History 2
Penang button Spheres of Influence


 Penang's 19th century enclaves

by Chen Kuo-wei

 
ABSTRACT

Meaning in architectural and urban space of the Penang Kongsi enclave

The paper will inquire into the spatial factors of the formation of territorial enclaves of varied ethnic populations in the nineteenth-century Penang. It will focus on the urban area where the Big Five of the Hokkien surname clans founded their Kongsi enclaves. The relations between social organization and the spatial structure of the enclaves will be examined. Levels of the territorial marks and elements, including from the urban to the personal, and from the functional to the symbolic, will be examined. Element examples will include communal squares, gateways, pathways, semi-communal balconies, yards, even rooflines, ditches and wells. It will ultimately seek to interpret meanings in the forms and spaces of these enclaves in terms of their cultural context.


Keywords: meaning in architectural and urban space, Penang kongsi enclave, early history of George Town, colonial urban development, territoriality.
 
Contents

1.    The land of ‘our own company'1
2.    ‘South precinct'
3.    Where colonial municipality stumbled
4.    A memorable corner
5.    Whose territory?
6.    Ours and yours
7.    Here and there
8.    Territoriality at work
9.    The illuminating kongsi temple
10.    Strategic gateways
11.    Sensitive, sensible or intervening decoder
12.    A topography of self-centredness
13.    Resistance by situation
14.    A synthetic proposition
15.    Sustainability in ritual
16.    Conclusion

1.  The land of ‘our own company' 1

The ethnic enclave has been the dominant urban scene in most of the modern Malaysian cities.  The Chinese 'kongsi' community has not only been special kind of such enclave, but also closely bound to the history of Penang. To be sure, it is a unique urban scene which can only be found in the precincts of George Town directly  south of its ‘original grid'. 2

This ‘south precinct3 next to the original grid itself has been distinct for having nurtured this historical enclave, as it has now been acknowledged, but even since earlier times, i.e. in the first decades after the founding of the city in 1786, when this area was known as the ‘Malay Town' on a 1798 map of George Town, there was already the presence of an autonomous congregation. ‘Malay Town' was then already well established with religious-community leaders as its institution and a sturdy Friday Mosque as its physical-spiritual centerpiece. There dwelled transmigrants, literally Malay, from various parts of the Malay world at the time in trading relations with Penang, particularly people from the Sumatran port-cities of Acheh. Contemporaneously, there had also been an  influx of Chinese from various parts of the region as well as directly from China and with very different dialect-ethnical backgrounds, since the earliest days of Penang. But it was the oncoming Straits-born Hokkien-Baba, arrived and carved into this residential-working settlement predominantly Acheh Malay; they settled at first close to where Armenians used to reside, and formed the Chinese enclave.

It was not long, in perhaps less than half a century, before the expanding Chinese reversed the ‘intaglio' effect of their enclave by surrounding their dominant neighbours, and rendered it a ‘relief' type of enclave. There have been since at least two cultural enclaves existing side by side in this animated neighbourhood. Some temperament typical of tradesmen, seafarers, and sojourners society might have presumably been with this newly formed constituency, because of their previous existence in similar professions. This is mentioned for the comparative notion that those labourers,  servicemen, artisans, and settlers had presumably been with people on other precinct of town. There was a conceptive tendency featured common to the communities residing on this same precinct as their ‘ethos' of the era.  This kind of inference is instrumental for the analysis and reconstruction of the ‘dynamics' of historical urban space.

The following description of the image of town is a brief version from our later discussions of the reconstructed process of urban formation. The community was presumably ‘very capable' of retaining their relative autonomy. They put under their might and control the process of formation of their town, shunned the external higher power of the colonial-municipality. This vast precinct, having an area almost as large as the part of town previously planned with grid by the colonial authority, seemed only divided into a few exceptionally large tracts irregularly shaped, although it was not uncommon for an urban outskirt to be, when there was estate or village, taking a larger tract prior to urban development.  However, seeing that there was supposedly a centrally controlled urban growth, it was a unique development.  For the people living in the area of this ‘south precinct', there was a time when they came to face the need of a larger territory to allow for the integrated network of their sustenance system to work. And as we shall see later, history helped it.   

Suggestive of the absence of a centralized control, is the orientation. It can be noted that the overall orientation summing up all approaches and the sequential developments of the area was axial along east (the sea front) and west (the swamp inland), not north and south as the relative position of the centre versus its radiated annex can be strengthened. It will be further discussed later.
2. ‘South precinct'

 That the ‘south precinct' is distinct, in its urban formation process for the least, is even clearer when a  comparison is made with the ‘original grid'. The ‘original grid' of George Town, bounded by Light Street to the north, and Beach, Chulia Street , and Pitt Street to the east, south and west respectively, were laid out by its founder, Francis Light. The intervening planning concept of Light, would have probably been out of something no more than an expedient adaptation of some straight examples from the forerunning colonial towns that existed. The grid, a ‘useful' form for settlement hastily built for practical purpose, was typical to be seen in the cases of many colonial foundations. Light's grid was no deviant to those basic plans of the past centuries, stuck with the Spanish ‘Law of the Indies' or the ‘Ideal Scheme' proposed by Simon Stevin, the Dutch colonial town planner.  The deviation was that Light did not implant his centre of control into the grid, nor was there a surrounding fortification. The ‘trinity' of the fort, the esplanade, and the European quarter keeping the rest of the town at bay, as seen in Penang, was perhaps rather a lessened edition of the transplantation of what had been in Calcutta.

 Policies and measures conforming to the colonial ideology of ‘divide and rule' that ordered the municipal designation of exclusive ethnic quarters were apparently absent in Light's mind, because nothing of these ideology is shown in the measures executed in his time. Albeit that ‘quarrels between different groups' were certainly not unfamiliar to him. However, the contemporary street names, and the town history already reflected the phenomenon of ethnic concentration and distribution in the town. The orthographic grid did contain the multi-ethnic mosaic, but did not seem to have fostered closed-off neighbourhoods to form ethnic enclaves.

 The power of rule cannot be more explicit than with the power of grid. If there was generally laissez-faire in practice, the potentially autonomous strength nourishable within an enclave was disarticulated and subdued being in the grid. But this power, with all the authority of the colonial administration, seemed had stumbled over the threshold, at the ‘south precinct'. The handicap of the colonial-municipal interventions in the years when this area experienced substantial growth, was one of the factors contributing to the preservation of the distinctiveness of the ‘south precinct'.
3. Colonial municipality stumbled

 The crucial periods of this development  were,  first,  the years between the 1790's and 1810's, and secondly, from the 1810's to the middle of the  century and, finally, the infamous Penang Riots of 1867, was only illustrative of the previous history.

Three early maps of George Town, made in 1798, 1803, and 1808, showed considerable changes of this ‘south precinct'. In the first map, a network of foot trails marked the territory of Malay Town, and  the vast uncleared jungle behind. In the second map, Beach Street had extended beyond Acheen Street and reached Prangin River, while Acheen Street and Malay Lane (later called Armenian Street) plus two other roads seemed to have ‘naturally' grown up without having been preconceived to be transverse-through ways and to demarcate town blocks, stretching from their respective ghauts at Beach Street and into an area indicated as swamp on the map, and ceasing there.  This was during George Leith's reign. In 1808 was when Norman Macalister was governor, a wishfully grand boulevard-like extension of Pitt Street (latterly labelled Carnarvon Street on a map of 1877) was proposed to stretch to Prangin River and end there without any clear planning intention. Though we will learn from the latter maps of the 70's and 80's that an attempt was made at connecting the town centre to the major southwesterly bound artery of Penang Road. But in 1808,  the early land speculation of a ‘James Town' had become doomed, and the incentives to take priority in constructing roads southwards came to a halt. Now the tasks cared for by the Road Committee, formed earlier in 1807 and chaired by James Scott, would mainly be those leading to the plantations in the countryside.

 On a map possibly drawn at some time during the period of 1814-1820 and subtitled ‘with Pitt Street prolonged to the Prangin River and widened to 120 feet'. The section ‘to be widened' was only one of planning, for from a map of 1832 (drawn chiefly for the marine purposes, hence relatively less accurate on the on-shore portion, and more   of a survey than a town plan)  it can be observed that not only the proposed "prolonged" version had yet to  materialize, but even the widening job beyond Chulia Street was not commenced. It was not until after the mid century (1851) that Pitt Street got to ‘pierce' into the kongsi heartland by a block length to reach to Armenian Street. The municipal planning intervention came to stop at the threshold of a gateway. This through-the-building gateway led to an interior street in the Khoo complex. It was here history saw the ceasing of the ‘fire power' of the municipal planning ‘assault' within its own jurisdiction. This event can be regarded monumental.


4. A memorable corner

 Even after Cannon Street had been opened up and widened in the following century to be what it is now, this section at the end of Pitt Street  looking toward Acheen Street remains a memorable corner. It presents a wonderful vista: with the Yap Temple in the foreground, it leads to a sequentially stepped and narrowing down of street widths and the ins and outs of street facades, until all the lines converge at the 70 foot high Acheh Mosque minaret,  with the backdrop of a sea of terra-cotta roofs of the shophouses. 

From the data available from the historical maps, the developmental stages of this part of George Town coincide  with a larger history,  the laissez-faire period before the mid century,  prior to the time when British colonial government  assumed the policy of direct Intervention in Malaya.

 With respect to the Straits Settlement municipal planning and administration, Penang was not comparable to the   Rafflesian, seeing disposition and the milieu that Light  and his successors had catered to. In addition, 1821 saw the moving in of more than ten thousand Malays to the island from mainland Peninsula, and in the years after 1830's, commercial revival in Penang brought in many established merchants of the Straits-born Chinese from the region, and in between the 1830's and 1860's there were growing feuds resulting from the revenue farming rivalries between competing kongsis.
5 Whose territory?

 In 1867, riots broke out between the camps of the allied Red Flag society and Tua Pek Kong society alias Khian Teik kongsi, and the White Flag society - Ghee Hin kongsi alliance.

 Territorial control has been a theorized cause blamed for the fierce fighting involving both Malay and Chinese secret societies. While it is convincing, the seeming secret society attribution of the groups has been ascertained solely for the territorial related duel. Taking territory as the turf whereon the underworld exerted extortions and other criminal acts, it simply fails to explain the scale of the 1867 event, when tens of thousands of the supposed ‘gang' members took part.

 Let us refer to another theorized statement, that the Riots was clan warfare and that the territory was clan home in need of protection against intrusion. While this view is socio-ethnographically based and more sympathetic, however, evidence disclosed in the colonial investigation reports, renders this view trivial. Furthermore, that Red Flag and Tua Pek Kong society were alleged to be aggressors rather than defenders during the first incidents, and their supposed rightful claims unexplainable and unjustifiable, despite all the defensive manner that the whole urban and architectural space of the kongsi enclaves and the mosque compound imposed.

 Now, we are ready to ask in a general fashion, how is the ethnic enclave to be regarded? Why is it so formed? And what is it formed of?
6.  Ours and yours

Communal space being the extension of the collective self, people in the group want to be able to identity with ‘their' space - ‘the part of town where they live as distinct from all others', hence their identity can be asserted and  preserved.

 Different subcultures or ethnicities can present a variety of opportunities, by which it can be best nurtured a multitude of different ways of life with vigour and intensity, and the physical barrier as a boundary is often necessary in helping each subculture and ethnicity to develop its own character. In other words, this physical-spatial restriction is regarded ‘healthy' in the sense that it promotes identity.

 The ethnic enclave is, in the first place, a form of territoriality ‘readable' in terms of spatial expression, including explicit and/or implicit elements marking territorial boundary. A boundary is crucial for this ethnic or subcultural subjectivity because it can be both a means and and an end to their identity, conveying differences and  serving as the receiver of the attachment.

Territoriality is expected to be expressed and to be read unmistakably by the effective means of communication, but as the subjectivity is of ethnicity, the ‘language' employed poses to be a problem. It would be less a ‘natural' kind of language but more abstract, in need of constant actions of declaration. Actions lie in space, hence in most cases territoriality is geographical.

 How explicit and/or implicit the marks can be communicated, will be subject to the extent of effort willed to  to keep this meaning system sustained, i.e. the whole effort of boundary maintenance, is to upkeep a stable and lasting system of forms versus meanings. The system, in turn, sustains boundary. Boundary maintenance thus means territorial control, and it is a meticulously constant task.

 Different meanings are conveyed when territorial control ranges different aims. Whether in the situation to limit, to defend, or to close off, the control aims at different accessibility. That ability to control, however, is much often challenged and tested. So that the explicit marks are those capable of withstanding challenges and expressing themselves with high physicality, such as a sturdy wall that seemed impermeable. While implicit marks can presumably best survive in a world which facilitates good communication; among them even the symbolic, the obscure, the unheeded marks were able to ‘function'. The application of means and ends of territorial control are all situational. One would never guess  when some impressive and ‘impermeable' posture of ‘our' territorial device might have stirred someone else's feeling or challenged ‘their' hostile aggression; or, whence some subtle territorial trace laid by ‘them' was able to be easily ‘sniffed' out by any other, to be comprehended and respected, and yet it required unexpectedly little from their ‘maintenance' effort. #

(to be continued)
ENDNOTES

1. ‘Our own company' (kompani kita), quoted from Khoo(1993),P.26, originated from the words sang in an old ‘boria' verse which celebrating the spirit of the Red Flag Society. The verse is an example of oral history collected from local elders. It reads: Kampong Che Long, Khian Teik Kongsi, Taukeh Ghee Hin sudah mati; Tidak Tiru , sendiri reka, Kampong Che Long, kompani kita. The substitutive ‘Kompani' and ‘kongsi' represent some ‘shared' meaning pertaining to social organization by the three cultures of the English, the Malay and the Chinese.

2.The term ‘Original grid' is used in the MPPP (the Building Dept.& the Planning Dept. Municipal Council of Penang Island) report on An Inventory of the Heritage Buildings & Ensembles of George Town, Penang. Other terms designate this area include: the ‘Commercial Town', or the ‘Pioneer Commercial District' (Ooi 2000)

3. ‘South precinct' is conditionally used in this article, as an abbreviated form of the ‘precinct immediately south of the original grid'. The south limit of the George Town city proper, is much further south of this ‘south' precinct. Other terms used elsewhere include: ‘Chinese Clan Houses and Muslim Mosques Enclave'. (Ooi,2000)
Penang Enclaves

 Meaning in architectural and urban space of the Penang kongsi enclave
by  Chen Kuo-wei

Institute of Building and Planning National Taiwan University, Taipei.

(paper read at the Penang Story conference)
Women's Centre for Change  34D Jones Road  Penang
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The Penang File Issue 24