Tin-The Background

By :K.G.Tregonning,Raffles Professor of History,University of Singapore

TIN has been mined in the Malay Peninsula for over a thousand years.The earliest accounts of this are given by Arab writers whose published works date from 851 A.D.onwards.They refer to tin mines along the west coast which then were famous.P.Wheatley in his recently published book on erarly Malaya, The Golden Khersonese, records that Abu Dalaf,who journeyed from Bokhara to China in the 10th century,and whose travels were published in 940 A.D.,has said of one Malayan mines "In the entire world there does not exist such a tin mine as the one in this fortress". Wheatley also quoted Idrissi,who,writing at the court of Palermo in Sicily,1154 A.D., has recorded that "the metal is very pure and bright,but merchants adulterate it after its extraction from the mine."

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Although the Chinese had been coming to the peninsula throught the first millennium,their contacts for a long time were largely with the east coast. Tin does not appear in their accounts of the Malay river or coastal settlements until five hundred years after the Arabs, when it is noted in the mid thirteenth century as a minor product of Kelantan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelantanand Pahang http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahangwhich is exported to China.

The Chinese were less interested in tin than in smaill objects of some value,such as pearls or ivory.Later they traded also for drugs ( elephant and rhinoceros horns for example and for spices. Following the establishment of Malacca in the fifteenth century however,they came round to the west coast,for at this one mart could be secured all these precious things brought from all over the archipelago,as well as more mundane commodities such as cotton cloth and tin. India, and other countries participated in this trade,and continued buying a little tin amongst other goods,when Malacca became Portuguese,in 1511.

When the Dutch captured the port,in 1647,although the once considerable apice trade had gone,the tin from the valleys of the westward flowing Malayan rivers fell intermittently into their hands,and many attempts were made by the Dutch to increase exports to India and elsewhere. In this export trade the Chinese played a part, seeking tinlargely for religious purposes, as tin foil to burn brightly on their innumerable altars. Muslims also sought tin, as it was a metal which the Prophet had not forbidden the devout to use.Thus unlike gold and silver,it could be fashioned into attractive objects http://www.royalselangor.com/rs2/index.php of utility and decoration for mosques and wealthy homes.

During the 18th century the Chinese desire for tin foil made it useful to the British who were seeking ways whereby they could buy tea at Canton.There was a fortune in tea,and as tin appeared to be one of the few products which China lacked and would accept in exchange,the search for tin and for other South-East Asia products also saleable in China,such as pepper.led to the establishment of a British settlement at Penang in 1786.singapore,acquired in 1819,was occupied largelay to protect the trade with China and to develop that with the islands,and even though by this time opium had become the major commodity sold at Canton,tin was still traded.

Two important developments occurred in the nineteenth century which transformed this ancient industry. Firstly, the industrial revolution in Western Europe created a new,ever increasing demand for tin. British scientific discoveries led to the beginning and growth of the modern tin plate industry in Great Britian and then in the United States. In the 1860's the American Civil War gave a powerful stimulus to the canning industry and the production of the oil barrel. Tin consumption increased rapidly as further uses for tinplate in particular were discovered. It became a basic component of the European idustrial age. Thus,buying quantities undreamt of in the 18th century,the Western world replaced China as the major market.

Secondly,the Chinese replaced the Malay as the miner.Previous to the nineteenth century,although there are suggestions that a few Chinese may ahve dug for tin on the peninsula ( and elsewhere in South-East Asia), by and large the ore was extracted,and the whole industry monopolised,by Malays.Both digging and smelting was intermittent and spasmodic,an undertaking entered into reluctantly and abandoned without regret. The Malays had established a way of life that did not include,unless necessary,hard continuous labour.Economic incentives played less part in his attitudes to work and to leisure than they did to many others; his culture was maintained as a living force without as acceptance of economic progress,and he was unprepared to adjust his values and his work-leisure ratio to meet the new European demand. As a result,the south Chinese.faced at home with famine,poverty and mal-administration,and increasingly aware of the profits to be won,came down in the eighteenth century to work the newly discovered rich tin fields on Banks and elsewhere. Then from there the miners went to the Malay Peninsula.Here Chinese merchants in Penang and Singapore financed them and moved them into the mining States along teh west coast.

This movement gained momentum from 1848,when a Malay, Long bin Jaafar,discovered a new tin field in the Larut Valley of Perak. By 1870 over 40,000 Chinese were squatting and squbbling in this wealthy river valley,while thousands of others were participating in the increase production of Selangor,particularly around the inland village of Kuala Lumpur. Other Chinese were in the pocket State behind Malacca,one and all deriving their living from tin.These Chinese miners were the second new factor in the industry.

Although hard working,the Chinese tin communities were quite unable to keep the peace between themselves.Divided into warring sections of rival Secret Societies,their bitter struggles for power and the almost complete lack of Malay control over them seriously perturbed the British Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore,which were linked in many ways to their enterprise and labour. Representations to London,together with other factors (chief of which was the London fear that another European power,possibly Germany,might intervene in the peninsula and establisha paramountey there),induced the British Government to suggest to its Governer of the Straits Settlement Colony that British officers might be attached to the west coast Sultans, to help establish peace.As aresult,in 1874 treaties were signed with the Malay states of Perak,Selangor and Sungei Ujong (part of today's Negri sembilan) and,later,with Pahang and British Residents were established in these States.

With some initial set-backs,these officers established law and order along the river banks of Western Malaya,and the migration of Chinese into the tin areas increased accordingly.Before the British intervened in 1874 and when Chinese fighting and Malay lack of control typified every tin community,tin production had stood at a possible 6,000 tons. By 1880 it had risen to nearly 20,000 tons. In that year there was discovered in Perak what was to become the world's greatest tin field,the fabulous Kinta Valley,and by the late 1880's the Chinese population of that Malay State had reached some 80,000 .

At that time,and for some time after,the industry was almost entirely a Chinese concern. In Perak, the premier tin State,it would appear as if only one European firm was successfully working tin in the late 1880's.The State was ably administered from 1877 by Hugh Low,an outstanding British Resident,and he endeavoured to attract European miners by offering various concessions. Although these were not sufficient to tempt the British merchants of Penang or Singapore,they were accepted with alacrity in 1880 bt two frenchmen, M.J.Errington de la Croix and Brot de Saint-Paul-Lias who formed the Societe des Mines dÉtain de Perak. In 1886 it became the Societe des Etains de Kinta, (S.E.K),now the oldest surviving EuropeanCompany in the industry. Only one European firm then was in existence on the world's richest tin field when the Straits Trading Company began.

The story was very similar in Selangor. In 1873 a selangor Tin Mining Company had been formed by the Singapore lawyer,J.G.Davidson and by W.H.Read, a Singapore merchant,together with Seymor Clarke,Read's brother-in-law and manager of the Great Northern railway in London. Davidson was the Sultan of Selangor's friend and legal adviser,and in 1874 he wa appointed the fist British Resident there,while Reand also had many links with the Malay States. Even this accumulation of favourable circumtances did not stop the Company from failing. Other however thought that they could do better,and by 1883 five European Companies had been formed to work concessions in Selangor. Swettenham,the young and dynamic Resident,had little doubt that these companies,if ably and economically managed,would be successful. Despite a rapid increase in tin production by the Chinese miners,however,by 1885, the European had vanished,swallowed up by their over-heads. Their worthwhile assets had been purchased very happily for a song by the Capitan China of Kuala Lumpur,Yap Ah Loy.