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Benton, Gregor
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Article contents
Benevolent technocracy: The Chinese Protectorate, migration control and racialised governmentality in colonised Malaya
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2021
Abstract
The Chinese Protectorate was first established in Singapore in 1877 with the limited objective of preventing abuses in Chinese labour migration, but it evolved multiple functions dedicated to governing Chinese migrants and residents in colonised Malaya. The Protector possessed extensive statutory powers and he was regarded as the official authority on all matters ‘Chinese’. This was an important yet under-studied colonial institution in the history of Chinese migration and settlement in Singapore and Malaysia. This article narrates the history behind the establishment of the Protectorate in the 1870s when ‘racialised governmentality’ of the Chinese population was institutionalised in colonised Malaya. The article underscores the significance of imperial and local contexts of the Protectorate's creation, arguing that it was a product of flexible adaptation of empire-wide practices of ‘protecting’ and governing liberated slaves, indigenous peoples and subsequently, indentured Indian labourers ‘humanely’. It is notable, therefore, that there was a coeval and conjoined discussion of migration control of Chinese as well as Indian labour migrants in Malaya during this period, but this history is hidden from plain sight by popular approaches studying labour migration as components of ethnic diasporas migrating from a single point of origin.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2021
Footnotes
The author would like to thank Hong Lysa, Victor Zhuang and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments which made key lines of arguments clearer. Victor Zhuang and Justin Ng helped with obtaining materials that were otherwise inaccessible to me. I am grateful to them for supporting my research. Needless to say, I bear sole responsibility for the article's contents.
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