Liberalism and Empire in Southeast Asia

Liberalism and Empire in Southeast Asia

Symposium 12th December 2016

Australian National University

Location: Hedley Bull Building, Seminar Room 1 (HB1), ANU.

Convening committee: Gareth Knapman, Anthony Milner, Mary Quilty

This symposium collects the leading scholars on British colonial thought in Southeast Asia to consider the question of the relationship between liberalism and the British Empire in Southeast Asia. Many recent studies of British imperialism, and European imperialism more generally, have focussed on what political theorist Jennifer Pitts labelled the ‘liberal turn to empire’. These studies have addressed how the anti-imperialist tradition of Eighteenth century liberalism was increasingly intertwined with the discourses of empire, freedom, race and economics in the nineteenth century.

The empire builders in Southeast Asia: Lord Minto, William Farquhar, John Leyden, Thomas Stamford Raffles, and John Crawfurd — to name a few — were fervent believers in a liberal free trade order in Southeast Asia. Three stand out events shaped the British liberal approach to Southeast Asia: firstly, the establishment of the colony on the island of Penang, secondly the British occupation of Java between 1811 and 1816; and thirdly, the foundation of Singapore.

All of these events have been discussed as defining elements in the making of Southeast Asia. But they have rarely been discussed as embodying the tension between empire and liberalism. With 2016 coinciding with the 200 year anniversary of the British withdrawal from Java, this symposium will, for the first time, place Southeast Asia within the broader literature of liberalism and empire.

Program - Location Hedley Bull Seminar Room 1 (HB1).

9.30am / Welcome and Introduction
10.00 / Diana J Carroll -- Marsden and the ideology of empire
10.20 / Tze Shiung Ng - The Invention of Liberalism in the Raffles Text
10.40 / Discussion
11.00 / Morning Tea
11.20 / Nadia Wright - Pragmatism at Play: William Farquhar and the Founding of Singapore
11.40 / Mary Quilty -Political Economy, labour and early ethnography in Southeast Asia
12.00 / Discussion
12.20 / Lunch
1.20 / Martin Müller - The Gaze of a Liberal Imperialist? Observing, Documenting, and Interpreting Oriental Despotism in John Crawfurd’s Travelogues.
1.40 / Wilbert Wong Wei Wen -- John Crawfurd’s studies on the people of the Malay Peninsula and liberalism
2.00 / Discussion
2.20 / John Walker - Contested Reputation: Revisiting William Gliddon’s Testimony concerning James Brooke”
2.40 / Gareth Knapman - The liberal security experiment in Southeast Asia
3.00 / Discussion
3.20 / Afternoon Tea
3.40 / Anthony Milner – Ideological impact of liberalism on Muslim Malay society
4.00 / Final discussion
5.30 / Robert Cribb is launching – Race and British Colonialism in South-East Asia: John Crawfurd and the politics of equality by Gareth Knapman @ Asia Book Room, 2/1-3 Lawry Pl, Macquarie ACT 2614

Diana J Carroll -- Marsden and the ideology of empire

Duncan BellʼsʻWhat is liberalismʼ argues that dating the advent of the British liberal tradition as far back as Locke was largely because of a twentieth century shift in historical analysis that saw a ʻretrojective extension of the liberal traditionʼ. Is William Marsden eligible to be embraced retrojectively by the liberal tradition? Certainly, in his History of Sumatra Marsden dealt with empire, monopolies, trade and colonisation – all subjects that fall within the ambit of the liberal tradition and drew on sources recognised as belonging to the liberal tradition. In addressing the question of whether, and how, liberal ideas found expression in the History this paper will focus on Marsdenʼs ideas about colonisation on the one hand, and about empire on the other.

According to a very resilient mythology the first or settler British Empire was based on trade and settlement, not conquest, and was informed by ʻBritish norms, exported and fostered by metropolitan migrantsʼ. It was this mythology that helped nurture ideas now identified as part of the liberal tradition. As Mehta and Pitts have pointed out, the liberal ideas that were beginning to inform political thought in the metropolis were not transported to the non-settler and tropical possessions. I argue that this was because, as Armitage has suggested, territorial expansion of the so-called second non-settler British empire ‘rendered it incompatible with metropolitan norms of liberty, equality and the rule of law ...[and] demanded that the Empire be exoticised and ... differentiated from domestic history’.

MarsdenʼsHistory responds to the danger that attempts to exoticise tropical and eastern nations held for Sumatrans and in the History he effectively de-exoticised Sumatra and Sumatrans. The Spanish had exoticised the Amerindians by denying that they belonged to the human race. The British exoticisation process depended on maintaining a distance between Europeans and non-Europeans based on notions of what constituted civil society. Distancing had begun in the Anglo-American colonies well before the 19th century and, in the first place, hinged on what constituted a nationʼs legitimate claim to land. Civilised peoples were said to cultivated the land effectively whereas the uncivilised merely scratched the earth. Although this debate originated in the American colonies it played an important part in determining the structure and tenor of Marsdenʼs History.

The first (1783) and second (1784) editions of Marsdenʼs History of Sumatra were written and published in the years between the American and French Revolutions. The comparative disenchantment with ideas on liberty as promulgated by the French philosophes experienced by Marsden (and many others) during the wars with France, had yet to occur. Marsdenʼs ideas of empire emerge from his 1783 discussion of the difference between the two phases of the Menangkabauempire – the ancient pagan empire and the eighteenth-century Islamic empire. Marsdenʼs 1783 analysis of the differences between the ancient pagan Menangkabau Empire and the modern (eighteenth-century) Empire, was one of the significant features of his 1783 and 1784 editions omitted from the third (1811) edition. The differences between the early 1780s editions and the revised 1811 edition reflects the changing attitudes to liberal ideas within Britain as a response to the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Therefore not only does Marsden’s history reflect the liberal tradition, it also reflected the conflicting ideas between conservatism and liberalism during the Napoleonic Wars.

Dr Dinna Carroll is the foremost scholar on the life and legacy of William Marsden. She has published numerous papers on Marsden and nineteenth century colonial writers of ethnology. She is currently aHonorary Fellow in the School of History, Culture and Language in the Collage of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University.

TzeShiungNg - The Invention of Liberalism in the Raffles Text

In the history of the British Empire, the commercial origin and design of Britain's imperial power in Southeast Asia is an undisputed narrative. Singapore's founding in 1819 as a free port, provides the watershed when three critical objectives of British free trade were seen finally to converge: i.e. national trade with China, freedom of navigation, and free markets in the Malay Archipelago. Laid down by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1824, these objectives defined the nineteenth-century liberal framework for both colonist and historian. Invaluable to the imperial project, was Raffles's claim that the objectives were already anticipated in the policies he had single-handedly pursued as governor of Java (1811-16) and Sumatra (1818-23), before founding Singapore.

This paper investigates the veracity of Raffles's claim, in light of the fact that Singapore's three objectives were first proposed in the proceedings of a parliamentary commission on foreign trade in London in 1820. The anachronism and displacement of the intellectual source of Empire's liberal framework, if valid, have important implications for the textual context. None more so than the question what, if Raffles had adopted the liberal framework after founding Singapore, is the political influence behind Britain's eight-year intervention in the East Indies which preceded the founding of Singapore?

TzeShiungNg is currently writing a PhD at the School of History, Culture and Language in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. The focus of TzeShiung’s research is on the intellectual origins and consequences of the British Expedition to Java in 1811.

Nadia Wright - Pragmatism at Play: William Farquhar and the Founding of Singapore

British attitudes to free trade in SE Asia were hedged by a determination to protect their own commercial interests. With the pending return of the Dutch to the region after 1815, British traders stood to lose the inroads they had made into local markets, and Britain needed to protect its increasingly valuable sea route to China. One man who was worried by this situation was William Farquhar, the Resident and Commandant of Malacca. Aware of the detrimental effect the Dutch return would have on British trade and influence, he pressed for a new post south of Malacca to protect Britain's interests. This would culminate in the founding of Singapore.

This paper briefly looks at Farquhar's attempts to expand British interests in the region, before concentrating on Singapore. While Sir Stamford Raffles established a small outpost there in 1819, it was Farquhar who retained the settlement against Dutch threats to retake it. He then developed Singapore from scratch into such a successful commercial port that in 1824, Britain decided to keep it. Farquhar's motives, however, stemmed less from liberalism than pragmatism

Dr Nadia Wrightis a retired teacher who lives in Melbourne, Australia, having migrated from New Zealand. She has focussed her research on Armenians in Southeast Asia, as well as the founding of British Singapore. Her Phd research at the University of Melbourne focused on William Farquhar's role in the founding of Singapore. Nadia has written Respected Citizens; the History of Armenians in Singapore and Malaysia, co-authored Vanda Miss Joaquim: Singapore's National Flower & the Legacy of Agnes and Ridley, and published related articles. Her book William Farquhar and Singapore: Stepping out from Raffles' Shadow is in press.

Mary Quilty — Political Economy, labour and early ethnography in Southeast Asia

Ideas from Britishpolitical economyhelpedshape the ethnographic ideas of theearlynineteenthcenturyBritish colonial administrators inSoutheastAsia.Two of the most influential economic ideas were:thelabourtheory of value and the theory of comparative advantage.

In the late eighteenth and early ninetieth centuries classical economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus searched for a method of establishing a real and lasting value of goods and services, rather than the existing ephemeral exchange values. They thought they had found the source of value in labour. Labour imparted value to things and was valuable in its own right, like any other commodity.

At first glance Smith’s value of labour seems to have no implied cultural or racial difference between different groups of labourers. Indeed he stated that any labourers anywhere ‘must always lay down the same portion of his ease, his liberty and his happiness’. However, portions of ease, liberty and happiness are hard to measure. So political economy measured the value of labour by the value of the commodities – food, clothing, lodging – necessary to replenish the body for the hours of labour expended. In this circular fashion Smith and other classical economists measured the labourer’s output (the work he did) with the labourer’s input (everything he consumes).

In Southeast Asia, British colonial administrators adapted the idea of Smith, Ricardo and Malthus by using ethnographic type information on food clothing and lodging needs of local labourers. In their writings they selectively applied the labour theory of value to Chinese, Indian and Malay labourers working in the colonies. They used this to write about the true value of the labour of the different races in their Southeast Asian colonies. British colonial administrators also used Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage. Ricardo’s theories were adapted by colonial administrators to explain the value given to the products of different races working side-by-side rather than those of geographically distant countries. Thus in the British colonies of early nineteenth century Southeast Asia, early ethnography and colonial adaptation of classical political economic theory were entwined and interdependent.

Dr Mary Quiltyhas written widely on British colonial thought in Southeast Asia. Her pioneering book Textual Empires, published in 1995, scoped much of the subsequent research into British colonial thought in Southeast Asia. Her PhD subsequently explored in depth the influence and adaptation of early economic thought in British colonies in Southeast Asia. Quilty co-authored with Anthony Milner a three volume series, published by Oxford University Press, on Australia’s attitudes to different Asian countries and their attitudes to Australia. These three volumes, comparing Asian and Australian attitudes to a range of issues from labour relations to defence to government, were published between 1996 and 1998. The volume in which Quilty co-authored several chapters, Australia in Asia. Comparing Cultures, has been republished several times. Quilty has also contributed chapters on social and cultural engagement to Facing North: A Century of Australian Engagement with Asia published by Melbourne University Press in 2003.

Martin Müller -The Gaze of a Liberal Imperialist? Observing, Documenting, and Interpreting Oriental Despotism in John Crawfurd’s Travelogues.

Within a broad framework of liberal discourses and imperial imaginaries this paperuses john Crawfurd’s travelogues describing his diplomatic missions to Siam and Cochin China (1821-1822) and Ava (1826-1827) to explore the uses of the trope of Oriental despotism in Crawfurd’s critique of Asian systems of government. Crawfurd presented different modes of ‘observing’ Oriental despotism. In particular, I study the discursive process through which the existence of a relatively high level of wages in these countries was transformed into directly observable evidence of Oriental despotism. Through a comparison of these texts with Crawfurd’s other writings on Oriental despotism, I furthermore look into the differentinvestigative modalitiesandlevels of knowledgeinvolved in gathering authentic information and producing authoritative knowledge such as it was presented in the various genres addressing non-European and colonial issues.

Emphasising the importance of contemporary ideas on society, civilisation, and empire, my aim is to contextualise the different ways in which Crawfurd framed, analysed, and debated the presence of Oriental Despotism in Southeast Asia. This involves a study of how Crawfurd in hisHistory of the Indian Archipelago(1820) traced of the origins of Oriental Despotism in the region to the material conditions associated with the cultivation of wet rice. In arguing this, Crawfurd differed markedly from Raffles’ culturalist explanation of its origins, stressing the role played by the Muslim religion.

Thus, I endeavour to contextualize Crawfurd’s discourses on Oriental Despotism within their broader cultural, political, and epistemological frameworks by comparing the heterogeneous ways in which he throughout the 1810s and 1820s conceptualized, observed, and discussed Oriental despotism as a learned traveller, philosophical historian, scholar-administrator, and diplomat.

Dr Martin Mülleris a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Copenhagen. Müller completed his PhD dissertation on notions ofcivilization, race, and culture within a set of British nineteenth century discourses on Southeast Asian, with a particular reference to John Crawfurd. His current research addresses the concept of territoriality in the entwined processes of national and imperial state formation throughout the long nineteenth century.

Wilbert Wong Wei Wen -- John Crawfurd’s studies on the people of the Malay Peninsula and liberalism

Scholars to date have engaged with John Crawfurd’s (1783—1868) extensive intellectual works, but none have paid close attention to his writings on the indigenous communities of the Malay Peninsula, how they helped inform his ideas, and their place in his global views. Crawfurd’s complex ideas have often been misunderstood. His position on race and ethnology are often collectively identified with other white supremacist racist thinkers of the nineteenth-century. Although his writings do provide the impression of European superiority, and it is not incorrect that he saw cultural progress as being relatively tied to the mental capacity of a race, or the “quality of the race”, closer reading of his texts would reveal his liberal belief that all races should be regarded as equals, in spite of their differences. This is also reflective of his views on empire, which, like his racial views, have been unjustly categorised as writings that provide legitimacy and moral justification for the spread of imperial power in Asia, like the writings of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826), for instance. Crawfurd was an outspoken critic of Britain’s intrusive policies in Asia, which he saw as detrimental to the well-being of its inhabitants, and believed that commercial and political engagements should be conducted on equal terms. Empire, in Crawfurd’s view, should only be established for the primary purpose of trade, and the British flag should only be planted on unoccupied, but strategic locations, such as Penang. Free trade will elevate the social conditions of the surrounding cultures that engaged with it. Crawfurd’s ideas are an example of how imperial literature and knowledge must not be treated as a collective, as perceptions and ideas differ across individuals. This research addresses these issues by examining Crawfurd’s scholarship on the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula, how his ideas about them were developed, and their place in his conception of empire, world history and liberalism. It will, moreover, explore how his ideas on liberalism and empire were applied to his studies on the Malay Peninsula.

Wilbert Wong Wei Wen is a PhD Candidate, School of History, Australian National University. His research focuses on British colonial interpretations of the Malay Peninsular

John Walker - Contested Reputation: Revisiting William Gliddon’s Testimony concerning James Brooke”

James Brooke’s well-publicised adventures in northwest Borneo during the 1840s established him as a hero of Empire. A consummate propagandist, Brooke ensured that his diaries and letters, and the publications of his European collaborators, Keppel, Mundy, Low and St. John fed a positive, indeed, heroic, image of him in Britain. Importantly, the overwhelmingly positive nature of the primary sources concerning Brooke’s career in Borneo continues to distort significantly our understanding of him and his career.