History 3
Inter-Ethnic Alliances and the Riots
of 1867
Anoma Pieris
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History 3
Inter-Ethnic Alliances and the Riots
of 1867
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Emerging Alliances UNLIKE THE CASE OF SINGAPORE, where ethnic groups were segregated in separate urban areas, Penang's ethnic communities occupied adjacent streets in a formal gridiron. Whether Europeans, Chulias, Malabaris, Achenese or Armenians, they had specific streets to their name, while the main street was reserved for Chinese traders. The plan of the city reflected the economy of the settlement, which depended heavily on the co-operation of the Non-European traders... We can interpret the grid as an attempt by Light to impose order on polyglot groups of migrants. The grid was ideal for managing populations, containing space and engendering taxes. But Penang's gridiron arrangement seldom penetrated the first layer of built structure. Inside each grid block, numerous alleyways led to courtyards housing various establishments, including the ‘notorious' kongsis or associations where inter clan rivalries simmered. At the street front, the cohabitation of colonial and Asian interest groups, produced a hybrid urban population that made confrontations in urban space all the more contentious. Unlike Singapore where during ‘riots' the Chinese appropriated portions of the European town, in Penang, they re-inscribed their own everyday landscape through violence. The battle for George Town could be seen as a struggle for social and spatial pre-eminence by a section of its citizens. The Penang Riots of 1867, was a confrontation within the Chinese, Malay and Indian ethnic groups to the exclusion of the colonial government. The marginalisation of colonial residents was a gesture of defiance, just as the embattled urban space was a challenge to the authority of Empire. Prior to the historic outbreak of 1867, the Chinese secret societies in Penang had waged war against each other in 1858 and in 1864, revealing two major groups of contenders (CO 273-3: 421). It appeared that the Ghee Hin and Tua Pek Kong societies were fighting for territorial dominance and controlling the smaller Associations in the settlement. Since Penang had originally been a part of the Kingdom of Kedah there was the possibility of petty urban conflicts leading to larger territorial confrontations with the mainland. More importantly an emerging alliance between the Indo-Malay and Chinese societies including Malays, Indians, Javanese, Boyanese and Jawi Pekans (1), meant that the government would be forced to deal with a curiously hybrid group of criminals. What troubled the colonial government most was the conflation of ethnic groups around the events of the Shiite festival, Mohurrum. |
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Mohurrum Origins The 1867 riots had their origin in Mohurrum, a Muslim Indian festival, and the Boria, its folk-counterpart, which emphasised everyday practices. A. W. Hamilton noted that the Boria was organised by the place of residence and the particular cultural attributes of the performers (Hamilton, 1920: 139). The verses quoted by him adopted the pattern of describing the place and general location the troupe came from, the story that they were acting and what they had acted the previous time. Accordingly, they would perform either a trait or character of their 'nationality' or scenes from everyday life. The verses of the Boria demonstrated the significance of 'place' in terms of kampong or street and place of origin or ethnicity for asserting group identities during this period. Many of the performers enacted stories of Arab origin covering Africa, Albania or Morrocco and some even included the activities of Europeans. For example the troupe from Dato Keramat Road beside the European jail described themselves as Malays who had pirated English land wearing black trousers and white shirts. During the 1920's Boria, forty to fifty troupes from different parts of the city were noted (Hamilton 1920: 141). Due to its emphasis on place based group loyalties Mohurrum was easily appropriated for the activities of religious and cultural societies that were competing for territorial dominance. The Boria, was an alternative template through which Penang's ethnic groups were negotiating their spatial privileges. The Penang Riots of 1867 demonstrated how the non-European inhabitants of Penang used this template, strategically, for their self-determination. ... Although Mohurrum in the Straits Settlements originated as a solemn affair, by the 1860's it had combined with the Boria, where a number of individual troupes performed and recited verses. In combination, the battle and the performance projected challenges to authority and seemed threatening to the colonial government. M. L. Wynne, a Penang police officer, who in 1941 studied the history of the festival in detail, described the participants as a combination of religious and profane characters (Wynne, 1941: Ch XII). While mendicants, Hindu Yogis, frenzied devotees and child carollers satisfied the conventional religious stereotypes in the procession, they were sharply contrasted by fools, drunkards, straw dummies and unbelievers. Complicating Wynne's analysis even further were a group of dancers dressed as tigers. As a celebration of marginalia by affiliated religious and social groups, Mohurrum seemed to be quite an outstanding 19th century urban performance. After 1865 the inter-ethnic affiliations reflected in Mohurrum became increasingly animated as the hoeys began to compete for territorial domination. Two Indo-Malay societies, the White Flag (Bendera Puti) and Red Flag (Bendera Merah) allied themselves on either side of the Ghee Hin versus Tua Pek Kong opposition. Often such alliances were further consolidated by inter-ethnic marriages between the leading families. Conflicts over women, often prostitutes, frequently led to confrontations(2). Mohurrum with its wandering minstrels and its mock battles was transformed into a bold display of both Chinese and Indo-Malay society alliances. Moreover the White flag society was reported as being a religious society established ten to twelve years previously as Boria performers. |
Red Flag versus White Flag The map of the city as understood by the associations is difficult to decipher. However we can imagine it rather like a power grid with multiple points of intensification. To each community, the centre was the kongsi house, the temple and the homes of the prominent clan members. The kongsi wars carved out this grid into large and small territories with embattled boundaries, areas of dispute and spaces of infringement. With alliances being formed between Chinese kongsis and Malay societies, a different set of circuits came into operation. The rioting typically broke out between the Ghee Hin Kongsi on Church Street, at the centre and the Tua Pek Kong kongsis on Armenian Street, south of the gridiron. The clan territories abutted lower Pitt Street that acted as a western boundary to the gridiron and was (conveniently) the street of undertakers. Not only did the clans have counterparts in the provinces but by 1867 they had allied themselves with outlying Malay associations. The White Flag society led by Tuan Chee, had its base at the Rope Walk Mosque (Masjid Pintal Tali) and was composed of Malay, Kling and Jawi Pekan rope spinners and cart drivers. Their opponents the Red Flag society, led by Che Long, was located south on Acheen Street near the Tua Pek Kong and Khoo Kongsi houses. Hutton Lane and Macalister Road housed association houses of other Klings and Jawi Pekan communities whose Kampongs were located on the west of the settlement. These were all potential centres of fighting, both at the heart of George Town as well as southward and westward. A verse from an old Boria song quoted by Khoo Su Nin gives us a description of the Toh Peh Kong and Red Flag alliance. (Khoo Su Nin,1993: 26) Translated from the Malay, the verse declares that the singers are from Che Long's Kampong, and the Khian Teik Kongsi, they proclaim that the Ghee Hin leader is dead and assert their autonomy in forming their own company (3). Accordingly Che Long, the subject of their allegiance was the leader of the Red Flag society during the Penang riots. His Kampong in Acheen Street was in the heart of Red Flag territory south of the gridiron street system. However the singers also cite the Hokkien, Khian Teik Kongsi, whose base was at the Tua Pek Kong temple in nearby Armenian Street as a second alliance. By additionally proclaiming the real or symbolic death of the Ghee Hin leader they name their opponents (4). Not only does this verse identify the primary instigators of the Penang riots but it shows us how the 'Muslim Indian' festival was being publicly used to proclaim inter-ethnic alliances. For diverse groups of migrants competing for legitimacy, the appropriation of the local geography had an added significance. A sense of geographic belonging had to be constructed and maintained through spatially defined cultural practices. Festivals that fore-grounded these issues were an anathema to the colonial government because they re-inscribed the colony's public space through seemingly pre-modern traditions. Contradictorily, the festivals with their sense of memory, geography and inter-ethnic affiliation were decidedly modern. Penang's residents had fused new, place-based identities that ventured beyond parochial kinship alliances. At the heart of these new associations was the Jawi Pekan, a mixed ethnic community of Malays and Indian Muslims who absorbed many from the settlement's penal population. ... On the day of the Mohurrum festival when the prisoners walked in procession along Penang's streets they were laying claim to a landscape that had been executed through their own effort. Though we have no evidence of the prisoners' own perceptions, it was inevitable that the British saw their festivities as bordering on subversion. The situation was further complicated in 1867 when the prisoners were used to police and capture the Mohurrum rioters. This colonial strategy of segregation was severely threatened by secret societies that blurred the ethnic boundaries and contended over territory in the space of the urban riot. The Penang riots of 1867, revealed that Chinese, Malays and Tamil-Muslims had formed numerous affiliations across ethnic lines defying both the spatial and the ethnic ordering that sought to fix them in a pre modern template of filial associations. |
| The Battle for the City Rioting commenced at the beginning of July 1867 and Georgetown was immobilised for a ten-day period. As in previous conflicts, rioting broke out initially in the gridiron streets of the commercial centre. Fighting commenced in Beach street, on Bishop Street and along China Street, reiterating the grid of the European settlement (CO 273-11: 268). Rioters organised themselves in two large detachments. Brandishing sticks and knives and firing muskets they advanced along Beach Street and Market Street, at one end of the Ghee Hin quarter. Unlike the previous riots however, the fighting was no longer pedestrian in nature. By the Penang riots of 1867, the society members were mounting and firing small cannon from the rooftops of adjacent houses. By firing across the city, the Associations marked out territories above its orthogonal footprint and in defiance of its street based spatial order. The centre of bombardment was Armenian Street, which housed the five main Hokkien clans, while Cannon Square was so-named after receiving one of the cannons. Next, fighting spilled over, beyond the city grid to the suburbs and the provinces, where villages were looted and burned. Cadjan and attap kampong houses easily succumbed to the flames. Red Flag Malays set fire to the Indian Muslim Kampong, near Chulia Street, on the Southern boundary of the gridiron. The fighting even spread as far as the Ayer Itam valley, a Chinese settlement on the far South of Penang and prisoners had to be sent to this area to try and contain the violence. During the ten days of rioting, the town remained immobilised with the remaining residents interred within their houses. However since the two societies collectively commanded a membership of 29,000 souls, we may imagine that participation in the riots was also considerable. The 1867 riots saw the Europeans imprisoned within their own grid, while the societies defied colonial spatial determinants. The town's artillery was away on a military expedition, so the defence of administrative and commercial buildings fell to the remaining soldiers, policemen and European residents. They initially barricaded Church Street and Armenian Street, the rival kongsi territories, until the city boundaries came under threat from provincial Chinese assailants. Pickets were next erected on Prangin Road and at Beach Street where fighting continued regardless (CO 273 11: 268). The British had to await supplementary troops from Singapore, to put an end to the violence. Despite the ferocity of the riots it proved difficult to ascertain casualties since the dead bodies of the Chinese had been speedily borne away for secret burial by clan members. There were no casualties amongst the Europeans. # ___________________ from a paper "Doubtful Associations: Reviewing Penang through the 1867 Riots" by Anoma Pieris, delivered at The Penang Story – International Conference 2002 18-21 April 2002, The City Bayview Hotel, Penang, Malaysia Organisers: The Penang Heritage Trust & STAR Publications __________ Footnotes
Ed note: Prisoners : Indian Prisoners from Madras, Bengal and Bombay Presidencies were transported to Penang from 1789 –1860 and many of the prisoners remained in the settlements after completing their sentences. (Pieris citing Turnbull, 1970: 87-104) |
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