Capitalism and the Malay States

Abstract

Much of the discussion in the proceeding essays has focused on the problem of how capitalism came to be established in societies where production of commodities for the international market was largely located in agriculture. As we have seen, in some cases the colonial state often played a critical role in initiating the process of transformation in the mode of production, in others, trade and expanded production of agricultural commodities set in motion a pattern of change which the colonial state helped to deepen and consolidate. The case of the Malay States - those which were the principle producers of tin in the nineteenth century, Perak, Selangor and Sungei Ujong - offers a very different context for examining this process of transformation. Here, in the Malay States, the transformation of the social relations in production underwent a profound change during the nineteenth century. This is most clearly apparent in the tin industry. In this case, the colonial state did not initiate the process, it was the Malay chief as owner of the mines who, with unintended consequences, rendered the change. Merchants intervened in the process of production to insure their control over the commodities which, on the one hand, helped to sustain the expansion of tin production and, on the other, insured their control over the marketing of the mineral in the international market place. In all of this, peasant surpluses, in terms of agriculture produce, were not immediately critical to the new mode of production which emerged before the establishment of the colonial state. The Malay States’ case allows us to see how capitalist production can occur before direct colonial rule is established and how it can set the conditions under which agricultural production is eventually incorporated into the new mode of production.