Notes on a tour through the Siamese states on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, 1900
C.W.S. Kynnersley, British Consul at Penang, published this consular travelogue in 1901 describing his December 1900 tour of the Siamese vassal states on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula—Kedah, Trang, Tongkah (Puket), Pung-a, and the Langkawi islands. The account documents the state of local administration, infrastructure, and economic development under Siamese suzerainty, and its central argument is that these states remain chronically underdeveloped because Bangkok treats them as revenue sources rather than provinces to be cultivated, extracting sixty per cent of their income while failing to invest in roads, telegraph, or other public works.
Summary
Kynnersley’s tour was undertaken in his official capacity as Consul, and the narrative is structured as a day-by-day log of visits to each state’s seat of government, interspersed with consular business (registering British subjects, hearing petitions, inspecting gaols). The underlying concern is administrative: how effectively are these states governed, and what is the material condition of their infrastructure? At Kedah, Kynnersley found a Malay government that had voluntarily modelled its offices on British colonial lines—complete with a Treasury, Land and Survey department, Courts of Law, and an Auditor-General—though the latter proved to be a sinecure with no papers in its office. The Sultan was in very feeble health, and the Raja Muda effectively conducted business.
At Trang, the picture was more mixed. Governor Khaw Sim Bee, a Penang-born Chinese man and British subject, was described as an admirable administrator who had suppressed secret societies, abolished gambling farms, and introduced the Burmese village headman system under which crime had “practically disappeared.” Yet the telegraph line ordered from Bangkok fifteen years earlier still lay unstrung at Trang, and the 60 per cent revenue drain to the capital meant that projected public works were never carried out. At Tongkah (Puket), the contrast between ambition and execution was starkest: a new road was blocked by an unbridged stream because the timber from Penang had been destroyed by fire, the harbour had silted up, and the Post Office was a “tumble down building” blamed on the late Governor. The sea-level tin mines, worked by two or three thousand Hokkien Chinese, were reported to have lost $50,000 in the year.
The concluding remarks sharpen the argument. Kynnersley explicitly endorses Mr. Maxwell’s 1889 observation that the Siamese Government neither makes nor maintains roads, and that these states are regarded in Bangkok as “mere sources of revenue to be spent at the capital.” He contrasts the situation with what might be achieved under a government like the Federated Malay States, arguing that with mineral wealth and fertile soil the population and trade would expand rapidly if revenue were spent locally. The piece closes with a note on the health of the states, the appointment (or non-appointment) of a Medical Officer at Tongkah, and the Sultan of Kedah’s reluctance to authorise a railway extension from Bukit Mertajam to Kulim due to his failing health.
Key Findings
- Sixty per cent of the revenue of each Western Siamese State was remitted to Bangkok through the Siamese Consul-General in Penang, a drain Kynnersley identifies as the principal cause of underinvestment in public works (p. 53).
- Trang produced 25,000 pikuls of pepper annually valued at $28 per pikul; Pung-a produced 100 pikuls of tobacco valued at $5,000 and 5,000 pikuls of tin brought down by elephants carrying only four or five slabs each (pp. 53, 59).
- The sea-level tin mines at Tongkah employed two or three thousand Hokkien Chinese, had an average yield of 12 pikuls per day, and were reported to have incurred a loss of $50,000 in the current year (p. 56).
- A telegraph line between Trang and Ghirbi had been ordered from Bangkok approximately fifteen years before the tour; the wire was still lying unstrung at Trang at the time of Kynnersley’s visit (p. 52).
- The Burmese village headman system, introduced in the Western States, required ten houses to elect a headman and a group of ten villages to elect a representative headman; all movements of persons between villages had to be reported, and the Governor of Trang reported that crime had “practically disappeared” since its introduction (p. 53).
- Capital punishment was not inflicted in these States; those convicted of capital offences were sent to Bangkok for execution (p. 64).
Conclusion
Kynnersley’s definitive historical takeaway is that the Siamese Western States possess considerable natural wealth—tin, pepper, timber, fertile soil—but remain economically stagnant because Bangkok’s fiscal extraction and administrative neglect prevent the capital investment necessary for development. He frames this as a structural failure of the Siamese central government’s relationship with its peripheral provinces, implicitly contrasting it with the more developmental approach of the British-administered Federated Malay States.
Context
- This is a primary consular dispatch written by the sitting British Consul at Penang in his official capacity; the account reflects the administrative concerns and diplomatic framing of a colonial officer reporting on neighbouring Siamese territory.
- The article draws on no archival collections beyond Kynnersley’s own observations and conversations with local officials during the December 1900 tour. Its historiographical value lies in providing a contemporaneous, ground-level snapshot of Siamese provincial administration at the height of the Chulalongkorn reforms, and in corroborating or contradicting earlier accounts such as Mr. Maxwell’s 1889 observations.