Violence and piratical/surreptitious activities associated with the Chinese communities in the melaka–Singapore region (1780–1840)

Abstract

The chapter hopes to examine the Chinese as an exogenous and endogenous group who had either settled or intermittently infiltrated the Melaka Singapore region in the Malay Archipelago. The Chinese in the archipelago had often been associated in Western sources with “rather positive” traits such as hardworkingness, astute business acumen, etc., characteristics which could help European colonizers sustain newly founded settlements. The chapter probes theshady world in which disparate subgroups of this ethnicity or creole ethnicity, whether these were related to one another, were engaged in surreptitious activities, or in banditry acts on the seas, which contributed indirectly and sometimes directly to general violence in the region. Overall, whether the Chinese were a more “peaceful” group interested in pecuniary relative to other interests and whether they contributed indirectly to militarization and tensions in the Malay Archipelago are re-examined.