Population estimates for the Malay Peninsula in the Nineteenth Century, with special reference to the East Coast States

Abstract

Summary Of the several population estimates for the Malay peninsula and its individual states in the nineteenth century, Newbold's figure of some 473,000 persons for the Malay peninsula in the 1830's is the most widely quoted and accepted. It is on the basis of Newbold's figures and later census statistics that it is believed that the Malay population of the peninsula dramatically increased during the nineteenth century due to archipelagan Malay immigration and internal population growth. The aim of this paper is to bring together in a systematic fashion all the various published population figures; to argue that archipelagan immigration hardly affected the northern and eastern states of the peninsula where the bulk of the peninsular Malays lived; that a pre-industrial population explosion on the peninsula is not plausible; and that, as in Java in the nineteenth century, the belief in a population explosion is based on an erroneously low early estimate that has been accepted, for want of anything better, mainly because of European ignorance and lack of interest in the native population and partly because of a mistaken belief in the demographic benefits of early colonialism. The paper concludes that a population of some 750,000 on the peninsula in the 1830's would be a reasonable, conservative estimate.