Author: Ipoh

Urban Planning in Colonial Malaya & Singapore

by Ipoh

As is the case with most urban planning, functionality was a main concern when drawing up urban plans for colonial Singapore and Malaya. Functionality, however, was not the only concern. Swettenham’s British Malaya: An Account of the Origin and Progress of British in Malaya (1907) and Pearson’s analysis of Jackson’s Plan both show the main priorities when planning how to construct and organise colonial settlements. Particularly in the cases of Singapore and Malaya, British authorities used urban planning as a means of reorganising colonial space to maximise economic productivity and/or administrative control. Even if plans were not successfully realised, the designs reveal British ambition and intentions which go further than simply functionality in urban planning.

Sir Frank Swettenham’s British Malaya: An Account of the Origin and Progress of British in Malaya (1907) is particularly revealing of the way in which the British used urban planning for the purpose of advancing economic priorities. Frank Swettenham, author of the aforementioned source, was a former Governor of the Straits Settlements, as well as the High Commissioner for the Federated Malay States. In British Malaya: An Account of the Origin and Progress of British in Malaya (1907), Swettenham writes from an insider perspective of his experiences within the colonial administration. Swettenham’s ideas surrounding economic growth being at the centre of urban planning became abundantly clear during his discussion of road construction in the Malay States. Swettenham describes roads in an interesting fashion. Instead of focusing on their practical purpose, getting people from one settlement to another, Swettenham instead describes the infrastructure as follows: “A bridle road was no sooner completed than small houses, plantations, and fruit and vegetable gardens sprang up along its whole length.”1 He writes that as the roads were improved upon, the villages were developing simultaneously. This means that roads, in the urban planning process, managed to alter the spatial organisation of the landscape by encouraging economic activities to be concentrated alongside them, a premeditated effort established by the colonial administration. This illustrates how space was seized as an opportunity to plan for the best economic outcome.

This is not the extent of economic growth as a main priority in the urban planning of Malaya. Swettenham additionally writes that, “revenue and prosperity follow the liberal but prudently-direct expenditure of public funds”2 especially when money is invested in “high-class roads, in railways, telegraphs, waterworks, and everything likely to encourage trade and private enterprise.”3 Here, Swettenham is stating that infrastructure is important because it increases land values, encourages private investment, and facilitates commerce, which ultimately benefits the government and its revenue. Swettenham is using urban planning by analysing the physical organisation of the settlement and connecting it to the networks of trade and private enterprise to best enhance productivity. The economic growth provided by the settlement, by proxy, benefits the administration that oversees it, once again proving economic growth and administrative interest are at the heart of urban planning in colonial Malaya.

Swettenham’s account, however, also reveals specific administrative efforts made within the colonial settlements whilst urban planning. Swettenham writes, “Sanitary Boards were instituted to regulate the markets, sanitation, slaughter-houses, laundries, water supply,”4 as well as various other aspects. The introduction of “Sanitary Boards” meant a new opportunity for colonial authorities to exercise power over civilians. Swettenham’s account also lays out other administrative positions that each coincide with a different location in the settlement, writing, “his main supports were the officer in charge of districts, originally styled District Magistrates.”5 This means that in urban planning, each district was assigned an officer to oversee it, showing how administrative efforts were implanted into the design of the city itself. In other words, with each district comes a specific administrative force to govern it. Swettenham’s account once again proves administrative control was at the forefront of urban planning, as the city was specifically planned for positions that coincided with certain districts.

Outside of Malaya, urban planning in colonial Singapore was orchestrated around optimisation for greater administrative gain. In H.F. Pearson’s analysis of Jackson’s Plan, the text shows British colonial powers using urban planning to implement administrative control over the settlement, though in this instance it was not exactly successful. However, the intent was always evident. The intent is especially evident in Pearson’s analysis of Jackson’s Plan, which demonstrates the ambitions of colonial planners for Singapore. Pearson cites a contemporary description of the plan: “The general plan of the town, showing the allotment of the different campongs, principal roads and streets, and the ground reserved for public purposes,”6 which shows an initial effort to make Singapore spatially ordered and, ultimately, more administratively manageable. Jackson’s Plan also included “well-regulated roads and kampongs planned according to Raffles’s instructions.”7 The language here of “well-regulated” and “planned according to Raffles’s instructions” yet again reinforces that colonial officials wanted Singapore’s physical organisation to reflect British administrative decisions.

The cases of colonial Singapore and Malaya both go to show that urban planning was not merely about creating a functional colonial settlement. Rather, urban planning was used to create a spatial organisation of a colonial settlement that was best equipped to be governable and easily regulated administratively as well as being economically efficient. The pieces of Swettenham and Pearson allow us to understand what intentions are behind the planning of a colonial city and how those intentions become realised in the actual city itself.

  1. Frank Swettenham, British Malaya: An Account of the Origin and Progress of British Influence in Malaya (London: John Lane, 1907), 238–39. [↩]
  2. Swettenham, British Malaya, 294. [↩]
  3. Swettenham, British Malaya, 295. [↩]
  4. Swettenham, British Malaya, 239. [↩]
  5. Swettenham, British Malaya, 242. [↩]
  6. H. F. Pearson, “Lt. Jackson’s Plan of Singapore,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of Royal Asiatic Society 42. no. 1 (1969): 163, quoting Singapore Consultations, 7 February 1823. [↩]
  7. Pearson, “Lt. Jackson’s Plan of Singapore,” 164. [↩]

Mapping Illness and Spatial Division in Hong Kong

by Ipoh

Illness, although not the first thing that might typically come to mind when discussing spatial histories, can prove very significant in mapping patterns of settlement, social divisions, and perceptions of different public spaces. “Climate and Sanitary Condition” from The Treaty Ports of China and Japan illustrates how illness intersects with the labelling of certain spaces. “Climate and Sanitary Condition” from The Treaty Ports of China and Japan describes mid-19th-century Hong Kong from the view of the foreign inhabitants residing there. This source is fascinating for a number of reasons. At first glance, this section of the source, “Climate and Sanitary Condition,” seems to focus solely on disease, specifically detailing which illnesses befell the foreigners across their first few years of inhabitance in the British colony of Hong Kong, with the primary source citing all sorts of illnesses throughout Hong Kong, corresponding locations of said illnesses and outbreaks, and a chart denoting mortality rates among foreigners in their first eight years settling in Hong Kong. However, the meticulous mapping and logging of the specific locations of illness outbreaks serve a broader purpose. By mapping illness outbreaks to certain spots in Hong Kong, the author covertly manages to forge associations, through the use of deliberate language, characterising spaces where predominantly lower-class Hong Kong locals reside as sites of illness. These associations strengthen pre-existing racial/class divisions between foreigners and Hong Kong locals under the guise of spatial divisions. This idea is further reinforced by many other sources in mid-19th century China, like in Treaty Ports in Modern China: Law, Land and Power and The Treaty Ports of China and Japan, where foreign ideas surrounding sanitation and health oftentimes informed the spatial organisation of China’s treaty ports.

The language used to map various illnesses in “Climate and Sanitary Condition” demonstrates how perceptions of disease became paired with particular spaces, and the people who resided in those spaces. “Climate and Sanitary Condition” has a section describing the foreign-stationed soldiers who were residing amongst Hong Kong locals when there was a particularly severe outbreak of an illness, the source writes, “From all accounts, it is not easy to escape the spots of this malarious character at Hong Kong; and if it is ever to be a healthy station, our soldiers must not be housed as they have been hitherto.”1 The terminology used by the author here, describing spots in Hong Kong as possessing “malarious character”2 and later in the source describing the locality of the barracks as “unwholesome,”3 illustrates a contempt for certain spots in Hong Kong, and these certain spots are far from coincidental. The foreign soldiers of the “unwholesome” locality were stationed in the barracks of the East and West ends of town, where many lower-class Hong Kong locals resided.4 In fact, most, if not all, of the “towns” where illness is mapped throughout “Climate and Sanitary Condition” were inhabited by Hong Kong locals, usually “among the lower classes.”5

Due to the large emphasis placed on mapping illness, sanitation became a big priority in areas occupied by foreigners, as a means to combat the areas marked by illness. Specific language in source passages in “Climate and Sanitary Condition” demonstrate just how much sanitation was prioritised. In Bickers and Jackson’s Treaty Ports in Modern China: Law, Land and Power, it is explained that sanitation played a big role in the organisation of foreign spaces within China’s treaty ports. Significantly, this mention of sanitation was centred in the foreign concession, again illustrating spatial separation between foreigners and locals in the treaty ports. Bickers and Jackson write that treaty-port municipal authorities in China employed “public health officials” and attempted to construct “a suitable system for sanitation in the concession.”6 An emphasis on sanitation in the foreign concession does not mean a lack of sanitation in local areas by any means; the significance here has more to do with the emphasis and importance placed on sanitation and how significant this concept was to foreigners. This illustrates that both in the treaty ports and in cities like Hong Kong, when something was deemed sanitary or needing to be sanitised, it was reliably associated with foreigners. Associative wording is of the utmost significance here, as putting so much emphasis on sanitation in foreign spaces creates a connotation of “sanitary” and “healthy” in specific relation to the foreigners. Contrasting that with the aforementioned descriptions of local spaces as “unwholesome” and having “malarious character,” there appears to be quite a harsh divide between locals and foreigners and what attributes or associations they have been given.

A large idea in aforementioned primary source passages is how certain spaces were “marked” with certain illness. Though this is evident throughout “Climate and Sanitary Condition,” it is not exclusive to Hong Kong foreigners and their perceptions of Hong Kong locals. In Henriot’s “The Shanghai Bund in Myth and History: An Essay through Textual and Visual Sources,” Henriot wrote about the renaming of Chinese street names with French figures in Shanghai’s French Concession, demonstrating that colonial separatism from Chinese locals was produced through terminology, where language was able to “mark” spaces in a way that imbues a real association with a place.7 This is arguably the same method of separatism through terminology as seen in the “Climate and Sanitary Condition” section of The Treaty Ports of China and Japan, prompting the question: was the practice of foreigners labelling or “marking” of local spaces commonplace across China in the mid-19th century? Was the practice of “marking” through language predominantly negative in connotation? Or, is this just a small sample of foreigners describing local spaces, not indicative of the opinions of the larger foreign population that inhabited China? Nevertheless, it is interesting to see the role of associative language in both Hong Kong and treaty ports in China.

Ultimately, in The Treaty Ports of China and Japan, the sections regarding illness and sanitation were as they appeared to be. The Treaty Ports of China and Japan was not useful providing empirical evidence through the logging and mapping of illnesses in mid-19th-century Hong Kong; instead, the writing on illness revealed more about the social perspectives, class divisions between Hong Kong locals and foreigners, and how language reinforced spatial separation between them.

  1. Nicholas Belfield Dennys, ed., The Treaty Ports of China and Japan: A Complete Guide to the Open Ports of Those Countries, Together with Peking, Yedo, Hongkong and Macao (London: Trübner and Co., 1867), 32. [↩]
  2. Dennys, Treaty Ports of China and Japan, 32. [↩]
  3. Dennys, Treaty Ports of China and Japan, 33. [↩]
  4. Dennys, Treaty Ports of China and Japan, 33. [↩]
  5. Dennys, Treaty Ports of China and Japan, 34. [↩]
  6. Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson, eds., Treaty Ports in Modern China: Law, Land and Power (London: Routledge, 2016), 3. [↩]
  7. Christian Henriot, “The Shanghai Bund in Myth and History: An Essay through Textual and Visual Sources,” Journal of Modern Chinese History 4, no. 1 (2010): 5–6. [↩]