Syers and the Selangor Police, 1875–1897
J.M. Gullick’s 1978 article reconstructs the career of Henry Charles Syers, a former private in the 10th Regiment of Foot who rose from commanding a demoralised mercenary force in Klang in 1875 to becoming the first Commissioner of Police for the Federated Malay States in 1896, before being killed by a seladang in Pahang the following July. Gullick’s central thesis is that Syers’ lasting contribution was his pragmatic insistence that the police in a Malay State must be predominantly Malay and integrated into local communities as a civil instrument, a position that ran counter to the prevailing military-police orthodoxy of his contemporaries and was vindicated by subsequent history.
Summary
Syers arrived in Selangor in March 1875 to find the mercenary force at Klang in a state of complete disintegration: undisciplined, unpaid for up to four years, opium-addicted, and without uniform or coherent command. Under the direction of Resident J.G. Davidson, Syers dismissed the worst elements, recruited approximately 150 Malays from Malacca, equipped and drilled them, and deployed detachments as garrisons at key coastal and riverine points. The immediate test came in October 1875 when Sutan Puasa, a former leader of the Sumatran Malay community in Kuala Lumpur, seized Ulu Langat village and the mining camps of Cheras and Kajang. Syers led an advance party of 75 police and 100 Malay irregulars, joined forces with Yap Ah Loy’s 200 Chinese fighters at Kuala Lumpur, and in a coordinated operation with Davidson’s artillery detachment surprised and captured Sutan Puasa at Kajang, ending the insurrection (pp. 12–13).
The period 1876–1882 saw Syers consolidate his force under the irascible Resident Bloomfield Douglas, whose diary contains approximately 170 references to Syers and reveals a relationship of mutual respect despite Douglas’s cantankerous temperament. Syers’ key organisational innovation was the dispersal of police into small outstation posts throughout the interior, a method that Swettenham had explicitly argued against in his 1876 memoranda on Perak police organisation but tacitly endorsed when auditing Selangor’s accounts in 1878–79, recognising that Selangor’s fragmented, clannish Malay society could not sustain the indirect channel of communication through traditional authority that Swettenham’s theory required (pp. 23–25). The move of the administrative capital from Klang to Kuala Lumpur in 1880, driven by the tin boom, brought both greater control over the interior and the legacy of inadequate police buildings that plagued Syers throughout the 1880s.
The final phase of Syers’ career was marked by the Pahang rising of 1891–92, in which he commanded Selangor Sikh police in the Semantan valley operations; the crime wave of 1895, which he broke up through systematic patrol and detective work culminating in the arrest and execution of the gang leader Li Choi; and his appointment as Commissioner of Police FMS in August 1896, a post in which he reorganised the Perak police and inspected the forces of all four States before his death on 14 July 1897 (pp. 34–49).
Key Findings
- Syers reduced the Klang mercenary force from its original strength to approximately 50 men by dismissing “all the worst characters,” then rebuilt it to 150 by recruiting Malays from Malacca; the men’s arrears of pay, amounting in some cases to three or four years, were settled by promissory notes that the men “disposed of for merely nominal sums,” revealing the bankrupt credit of the Selangor government (p. 10).
- The operation against Sutan Puasa at Kajang in October 1875 succeeded by surprise: scouts provided intelligence that allowed the combined force to take the village in the rear and rush three stockades “armed with brass guns, loaded to the muzzles with old nails and other rubbish” before resistance could be mounted (p. 13).
- Swettenham’s 1876 memoranda argued that police stationed in Malay villages would create a conflict of authority with the penghulu and that “the power of the headman must always give way before the power of the police”; Syers’ practice demonstrated the opposite, with victims lodging complaints directly at local police stations and the mere presence of small detachments deterring crime (pp. 24–25).
- The Selangor police strength grew from approximately 150 in 1875 to 660 by 1894, of which about one quarter were Sikhs; 29 outstation police stations occupied positions commanding principal highways and mining centres (p. 40).
- During Captain Lyons’ temporary command (1893–95), the abolition of good conduct pay caused the Malay element to lose approximately one third of its strength (150 out of 462) in a single year; Syers restored the old system on his return and “many old men rejoined” (pp. 41–42).
- Syers was killed on 13–14 July 1897 when a wounded seladang, already hit six times, charged him twice; he was gored, tossed 35 feet into a tree, and gored again before his companion Robert Meikle killed the animal with a total of 15 shots (pp. 48–49).
Conclusion
Gullick’s definitive assessment is that Syers “grasped clearly — as none of his contemporaries did — that the police force in a Malay State must be predominantly Malay and that it must be integrated into the community which it is to serve as a civil instrument for the maintenance of law and order rather than held back as an alien striking force.” The subsequent history of the Malayan Police confirmed this judgment, while the military-police school represented by Walker, Lyons, and Wagner was progressively abandoned. Syers’ particular genius lay not in theory but in an “instinctive soundness of judgment” that produced practical solutions adapted to local conditions, combined with a proficiency in Malay, personal tact, and an ability to inspire loyalty that no amount of drill or discipline could replicate (pp. 50–51).
Context
- The article draws heavily on the Bloomfield Douglas diary (1876–1882), held in private family possession and previously published in part by Gullick (1975), which provides the most detailed contemporary record of Syers’ day-to-day activities and his relationship with the Resident.
- Syers’ own 1878 police report, submitted in response to Parliamentary questions and transmitted to the Colonial Office, is a key primary source for his organisational thinking; it is held among the Straits Settlements Despatches (CO 273) at the Public Records Office, Kew.