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From Blood to Public Ofce: Constituting Bureaucratic
Rulers in Colonial Malaya
Peter Triantallou
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies / Volume 35 / Issue 01 / February 2004, pp 21 - 40
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463404000025, Published online: 11 February 2004
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022463404000025
How to cite this article:
Peter Triantallou (2004). From Blood to Public Ofce: Constituting Bureaucratic Rulers in Colonial
Malaya . Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 35, pp 21-40 doi:10.1017/S0022463404000025
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2004 The National University of Singapore DOI: S0022463404000025
From Blood to Public Office: Constituting
Bureaucratic Rulers in Colonial Malaya
Peter Triantafillou
With the transformation from the Malay kerajaan rule based on economic extraction and
the capability to take life to British colonial rule, Malays aspiring to govern others were
now subject to a set of mundane disciplinary techniques seeking to promote a bureaucratic
ethos that precipitated around academic merits, team spirit and above all the strange
distinction between public and private spheres of action.
When British colonial rule was established in Malaya in the nineteenth century, it
was confronted with a particular Malay mode of rule termed kerajaan (literally the state
of having a raja).
1
While the variations in kerajaan rule over time and among the various
Malay states must be stressed, at the most general level it seems that this mode of rule
revolved not so much around political territory but around the group of people (rakyat)
who were the subjects of a particular ruler. The rakyat owed their primary allegiance not
to a legally defined state or to an ethnic or religious community, but rather to a royal
personage. The sultan was thus the symbol of unity within a particular geographically
defined territory, his authority being derived from the support of his kinsmen in and
around the court and a hierarchy of greater and lesser chiefs appointed to smaller territo-
rial units. There was an elaborate set of hierarchical relations in which everyone was
attributed with a particular title or rank. Originating in the ceremonial practices of the
royal court but extending to everyday social interactions, these relations were constantly
reproduced and negotiated through particular styles of dress, residence and conduct.
2
Whereas Malaya had been exposed to both Portuguese and Dutch colonisers
beginning in the sixteenth century, particularly in Melaka, it was only during the 1800s
that the peninsula was subjected to more systematic and extensive colonial rule, this time
as part of the British Empire. After the initial acquisition and establishment of the Straits
Settlements (Penang, Malacca [Melaka] and Singapore), the signing of the Pangkor
Engagement between the Sultan of Perak and Britain in 1874 signalled the inauguration
of a new series of policies and institutions seeking to ensure the allocation of manpower
Peter Triantafillou is Assistant Professor of Public Adminstration at Roskilde University, Roskilde,
Denmark. His e-mail contact is triant@ruc.dk
This article has improved significantly thanks to the constructive criticism of two anonymous referees
of the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, and Christa Armhj and Rigmor Lond from the Copenhagen
Business School. The research supporting the article was made possible by a generous grant from the
Danish Social Science Research Council.
1 The term raja was used in the Malay states to denote a person of royal/aristocratic descent.
2 Anthony Milner, The invention of politics in colonial Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), pp. 216.
21
22 peter triantafillou
in mines and plantations, improve the productivity of the Malay agricultural small-
holders, maintain a healthy and productive population by preventing epidemic diseases
and curing illnesses, and establish adequate infrastructure and communication services.
Whereas kerajaan rule had revolved around revenue extraction essentially depending
on ostentatious rituals of obeisance and the capability to take life, the new colonial
power would evolve around enhancing the productive capacities of enterprises and men
by an assemblage of disciplinary techniques and political interventions targeting the
populations health and educational level with the overall aim of facilitating economic
exploitation.
3
While force and violence remained the colonial governments ultimate
means of enforcement, these techniques were utterly insufficient for the purposes of
colonial rule. What was needed was a much more constant, regular and economical set of
techniques ensuring that individuals would conduct themselves in a more civilised and
law-abiding fashion and produce more efficiently.
One of the solutions offered to meet this need was a modern bureaucracy that
ideally, at least was guided by an ethos of efficiency, academic merit and impartiality.
This article hopes to shed some light on the implications of modern forms and tech-
niques of rule under the British colonial administration for the ways in which one who
wished to govern others ought to govern oneself. More precisely, it seeks to provide a
preliminary answer to the following question: By what disciplinary techniques and
informed by what political rationalities did the British seek to shape the self-conduct of
those Malays who sought a position in the colonial bureaucracy? Inspired by Foucaults
analytics of disciplinary power and ethics, the study attempts to show that the making of
Malay administrators under colonial rule may be seen neither as another instance of the
irreversible diffusion of Western formal rationality nor as the renunciation of some
mythical Malay authentic identity. Instead, it is argued that colonial rule implied the
inauguration of a modern game of power and freedom in which certain groups of Malays
submitted themselves to a series of disciplinary techniques urging them to question and
conduct themselves according to the distinction between public duties and authority on
the one hand and private convictions and interests on the other. In brief, it is suggested
that the effect of this training was not to renounce a mythical Malay interiority, but to
produce it, thereby enabling the Malays to govern themselves according to bureaucratic
norms of conduct.
The empirical analysis of this article draws on well-known colonial archival material
along with a number of scholarly studies on pre-colonial and colonial Malaya, notably
Khasnor Johans excellent The emergence of the modern Malay administrative elite.
4
I have
included these studies with a view not to rectify them but to examine under a different
analytical light some of the events and practices they describe. Thus, rather than studying
the administrative elite or the school system per se, the article seeks to illuminate how
modern (colonial) political rule sought to reproduce itself by urging certain segments of
the Malays to subject themselves to bureaucratic norms of conduct through a wide array
3 Philip Loh Fook Seng, Seeds of separatism: Educational policy in Malaya 18741940 (Kuala Lumpur:
Oxford University Press, 1975); Keith Watson, Rulers and ruled: Racial perceptions, curriculum and
schooling in colonial Malaya and Singapore, in The imperial curriculum, ed. J. A. Mangan (London and
New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 14774; and Lenore Manderson, Sickness and the state. Health and illness
in colonial Malaya, 18701940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
4 Khasnor Johan, The emergence of the modern Malay administrative elite (Singapore: Oxford University
Press, 1984).
23 constituting bureaucratic rulers in colonial malaya
of disciplinary techniques. After briefly outlining an analytical framework of discipline
and ethics inspired by Michel Foucault, the study analyses some of the essential charac-
teristics of kerajaan rule in the states of Selangor, Perak, Negri Sembilan and Pahang
immediately before British intervention in the nineteenth century; the disciplinary
techniques applied in the Malay College at Kuala Kangsar that trained a large proportion
of the Malay administrators; and, finally, the disciplinary mechanisms deployed by the
Malayan Administrative service in the early 1900s. Finally, I seek to draw some tentative
conclusions on the potential for utilising Foucaults analytical framework to understand
the emergence of the bureaucratic ethos in colonial Malaya.
Foucault: Bureaucratic ethos as a practice of power and freedom
How can we undertake an analysis of the historically specific relations between
bureaucratic self-conduct and wider political reforms and practices that will avoid both
psychological reductionism seeing self-conduct as the contextual unfolding of the
same essential human needs or desires and sociological reductionism conceiving
self-conduct as the internalisation of external social structures? In the second and third
volumes of the History of sexuality, Michel Foucault has undertaken a history of various
forms of self-conduct or ethics that seeks to steer clear of both psychological and socio-
logical reductions. This involves a detailed historical analysis of the different ways in
which individuals have been urged to constitute themselves as subjects of moral conduct,
the forms of knowledge involved in the attempts to know and examine oneself, and the
models and techniques utilised for reflecting on and possibly transforming oneself. This
approach is utilised to analyse reflections on how one ought to govern oneself in order to
be judged fit to govern others in Western societies dating back to the Ancient Greek polis
and the Roman Empire.
5
Ethics, or rather ethical practices, denote the task of reflecting upon how we can
improve ourselves and what constitutes proper conduct; ultimately we problematise
the practices of freedom, deciding what they consist of and how we wish to exercise
them. In order to clarify the notion of ethics, Foucault proposes a distinction between
liberty and liberation processes (including the struggles to dismantle various form of
political dominance and economic exploitation) on the one hand, and freedom viewed
as the practices whereby the self acts upon oneself on the other. While liberty is a
precondition for the ethical work of the self, one cannot reduce the analysis of freedom
to that of the struggle against forces of domination and exploitation. Freedom must
instead be analysed as the set of ethical practices whereby the individual scrutinises and
problematises freedom and what it is for him or her and how it should be practised.
6
A banal but nonetheless crucial point is that this ethical work, the actual practising of
freedom, does not take place in a vacuum but is always linked to the exercise of power, i.e.
the manifold attempts to govern the conduct of someone else. Thus ethical practices are
never autonomous but always depend in some way or another on moral codes of proper
conduct and disciplinary techniques (such as examination and systems of observation)
when seeking to govern others. Conversely, the exercise of power depends on a certain
level of freedom for those individuals over whom it is exercised. In this understanding,
5 Michel Foucault, The history of sexuality, vol. 2 (The use of pleasure) (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 29;
Foucault, The history of sexuality, vol. 3 (The care of the self ) (London: Penguin, 1990), pp. 8196.
6 Michel Foucault, The ethic of care of the self as a practice of freedom, in The final Foucault, ed. James
Bernauer and David Rasmussen (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 120.
24 peter triantafillou
power is the name for all those actions seeking to shape the conduct of individuals who
by definition are free in the sense that they always have a certain amount of room for
choosing whether to obey, resist or strategically manipulate the attempts made to govern
their behaviour. This is not to say, of course, that relations of power between individuals
or groups may not be unequal, nor that domination and coercion are absent. Yet we must
recognise that there must be on both sides of a social relationship, however unbalanced,
at least a certain form of liberty in order to exercise power.
7
If freedom, then, is viewed not as a question of personal autonomy denoting the
absence of power, but as the practices by which we are urged in accordance to specific
norms and by various disciplinary techniques to constitute ourselves as acting, respon-
sible and civilised subjects, then it is possible to analyse modern bureaucratic conduct
as something other than a renunciation of what Weber takes to be the universal form
of freedom, namely subjective consciousness and meaningful action.
8
Instead, we may
understand bureaucratic conduct as the shifting intersections between governmental
technologies (such as schooling and health systems) and individualising disciplinary
techniques on the one hand, and ethical practices whereby the individual questions
himself and practises his freedom on the other.
9
It is from this latter perspective that this
study seeks to illuminate the ways in which disciplinary techniques operating in the
Malay College and the Malay Administrative Service in the context of a newly installed
colonial regime targeting the productivity of the population sought to provide Malays
with the capacity to freely scrutinise themselves and act according to norms of integrity
and efficiency. Thus what the Foucauldian analysis may contribute here is to illuminate
how the distinctions between private and public spheres of action, between inner
personal values and external moral codes of conduct depended not on a given human
attribute but on the extensive training and rehearsing of the Malays in order to
enable them to govern themselves by this bureaucratic ethos. Equally important, this
analytical framework helps to show how this exotic new ethos came to be solidified and
institutionalised, not as the result of an irreversible process of rationalisation spurred on
by means of coercion and repression but by the Malays choice to submit themselves to
the norms and techniques giving substance to the new ethos.
7 Ibid., p. 12.
8 To Weber modern bureaucratic conduct is essentially seen as curtailing the bureaucrats freedom. As is
well known, he characterised the modern bureaucratic ethos in terms of a vocation (Beruf) entailing a
sense of duty in pursuing the purpose of office based not on personal relations but on the impersonal
dedication to a purely functional purpose; Max Weber, Economy and society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus
Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 9589. Bureaucratic action ultimately rests on
the individuals willingness and ability to renounce personal inner values and convictions; Weber, The
methodology of the social sciences, tr. and ed. Edward Shils and Henry Finch (New York: Free Press, 1949),
pp. 1245. By hinging on a conception of the subject as a conscious individual in search of meaning and
pursuit of so-called inner values, Weber could not but equate freedom with individual autonomy and lack
of freedom with so-called external social forces encroaching on the individuals autonomous pursuit of
substantive values. I believe that this conception of the subject limits our understanding of bureaucratic
conduct in two ways. Firstly, it does not allow for an analysis of the ways in which the split between inner
values and convictions and external (public) activities is produced through a series of mundane disciplin-
ary practices. Secondly, by opposing freedom to power, it inhibits us from analysing the ways in which
individuals freely subject themselves to the bureaucratic ethos.
9 For an explication of the notions of technologies and rationalities of government, see Nikolas Rose and
Peter Miller, Political power beyond the State: Problematics of government, British Journal of Sociology,
43, 2 (1992): 173205.
25 constituting bureaucratic rulers in colonial malaya
Kerajaan rule in nineteenth-century Malaya
10
Blood (lineage) played a fundamental role in Malay rule in Malaya, and access to
positions of authority in the kerajaan mode of rule depended above all on that factor.
Election of the sultan, ministers, district chiefs and village headmen was largely deter-
mined by claims to blood relations. Yet at times other men took up these positions, who
had high status without such claims. In Perak in 1871, for example, the supposed heir to
the post of sultan the brother-in-law of the recently deceased ruler was pushed aside
by the bendahara (prime minister) who had served under two previous sultans and now
received the backing of the chiefs.
11
Likewise, on the death of the district chief in charge
of the levying of trade, administration of debt-slaves and enforcing customary codes of
conduct a lesser chief could rise up the ladder if he could distinguish himself and gain
the confidence of the sultan. Similarly, the village headman responsible for keeping the
peace, arresting criminals and delivering them to the district chief for trial, providing
labour from the village under the corve (kerah) system, raising a defence levy when
required, and executing various other requirements of the district chief usually inher-
ited his office from his father or other patrilineal relatives. Even so, formal nomination
by the district chief and informal support from the majority of the villagers were both
necessary components which, if lacking, occasionally meant that men from another
lineage took over the position as village headman.
12
Perhaps more importantly, blood was also a symbol of power in the sense of the
capability to take life. The chief was appointed to his office by the sultan with the issue of
a letter of appointment and by the gift of a sword, perhaps the most important piece of
regalia, as the symbol of his office. The symbolic efficacy of the sword in transferring
authority from the sultan to the district chief to collect taxes, mobilise labour for various
construction jobs, defend against external enemies, and judge offenders against custom-
ary codes of conduct may be grasped by the fact that special value was placed on a weapon
known to have taken human life. Likewise, if the sultan desired a particular maiden he
could send the royal sword in advance by an official sword-bearer to her house with the
result that his wish would be immediately obeyed. An important function of another
regalia, the kris (a Malay dagger), at least in the state of Selangor, was to conduct the
execution of individuals who had been sentenced to death for violating customary codes,
such as piracy.
13
A further indication of the type of power involved in kerajaan rule may
be gauged from the document by which the non-royal Malay Ngah Ibrahim was granted
10 The present depiction of kerajaan rule is by no means intended as an exhaustive analysis of the
manifold and historically highly variable practices of authority in Malaya. Rather, it seeks to illuminate
some of the most pertinent ways in which kerajaan rule in the Malay states of Perak, Selangor, Negri
Sembilan and Pahang during the nineteenth century differed from the bureaucratic ethos that the British
colonial administration sought to invoke from the beginning of the twentieth century.
11 Richard O. Winstedt and Richard J. Wilkinson, A history of Perak, Journal of the Malayan Branch of
the Royal Asiatic Society, 12, 1 (1934): 934.
12 John M. Gullick, Indigenous political systems of Western Malaya, rev. edn (London: Athlone Press,
1988), pp. 346; on district chiefs, see Johan, Emergence, p. 2.
13 John F. McNair, Perak and the Malays (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1972 reprint),
pp. 2828; the young maiden is mentioned on p. 246. In Perak, the regalia consist of a sword, a kris
(a Malay dagger), a chain, an armlet and a seal (bearing the inscription The illustrious Sultan Muhammad
Shah, Gods shadow upon Earth). On the symbolic authority of the sword see Gullick, Indigenous political
systems, pp. 956, 123.
26 peter triantafillou
authority over the tin mining district Krian in October 1863 by the Sultan Jaafar of
Perak:
We give the government of the aforesaid entire country to the Orang Kaya Mantri, whether
he acts well or ill, with all its subjects and its soldiers, its lands and its waters . . . its mines
. . . with power to frame laws and to admit men to the Muhammadan religion, to kill, to
fine and to pardon . . . If any man makes disturbance or disowns the Mantris authority, he
commits a sin against God, against Muhammad and against Us. If he disowns the Mantri,
we will seize his property; if he resists the Mantri, we will kill him.
14
Kerajaan rule, then at least in Selangor, Perak, Negri Sembilan and Pahang during
most of the nineteenth century hinged significantly on the right to kill and, by default,
to let live. This is not to say that the everyday exercise of power was characterised by
brute coercion and bloody violence. On the contrary, as is indicated below, ceremonial
self-conduct and ostentatious rituals of obeisance were crucial practices for the everyday
exercise and reproduction of authority. Yet it is characteristic that when Ngah Ibrahim
was granted the power to formulate and enforce laws, this was not to establish a frame-
work of administrative, disciplinary or normalising regulations seeking to promote
economic development or raise the productive capacities of the population, but rather a
legalisation of the rights to extract economic revenues from tin mining and if necessary,
to ensure this extraction by lethal force. Violations of the rules were in turn seen as sins
against the divine authority of Allah and His will incarnated on earth, i.e. the sultan. Any
violations of authority were thus taken as an infliction against the body of the sultan and
therefore he or the persons to whom granted authority was by default entitled to take
the life of the offender.
Ceremonial self-conduct
A good sultan like other Malay rulers of lower ranks is described in the Malay
annals in terms not of personality, character or individual traits, but rather of qualities
and powers that are attributed to him in a stylised manner; the key attributes are grace-
fulness and gentleness. Of Sultan Ali of Pahang, for example, it is said that his behavi-
our could be compared with no one else in terms of elegance and attention to custom;
his speech was charming and graceful, and his words melodious. A sultan with such
attributes will not only win the love and support of a large group of followers (ministers,
chiefs, soldiers and regular subjects), but will also be able to rule properly or justly.
15
Attributes of gracefulness and gentleness were crucial for any ruler wishing to
remain respected and influential, particularly because of the importance of public
ceremonies in the kerajaan. It was during these public ceremonies that the relations
of authority were succinctly negotiated, reaffirmed or eventually modified between the
sultan and his ministers, chiefs and other subjects. At these ceremonies, the sultan had to
know and respect the rank or reputation (nama) of each of his subjects, inasmuch as
14 Winststedt and Wilkinson, History of Perak, p. 81; the title Orang Kaya Mantri, the highest possible
for a non-royal person in Perak, was given to Ngah Ibrahim simultaneously with the granting of authority
over the Krian district.
15 Anthony Milner, Kerajaan: Malay political culture on the eve of colonial rule (Tucson: University of
Arizona Press, 1982), pp. 401, 43.
27 constituting bureaucratic rulers in colonial malaya
addressing people by the right title and seating them in the proper place at an audience
were requirements of good administration. It was on these occasions that his subjects
were required to submit to intricate procedures of obeisance and thereby display their
particular position and status in relation to their ruler. It was at such events, too, that
a subject of the sultan might have his title upgraded or downgraded.
16
The rulers hall
of audience (balai) was designed to facilitate the symbolic reproduction of relations of
authority in that it had open sides enabling a large assembly of people outside the royal
palace (istana) to view the proceedings within. Moreover, the floor of the balai rose in
steps, with the ruler seated at the highest level and other dignitaries given descending
seats according to rank. Outside the istana symbolic rituals of obeisance played a funda-
mental role in reproducing (unequal) relations of authority. Thus whenever a commoner
encountered someone of superior status, the former was supposed to bend down so as to
appear lower than the latter.
17
The self-conduct of rulers was not informed by the modern distinction between
private and public spheres of life. In terms of monetary income the ruler and other
Malay authorities such as the district chief made no distinction between household
consumption and his outlay as ruler.
18
The functioning of the customary corve system
known as kerah demonstrates this fact. When a district chief needed labour to undertake
work, such as clearing a river or the building of a mosque, all the men within reach were
summoned through the village headman to undertake this forced labour, for which no
payment was provided. As subjects of the sultan, who ruled through the chief, the locals
were morally and politically obliged to submit themselves to this kind of work; refusal
would have been considered as disloyalty to the sultan and resulted in grave punish-
ment.
19
To the extent that objections were made against the system of kerah, the reason
was not that it illegitimately allowed public office to intrude into the private lives
of Malay subjects, but rather that the chief did not respect his obligation to feed the
men undertaking the work and/or that he picked a time that coincided with the harvest
season.
This is not to claim that the conduct of the Malay elite (including both aristocratic
and non-aristocratic individuals) was not guided by certain norms and values. On the
contrary, the ruler was obliged if not legally then morally to conduct himself in
a proper manner, including adhering to Islamic rituals, listening to the advice of his
ministers, taking into consideration the opinions and interests of the district chiefs and,
last but not least, taking care of his common subjects (rakyat) in harsh times such as
starvation and war. In fact, a ruler and other members of the Malay elite could become
very unpopular, to the point of losing respect and influence, if they disregarded these
codes of conduct. Notwithstanding the importance of these moral obligations, however,
the point remains that the Malay elites code of conduct was based not on the distinction
between private interests and public duties but on the continuous symbolic reproduction
16 McNair, Perak and the Malays, pp. 2978; Milner, Invention of politics, p. 21; Gullick, Indigenous
political systems, pp. 479.
17 John M. Gullick, Malay society in the late nineteenth century (Singapore: Oxford University Press,
1987), pp. 21, 723.
18 Ibid., p. 53.
19 Frank Swettenham, British Malaya: An account of the origin and progress of British influence in
Malaya (London: Allen and Unwin, 1948), pp. 1413.
28 peter triantafillou
of personal bonds of reciprocity on the one hand, and unequal and at times surprisingly
volatile relations of authority on the other. In the absence of written laws of universal
validity demarcating unequivocally spheres of jurisdiction, authority was rooted in
lineage and was exercised and reproduced through public ceremonies that served to
solidify the bonds of loyalty between ruler and subject.
Malay influence in colonial administration as an issue of responsible
self-conduct
A whole new mode of rule with new rationalities and techniques of government
was to become dominant in Malaya with the arrival of British colonialism. Except for
religious issues, all political and administrative matters were transferred from the Malay
rulers to the authority of the colonial administration. Yet rather than erasing kerajaan
rule outright, the British sought to elaborate a system whereby the ascriptive status of the
Malay elite would still be recognised. By a series of treaties and letters of permission
signed with the respective Malay rulers during the 1870s, British Residents were estab-
lished in the states of Selangor, Perak, Negri Sembilan and Pahang; their task was to
undertake the collection and distribution of all revenues and see to the general adminis-
tration of the country. According to these treaties, the Resident was to advise the Malay
sultan who was to remain in control of the government, but in practice the Resident,
supported by a modern administration staffed by British district and departmental
officials, was effectively ruling with occasional advice from the sultan.
20
The official British position was that they were there to support and advise the
Malays in governing their own land. While the Malays were seen as the original populace
and hence the legitimate rulers of Malaya, they were regarded as insufficiently mature
and qualified to govern themselves. While there are good reasons to remain sceptical
about this rhetoric, the British colonisers nonetheless opened up at least three avenues
for Malays with ambitions to govern, namely membership in the State Council and
positions as Malay magistrates or as penghulu (sub-district headmen). In order to main-
tain their support for the British Residential system, the sultans were granted personal
allowances and pensions and a seat in the State Councils, which were established in 1877
in Perak and Selangor and a few years later in Pahang and Negri Sembilan. Over the next
two decades the Councils played a significant role in the administration of a number of
issues and the Resident would usually take into consideration though not necessarily
follow the interests and opinions of the ruler in matters other than those pertaining
to religion. However, the centralisation of power following the establishment of the
Federated Malay States (FMS) in 1896 meant that the Councils lost substantial influence
in most matters and accordingly that the rulers were left with little influence in the
administration of the states affairs.
21
20 Rex Stevenson, Cultivators and administrators. British educational policy towards the Malays
18751906 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 2.
21 John M. Gullick, Rulers and Residents. Influence and power in the Malay states 18701920 (Singapore:
Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 3951. With the establishment of the Federated Malay States in
1896 incorporating Perak, Selangor, Pahang and Negri Sembilan the British Resident, who had been
the single most important authority in each of the aforementioned states since the 1870s, lost executive
influence in favour of a more centralised set of regulations and institutions placed in Kuala Lumpur under
the control of the Resident-General. This influential position was formally accountable to the Governor of
the Straits Settlements who, from 1896, also served as High Commissioner of the FMS.
29 constituting bureaucratic rulers in colonial malaya
With the establishment of a modern legal system based on written laws of universal
validity, positions as Malay magistrates were established in the new administrative
districts into which the states were divided. This theoretically gave former chiefs and
other lower-ranking members of the Malay aristocracy who had been deprived of their
territorial authority and wealth a chance to acquire a new position of influence, yet
in practice their lack of formal education usually meant that they were widely regarded
as unsuitable to participate directly in the colonial administration.
22
The persistent
influence of patrimonial bonds of loyalty was seen as another fundamental problem.
Thus one story goes that in the case of an accused whose guilt was beyond doubt, the
Malay magistrate stated, What do I care for evidence?, adding that he belongs to my
tribe. Similar problems were experienced with the new position of penghulu under the
district officer. While the colonial regime saw the penghulu as a useful and inexpensive
means of extending its control to the villages, some of the Malays who came to occupy
this position viewed it more as a source of income than as a working responsibility.
23
The lack of educational facilities meant that the prospects of entering the civil service
remained very meagre for a wider segment of Malays. While the issue of influence in the
new administration had been raised by the Malay elite several times during the end of the
nineteenth century, it was only in the early 1900s that institutional measures to remedy
the lack of academic and technical skills or a proper moral predisposition among the
Malays became a recurrent theme of discussion among high-ranking British officials in
the colony. A public discussion of the issue of providing the Malays with the necessary
training to enter the administration took place during the second Conference of Malay
Rulers held in July 1903 in Kuala Lumpur; the Resident of Perak, J. P. Rodger, argued that
Malays should be allowed to have greater participation in the civil service. Three months
previously, he had explained in a letter to Resident-General Treacher that
as advisers of the Protected Malay States we should, I think, endeavour to employ the
natives of the country wherever possible . . . to develop their capacity by means of
education . . . and subsequently by means of official life, and gradually increase their
sense of responsibility by entrusting them, more and more, with important posts under
Government, and enlarging rather than restricting the scope of their power, as they show
themselves deserving of confidence.
24
By providing the Malay elite with opportunities for an administrative career and a larger
share of responsibility in the everyday government of the FMS, it was believed that their
loyalty to the British protectorate would be maintained.
The idea of allowing the Malays to enter the administration was spurred on by both
political and financial concerns. As early as 1898, High Commissioner Charles Mitchell
had pointed out that Europeans staffed the administration of the FMS on a far greater
scale than in either India or Ceylon. As Europeans were efficient but costly to employ,
22 Gullick, Malay society, p. 76; Stevenson, Cultivators and administrators, pp. 34.
23 Gullick, Malay society, p. 77; the anecdote is on p. 76, citing Ambrose B. Rathbone, Camping and
tramping in Malaya: Fifteen years pioneering in the native states of the Malay Peninsula (Singapore: Oxford
University Press, 1984 reprint), p. 203.
24 Rodger to Treacher, 6 Apr. 1903, in National Archives of Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Colonial Office
(CO) 273/303; the Conference is mentioned in Stevenson, Cultivators and administrators, p. 177. All
archival sources cited in this article are from the National Archives.
30 peter triantafillou
the Resident-General wrote in 1902 in a circular to the Residents that no further increase
in the number of British officials could be justified, and that it was the policy of the
government to train and employ natives in all subordinate positions in the civil service.
Over the next decade the Residents would raise similar concerns, arguing that the native
Malays, who would require a much lower salary, should be educated to take up positions
in the lower levels of the administration.
25
However, the proposal to enable a larger number of Malays to enter the civil service
was far from undisputed. The top administrators in colonial Malaya widely regarded
them as indolent, lazy and of low intelligence and therefore of little use in affairs of
modern administration. In 1903 High Commissioner Swettenham wrote in a letter to
Resident-General Treacher that the Malays who show themselves able to wield authority
with justice and intelligence are unfortunately all too rare. . . .
26
In July 1904 Treacher
explained in a newspaper article that I do not despair of Malays eventually becoming
valuable public servants in the higher grades of the Civil Service, but race characteristics
the result of centuries of tropical environment cannot be changed in a decade, or even in
two or three decades. Sharing this view, FMS Governor Anderson wrote in 1904 to the
Colonial Office asking for a formal ban on any further Eurasian appointments to the
highest administrative level (namely the prestigious Malayan Civil Service), including
the Public Works Department, because the seven persons already in service lacked moral
fibre and could not be trusted. Moreover, he argued, the Malays themselves did not trust
the native administrators.
27
In sum, at the turn of the century the top British administrators in Malaya held
rather conflicting opinions on what role the Malays were to play in the governing of the
colony. Notwithstanding this lack of consensus, it seems clear that the attempts made to
allow them a certain place in the colonial administration reflected the wider strategy in
Malaya of seeking to strike a balance between direct and indirect rule in order to optimise
influence and minimise resistance a strategy pursued with some success in other parts
of the British Empire.
28
By maintaining support of the traditional Malay elite, the British
colonisers hoped to facilitate their own imperial ambitions. At the same time, it seems
fair to argue that the attempts to make room for the Malays were informed not only
by strategic calculations of power, but also by a perception that they were the original
inhabitants and therefore in theory, at least the legitimate rulers of Malaya.
Educating the minds and bodies of the Malay masses
Education was a crucial element of the governmental rationale for colonial rule
in Malaya. Thus a certain level of educational formation was seen as fundamental to
spurring on not only the natives civilisational maturation, but also the economic
25 Ibid., p. 176.
26 Swettenham to Treacher, 16 Sept. 1903, High Commissioners Office (HCO), RG. 422/1904; see also
McNair, Perak and the Malays, pp. 2013.
27 Anderson to Colonial Office Conference, 17 Aug. 1904, in CO 273/300; Treachers comments are in
The Malay Mail, 10 July 1904. The Malayan Civil Service was established in 1867 as a result of the transfer
of authority over the Straits Settlements from the India Office to the Colonial Office; Robert S. Milne
and Diane K. Mauzy, Politics and government in Malaysia (Singapore: Times Books International, 1978),
p. 265.
28 Rupert Emerson, Malaysia: A study in direct and indirect rule (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya
Press, 1964 reprint).
31 constituting bureaucratic rulers in colonial malaya
development and exploitation of what was known as the colonial estate. The conviction
that the Malays were the true natives and therefore the legitimate rulers in the future at
least was important for the specific formation of the educational system in the colony.
Equally important, however, was the widespread belief among the local British adminis-
trators that the average Malay depicted as a rather unintelligent and indolent racial type
would be best off remaining in his traditional occupations of small-scale agriculture
and fishing in the rural areas. Any radical changes, such as the exposure to comprehen-
sive European forms of education, would only serve to disrupt the so-called traditional
Malay styles of life to the detriment of the colonial estate and the Malay himself.
These ideas were crucial in forming a racially divided educational system that would
not be seriously challenged until after World War Two. A four-stream system was
developed: Chinese (Mandarin)-, Tamil-, Malay-, and then English-medium schools.
The latter were in principle open to all ethnic groups but in practical terms were inacces-
sible to the average Malay.
29
Thus the colonial educational measures targeting the Malays
essentially consisted of a dual institutional set-up: a vernacular primary school system for
the masses of the rural areas, and the Malay College targeting the elite.
From the 1870s, the establishment of secular schools teaching in the Malay tongue
was actively supported by the colonial administration in Perak and Selangor. Rather than
outright evicting the teaching of the Koran from the Malay schools, it was decided
that religious instruction should take place separately from the teaching of the Malay
language and other disciplines. While this compromise was made in order to reduce the
fears of Malay parents that their children would be converted to Christianity, enrolment
rates remained unsatisfactory. Despite the introduction of mandatory attendance legisla-
tion, fines imposed upon parents who failed to send their sons to school, and prizes to
pupils for diligent and punctual attendance, enrolment rates remained appallingly low
until the beginning of the twentieth century. Thus in 1901 only one out of five Malay
male children between the ages of five and fourteen was enlisted in school. Then the
situation started to improve gradually: between 1900 and 1920 the number of Malay
vernacular schools increased from 168 to 400, and the average enrolment rose from just
over 6,000 to more than 20,000, though it should be noted that drop-out rates in the same
period reached 50 per cent.
30
Despite steadily increasing enrolment, the standard of teaching at the majority of
Malay schools remained appallingly bad, above all due to a lack of qualified Malay teach-
ers. Despite its rural bias approach, the colonial administration nevertheless decided to
improve the standard of teaching at the Malay schools through the establishment of
the Sultan Idris Training College at Talong, Perak in 1922. The following decades saw
the production of a cadre of more professional teachers with enhanced disciplinary and
pedagogical competencies. Already by the mid-1920s the College had a total enrolment
29 Despite the establishment of an increasing number of English-medium schools, the Malays made
up no more than 18 per cent of the pupils in the interwar period (Loh, Seeds of separatism, p. 82). The
combination of the remoteness of the urban-based English schools for the predominantly rural Malays;
their relatively poor situation, which made entry fees unaffordable; the predominantly Christian religious
teaching at the English schools; and the policy adopted by the colonial administration, all served to hinder
more substantial Malay enrolment; Watson, Rulers and ruled.
30 Annual report of the FMS for 1900, p. 20; Annual report of the FMS for 1920, p. 12; Loh, Seeds of
separatism, pp. 14, 27.
32 peter triantafillou
of 400 students, and was receiving some 120 new students every year. While the school
targeted the middle and lower socio-economic strata of the population and instruction
was in Malay, it is worth noting that the training of teachers there in many respects
closely resembled that of the Malay College at Kuala Kangsar (see below). Both rested on
the house and prefectural system to ensure a sense of discipline and comradeship; both
gave a secondary-level education focusing on arithmetic, geography, Malay literature
and history; both drew their students from all parts of the Malay Peninsula; and both
ultimately facilitated the making of strong Malay nationalist sentiments.
31
Along with education, the Malayan scout movement (including Boy Scouts and Girl
Guides) seems to have played an increasingly important role in both the mental and
physical training of young Malays from the mid-1920s. Though initiated as early as 1909
in Selangor, the movement only gained pace in Malaya around 1925, when it started to
spread rapidly; by 1934, Negri Sembilan, for example, hosted some 786 scouts and 71
scouters.
32
Despite the original movements Christian orientation, I. Richmond Wheeler,
District Commissioner in Perak, argued that while all Scouts owed their duty to God,
they were free to choose whatever religion they liked. Accordingly, local Boy Scout
Associations drew their members from both English and Malay schools and several of
the leading scouters were Malays. Apart from camping life, physical drills and hygienic
measures targeting the body, the movement sought to instil in the minds of the young
Scouts a sense of personal responsibility for ones actions and loyalty to the civil servants
of the colonial government, as opposed to kinship and patrimonial ties.
33
The colonial rural bias approach towards Malay education meant that the bulk of
the Malays never received more than four years of primary schooling if that and their
schooling was conducted by teachers whose qualifications were generally quite poor.
Moreover, the curriculum of the Malay schools, which excluded English until after
World War Two, only slowly expanded beyond the three Rs, basketry and gardening.
34
Despite the poor quality and ineffectiveness of the Malay vernacular schools, though, it
is clear that during the first half of the twentieth century a steadily increasing proportion
of the masses were to varying extents subjected to disciplinary techniques targeting
both body and mind, including physical drills and exercises, school and scout regula-
tions, instructions in hygiene and lessons in Malay history and geography. This would
slowly introduce the average Malay to a notion of loyalty that rested not on kinship
relations and personal loyalty to the Malay aristocracy, but on duties to the abstract and
apparently impersonal regulations and laws revolving around the notion of the modern
nation-state. In this specific sense important commonalities can be observed between
the schools for the Malay masses and those for the Malay elite, though the latter group
subjected themselves to a much more systematic and strict regimentation of their minds
and bodies, deemed necessary for them to govern others according to the new sense of
rule.
31 William R. Roff, The origins of Malay nationalism, 2nd edn (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press,
1994), pp. 1424; Loh, Seeds of separatism, pp. 878.
32 Rally-O. A souvenir of the visit to Malaya of the Chief Scout and Chief Guide, November 1934
(pamphlet produced by the Boy Scout and Girl Guide Associations of Malaya), p. 16.
33 I. R. Wheeler, Scouting in the tropics (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1926), p. 26 (religion), 1517, 53
(values); on membership, see Whos who, Scouting in Malaya, 1, 4 (1925): 556.
34 Loh, Seeds of separatism, p. 30; Watson, Rulers and ruled, pp. 1701.
33 constituting bureaucratic rulers in colonial malaya
Fostering a disciplined Malay elite
Notwithstanding their very different interests and motivations, British colonisers
and Malay elite alike agreed that to the extent that Malays should enter the administra-
tion, they would have to receive extensive education and training. Unlike the parents
of the poor average Malay, who at least initially only sent their (male) children to
school with great reluctance and under the threat of punitive measures, the Malay
elite were eager to send their offspring to the Malay College as they concurred with the
notion that education was desirable and even necessary in order for them to take part in
colonial rule.
In February 1904, in the midst of the debate over the future role of the Malays
in governing Malaya, Inspector of Schools R. J. Wilkinson submitted proposals for
establishing at a suitable locality in the FMS a special residential school for the education
of Malays of good family and for the training of Malay boys for the admission to certain
branches of the Government Service. Wilkinson envisaged this school as serving a dual
purpose, to train capable Malays for government employment and to serve as an educa-
tional institution for the traditional elite. He argued that merit in the sense of academic
qualifications and potential, rather than social class, should be the main criterion for
entering the Malay College and suggested a ratio of four pupils of good merit to one from
a good family. In this manner he thought the school could both prepare those destined by
birth for high office for their future duties, and at the same time create a cadre of Malay
administrators from amongst the brightest pupils in the FMS.
35
The Malay College, initially called the Malay Residential School, was put into opera-
tion in 1905; the objective was for its graduates to qualify first for junior administrative
posts and eventually, after years of practical training, to advance to senior posts. At
the opening of the College, Sultan Idris of Perak stated that times had changed so much
that nobody could be successful unless he was educated. Formerly, he said, might was
right, but now ones career must depend on ones education.
36
Soon known as the Eton
of Malaya, the Malay College was run along the lines of an English public school as an
institution especially designed to produce a cadre of English-educated administrative
civil servants recruited from among the offspring of the ruling class. Members of the
latter saw this clearly and were enthusiastic in their support of the College, which to them
provided a symbol and a practical means of retaining their position and status in the
new society that had arisen under British rule. Indeed it was the Malay ruling class
(some of whom, such as former District Chiefs, had little or no power under the colonial
system) who most vigilantly preserved the elitist nature of the College and sought to
thwart any attempt to relax the social basis of its entrance criteria, and only from the
1920s were a number of Malay commoners admitted to the College. (Wilkinson had
been removed from his educational position in 1907, and until this point the main
criterion for entrance to the College was membership in the Malay elite rather than
scholastic merit.)
37
35 Wilkinson to Treacher, 24 Feb. 1904, text in minutes of Conference of Residents, Mar. 1904, HCO, RG.
422/1904.
36 Times of Malaya, 26 Oct. 1905.
37 Stevenson, Cultivators and administrators, pp. 18890. It is not quite clear whether his change of
position was voluntary, but most sources suggest that he was transferred against his will.
34 peter triantafillou
Pursuing academic merit and reshaping Malayness
Inspired by the conviction that the adolescent years were vital to the moulding of
character, the boys spent the greater part of the year at the College, going home only
twice, for six weeks at the time of the fasting month (Ramadan) and for another three
at mid-term break. Education at the College covered Standards I through VI until 1921
and 1922, when Standards VII (the Junior Cambridge Class) and VIII (Senior Cambridge
Class) were introduced to enhance the efficiency and quality of the education. The
medium of instruction at the College was English and the usual school subjects of English
language and literature, arithmetic, geography, history, hygiene and physical training
were taught.
38
The boys were subjected to monthly written tests in each subject, and
advancement from one form to the next was conditional on passing examinations
successfully.
While the acquisition of English language and manners played an important role,
the College did not seek to turn Malay adolescents into English ones, but rather made a
strong case for preserving what were seen as their cultural roots. This included instruc-
tion in the Malay language, wearing traditional clothing, eating Malay food, compulsory
participation in Friday prayers and occasional visits from Malay royalty. No doubt
concern over the acceptance of the school by the Malay elite and the populations
reaction to being governed by wholly Anglicised Malays with little concern for their
traditional language, religion and customs was an important consideration behind the
emphasis on cultural practices. There were also positive arguments for emphasising
religious services in particular, however, and here it made little difference to the British
that the religion in question was Islam rather than Christianity, in that it was seen to
strengthen the moral fibre of the young boys.
39
Curiously, what had been considered
as one of the major obstacles to becoming an efficient, law-abiding and impartial officer
namely traditional Malay culture with its alleged favouring of mindless obedience to
authority and irrational outbursts of anger was now turned into an asset by selecting
and shaping those elements that were deemed useful.
Regulating conduct and promoting team spirit
Life at the College was strictly regimented and supervised in order to instil in
the young boys a strong sense of discipline and to develop their moral character. Vivid
descriptions of the so-called rule of the bell by former pupils and employees at the
College reveal that the timing of everyday routines at the school was tightly regulated
from the wake-up call in the morning until bedtime. The transition from one element
to another breakfast, academic lectures, lunch, physical training, break, preparatory
classes, dinner and sleep was marked by the ring of the bell in the central yard of
the school. Similarly, there were a number of regulations prohibiting smoking, certain
forms of conduct and language, etc. The students lives were closely monitored, and
the premises were physically designed in a manner that allowed constant observation of
the actions of each and every boy except for the prefects, as discussed below. The
classrooms, open courtyards and dormitories were all public spaces and apart from the
toilets, which often served as places for (illegal) smoking of cigarettes, there were few
places to hide from the gaze of teachers, prefects or fellow students. Outside classes, the
38 Johan, Emergence, pp. 367.
39 Ibid., p. 40.
35 constituting bureaucratic rulers in colonial malaya
boys actions were supervised by the monitors (elected among the boys from each house)
and by the prefects (appointed by the former prefects). Moreover, both dormitories and
so-called private lockers were regularly the target of searches by the prefects in order to
find cigarettes and other illegal items.
40
Punitive measures incurred by breaches of school regulations ranged from writing
lines to detention classes and caning to outright expulsion. The most common form of
punishment for minor offences was writing lines for example, I will not be late for
classes written 100 times and being ordered to do tedious jobs such as cleaning. For
more serious offences a prefectural interrogation could be launched, involving a cross-
examination of the implicated students before the Prefects Board that often involved a
series of methods to make the boys confess the truth. If found guilty, the offenders would
be publicly named during the weekly assembly, the so-called Detention Class, and would
have to stand up in front of the entire school. Smoking, defiance of authority, dishonesty
and other serious offences would bring caning and, in very rare cases, expulsion.
41
Discipline involved not only techniques targeting the individual by recording
his academic skills, diligence and occasional violations of College regulations but also
devices for the nurturing of inter-subjective relations. Participation in games and athlet-
ics was essential, not only because it developed the students physical capabilities, but also
because it was seen to do more for character than any other educational pursuits in terms
of developing self-discipline, a sense of fair play and team spirit. The unfolding of
these relations was, however, characterised by a certain contradiction. On the one hand,
students were supposed not only to obey the regulations themselves, but also to report
fellow students who breached them. On the other hand, reporting or snitching on
fellow students was regarded as an act of bad camaraderie that undermined team spirit.
42
This sense of comradeship was also developed through participation in the Scout troops
and Cadet corps. Drills, marksmanship and participation in camp excursions were
popular among the students, and in 1925 it was made compulsory for all students to
participate in either scouting or cadet activities.
43
Inculcating a sense of legitimate authority
A prefect system, inspired by the English model, had been introduced by the first
headmaster of the College; chosen from the ranks of the senior boys for their outstanding
qualities in various aspects of school activities, prefects were responsible for monitoring
the conduct of their fellow students. In contrast to ordinary students, they had private
cubicles, as well as exclusive access to the prefects room, where they could lounge in
isolation from the other students a fact much envied by the latter. At the same time,
the prefects were supposed to be role models to the other boys in terms of dress,
behaviour and performance in both academics and sports. When they were outside their
cubicles, their conduct was subject to intense scrutiny by the teachers, and they were
often judged more harshly than their fellow students. Similarly, the granting of a separate
building the Pavillion to the oldest students (the sixth formers) was regarded, at
40 Malay College, 19051965. Past and present (Kuala Lumpur and Singapore: The Straits Times Press (M),
n.d.), pp. 11416 (schedule), xvi (premises), and 124 (searches).
41 Ibid., pp. 1404.
42 Ibid., pp. 910, 14.
43 Johan, Emergence, pp. 3940.
36 peter triantafillou
least in one former students recollection, as a privilege: For it is here they can enjoy
freedom freedom from being watched by other members of the school, for outside the
sixthformers are expected to set an example to the rest of the school.
44
In this way, the
spatial design of the College came together with the disciplinary mechanisms in seeking
to instil in the students a sense of distinction between the public sphere associated with
duty, correct behaviour and constant surveillance and private sphere of life, linked to a
particular form of freedom, namely the absence of surveillance and discipline and the
possibility of pursuing ones own interests and inclinations.
The prefects were granted considerable authority to decide between right and
wrong, and in particular to pass judgement and impose punishment without prior con-
sultation with the staff.
45
Regarded as the Headmasters bloodhounds, they were often
accused of favouring certain students, bullying others, and passing unfair punishments
based on idiosyncratic inclinations. A former student recollects how the combination of
authority and access to private precincts affected the prefects conduct:
When a boy is made a prefect and receives his badge, he undergoes a complete change in
his behaviour, character and even his attitude towards his best friends . . . . He soon realises
that he is different from the rest. He has special rights and privileges . . . . Above all he can
decide between right and wrong, and pass judgment and impose punishment without prior
reference to higher authorities. He struts about the hostel with his nose high up in the air
and fails to recognise his good old pals. He seeks a more refined and sophisticated group of
people and finds seclusion in the prefects room. There the beautiful cushions, the shiny
tables, the vases of flowers, the radio and an out-of-place mirror complete the change and
he emerges as a new person with some strange ideas about loyalty, duty and friends.
46
What is important here is not so much the extent to which the prefects were actually
exercising their influence over the other boys within the ambit of their legitimate author-
ity, but the fact that this very distinction between their official authority and their private
predilections was a source of recurring conflicts. In effect, these recurring disputes
meant that prefects and other students alike were forced to play out a game of power
that revolved around the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate authority, and
correspondingly between public duty on the one hand and private interests and so-called
inner convictions on the other.
In sum, the disciplinary techniques circulating at the College were repressive but
also highly productive in that they instilled in the boys an entirely new sense of achieve-
ment, team spirit and authority. In particular, these techniques urged the boys to
conduct themselves in relation to the distinction between legitimate authority and public
duties, on the one hand, and illegitimate authority and private convictions on the other.
Moreover, while there was no doubt strong pressure on the students from both inside the
school (teachers and fellow students) and outside the school (ambitious parents), it is
clear that they did not join the school or accept the new codes of conduct against
their will. In fact several testimonies of former students seem to indicate that while the
discipline at the College was considered harsh and sometimes unfair, life there was
44 Malay College, pp. 1456; on the higher standards for prefects, see p. 141.
45 Ibid., p. 139.
46 Ibid., p. 139; emphasis added.
37 constituting bureaucratic rulers in colonial malaya
often the source of intense enjoyment and engagement, and the students took great pride
in completing their education.
47
What, then, was the impact of the Malay Colleges activities on the wider political
and cultural fabric of the FMS? Judging from the statistics alone, it is clear that the young-
sters graduating from the College or from the other less prestigious English-medium
schools remained a very tiny minority well up until World War Two. By 1913 the total
enrolment at the Malay College was 138, a figure that was to remain more or less constant
until the 1930s. By 1914, a total of 164 boys had earned the Seventh Standard Certificate
the basic educational qualification in the English-language school system since the
Colleges inception in 1905, making an annual output of less than 20 students.
48
While
the number of graduates gradually increased over the interwar period, its significance
should be gauged not so much in numerical terms as by the subsequent trajectory of
its individual students who became top politicians and administrators in independent
Malaysia. Thus on top of educating several traditional Malay rulers, the College was to
produce key members of the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) and thus
some of the leading politicians of post-independence Malaysia well into the 1970s,
including Prime Minister Tun Razak, who emphasised the importance of his education
at the Malay College in developing his capacity to lead.
49
Shaping the career and conduct of Malay administrators
While the bulk of the students graduating from the Malay College went to find
jobs in the lower subordinate government services as, for example, clerks, translators,
medical dressers, surveyors and assistants a minority entered a three-year proba-
tionership with a view to becoming members of the Malay Administrative Service
(MAS). This system, which was essentially to prevail until the beginning of World War
Two, initially made successful graduation from the College the only legitimate mode of
entrance to the MAS, as all probationers had to come from that school. The implementa-
tion of the Scheme for Malay Officers (Administrative Branch) in 1921, which replaced
the earlier system, deprived the Malay College of this monopoly by opening proba-
tionerships to graduates of other English schools in the FMS as well; only half of the
nominations for these positions would now go to graduates of the College.
50
Moreover,
the selection of probationers was no longer restricted to boys of good family. By enlarg-
ing the basis of recruitment, the British were hoping to increase the number of qualified
candidates and to provide opportunities for those of non-aristocratic background. Even
so, the number of MAS members serving at one time never exceeded 91 in the period
before 1941, and by 1959 the figure was no more than 75.
51
47 See accounts by former students in ibid.
48 Roff, Origins of Malay nationalism, p. 105.
49 Speech by Abdul Ahmad, Sun, 11 Jan. 1998. Other notable graduates include former Chairman of
UMNO Dato Onn bin Jaafar, former Minister in Prime Ministers Dept. Abang Abu Bakar, former UN
Ambassador Razali Ismail, and former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
50 Scheme for the employment of Malays in the public service (Higher subordinate class), 1910,
Federated Malay States civil service list (Kuala Lumpur: Government Press, 1913) pp. 32930; Scheme for
Malay Officers (Administrative Branch), 1921, Federated Malay States government gazette (Kuala Lumpur:
Government Press, 1921), pp. 12368.
51 For an overview of these developments, see Robert O. Tilman, The Malay Administrative Service,
19101960, The Indian Journal of Public Administration, 7, 2 (1961): 14557. The figure for 1959 is from
p. 146, while the pre-1941 data are in Johan, Emergence, p. 65. The MAS existed as an entity until 1974.
38 peter triantafillou
Despite its limited membership, the MAS became the single most important institu-
tion for Malays seeking to reach the top of the colonial administration. Thus in the
period 191053 the MAS provided almost the only method of entry for native Malays
into the most exclusive part of the colonial administration, namely the Malayan Civil
Service (MCS), which was an elite corps of administrative generalists very much along
the lines of the Indian Civil Service and the Civil Service of Pakistan. (The Malay Admin-
istrative Service, on the other hand, was for Malay officers only and lacked the prestige
of the MCS.) The 1910 Service Scheme enabled exceptional Malay Assistants, after a
minimum of eight years service in the MAS, to be selected for a Special Class with the
opportunity to be promoted to the MCS. By 1941, out of a total of 29 Malays in the MCS,
25 had come from the MAS. According to Robert Tilman, who has made what is perhaps
the most thorough analysis of the civil service in Malaya around the time of indepen-
dence, the Malayanisation of the post-independence administration would hardly have
been possible without the core of highly trained Malays who had passed through the
MAS. In 1953 the Service Scheme was altered by making a university degree a sufficient
condition to enter the MCS, effectively undermining the incentive to join the MAS and
thus its importance.
52
What sort of training and discipline did the Malays undergo in order to rise through
the hierarchy of the colonial administration? The life of Malay officers like that of the
British officers was strictly regulated both at work and outside work. Under the General
orders, rules and regulations pertained not merely to terms of service (such as the transfer
from one position to another, conditions of leave, allowances and salary increments), but
also to the acceptance of gifts, acquisition of land and incurring of debts; the latter
practices were all viewed with great seriousness as a threat to the integrity of Malay
officials. Failure to abide by the rules and follow directions from above had direct career
repercussions, ranging from oral warnings to withdrawal of promotions and transfer to
remote districts, to outright sacking. For example, three Malay officers were dismissed in
the late 1930s for taking bribes.
53
Falling into debt was also seen as a liability to Malay official, and someone who was
seriously indebted would be given a reprimand, a serious drawback in future applications
for promotion. He would also be given a warning that should he get into further debt,
he would be liable for dismissal. As a safeguard against indebtedness civil servants were
encouraged to live within their means, and loans were only provided when it could be
ascertained that repayment would not constitute a hardship to the employee.
54
Finally,
the acquisition of land by civil servants was regulated in order that property matters
should not interfere with the efficient performance of official duty. In 1926 the British
Residents decided that Malay Officers should be allowed to acquire up to 50 acres of land
provided that they had sufficient capital to develop the land and that it did not interfere
with their official duties.
55
52 Tilman, Malay Administrative Service, p. 146; figures from p. 148. On the changes after 1953, see
pp. 1567.
53 High Commissioner to Secretary of State, 19 Jan. 1940, in CO 717/144.
54 Johan, Emergence, p. 137.
55 Acting Under-Secretary to Government, FMS, to Secretary to Resident, Selangor 21 Dec. 1926, in
Selangor Secretariat (Sel. Sec.) 1083/1927.
39 constituting bureaucratic rulers in colonial malaya
Despite being subjected to strict rules and regulations of conduct and patronising
comments from their British superiors, remarkably few Malay officers resigned from the
MAS less than five between 191040.
56
The perseverance that these men demonstrated
in pursuing a career in the colonial administration can hardly be attributed to the pro-
spects of material gain, as even at the highest levels of the Service salaries were relatively
modest, at least when compared to the income of members of the Malay aristocracy or
to that found in the commercial sector. Moreover, throughout the interwar period the
prospects of advancement to positions with higher status and salary were, as indicated
above, rather meagre, to put it mildly. If Malays persevered in the colonial administration
in spite of these conditions, it may be due to the fact that the civil service presented one of
the few ladders of upward social mobility at the time. Both the officers themselves and the
traditional elite were continuously urging the British to improve the possibilities for
Malays to enter the civil service and improve the career advancement for those deemed
qualified for the task.
The tensions between those practices informed by the new ethos of integrity based
on a distinction between private and public spheres of action as opposed to those
informed by the importance attributed to the hierarchical personal relations pre-
dominating under the kerajaan rule became particularly acute in the situations where
Malay officers dealt with the traditional aristocracy. These conflicts were played out both
during ceremonies hosted by the latter and during the officials conduct of their duties.
Many found it very uncomfortable to attend ceremonial occasions in the rulers courts.
At these ceremonies, where seating arrangements and manner of dress expressed the
hierarchical status attributed to the persons present, Malay officials would often be
seated and required to dress in a manner that they found unbecoming to their dignity
and social status and often very humiliating.
57
British officials were acutely aware of the
strains placed on Malay officials in such circumstances and took several steps to reduce
the likelihood of their succumbing to the influence of members of the elite at the expense
of their official obligations. For example, the officerships of those districts in which the
sultans resided were reserved for European officers.
Conclusion
This article has argued that the establishment of the British colonial administration
in Selangor, Perak, Negri Sembilan and Pahang in the 1870s was associated with a gradual
but nonetheless radical mutation of the norms informing the practices of self-conduct of
those Malays allowed positions of political authority. In a delicate balance between direct
and indirect forms of rule, grounded in a perception of the Malays as the legitimate
though largely immature and unqualified rulers of Malaya, the British colonisers gradu-
ally made room for Malays to occupy positions of authority in the new administrative
apparatus. This authority was no longer based on lineage, the ability to take life and
rituals of obeisance as under kerajaan rule, but instead on academic merit, team spirit
and above all the capacity to govern oneself in what was for Malays at that time, at least
a curious separation between official duties and tasks on the one hand and private
interests and convictions on the other.
56 Johan, Emergence, p. 142.
57 Ibid., pp. 1723.
40 peter triantafillou
Inspired by Michel Foucaults analysis of discipline and ethics, the discussion has
tried to show that the emergence of a bureaucratic ethos should be seen not as imposition
of Western, formal rationality on Malays whose authentic inner worldview was thereby
steadily repressed and erased. Rather, this strange sense of interiority had to be invented,
trained and rehearsed through a series of disciplinary techniques at school, during proba-
tion and in the administration. If Malay officers began to scrutinise, problematise and
govern themselves according to norms of integrity and impersonality (though with some
exceptions, as indicated by several reports of bribery and other irregularities), this was
hardly the result of a repressive disciplinary apparatus imposing itself on the Malay
officer and inducing him to renounce his so-called inner or private convictions. It is
worth repeating that the Malay College did not seek to Anglicise its students, but rather
to make them respect and adhere to Malay language and customs, including professing
Islam. Moreover, as analysis of the kerajaan rule has showed, it makes little sense to view
as the Weberian-inspired approach suggests the emergence of the bureaucratic ethos
as repression and renunciation of the Malays authentic inner values in favour of exter-
nally imposed formal and rule-bound duties, for the simple reason that this distinction
was entirely new to them. The effect of training and rehearsing then was not to renounce
a mythical Malay interiority but to produce it and this in a manner that would enable
Malays to govern themselves according to the bureaucratic norms of conduct.
Equally important is the basic but nonetheless crucial fact that Malays freely sub-
mitted themselves to the disciplinary techniques circulating in the Malay College and
the Malay Administrative Service inasmuch as they chose to pursue a career in the
colonial administration. Nor should it be forgotten that the nobility was instrumental in
pushing for the making of a school that would allow Malays to enter the administrative
service. While there can be no doubt that the attempts to shape the conduct of these men
included mechanisms of supervision and control by others, they depended above all on
the students and officers freely questioning, examining and shaping their own conduct
in accordance with norms of proper bureaucratic conduct. It is in this sense that the
emergence of a bureaucratic ethos in colonial Malaya may be characterised not as yet
another instance of Western formal rationality based on the renunciation of authentic
Malay subjectivity, but rather as the constitution of a specific Malayan bureaucratic
subjectivity based on a modern and power-laden practice of freedom. Not surprisingly,
the instigation of a new code of conduct was the source of recurrent problematisation
and conflict. This was equally the case under colonialism, when Malay officials them-
selves expressed concerns over conflicting loyalty in cases dealing with members of the
Malay aristocratic elite,
58
and after independence, when opposition parties, NGOs and
individuals have advocated norms of impersonal and rule-bound conduct as an antidote
to corruption and the all too symbiotic relationship between the civil service and the
ruling government coalition.
58 Ibid., p. 116.