Archipelago, wrote positively about mixedracial unions in European colonies, especially between Europeans and the local populace, because he believed it would improve the social conditions of the indigenous society, just as the Turks in Europe, as he later wrote in 1865, had been greatly improved by intermixture with European blood.⁶³

Crawfurd, nevertheless, saw individuals of mixed races as a race unto their own, as observed in an 1861 article, “On the Classification of the Races of Man” for the Ethnological Society of London. He wrote, “Foreign invaders who mixed their blood largely with that of the original inhabitants, resulting in the production of a hybrid population originating in races distinct, yet nearly allied”.⁶⁴

Distinguishing the Races

In his scientific views, Crawfurd was a believer in polygenesis, a theory that supposes the multiple origins of mankind.⁶⁵ Men were thought to comprise different races, or species, that are spread across different geographical locations around the world.⁶⁶ He opposed Darwinism, because of its stand on the common origins of man, regarding the theory to be one without foundation and unbacked by historical or archaeological evidence.⁶⁷ Crawfurd also assumed that each race was of “equal antiquity”, and the reason behind their distribution across the globe, as with plants and animals, was a mystery “beyond the power of our comprehension”.⁶⁸

He distinguished each race according to their external physical appearances, such as the colour of the skin, hair and eyes; average height; hair texture and facial features.⁶⁹ But in spite of their differences, they all belonged to the same genus of Man, just like how different breeds of dogs, although having different physical features, are all of the same family.⁷⁰ Crawfurd was against using anatomy to distinguish the “species” of mankind, such as the classification of races according to the shape of the skull that was promoted by anatomist and naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) in the publication of De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa in 1795.⁷¹

Perhaps also drawing his conclusion from his knowledge of medicine, Crawfurd stressed that regardless of race, one would not be able to tell the difference between the skull of a “Hindu-Chinese” and a Malay.⁷² There is moreover, he argued, no definite form in the human skull.⁷³ Even the species of the same family of the lower animals, he stressed, “are often so alike, that it is impossible to distinguish them from each other by their skulls”.⁷⁴

This was why Crawfurd thought it best to catalogue the different races of mankind according to their outer physical features, and this was how he distinguished the inhabitants of the Indian Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula in his studies:

The physical form of the Malayan race of man… is of short stature… The face is lozenge-shaped, with a flat forehead, high cheek-bones, a prominent large mouth, and thin lips. The hair of the head is always black, coarse, lank, and abundant…. In this attempt to describe the physical characteristics of the Malayan race, I take no account of the form of the skull, because I am most satisfied that the most skilful craniologist would not be able to distinguish it from the skull of a Chinese, of a Tartar… of any other races of man having a low-bridged nose.⁷⁵

Crawfurd observed that the inhabitants of the Indian Archipelago consist of many different races, which he divided into three groups based on appearance: the brown-complexioned, straight-haired men, such as the Malays; men of dark complexion, with woolly hair, who Crawfurd termed “Oriental Negroes”, because their features were similar to “African Negroes”, although Crawfurd knew that they were not actually of the same race (as mentioned later); and men of brown complexion, with frizzled hair, like the inhabitants of Timur.⁷⁶

The people of the Malay Peninsula comprised the brown-complexioned Malay and the dark, woolly-haired, “Oriental Negroes”, also known locally as the Sámang (Semang) or Bila.⁷⁷ In History of the Indian Archipelago, Crawfurd noted that, besides their appearance, even the languages spoken by the Archipelago’s “Oriental Negroes” were distinct from the brown-coloured races of the Indian Archipelago, which would distinguish them as a separate race.⁷⁸

Crawfurd’s direct examination of the aboriginals of the Malay Peninsula, the Orang Asli, seemed to be limited to the three Semangs he saw in Penang and Singapore, and the Orang Laut.⁷⁹ This was because he had not ventured into the interiors of the Malay Peninsula and had to rely on the findings of other Orientalists, such as James Richardson Logan and John Turnbull Thomson (1821–84), when studying the other Aslian tribes.⁸⁰ Those that possessed Malay-like features – the Jakun, for instance – were deemed to belong to the Malay group, which Crawfurd labelled as “uncultivated Malays”.⁸¹ 81 The other two Malay classes were the “civilised Malays” and the “sea gypsies”, or Orang Laut.⁸²

Stages of Civilisation and Indicators of Cultural Progress

In his views on the global progress of mankind, Crawfurd regarded the Malays and Javanese to be the most civilised of the inhabitants of the Indian Archipelago.⁸³ In a manner that was consistent with the Scottish Enlightenment philosophy of measuring the progress of mankind, which was unsurprising considering his education in Edinburgh, he divided the cultures of the world into different stages of civilisation, ranging from refined to savage. He used cultural and material indicators to measure their level of progress, such as the development of language and numerals, advancement of their social order, development of the arts, tools used, weaponry, state of agriculture, technology and architecture.⁸⁴

The (civilised) Malays, Crawfurd observed, were more advanced than the “Oriental Negroes” of the Peninsula because they had learnt how to domesticate animals and cultivate plants, possessed the art of writing and use of numerals, and had knowledge of useful metals and how to work them.⁸⁵ The “Oriental Negroes” in contrast, who “wander[ed] the forests in quest of a precarious subsistence, without fixed habitation” had not developed letters and the use of numbers, and had achieved few or none of the aforementioned cultural markers.⁸⁶ There was also a connection between wearing less clothing and savagery.⁸⁷ The following entry in his 1858 dictionary nicely sums up his indicators of cultural progress:

The subsidiary or accessory causes which contributed to raise the indigenous civilisations to the point to which they had reached on the arrival of Europeans were, the possession of iron, of cereal corn, of the larger domesticated animals… Without the possession of iron no nation of the Malay or Philippine Archipelago has attained any respectable amount of civilisation. All of the nations that have possessed the art of phonetic writing, have also possessed a knowledge of this metal.⁸⁸

To Crawfurd, material and cultural measures were indications of the state of civilisation a race had attained. When it came to explaining how they got there, he would identify access to domesticated animals and cultivated plants, cross-cultural engagement with a superior race, geography and the intellectual capacity of a race as the underlying factors that determined racial progress.⁸⁹ For a culture to develop, he believed, it needed access to resources necessary for its growth, such as animals that could be domesticated and plants that could be cultivated.⁹⁰ Contact with a superior civilisation, whether through cross-cultural engagement or conquest, could also improve a race.⁹¹

Cultures that thrive, Crawfurd pointed out, are located in places that encourage development and have few geographical barriers, such as impassable forests or mountains, that would impede growth.⁹² Access to domesticated plants and animals and cross-cultural engagement are also directly tied to geography – isolated cultures could not be expected to benefit from cross-cultural contact and geographical barriers could prevent a culture from obtaining the resources it needed for advancement.⁹³ Crawfurd often referred to the Eskimos as a case in point, stating that they could not be expected to progress in the isolated and frozen lands they lived in, which had little by way of plants or animals that would help growth.⁹⁴ Crawfurd also made an interesting remark that the inhabitants of Britain would still be in a savage state, isolated in their lush forests, if the superior Romans – who introduced letters and numerals to the savage and barbaric tribes of Europe – had not undertaken their conquest.⁹⁵

But Crawfurd questioned why some races advanced more than others, in spite of having the same civilisational advantages.⁹⁶ Europe, for instance, seemed to be progressing at a faster pace and had now surpassed countries that were once more advanced than them, such as China.⁹⁷ He reasoned that it was because each race had a different intellectual capacity, or in Crawfurd’s words, “the quality of the race”.⁹⁸ Europeans, of course, had the highest mental aptitude, which explained their rapid advancement through history and dominance during Crawfurd’s time.⁹⁹ To sum up his views on the development of mankind, racial advancement was, therefore, a function of geographical, cultural and biological factors.

Crawfurd would then apply his ideas about the progress of mankind to explain the history of the Malay Peninsula’s inhabitants, framing it within a global context. The “Oriental Negroes” were on a lower scale of civilisation because of their isolation in the dense forests and mountains of the interior.¹⁰⁰ The Malays had attained a certain degree of advancement from their superior Sumatran homeland before migrating to the more geographically hostile Malay Peninsula that was shrouded in dense forest, “a serious and almost insuperable obstacle to the early progress of civilisation”..¹⁰¹

Crawfurd saw that the Malays’ civilisation was improved by their contact with Hinduism and, later, Islam, from where they obtained their letters, culture and some of their numerals..¹⁰² Only the most advanced nations of the Archipelago had converted to Islam, while “the more savage tribes” remain unconverted up to the present day..¹⁰³ He even hinted in his paper, “On the Physical and Mental Characteristics of the Negro”, that the “Oriental Negroes” of the Peninsula would be improved if they embraced Islam..¹⁰⁴ While Crawfurd thought that Islam was on the whole beneficial to the Malays, Raffles, on the contrary, thought that it degraded them..¹⁰⁵

Climate as a Factor of Mankind’s Biological and Social Characteristics

The scientific and medical belief in climate as a major determinant of the biological and social characteristics of mankind was popular during Crawfurd’s time, which also influenced how global history was conceptualised.¹⁰⁶ The physical traits of the world’s various ethnicities were explained by the climates of their native lands. In European scientific circles, it was commonly assumed that Europeans have fairer complexions because of their confinement to the cold climate of their traditional homelands, whereas those who inhabit warmer climes have darker features. It was also widely believed that Europeans would degenerate both physically and characteristically if they moved beyond the cold confines of their homelands to warmer ones, as can be seen in Thomson’s view of history; he, like Crawfurd, was also a British civil servant who served in the Malay Peninsula:

Thus, the Macedonians degenerated on the plains of Babylonia, as the British at the present day on the plains of Hindostani; the New Englanders on the plain of Mississippi; the Portuguese in the Valley of Amazon… the power thus gathered in the middle latitudes is dissipated in the tropics. The power of education is paralysed by the weakening influences of climate. The natural energy is absorbed by contact with the enervating influences of the opposite zone.¹⁰⁷

Thomson’s comment mirrored the opinion of many European writers, who considered climate to be a cause of the decline of Western empires, after expanding beyond the cold boundaries of their natural abodes.¹⁰⁸ Hot weather was also used to explain the immoral practices and laxity of Europeans living in their tropical colonies, and the term “going native” was commonly applied to those whose behaviours were seen to have strayed from the European ideal..¹⁰⁹ Warmer climates were, therefore, unsuitable places for Europeans to live, some believing that it would lead to the loss of attributes that distinguished their “imperial race”.¹¹⁰

Crawfurd, however, had a different view, one that was confirmed by his experiences living in Southeast Asia. Using his experience in Singapore as an example (and probably also from his medical assessment), he found that there was no reason to believe that the tropical climate was less healthy than other parts of the world.¹¹¹ In History of the Indian Archipelago, he further highlighted his observation that Europeans were able to adapt to the climate of tropical countries and the idea that they degenerated due to the climate “of the black or copper-coloured races, [was] no better than a prejudice”.¹¹²

To him, using climate or sun intensity of a region to identify the physical makeup of a race made no sense due to the existence of inhabitants in colder climates who do not share the same features as the Europeans, such as the Eskimos, who are as dark as the equatorial Malays.¹¹³ The Malays are still fairer than the inhabitants of India who live under similar geographical conditions as southerners of Europe, and “the Laplanders are much darker than the Norwegians, although much nearer to the Pole, with less sun”.¹¹⁴

Crawfurd pointed to his observations of the interesting racial composition of the Malay Peninsula, where the dark Semang in the cooler mountains and the lighter complexioned Malays in the hot plains could be found, to further demonstrate the impracticability of connecting human features with temperature.¹¹⁵ Climate, therefore, had no influence over determining the colour of the different races, and he reasoned that these erroneous observations arose out of inadequate experience.¹¹⁶

The explanation for the variety of skin colour present in the different races of mankind was, according to Crawfurd, beyond human comprehension, just as one cannot explain the different colours found in the same species of fox.¹¹⁷ Hence, skin colour of the different races would seem to be a character that was imprinted on humanity from the beginning.¹¹⁸ Crawfurd also questioned the use of skin colour as a means of measuring racial superiority, noting that the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent were darker than the Malays, yet the former were more advanced than the latter.¹¹⁹ One striking feature of these discussions was Crawfurd’s attack on European subjectivity:

The notion that a fair complexion is the offspring of a cold, and a dark one of a warm climate, is entirely European. Such a fancy could not possibly have originated with any other race of man. The superiority which the White man has always shown, perhaps justifies us in considering a fair complexion the most favourable.¹²⁰

Crawfurd’s arguments about skin colour bearing no connection to climate were related to his broader polygenetic views on ethnology and history. He believed that, with reasons only known to the Creator, the diverse human races sprang up independently in different parts of the globe, each with their own features and languages, just as various species of the same genus of plants and animals are found across various locations around the world.¹²¹ One of Crawfurd’s attacks on studies that promoted the idea of shared human origin, such as Darwin’s, was that it had not identified the location of that origin.¹²² He called British physician and ethnologist James Cowles Prichard’s (1786–1848) theory that the first man and woman were “black” nothing but a “figment of his own brain”.¹²³ Although there is no indication in his writings to suggest that he was an atheist, Crawfurd’s stand on multiple human origins was also in conflict with the Biblical stance on common human origin.¹²⁴

Language and Mankind’s Origins

In his paper reviewing Sir Charles Lyell’s (1797–1875) Antiquity of Man that was read to the Ethnological Society of London in 1863, he pointed out that Lyell’s theory of the unity of the human race was influenced by Darwin’s hypothesis of the transmutation of species. Calling it a “monstrous fiction”, Crawfurd remarked that he could not bring himself to agree with the theory because it did not account for human diversity, physical and mental, as seen in the Malays, Chinese, Polynesians, Europeans and so forth.¹²⁵ Africans and Europeans, he added, have been planted in almost every climate of the world “for three hundred years” and have remained unchanged, unless through intermixture.¹²⁶ There was, furthermore, no historical or archaeological evidence to support the hypothesis, and he highlighted that “the Ethiopian represented on Egyptian paintings four thousand years old is exactly the Ethiopian of the present day”.¹²⁷

Another reason for his opposition to Lyell’s idea on human history was also because of his adoption of German philologist Max Müller’s (1823–1900) Aryan theory of language to further support his view on the unity of the human races.¹²⁸ Müller, whom Crawfurd lauded as “a gentleman of great learning” whose imagination was “at least equal to his learning”, argued that the languages of Europe could be traced to Central Asia and, therefore, must have been brought to Europe through distant migration or conquest.¹²⁹ This would suggest that Europeans could trace their ancestry to Central Asia as well as India and Western Asia, where traces of the Aryan language can be found and was alleged to have spread.¹³⁰

Using history as a case in point, Crawfurd questioned how mankind in its savage state of antiquity could undertake such a remarkable feat of diaspora, pointing out that they must have first acquired a considerable measure of civilisation before accomplishing such a task.¹³¹ Europeans had only attained the means of undertaking the discovery of one half of the world only 400 years prior, and it was absurd to think that the same enterprise was expected to have been accomplished on a massive scale by “rude and savage men” from a single point of the earth’s surface thousands of years earlier.¹³²

Even the Romans and Greeks during the classical age, with their civilisation, were not capable of achieving such a grand feat of diaspora.¹³³ Crawfurd noted that, in spite of this, some writers still argued that “helpless savages, then, without a stock of food, and without flocks or herds, are represented as crossing broad seas, or marching over mountains of ice and snow”.¹³⁴ That said, one can see why he saw the multiple origins of mankind as the more sensible explanation to their wide geographical spread around the world.

Crawfurd was against the use of language, as was done by Müller, to trace common ancestry because it was unreliable and because the concept did not conform to his polygenetic view. Mankind emerged simultaneously at different points around the world, speaking a diverse set of languages that were specific to the locality from which they had sprung. But as societies advanced, their languages evolved into common combined tongues and were reduced over time through conquests and cross-cultural engagements such as commerce and religion.¹³⁵

Crawfurd explained that this was why more languages can be found spoken by people in “savage” and isolated regions such as Borneo, and fewer in more advanced societies such as Britain.¹³⁶ Some would simply abandon their native tongue and adopt a more practical one, not unlike contemporary times, which was another problem he identified with using language to trace racial origin: “If, then, language were a test of race, we should be tracing some of the Negros settled in America, first to England and then to Germany and Italy, and others… to Spain”.¹³⁷ But there were exceptions to the rule and language could, at times, be employed to tell the history of a race, and Crawfurd would argue that the African and “Oriental Negroes” were not related because, aside from their different features, there was no connection between their languages, and the same would apply between the latter and the Malays.¹³⁸

Polygenesis as a Framework for Understanding the History of the Malay Peninsula

Polygenesis can be observed in the way Crawfurd conceptualised the history of the Malay Peninsula. The Malays, he theorised, were one of five independent civilisations to have sprung up from the well-watered volcanic portion of Sumatra. This was a geographically ideal location for them to attain a level of civilisation advancement to effect migration to other parts of the Indian Archipelago, such as Borneo, northern Sumatra, and most notably the Malay Peninsula – where they were now found settled on the coasts.¹³⁹ Thus, they arrived in the region in a comparatively civilised state in the 12th and 13th centuries, and continued to the present-day to emigrate from Sumatra.¹⁴⁰ The other brown-complexioned “Malay” Aslian tribes such as the Jakuns, were also migrants from Sumatra, but the darker “Oriental Negro” tribes, he believed, were in the Malay Peninsula before them.¹⁴¹

Crawfurd noted in Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language that unlike others, such as Marsden, Raffles and Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), he did not believe that the languages of the Indian Archipelago, such as the Malay language, were derived from one source as was generally thought. In his later A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands, he noted that the Indian Archipelago is home to innumerable languages.¹⁴²

Traces of the Malay language, however, can be found in some parts of the Indian Archipelago, such as the Philippines, but the origin of the Malay language is obscure.¹⁴³ Although he mentioned in Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language that his different conclusion was due to his advantage of being favoured with ampler materials than his predecessors, it was also because this concept of shared language origin, which suggested that the inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago were “one of the same race”, did not conform to his idea of polygenesis.¹⁴⁴ Crawfurd, citing lack of evidence, had not always agreed with Marsden that Minangkabau was the homeland of the Malays, but he eventually surrendered to this view, although he continually reminded his readers that it was only a reasonable hypothesis, as there was yet to be solid proof to confirm this.¹⁴⁵

Returning to Quilty’s Textual Empires, if she had included Crawfurd’s later works in her analysis, she would have seen his ideas about race and language as more than simply a Malthusian or proto-Social Darwinist view of “a fight for survival between languages” – where the language of the weaker group is displaced by the dominant.¹⁴⁶ He would have cringed at the notion of being identified with Darwinism. She would also have observed that Crawfurd’s idea about the Southeast Asian peasant as a potential proto-capitalist who could be improved by being in close proximity to the European presence was part of his broader view that less advanced societies would benefit from contact with a more advanced one, and it did not have to be the West.¹⁴⁷

Although it is true that Crawfurd stated in History of the Indian Archipelago that civilisation of the Asiatic nations may be fairly traced to the European race, he had a different view in his later publications, acknowledging that some Asian nations were once ahead of the West.¹⁴⁸ If one applies Crawfurd’s later conception of ethnology to practice, an advanced non- European nation could have brought civilisation to the savage western and northern Europeans of antiquity by way of cross-cultural engagement, if they had been within closer proximity to them than the Romans or Greeks.

People change their minds, and this is a key point for scholars who are dealing with intellectual history on a broad scale to note. As Knapman has demonstrated, the misinterpretation of Crawfurd’s work is a warning not to simplify 19th-century thought.¹⁴⁹

Conclusion

The Malay Peninsula’s Place in Crawfurd’s Conception of Ethnology and World History

The Malay Peninsula and its inhabitants played an imperative role in Crawfurd’s vast literature and in shaping his views on ethnology and world history, as with other colonial individuals who travelled to and lived in the region. They also featured regularly in his scientific arguments on ethnology. This important connection was admitted by Crawfurd when he noted in his 1861 ethnological article that the Malay Archipelago, where he spent 12 years of his life, had been the subject of his attention, and he would emphasise his authority over his subjects and in his arguments on ethnology, history and languages by pointing to his experiences in the Malay Peninsula and its surrounding islands.¹⁵⁰

He used his observations of the Peranakan communities, for example, to support his position on the offspring of mixed-racial unions and dismiss the notion that they would be sterile, and to stress that a union between a superior and inferior race would produce an intermediate offspring inferior to the latter and superior to the former. His belief that the climate had no forbearance in shaping the physical appearance of mankind and that hot climates were not harmful to Europeans were drawn from his own experience living in Southeast Asia. He contested the common perception of laziness that European observers had ascribed to the inhabitants of the region, stressing that there was no encouragement for hard work in a society where laws protecting wealth were absent. By comparing the Malays to the darker but more advanced inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent, he argued that skin colour could not be used as a benchmark of racial superiority. It is likely that his perceptions would have been different had he never visited the region.

Crawfurd applied his ethnological and scientific theories to his understanding of the Malay Peninsula’s history, and connected its inhabitants to the rest of mankind to form and advance his ideas on the history of human origins and progress. The races of the Malay Peninsula, the Malay and the “Oriental Negro”, were distinguished by their physical features in the same manner as he would differentiate the different races of mankind worldwide. The Peranakan and other mixed-race communities in the region were a race of their own.

Racial progress was determined by a combination of biological, geographical and cultural factors. The Malays were considered more advanced than the “Oriental Negro” tribes of the Malay Peninsula because their fertile homeland of Minangkabau, Sumatra, provided their civilisation with the means to thrive to the extent that it enabled them to expand out of their homeland to form settlements in other parts of the Indian Archipelago such as the Malay Peninsula.

The Malays’ contact with Hinduism and later Islam further improved them, giving them the knowledge of letters. The savage state of the “Oriental Negroes” was due to their isolation in the interiors of the Malay Peninsula, with lush forests and mountain ranges acting as barriers to cultural development. With their isolation from the rest of mankind they could not benefit from contact with a superior society, unlike the Malays. On the other hand, Crawfurd did not expect the Malays to progress at the same rate as the Indians, Chinese and, of course, the West, despite having the same geographical and cultural advantages for civilisational advancement, because of what he believed to be their lower intellectual capabilities.

Crawfurd’s conception of the history of the Malay Peninsula fit his polygenetic interpretation of human history. Mankind emerged at the same time in different parts of the world and Sumatra was the seat of the Malays. From there, they obtained the civilisational means that allowed them to establish themselves in the Malay Peninsula. The “Oriental Negroes” were already in the Malay Peninsula before the Malays, and hence, there must have been a race that had sprung up in that region. They not only differed from the Malays in physical appearance, but also spoke a language that was wholly different.

Polygenesis also played a role in Crawfurd’s later opposition to the common belief that the Malay language and others spoken in the Archipelago were from a common source. Indeed, it was not compatible with his polygenetic belief that the different races of mankind sprang up in their localities around the globe with their own languages.

It is clear that Crawfurd was no petty intellectual figure of the 19th century. As his works were highly regarded and highly read, he would have influenced how others saw the Malay Peninsula and its place in the world. From a broader perspective, Crawfurd’s writings are an example of how the Malay Peninsula and its populace were featured in British literature, and how such writings shaped imperial scientific and historical debates on mankind. They also demonstrate the importance of cross-cultural encounters in shaping Western ideas and understanding the world.

This study has, nevertheless, become more than just an examination of Crawfurd’s ideas about the Malay Peninsula, its inhabitants and their place in his global views. Crawfurd’s knowledge of the region and the rest of the Archipelago was not drawn from his personal observations and experiences alone, but also from studying the findings of his contemporaries and other secondary literature, particularly in areas where his knowledge was inadequate. He studied both indigenous and Western historical accounts and records, as well as corresponded with individuals in his intellectual network from Europe and Asia where information was exchanged and obtained.

We must also not forget that some of his knowledge was taken directly from indigenous sources. Although he was critical about the quality of the Malays’ historical sources, as with other nations in the Archipelago, he still included them in his works, and noted that such inadequacies were expected in societies at that level of civilisation. Understanding how Crawfurd gathered his knowledge about the Malay Peninsula and treated his information is not only crucial in providing us with a closer look at how his ideas about the region and its inhabitants were conceptualised, but also how Western imperial knowledge of the outside world, a vast global information network, operated during his time.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank his subject reviewer, Associate Professor Syed Muhammad Khairudin Aljunied of the Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore; Dr Austin Gee of the University of Otago; and Dr Gareth Knapman of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, Australian National University, for their feedback on this paper. The author is also grateful for the assistance provided by Gracie Lee, Senior Librarian at the National Library, Singapore, in this research. The outcome of this paper, however, is not the responsibility of these individuals, but the author’s.

About the Author
Wilbert Wong Wei Wen is a PhD student at the Australian National University. His PhD research engages with British colonial knowledge of the Malay Peninsula, with emphasis on the writings of prominent 20th-century British orientalist, Sir Richard Olaf Winstedt, and his contributions to the historical understanding of the region during the colonial and post-colonial period. Wilbert’s research interests lie in areas such as world history, Asian history (East and Southeast Asia), British discourse on Asia and intellectual history, as well as the history of globalisation and cross-cultural encounters.