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Sir Hugh Charles Clifford

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Sir Hugh Charles Clifford

Sir Hugh Charles Clifford (1866–1941) was a British colonial administrator who served in the Malay States from 1883 to 1903, held governorships in Trinidad, Ceylon, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria, and returned to Malaya as Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Malay States from 1927 to 1929. [1, p. 89] [2, p. 54] He was created C.M.G. in 1900, KCMG in 1909, GCMG in 1921, and GBE in 1925. [1, p. 89, n. 2] Beyond his administrative career, Clifford was a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction on Malayan subjects, and his literary output has been the subject of sustained scholarly attention as a source for understanding the period when traditional Malay society encountered British colonialism and accelerating Chinese immigration. [3, p. 53] [4, p. 107]

Early Career and the Pahang Mission

Hugh Clifford was born on 5 March 1866, the eldest son and sixth child of Lieutenant Colonel (the Honourable) Henry Clifford, a distinguished soldier who had won the Victoria Cross in the Crimean War, and Josephine Clifford, the posthumous daughter of Joseph Anstice, the first Professor of Classics at King’s College, London. [1, p. 89] The family was Roman Catholic, and the ancestral seat at Ugbrooke Park in Devon provided Clifford with a model of social organisation that he would later measure against the conditions he encountered in the tropics. [1, p. 90] His father died of abdominal cancer on 12 April 1883, and it was his cousin, Sir Frederick Weld, then Governor of the Straits Settlements, who offered the seventeen-year-old Clifford a cadetship in the Malay States, diverting him from a planned military career. [1, pp. 90–91]

Clifford sailed from Tilbury in August 1883 and joined the Singapore Secretariat on 21 September of that year. [1, p. 91] He was sent to Perak as secretary to the Resident, Hugh Low, and in March 1885, having passed the required standard of proficiency in Malay, was appointed collector of land revenue at Kuala Kangsar. [1, p. 91]

The defining event of Clifford’s early career was the 1887 mission to Pahang. Sir Frederick Weld, who had failed on two previous occasions to secure a treaty arrangement with the Bendahara (chief minister and de facto ruler) of Pahang, despatched Clifford on what he described as “a special mission of some delicacy and difficulty.” [1, p. 91] Accompanied by Wan Mansur, the Bendahara’s disaffected younger brother, Clifford left Singapore in January 1887 and reached Pekan on 18 March. [1, p. 92] Three manuscript letters written during the expedition, preserved in the Clifford Papers, reveal the tensions between European and Chinese miners in Ulu (upstream) Pahang, the disputes among Malay chiefs, and Clifford’s cautious optimism about the mission’s prospects. [1, pp. 92] His patience was rewarded when on 10 April the Bendahara gave him the desired letter requesting a treaty arrangement. [1, p. 92] The treaty itself was not signed until late September 1887, largely through the mediation of the Sultan of Johore, and it provided for British control of Pahang’s external affairs together with the appointment of a British Agent at Pekan. [1, pp. 92–93]

Administrative Service and the North Borneo Dispute

Following the treaty, Clifford served as British Agent at Pekan, but the limited powers of that position frustrated his attempts to establish the system of control that existed in Perak or Selangor. [1, p. 93] Sir Cecil Clementi Smith, Weld’s successor as Governor, decided to abandon the gradual approach and establish the Residential System immediately. By late August 1888, Clementi Smith had compelled the Sultan to agree to the appointment of a British Resident with powers similar to those in the west coast states. [1, p. 93] At this point Clifford’s health, after months of privation, gave way and he was invalided to England. [1, p. 93]

From 1890 to 1895 Clifford served as Superintendent, Ulu Pahang, under the first Resident, J.P. Rodger, and periodically acted as Resident in Pahang and for a short time in Selangor. [1, p. 93] During these years he “risked my life over and over again in the public service,” promoting law and order, winning the confidence of the Sultan and his people, and pursuing rebels through the hitherto unexplored jungles of Pahang, Trengganu, and Kelantan. [1, p. 93] In 1896 he was appointed British Resident, Pahang, within the newly formed Federated Malay States, a position he held until 1899. [1, p. 93]

While on leave in England in 1899, Clifford was offered the post of Governor of British North Borneo, then administered by a chartered company. [1, p. 94] Frank Swettenham, Resident General of the Federated Malay States, was sceptical about the advantages of the appointment and wrote to Clifford from Kuala Lumpur in November 1899: “As to BNB of course the salary is an attraction but except for that I should think you won’t like it.” [1, p. 94] Clifford arrived in Sandakan in February 1900, ready to subjugate Mat Salleh’s revolt, reform the chaotic affairs of the administration, and develop the prosperity of the territory. [1, p. 94]

Pacification having been effected, Clifford turned to the twin tasks of administration and economic development. Before leaving London, the Managing Director of the British North Borneo Company had painted in glowing colours the prospects of a railway project. [1, p. 95] However, once Clifford had carried out an energetic and exhaustive examination of the territory — walking the entire Pagalan Valley from the Sunsuran hills to Tenom, passing through the Penotal Gorge, down the Padas river to Beaufort, and over the line under construction to Weston — he concluded that the railway scheme would “only result in crippling such material prosperity as the Territory already enjoys.” [1, pp. 95] He further discovered “the existing state of things in almost every Department of Government of British North Borneo as the reverse of creditable to the Company.” [1, p. 95] It was not the immensity of the problems but the attitude of the Directors in London that provoked Clifford to tender his resignation on 5 July 1900. [1, p. 95] Despite a public meeting in Sandakan which appealed by telegram to Joseph Chamberlain to intervene, the Court of Directors accepted his resignation towards the end of September 1900. [1, pp. 95–96]

The dispute between Clifford and the Company Directors illustrated a perennial theme in colonial history: the struggle for mastery between London and local authorities. [1, p. 96] Clifford’s experience in North Borneo left him vigilant lest the indigenous inhabitants of any dependency be sacrificed to the interests of big business; in the Gold Coast he would endeavour to preserve indigenous ownership of cocoa farms, and in Nigeria he would regard himself as trustee for the indigenous peoples, attacking Lord Leverhulme’s proposals for palm oil development as though the country were merely a source of raw materials for British industry. [1, p. 97]

Literary Career and Intellectual Development

Clifford’s literary career began in June 1895, when Arnot Reid of The Straits Times commissioned him to write a series of articles on the east coast Malay States. [1, p. 104] [3, p. 61] These articles, which proved to be short stories, were published in book form as East Coast Etchings (1896, Singapore) and republished in England with additions as In Court and Kampong (1897, London). [1, p. 104] [3, p. 61] Other collections followed rapidly: Studies in Brown Humanity (1898), In a Corner of Asia (1899), and Bush-Whacking and Other Sketches (1901). [1, p. 104]

A central theme running through Clifford’s writings was the interaction of Asian societies with European influence. [1, p. 104] To Clifford it was a complex entanglement: while critical of the Malay tyranny and cruelty that had, in his belief, induced British intervention, he regretted the passing of many admirable customs smothered under European control; though convinced of the material blessings of British influence, he attacked the insensitive approach to indigenous peoples adopted by the Dutch in Aceh, the Americans in the Philippines, or by some of his own countrymen in the Malay States. [1, p. 104]

P.C. Wicks has argued that Clifford’s fiction reveals “an intriguingly ambiguous gap between public life and private thought,” exposing doubts about imperialism that the official record does not capture. [3, p. 53] In The East Coast (1897), Clifford wrote of “the boot of the ubiquitous white man” which “crushes down the forests, beats out roads, strides across the rivers, kicks down native institutions, and generally tramples on the growths of nature and the works of primitive man.” [3, p. 57] His 1927 fly-leaf note to Studies in Brown Humanity states that “every one of them is true in every detail,” confirming the autobiographical basis of his fiction. [3, p. 72]

Mohamed Rashidi Pakri has traced a discernible evolution across Clifford’s early works, in which the author’s stance shifts from what Clifford himself called “archaeological studies” drawn from life toward an explicit advocacy of British civilizing mission. [4, p. 107] The central dilemma Pakri identifies is structural: Clifford loved the Malay peasants and their culture while simultaneously serving as an agent of the empire that was dismantling that very culture. [4, p. 107] His prefatory remarks across the collections reveal this contradiction in its rawest form — he describes his “brown friends” as “very real and very lovable” while declaring himself “a firm believer in the necessity for the intervention of Great Britain in Malaya.” [4, pp. 107–108]

J. de V. Allen’s comparative study of Clifford and Swettenham identifies the fundamental divergence between the two men in their competing definitions of “regeneration.” [2, p. 55] For Swettenham, regeneration was a material and environmental transformation; for Clifford, it was restricted to political reform — the termination of feudal chiefdom and the liberation of the people from arbitrary rule. [2, p. 58] Clifford’s justification rested on a hypothetical plebiscite: the Malays themselves would choose British rule over the ancien régime. [2, p. 58] Allen traces how this confidence was progressively eroded over the decades, from the assured 1898 assessment that the British had “little to fear from the Day of Judgement,” through the anguished political officer in Bush-Whacking who “suffers with” the people he is ordered to persecute, to the 1916 admission in The Further Side of Silence that no argument could “staunch the blood which I saw flow” in pre-intervention Pahang — a passage Allen identifies as representing “intellectual bankruptcy at last.” [2, pp. 59]

Exploration and Fieldwork

In April 1897, Clifford undertook a fourteen-day expedition through the uncharted interior of northern Pahang, accompanied by F.W. Douglas and a party of Malay and Sakai (Senoi) guides. [5, pp. 135–139] The route ran from Pekan up the Pahang River to the Pahang Corporation’s mine at Jeram Batang, across the Bukit Lada watershed (approximately 700 feet by aneroid), and down the Pertang–Tekal–Tembiling river system. [5, pp. 136–138] The expedition was marked by considerable hardship: leech infestations, hornet attacks, waist-deep river crossings in rain, and a series of rafting accidents at rapids including Jeram Jerami, Jeram Tahan Badak, and Jeram Mena, the last of which caused Clifford to lose his raft and all his equipment. [5, p. 138] Most critically, all time and compass survey records were destroyed, meaning the route was never formally charted; Douglas stated that “no one has been through that way since” as of 1922. [5, p. 139]

The expedition also yielded ethnographic observations. Douglas recorded that the Kuantan Sakai constructed blowpipes by splitting a piece of wood, boring out the half-sections, and binding the two pieces with rotan (rattan) and gutta-percha — a technique he noted was shared only with the Patagonians of South America. [5, p. 136] Two Sakai men, Chong and Bo’uk, were recruited as guides and later demonstrated their blowpipe skills at Douglas’s house, with one blowpipe eventually entering the British Museum collection. [5, p. 136]

Clifford’s fieldwork extended beyond the narrative record. He contributed papers on his explorations to the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Colonial Institute, and he made a collection of stone implements from the Pahang River which he lent to the Museum of Archaeology at Cambridge. [1, p. 104] The museum acknowledged receipt in April 1903 of 56 stone implements — celts and adzes — and portions of 11 others. [1, p. 104, n. 51]

The Malay Dictionary and Linguistic Work

Between 1894 and 1902 the Government Printing Office, Taiping, brought out parts of A Dictionary of the Malay Language: Malay-English by Clifford and Swettenham. [1, p. 103] The work was produced at the compilers’ own expense and did not sell well. [1, p. 103] Swettenham reported to Clifford that copies sold had realised altogether about $1,075 against printing costs of approximately $1,700 to $1,750. [1, p. 103] Lack of time — as Swettenham put it, they could only do “the things by driblets” — combined with the compilers’ prolonged separation in different parts of the world meant that the Dictionary remained unfinished. [1, p. 103] Although the manuscript was completed at least up to the end of “O,” publication never passed beyond “G.” [1, p. 103] Nevertheless, as the first of its kind, the Dictionary had “a very real value” and the compilers displayed “almost an extraordinary knowledge of the vocabulary of the natives.” [1, p. 103]

Final Governorship and Legacy

Clifford returned to Malaya in 1927 at the age of sixty-one to serve as Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Malay States. [4, p. 122] [2, p. 54] He resigned after only two years, in 1929, citing his wife’s health; Pakri suggests the real cause was his recognition that the Malays he remembered no longer existed. [4, p. 122] [2, p. 70] He retired to England suffering from cyclical insanity, and his last book, In Days that Are Dead, was published in 1926. [2, p. 70] Clifford died on 18 December 1941, at the very moment when Malaya was being overrun by Japanese invaders. [1, p. 89, n. 2]

Research and Documentation

The primary archival collection for Clifford’s life and career is the Clifford Papers, now the property of H.C. Holmes, having been carefully preserved for many years by his mother, Lady (Mary) Holmes, Clifford’s only surviving child. [1, p. 89, n. 4] The papers consist of some twenty uncatalogued volumes of newspaper cuttings, photographs, official and semi-official correspondence with the Secretary of State and with officers of the Colonial Service and the Colonial Office, and private letters from various well-known people of his day. [1, p. 89, n. 4] Clifford’s diaries were reportedly destroyed during the Second World War, although manuscript diaries for 1888 and 1893 are held at the Arkib Negara, Malaysia. [1, p. 89, n. 4]

The scholarly literature on Clifford is substantial. A.J. Stockwell’s 1976 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society remains the definitive account of his early career, drawing on the private papers to supplement and occasionally contradict the official record. [1] J. de V. Allen’s 1964 comparative study of Clifford and Swettenham provides the most sustained analysis of Clifford’s intellectual development and the internal contradictions of his imperialist philosophy. [2] P.C. Wicks’s 1979 article demonstrates how Clifford’s fiction can be read as a historical source that resists easy categorisation in either the imperial or indigenous camp. [3] Mohamed Rashidi Pakri’s 2004 article situates Clifford’s literary output within the broader debate over the literary representation of colonial subjects in Southeast Asia. [4] F.W. Douglas’s 1922 first-person account of the 1897 Pahang expedition provides a rare contemporary record of Clifford’s fieldwork in the interior. [5]

The historiographical significance of Clifford as a subject of study lies in his unique position at the intersection of administration, literature, and intellectual history. His private papers reveal the tensions between colonial governance and commercial interests, his literary engagement with Malay society, and the personal costs of tropical service. [1, p. 89] His fiction, as Wicks has demonstrated, provides “a rather different and much more complex picture of the Residents and the world they ruled” than what Colonial Office files alone would yield. [3, p. 55] Allen’s observation that Clifford “wrote about Malaya because he dreamed about it,” in contrast to Swettenham who “wrote about Malaya because he knew about it,” captures the essential duality of a man whose administrative career and literary imagination were in perpetual, productive tension. [2, p. 55]

MBRAS Sources

Bibliography

References

  1. A.J. Stockwell (1976). Sir Hugh Clifford’s early career (1866–1903) as told from his private papers JMBRAS 49(1): 89–112. Read on JSTOR
  2. J. de V. Allen (1964). Two imperialists: a study of Sir Frank Swettenham and Sir Hugh Clifford JMBRAS 37(1): 41–73.
  3. P.C. Wicks (1979). Images of Malaya in the stories of Sir Hugh Clifford JMBRAS 52(1): 57–72. Read on JSTOR
  4. Mohamed Rashidi Pakri (2004). Between the Malay peasants and a beautiful theory: romanticism and the imperialist agenda in Hugh Clifford’s early fiction JMBRAS 77(2): 107–124.
  5. Sir Hugh Charles Clifford and F.W. Douglas (1922). Through an unknown corner of Pahang with H. Clifford in 1897. F.W. Douglas JSBRAS 85: 135–139. Read on JSTOR