1

wealthy native classes might be given an opportunity of showing their patriotism. The loan was over-subscribed; and one prominent Chinese resident, the late Towkay Loke Yew, C.M.G., contributed over one million dollars (about 120,0007.).

If we leave out of consideration the falling-off of revenue in 1914 and 1915, which is accounted for to a large extent by the derangement of trade owing to the war, the expansion of the resources of the Federation has been progressive almost from the beginning. Since 1888 the revenue has increased tenfold and the imports and exports more than fivefold, while the population has grown from 424,218 in 1891 to 1,172,336 in 1915.

Taking a wider survey, embracing the whole of the Malayan area under British influence-the 'old Colony' as well as the Federated States-we have a remarkable position disclosed in the trade returns. The following are the latest figures relative to Imports and Exports in connexion with the Straits Settlements:

It is noteworthy that the aggregate trade of British Malaya in 1916 (164,244,2037.) was in excess of the total seaborne trade of India twenty years ago. That the astonishing progress already made will be maintained at the rate that the past has witnessed is perhaps not to be expected. But we may reasonably hope that there will be a steady growth in the commerce of the area. The remarkable wealth of British Malaya in raw material

Fluctuation in price of rubber and tin affects value of exports.

indispensable to the world's manufactures must insure for its trade an increasing predominance. For its rubber,* its tin, its wolfram and other valuable mineral deposits, and for its copra, it has an assured market; and with the opening-up of the Peninsula by railways and roads these natural resources will be indefinitely multiplied.

One of the most encouraging facts of the war period is the relatively small effect that the cataclysm in Europe has had on our tropical possessions. In the first months of the war there was a temporary dislocation of trade relations, due partly to raiding enemy cruisers and partly to the natural timidity of the community in the presence of such exceptional conditions as those which the war brought about. But this wave of depression soon passed away; and to-day the position is quite satisfactory, save in a few special directions in which commerce is directly affected by the stoppage of trading with the enemy countries. As regards British Malaya, the outlook has never been brighter. Trade, as the figures cited show, not only recovered from the first effects of the war, but there was actually an improvement on the pre-war conditions, the returns for the Straits Settlements disclosing an increase in 1916 of 29,692,3647. over the excellent figures of 1913, and of 44,108,6747. over those of 1914. A further interesting point to be noted is that the exports from the Federated Malay States in 1915 formed a 'record.' This record in its turn was eclipsed by the figures for 1916. The phenomenon is largely explained by the enhanced price of rubber and the increased export of that invaluable commodity. Though in this instance the war's influence has been directly beneficial and the return of peace may produce a reaction, the remarkable fact remains that, in the second and third year of the

* Hevea brasiliensis, a South American tree of the order Euphorbiaceæ. A few plants of this tree were sent out from the Royal Gardens, Kew, in 1876, and were in the same year planted in the Singapore Botanic Gardens and also in the grounds behind the Residency at Kuala Kangsar, Perak. The seeds from these locally grown trees were distributed to various places in the neighbourhood, and ultimately plantations were formed which became the nucleus of the vast rubber industry in British Malaya. Last year's output from the Federated Malay States alone amounted to 62,764 tons, with an approximate value of 17 million pounds sterling. The Malay Peninsula produces about two-thirds of the total of the world's production of plantation rubber.

great war, a British possession did a larger export trade than at any previous period in its history.

·

In a recent work,* with the production of which the writer was associated, British Malaya was described as a miniature India, the old Straits Settlements-Singapore, Penang and Malacca-answering to the Presidency towns, the Federated Malay States to the British administered area, and the Protected States to the Native States. This idea of a new India arising outside the limits of the Indian Empire, it is not without significance to note, was developed in a lecture delivered just before the outbreak of war by a German Professor, Dr L. von Wiese, before the International Union for Comparative Law and Political Economy in Berlin. Adopting as the title of his lecture English Colonial Policy in Hinter-India,' the lecturer expressed regret that Germans had not given more attention to the fact that a new British Colonial Empire of the greatest economic capability was being erected, an Empire that would greatly strengthen England's political and strategic position as against the Powers of the Pacific Ocean, and also those Powers, like Germany, interested in the Far East. He went on to describe with what energy and foresight the Straits Settlements were gradually being united with the nominally still independent Malay States, and how by a later union with Burmah, after overcoming the opposition of Siam, a new English Colonial Empire would arise in the tropics, whose riches and favourable maritime position would reach far beyond the conditions of India. Prof. von Wiese, continuing, referred to what he called the astounding pitch of development to which what were forty years ago robber States had reached in Malaya under the direction of British advisers. This State federation is, therefore, he said, not directed against England, but is the result of a clever British policy. He went on to deal with the riches of the Federated Malay States, and described the way in which the Crown Colony and the protected States were being bound together by railways, which are being continued up the Peninsula.

The Malay Peninsula,' by Arnold Wright and Thos H. Reid. Fisher Unwin, 1912.

The British had, he added, only one anxiety, viz. the Chinese problem. Describing the influx of the Chinese and their achievements, he said that, more and more, Singapore was becoming the great dividing line between Yellow and White world-domination, and therein lay the special importance of the ripening State organisation in that region.

Prof. von Wiese is quite wrong as to the Chinese in the Straits being a source of anxiety to the British. The Chinese are commercially the most stable element of the whole native community in British Malaya, and they are far more attached to British rule than are corresponding alien communities in other British possessions. As Sir Frank Swettenham shows in his well-known book (British Malaya: an account of the origin and progress of British influence in Malaya'), they have played a conspicuous and useful part in the work of development in this region :

'Their energy and enterprise,' he says, 'have made the Malay States what they are to-day, and it would be impossible to overstate the obligation which the Malay Government and people are under to these hard-working, capable, and lawabiding aliens. They were already the miners and the traders, and in some instances the planters and the fishermen, before the white man had found his way to the Peninsula. . . . They brought all the capital into the country when Europeans feared to take the risk; they were the traders and shopkeepers; and it was their steamers which first opened regular communication between the ports of the colony and the ports of the Malay States. They introduced tens of thousands of their countrymen when the one great need was labour . . . and it is their work, the taxation of the luxuries they consume and of the pleasures they enjoy, which has provided something like nine-tenths of the revenue' (pp. 231–2).

...

Sir F. Swettenham's opinion of the Straits Chinese is substantially that of every authority on British Malaya. Their loyalty to the British connexion was never more apparent than in this present period of stress for the Empire. They have aided the Government in many ways, and not least by the example they have set of steadfast devotion to the cause of the Allies. In his main conclusions, however, the German Professor

takes a singularly accurate and farsighted view of the position. In the Malay Peninsula a vast edifice is being built up, the ultimate magnificent proportions of which may be clearly discerned in the startling growth of the past. Though it may never attain to the stately grandeur of Imperial India, whose immemorial traditions it cannot parallel in its own history, it is not a far-fetched supposition that the time will come when the stream of wealth flowing from and to the Malay Peninsula, measured by the value of imports and exports, will be as great as that which flows in and out of India, and it is conceivable ⚫ that it may be even greater. The present enterprising policy of the British Malayan authorities is helping on the movement to the utmost. They are showing a prescience and a business-like promptitude in dealing with the problems of development which is worthy of the highest commendation, more especially as it is in striking contrast with the attitude of many leading men at home in things which pertain to Imperial consolidation. One conspicuous example of their enterprise is the taking of measures to establish a health resort in Malaya. The future Simla of this New India is to be at Gunong Tahan, a lofty mountain, 7186 feet high, in Pahang. Here on a great plateau, situated at an elevation of 5000 feet, a hill-station is to be established which will prove of inestimable value to those who are bearing the White Man's burden in Malaya. Generally speaking, the spirit of progress embodied in the proceedings relative to Gunong Tahan is reflected in almost every phase of British activity in this region. In fact, no great British possession has ever been built up at once with more energy and enthusiasm and less anxiety to the Imperial Government than British Malaya.

ARNOLD WRIGHT.