The White Man's Burden and Brown Humanity: Colonialism and Ethnicity in British Malaya

Abstract

Ethnicity is one of several boundary phenomena (another is class) marking out groups within society. Ethnic identity may be perceived according to a variety of terms such as race, culture, religion, language or according to the place of origin of the group's members. In the colonial context the most obvious boundary was between Europeans and non-Europeans. Cast into an alien environment, Europeans acquired a self-awareness and a corporate sense, and the first part of this paper deals with this colonial experience, including the alienation of the individual, the growth of white tribalism and the emergence of a colonial ideology which was partly common to the empire as a whole and partly peculiar to Malaya. I then turn to examine European perceptions of non-Europeans (especially Malays) and the way ethnic attitudes affected colonial administration. I conclude by briefly considering the British influence upon the Malay's image of themselves.

Being British in Malaya, 1890–1940

“…He used the term "white tribalism" to describe the racially exclusive habits of the vast majority who worked to maintain ethnic boundaries rather than to overcome them. 65 His account fits men in the civil service, such as William Evans, who pictured the Chinese and the Malay as profoundly different from themselves. If the term "British" had to be accepted for its political reinforcement of empire, they could embrace a notion of Englishness to support their sense of superiority.…”

The Meaning and Measurement of Ethnicity in Malaysia: An Analysis of Census Classifications

“…As the British community grew in numbers and the presence of European women became more common, there was less and less social intercourse between Europeans and Asians. Asians were employees and servants of Europeans, but rarely friends (Stockwell 1982). Colonial rule really ended with the Japanese occupation during World War II, although the British did return for twelve shaky years of rule beginning in 1945.…”

The Importance of Fiction to the Raffles Library, Singapore, During the Long Nineteenth-Century

“…Superiority lay in deeds; it lay not just in power but in the way power was exercised'. 44 Given this concern for the degeneration of whites in the tropics, what could be done? Tropical neurasthenia was seen as resulting from 'a distance from civilization and European community and by proximity to the colonized' 45 so that the ultimate remedy was to ship sufferers back home as quickly as possible.…”