Article

Weavers

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Weavers

The Handloom Weavers of the Malay Peninsula

The handloom weaving industry of the Malay Peninsula, concentrated on the east coast in Trengganu and Kelantan with a smaller presence in Pahang, constitutes the largest surviving cottage industry in the Federation of Malaya. At its peak in the late 1950s, the industry employed 4,209 weavers—every one of them a woman—operating 3,886 looms to produce an estimated 223,760 yards of cloth valued at approximately $1,564,000 in 1957 [1, pp. 14]. The principal product is the kain sarong, a piece of cloth approximately forty-two inches in width and two yards in circumference, worn wrapped around the waist, with the most prestigious variant being the kain songket, woven from Chinese spun silk yarn with patterns and borders worked in gold or silver thread [1, pp. 5–6]. The industry’s origins are not indigenous in the sense of being an agricultural by-product; rather, they derive from the Peninsula’s strategic position along maritime trade routes linking China, India, and the West, where imported raw materials met local weaving skills, royal patronage, and concentrated populations to generate a commercial textile industry [2, p. 91].

Historical Origins and the Trade-Dependent Character of the Industry

Maznah Mohamed’s 1995 study establishes that weaving in the Malay Peninsula was fundamentally an import-dependent craft. Unlike China or India, where raw materials were grown locally, the Peninsula’s weavers relied on silk from China and cotton from India, Annam, Java, and the Middle East, meaning that weaving could only flourish where trade was active—namely, coastal ports [2, p. 91]. Mohamed traces four successive phases of international trade, from the first-century Silk Road to the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, each producing a corresponding transformation in local weaving [2, p. 91].

The most analytically significant phase is the mid-nineteenth-century “transitional period,” when the collapse of Indian handloom exports created a market vacuum that English machine-made cloth could not immediately fill due to consumer preferences for durability and specific patterns. Mohamed argues that this gap, combined with the new availability of cheap English cotton twist and the peak of Chinese raw silk exports, created the conditions for a genuine boom in local handloom production, particularly in Kelantan and Trengganu [2, p. 91]. Trade statistics confirm this: in 1836, the eastern Malay states imported 471 piculs of English cotton twist from Singapore, compared with 36 piculs for Penang and 5 for Melaka; by 1844 this had risen to 1,548 piculs for the eastern states alone [2, pp. 105–106]. In 1856, the Malay Peninsula was the largest importer of raw silk from Singapore in the entire Malay Archipelago, receiving 9,815 lb. (worth 40,627 rupees), exceeding Java, Celebes, Borneo, and Sumatra combined [2, p. 106]. East coast trade with Singapore grew by approximately 500 per cent in tonnage between 1830 and 1866, while west coast trade remained essentially unchanged [2, p. 110].

The geographic concentration of weaving on the east coast rather than the west is explained by a confluence of factors: the east coast’s position within a continuous chain of Islamic trading ports stretching from Champa through the Peninsula to Sulawesi and Aceh; the migration of Bugis weavers to Pahang after the Dutch capture of Makassar in 1669; Cham migration bringing textile knowledge from Cochin China; and the demographic concentration of the northeastern states, which provided both labour and market depth for commodity production [2, p. 91]. In 1764, the Governor General of Kwantung-Kwangsi formally requested permission for Chinese merchants to export raw silk and Fuchou second-generation silk to Trengganu, confirming the port’s integration into the Chinese silk trade network [2, p. 109].

Technical Processes and the Loom

The weaving is done on simple, locally made frame handlooms with hand-thrown shuttles. Some of the looms in use are said to be over a hundred years old, and only half the looms in use in Trengganu are less than twenty years old [1, p. 6]. The basic weaving equipment and methods appear to have remained virtually unchanged for more than a century [1, p. 6]. A full-size sarong requires 1,680 warp threads with 20 heddles to the inch; the loom width limits the cloth to 42 lok (approximately 40–44 inches) [3, pp. 75]. The loom, known as the kek, costs approximately $60 new, while the warping machine (anian) costs $30 [1, p. 25]. The jentera, comprising the warp reeds and comb, is a more complex item requiring considerable labour and skill for its construction, with a present-day price of twelve dollars each [1, p. 27].

A.H. Hill’s 1949 field description traces the full production chain: the purchase of Chinese 2-ply silk thread through Singapore importing houses, the dyeing process using American aniline dyes imported via China, the winding of thread onto bamboo spools, the complex arrangement of warp threads on a special frame to establish the pattern, and finally the weaving itself [3, p. 75]. Raw material consisted of Chinese 2-ply silk thread purchased in bundles (bantal) of 3 kati each; each bundle contained 36 hanks further divided into 10 skeins of ¼ tahil [3, p. 75]. Hill notes that the industry resists rigid systematic categorisation because of the free interplay of techniques—woven patterns, embroidered borders, ikat-dyed grounds, and stamped designs can all be combined in a single piece [3, p. 75]. He describes the kepala (centre panel) of fine songket as “a real work of art” and cautions against reductive taxonomies that would obscure the subtlety of the craft [3, p. 75].

The dyeing process underwent a significant transition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. W.W. Skeat’s 1902 account documents the processes by which silk and cotton thread were dyed in Kelantan, Patani, and Selangor, at a moment when imported aniline dyes from Singapore were rapidly displacing native vegetable dyes [4, p. 123]. By 1902, most of the colours described were “now usually obtained from aniline dye-stuffs imported from Singapore,” and the native methods were preserved only in out-of-the-way inland districts among older generations [4, p. 125]. The most extensively documented process is the red dye (chelup malau), which uses asam gelugor fruit, tamarind, and alum as a mordant, with the silk boiled, left overnight, kneaded, dried in the sun, and then exposed to dew [4, pp. 123–124]. Four distinct local varieties of indigo were identified in Kelantan and Patani: tarung kechil, tarung gelanggang, tarung Siam, and tarung akar [4, p. 125]. Silk was purchased from peddlers or bazaars at $4 to $4.50 per kati (1⅓ lbs), with typical dyeing batches ranging from four to ten kati’s weight [4, p. 123].

Economic Structure and the Role of the Middleman

The structure of the industry is moderately complex and greatly influenced by the source and control of the scarcer factors of production [1, p. 18]. The weavers are to be found mainly in the lowest income groups, with very little capital, little formal education, and usually little experience of the world outside their own kampongs [1, p. 18]. Ninety-five per cent of the Trengganu weavers are completely illiterate in any language or script [1, p. 36]. The great majority are married women, widows, or divorcees in age groups likely to have children to care for and other household duties to perform [1, p. 36].

The middleman or entrepreneur performs a central and indispensable role. Fisk states that “without the middleman, or some very similar entrepreneurial alternative, the existence of the industry on any appreciable scale would be impossible” [1, p. 42]. The services provided cover four main heads: capital, technical services, production planning and organisation, and marketing [1, p. 42]. In the Trengganu survey, 86.6 per cent of active weavers worked regularly and exclusively for middlemen [1, p. 20]. The structure has many points of similarity to the domestic system of pre-industrial Britain: large wholesalers import raw materials from abroad, established middlemen provide technical and skilled common facility services, and the weavers work for piece rates while the finished products remain the property of the middleman [1, p. 20].

The middlemen are almost entirely Malays, and a large proportion are women [1, p. 42]. In Kelantan at the time of the 1958 survey, twelve middlemen were in effective operation, the largest being a lady named ‘Che Minah binte Haji Omar, who had 131 Kelantan weavers regularly working for her in thirteen kampongs [1, p. 42]. In Trengganu the situation is more complicated, with 176 names of middlemen recorded during the survey, a list acknowledged to be incomplete [1, p. 42].

J.M. Gullick’s 1952 survey of Kelantan recorded 919 Malay sarong weavers (845 kampong workers, 74 commercial weavers) [5, p. 138]. He found that 88 per cent of kampong weavers were dependent on middlemen who supplied thread on credit; excluding the atypical case of Kg. Laut, where 80 of 221 weavers worked on their own account, the proportion rises to 96 per cent [5, p. 142]. Three-quarters of kampong weavers earned between $6 and $15 per month from part-time work, while full-time workshop weavers earned a minimum of $25 per month, with the highest recorded figure of $52 per month [5, pp. 143–144]. A notable finding is that earnings correlate with experience but not with age: older, more experienced weavers earn less than their younger counterparts, a phenomenon Gullick attributes to the most skilled women shifting from loom operation to the more lucrative but less visible role of pattern-setting for others [5, pp. 142–143].

Seasonality, Output, and Income

The industry is subject to pronounced seasonal variation. The north-east monsoon, which blows for about four months from the beginning of November to the end of February (musim tutup kuala), curtails weaving severely as the high winds and driving rain prevent work underneath the houses where the looms are normally situated, and the continuous damp swells the yarn and impedes the operation of the comb or jentera [1, p. 22]. In the Trengganu survey, 78.1 per cent of weavers reported stopping work during the monsoon, 40 per cent during the padi harvest, and 6.9 per cent during the fasting month (Ramadan) [1, p. 23]. Only 12 per cent claimed to work all the year round [1, p. 23]. The effective period of no weaving amounts to approximately a quarter of the year, giving an average of nine working months per annum [1, p. 23].

The average monthly income from weaving during active months is $16.75, but when assessed over the full year this yields an average annual income of only about $134 per weaver, or approximately $11.20 per month throughout the year [1, pp. 38–39]. The return for labour is 15.65 cents per hour and sixty-four cents per day, which is low by any standards [1, p. 40]. However, when compared with household incomes from other sources, this small amount represents an addition of twenty-four per cent to the cash income of the average household of which the weaver is a member [1, p. 40]. The minimum capital investment required per active weaver is about $375, of which only about $82 (19 per cent) is fixed capital in equipment; the remainder is working capital in raw materials, advances, and distribution stocks [1, pp. 33–34].

Fisk estimates that a 25 per cent increase in demand could be met by existing resources without recruiting new weavers, given that 17 per cent of registered weavers had already stopped working and a further 25 per cent were working for less than four hours per day [1, p. 67]. The gross product of $1,500,000 breaks down into $700,000 for raw materials, $550,000 in payments to weavers, and $250,000 for distribution, marketing, and profits [1, p. 67].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on weavers spans more than half a century and reveals a clear evolution in methodological approach and analytical priority. The earliest contribution, W.W. Skeat’s 1902 article on silk and cotton dyeing, is a practical ethnographic record motivated by the perceived urgency of documenting indigenous technical knowledge that commercial modernisation was erasing [4, p. 123]. It functions as a salvage document, capturing a technology in the process of obsolescence, and its colour references are tied to physical swatches that are no longer available, limiting the precision of the descriptions for later readers [4, p. 123].

A.H. Hill’s 1949 study represents the next phase: a technical-ethnographic description of the Trengganu industry written from direct observation of workshops in the Chabang Tiga area, providing a detailed account of the production chain and cataloguing the diverse types of textile produced [3, p. 75]. Hill explicitly states that the economics of the industry fall outside his scope, though he appends brief remuneration data at the close [3, p. 75]. The piece is notable for its sensitivity to the artistic dimension of the work and its detailed technical vocabulary, which remains a valuable reference for the study of Trengganu weaving traditions [3, p. 75].

J.M. Gullick’s 1952 survey marks the transition to quantitative economic analysis. Commissioned by the Rural and Industrial Development Authority (RIDA) and carried out by T.W.T. Bangs, Development Officer for Kelantan, with two Malay assistants, the survey visited every kampong identified by local headmen as having practitioners of six selected crafts [5, p. 135]. Gullick’s paper analyses only two—sarong weaving and silversmithing—expanding a memorandum he prepared for RIDA with general information supplied by Dr. C.A. Gibson-Hill [5, p. 135]. Historiographically, the article represents one of the first systematic economic surveys of Malay craft industries in the post-war period, providing a quantitative baseline against which later studies can measure change [5, p. 135].

E.K. Fisk’s 1959 monograph is the most comprehensive treatment to date, drawing on detailed fieldwork conducted by RIDA in Trengganu and Kelantan during 1957–58 [1, p. 1]. The Trengganu survey was the first large-scale survey of its kind undertaken directly by the Authority’s staff [1, p. 9]. Fisk’s central argument is that the industry’s future depends not on expanding mass cotton production but on improving the quality of its entrepreneurial organisation to serve higher-value silk and metallic-thread markets, both domestic and overseas [1, p. 1]. The article reflects the post-independence policy environment of the Federation of Malaya, in which the elected government’s general policy favoured gradual development through private enterprise rather than immediate and complete government control of cottage industries [1, p. 69].

Maznah Mohamed’s 1995 article represents a historiographical shift, reframing the textile industry not as a static “traditional craft” but as a dynamic response to global market forces, aligning with the broader Southeast Asian historiographical shift of the 1980s–90s toward trade-network and world-systems approaches [2, p. 91]. Her article draws heavily on Paul Wheatley’s The Golden Khersonese (1980) for early Chinese and Arab source material, T.J. Newbold’s Political and Statistical Account of the British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca for nineteenth-century trade data, and Wong Lin Ken’s “The Trade of Singapore” for quantitative export figures [2, p. 91]. Together, these five studies trace an arc from ethnographic salvage, through technical description and quantitative survey, to economic analysis and finally to a macro-historical reinterpretation of the industry’s origins in global trade networks.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. E.K. Fisk (1959). The economics of the handloom industry of the east coast of Malaya JMBRAS 32(4): 1–72.
  2. Maznah Mohamed (1995). The origin of weaving centres in the Malay Peninsula JMBRAS 68(1): 91–118.
  3. A.H. Hill (1949). The weaving industry in Trengganu JMBRAS 22(3): 75–84. Read on JSTOR
  4. W.W. Skeat (1902). Silk and cotton dyeing by the Malays JSBRAS 38: 123–127. Read on JSTOR
  5. J.M. Gullick (1952). A survey of Malay weavers and silversmiths in Kelantan in 1951 JMBRAS 25(1): 134–148. Read on JSTOR