THE IMPERIAL LOCOMOTIVE: A STUDY OF THE RAILWAY SYSTEM IN BRITISH MALAYA, 1885-1942

Abstract

The origin of the British railway system in the Malay Peninsula can be traced to the laying of its first tracks between Taiping and Port Weld in Perak, 1885. It was to take another half a century before the extent of the network in the British protectorate was reached in full. Together with the technologies of steamship and telegraph, the railway revolutionized transportation and communications in the nineteenth century. Its significance within the imperial framework is generally perceived to lie in aiding further economic exploitation and growth as an enhancement of existing infrastructures for agriculture, industry and trade. As some historians have noted, the development of railways in British Malaya was indeed closely connected with the tin and rubber industries and the emergence of an export economy centred on the west coast of the peninsular. Nonetheless, this thesis argues that the railway functioned not just as a tool which served the colonial economy but also served as an instrument of imperial rule in British Malaya as well. British imperial rule in the Federated Malay States (FMS) was consolidated through the establishment of a railway system that connected its constituent states together into a political unit, whereupon the Federated Malay States Railway (FMSR) facilitated in the dissemination of British authority. As the railway became a site of imperial contest and control over sovereignty in the Unfederated Malay States (UMS), the assertion of British dominance over the peninsula railway facilitated in drawing these states into the orbit of British imperialism. At the same time, the railway also became a cultural technology of rule as it diminished the indigenous political system of the kerajaan in the Malay states. Consequently, this thesis asserts the importance of imperial institutions such as the railway in the creation of European empires in the late nineteenth century.