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The Population of Kedah in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Zaharah Mahmud
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Extract

The 19th century is chosen as a period for a static section study of the population of Kedah for a number of reasons. The most important is perhaps the feasibility of the study at all, for as with the other states of Malaysia, no statistically based discussion on population or landuse can be undertaken for periods earlier than the 19th century. Secondly, the population of the State during that century provides us with a picture of what the situation was like, and what it might have continued to be, with regards to numbers, composition and distributions, prior to the drastic demographic and economic upheavals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The existence within the State's population of certain elements and situations peculiar to the century alone provide other points of interest. Examples were the presence of a large Thai element and of the Jawi Pekan community, both of which became conspicuously absent after the census of 1911.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , September 1972 , pp. 193 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1972

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References

1 Kynnersley, C.W.S., “Notes of a Tour Through the Siamese Malay States on the West Coast of Malaya 1900”, JSBRAS, Vols. 35 & 36, 1901Google Scholar entered the following comment in reference to Kedah:-

“A census has lately been taken and we were shown the figures, which, however, are stillincomplete for some of the up-country mukims”.

2 Listed below are some of the accounts which made reference to the population of Kedah in the 19th century.

  1. (a)

    (a) Anderson, J., “Political and Commercial Considerations Relative to the Malay Peninsula and the British Settlements of the Straits of Malacca”, JMBRAS, Vol. 35, Part 4, December, 1962.Google Scholar

    This account quotes two estimates of the population of Kedah in that century. The first was made by Captain Glass, Commanding Officer of the British garrison at Penang; a figure of 40,000 persons was cited as being the population of the State at the start of the century. The second estimate made by Francis Light mentioned a figure of 100,000, apparently with reference to the period of the Siamese invasion.

  2. (b)

    (b) The Great Britain War Office Intelligence Division, in its report entitled, Precise Information Regarding the Straits Settlements and the Native Malay States of the Malay Peninsula, London, 1892Google Scholar, gave the following account,

    “Before the Siamese invasion and conquest of 1821 the country is believed to have a population of 50,000 which in 1839 was reduced to 21,000 …“

  3. (c)

    (c) Hart G.C., Annual Report of the State of Kedah, 1906, reported as follows, “… the population is said to have been reduced from 180,000 to 60,000 in the first years of Thai rule”.

  4. (d)

    (d) Newbold, T.J., in his, Political and Statistical Account of the British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, Vol. 1, 1939Google Scholar, cites an estimate of 100,000 for the pre-invasion years and of 50,000 for the post-invasion period. This estimate corroborates most with evidence inferred through the developments in the Malay population of Province Wellesley during the same period. It has since become the most popular estimate of the State's population in the 19th century. Ooi Jin Bee, in his book, Land, Peoples and Economy in Malaya, London, 1965Google Scholar, for example, quotes this estimate to the exclusion of all others.

  5. (e)

    (e) Logan J.R., Notes on Pinang and Kedah, J.I.A., Vol. 5, 1851, quotes a population of 6,500 for the Kedah Plain and of 1,300 for the Muda Plain of the 1850s. The unusually small estimates have led Dobby E.H.G. in his account of, The North Kedah Plain, a Study of the Environment for Padi Cultivation, Economic Geography, 1951, to interpret these as being counts of heads of households rather than of individuals. Considering the fashion of census taking of the time this is not an altogether unreasonable deduction.

  6. (f)

    (f) Malcom, H., Travels in Eastern Asia Embracing Malaya, Hindustan, Siam and China, Boston, 1839Google Scholar quotes the population of Kedah as being in the region of 200,000 persons. No doubt he was also referring to combined populations of Kedah and a number of southern Thai provinces which formed one political unit in the early 19th century.

3 Logan J.R., “Notes at Pinang and Kedah,” op. cit., 58.

4 Mahmud, Zaharah Hj., “The Development of the State of Kedah up to the end of the Nineteenth Century,” International Conference on Asian History, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, August 1968, Paper No. 67.Google Scholar

5 Hart G.C., op. cit.

6 Zaharah bt. Haji Mahmud, “The Population of Kedah up to the 18th century”, Geographica, Vol. 5, 1969.

7 Extract from a letter written by Francis Light in 1794, in Logan J.R., op. cit., 5.

8 Topping, M., “Some Account of Kedah”, JIA, Vol. 4, 1850, 44.Google Scholar

9 A literal translation of the term means “urban Malay”, Jawi being the quolloquail Arab reference to a Malay. An account by Skinner, A.M., entitled, A Geography of the Malay Peninsula and Singapore, Singapore, 1884Google Scholar, used the term Mestizo Telingas in describing the Jawi Pekan peoples of the settlement at Penang.

10 The following comment is to be found in the chronicler's biography, “My mother's father was an Indian from Kedah who had embraced the Muslim faith and moved to Malacca where my mother whose name was Selamah was born.” Hill., A.H., “Annotated Translation of Hikayat Abdullah”, JMBRAS, Vol. 28, Part 3, June 1956, 36.Google Scholar

11 Wales H.G.Q., “Archaeological Researches on Ancient Indian Colonisation in Malaya”, JMBRAS, Vol. 28, P. 1.

12 In the late 18th century (1791) M. Topping made the following comment, “The principal seaport called Kedah by strangers but Kuala Batrang (Kuala Kedah) by natives …” Topping, op. cit., 42.

13 Logan J.R., op. cit., 55

14 ibid.

15 Dobby E.H.G., op. cit., used the term in reference to the said locality and was subsequently followed by others.

16 In 1883, by royal decree, a land of twenty five cents per relong was imposed on all landowners irrespective of their social standing. This was during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid Halimshah.

17 Krah, simply means free and compulsory labour extracted by members of the aristocracy from members of the commoner class or the rakyat. The nature of the service was seldom specified; it could range from menial domestic services or work in the ricefields. This practice appeared to have been common in all the tributary states of Thailand.

18 Wright, A & Reid, T.H., Twentieth Century Impressions of British Malaya, London, 1908.Google Scholar