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The Colonial Office and the Malay States, 1867–73

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The Colonial Office and the Malay States, 1867–73

J. de Vere Allen’s 1963 article, published in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, re-examines the origins of British political control in the Malay States by drawing on Colonial Office files (CO 273 series) to challenge C. D. Cowan’s influential thesis that the September 1873 despatch to Sir Andrew Clarke marked a sudden policy reversal provoked by a foreign-power scare. Allen argues instead that the Colonial Office possessed no coherent “policy” for the Malay States between 1867 and 1874 — the entire period was one of “drifting without a policy” — and that the decisive variable was not external threat but the degree of trust London placed in its Singapore Governor.

Summary

Allen’s central contention is that the concept of a “policy of non-intervention” inherited from the India Office is a historiographical fiction. The 1867 transfer of the Straits Settlements from the India Office to the Colonial Office involved a complete disruption of precedents rather than a continuity of approach. When the Permanent Under-Secretary, Rogers, drafted instructions for the incoming Governor Sir Harry Ord, he crossed out the heading “Political Relations” and wrote nothing beneath it (p. 10). The Colonial Office began with a clean slate, and for nearly seven years the precedents that emerged conformed to no pattern because none had been imposed from above (p. 3). The affairs of the Straits were, in Allen’s words, “very small fry in London,” and the subsidiary question of relations with petty neighbouring states was still less important (p. 3).

The article then traces the deterioration of relations between Ord and the Colonial Office, showing how Ord’s conduct of both internal and external affairs progressively eroded London’s confidence in him. Ord’s failure to report his negotiations with Kedah, Kelantan, and Perak until after they were concluded, his proposal for British suzerainty over the Southern Malay States, and his general insubordination all contributed to a growing conviction in Whitehall that he could not be trusted with any new initiative (pp. 13–20). The Selangor Incident of 1871, in which Acting Governor Anson permitted the Colonial Secretary Birch to impose a British-backed Viceroy on the Sultan, was accepted by London as a piracy matter rather than a sovereignty violation, revealing how little the Colonial Office cared about the nominal independence of the Malay States unless an ambitious Governor threatened to commit Britain to something expensive or military (pp. 22–23).

The final section reconstructs the events of March–September 1873 to show that Kimberley’s “decision to intervene” was not the dramatic break Cowan described. Campbell’s Larut Report of June 1873, which proposed political agents “similar to those employed in India,” provided the immediate stimulus, but the policy was already being considered before Seymour Clarke’s letter arrived on July 22 (pp. 29–31). Kimberley viewed the Resident system as an alternative to annexation — a way to extend influence without troops or Treasury money — and the foreign threat, while mentioned in his drafts, was not the sole or even primary motive. Clarke’s actual instructions made no specific provision for excluding foreign powers, and Clarke himself turned to Perak before Selangor, where the danger was presumably greatest (p. 34). Clarke succeeded because he had his superiors’ confidence, acted cheaply and peacably, and the Colonial Office was glad to let him carry on from there (p. 35).

Key Findings

  • The 1867 transfer from the India Office to the Colonial Office involved no meaningful policy continuity; Rogers deleted the “Political Relations” heading from Ord’s instructions entirely, and the files handed over contained “surprisingly little material” concerning the Malay States (pp. 9–10).
  • The Colonial Office’s fundamental constraint was not doctrinal opposition to expansion but the mechanism of ministerial responsibility: any policy requiring troops or Treasury money would provoke parliamentary questions, press criticism, and inter-ministerial conflict (pp. 7–8).
  • Ord’s proposal in April 1868 to extend British suzerainty over the Southern Malay States, modelled on Siamese control of the Northern States, was explicitly rejected; the Colonial Office told him the “true policy” was “not to attempt to interfere in but to keep entirely clear of any disorders” in the Native States (pp. 16–19).
  • The Selangor Incident of 1871 was accepted in London as a case of piracy requiring immediate action for the Colony’s security; the only reproof offered concerned the small size of Birch’s police force, not the infringement of Selangor’s sovereignty (p. 23).
  • Kimberley’s September 1873 drafts cited the foreign threat alongside Britain’s “long and intimate connection” with the Malay States and the interests of Straits trade, and the Resident system was presented as a way to achieve good government “at the expense, not of London, but of the Settlements concerned” (pp. 32–33).
  • Herbert’s minute to Carnarvon in May 1874 summarised the Colonial Office’s satisfaction: “as English enterprise makes its way into the interior we shall almost certainly have to follow it to redress outrage on Englishmen unless we adopt Sir Andrew Clarke’s preventive policy” (p. 35).

Conclusion

Allen’s definitive takeaway is that the 1873 despatch should not be understood as a clear-cut policy reversal but as one stage in a gradual, not always London-directed commitment of Britain in Malay affairs. The Colonial Office’s behaviour was governed less by abstract principles of intervention or non-intervention than by the practical question of whether its Governor could be trusted to execute a new course without incurring military expense or parliamentary embarrassment. Once a reliable Governor was in place, the “policy” that emerged was less a product of ministerial design than an acceptance of what the man on the spot had already done.

Context

  • The article draws exclusively on Colonial Office files (CO 273 series) held at The National Archives, Kew, and engages directly with the secondary literature of C. D. Cowan (Nineteenth Century Malaya, 1961), C. N. Parkinson (British Intervention in Malaya, 1867–77, 1960), and D. MacIntyre (“British Intervention in Malaya,” JSEAH II, iii, 1961).
  • Allen’s argument that the Colonial Office functioned through a system of trust in individual governors rather than through codified policy anticipates later work on the “imperial state” and the relationship between metropolitan bureaucracy and colonial agents.

References