One Hundred Years' History Of The Chinese In Singapore: The Annotated Edition. Ong Siang Song
of land tenure at that time gave no encouragement to the planter, while the inefficiency of the police, coupled with the frequent reports of the killing by tigers of Chinese planters and coolies in the newly opened plantations, kept back not a few enterprising people from agricultural pursuits.
A certain number of bad characters had already found their way to this Settlement, and these, with their ranks augmented by agricultural labourers who had been [35] in receipt of low and unremunerative wages, made their appearance as organised bands of robbers. Fortunately they were ‘such arrant cowards that they retreated on the slightest opposition,’ and were armed with no weapons more formidable than spears.
Mr Earl, writing of agriculture in Singapore at this time, pronounced it to be ‘of minor importance, when compared with commerce, for it has been by means of the latter alone that Singapore has attained its present state of prosperity’. But, two years later (in 1836), gambier and pepper plantations began to be of greater commercial importance, the yearly production of the former being about 22,000 piculs and of the latter about 10,000. On a plantation producing from 100 to 110 piculs, the average size of the gardens, six coolies were employed at wages from $4 to $4.50. The price of gambier was then about $3 a picul.
In Logan’s Journal,30 we read that the cultivation of gambier by the Chinese had increased rapidly since 1830, but in 1840 it was already retrograding, as the older plantations had all become exhausted. Nothing daunted, the Chinese began to open up gardens on the adjoining coast of Johore, and by 1845 there must have been at least a hundred plantations on the mainland.
The Free Press of March 1839 speaks of the cultivation of gambier and pepper by the Chinese settled in the interior as the only cultivation on the Island which had yet assumed any degree of commercial importance:
It is well known to our local readers that the cultivation of pepper and gambier is always carried on in conjunction, the support which they mutually afford each other being, it seems, indispensable to the existence of either of these plantations, commonly termed ‘bangsals’. There are now altogether about 350 in the Island, which we may divide into plantations of the first, second and third class.
A bangsal of the first class produces about 210 piculs of gambier annually and employs from ten to eleven [36] men, including the proprietor. To supply firewood for the boiling-house, it is necessary to have a tract of jungle in the immediate vicinity, and it is a serious objection to any locality for gambier-growing if it has not, at the commencement, an available extent of jungle for fuel equal to the area occupied by the plant and which it is computed will supply firewood for a term of twenty-five years. The annual produce of pepper on a bangsal of this description is about 125 to 150 piculs.
Bangsals of the second class average about 150 piculs of gambier annually and about 80 piculs of pepper, employing eight or nine men; while those of the third class, about 100 to 120 piculs of gambier annually, and about 50 piculs of pepper, there being seldom more than seven men to the latter.
The aggregate produce of the whole of the 350 bangsals in gambier and pepper is stated at fully 48,000 piculs annually of the former, and 15,000 piculs a year for the latter.
Nearly all these plantations were commenced by individuals without capital of their own, who began on small advances from the Chinese shopkeepers in town, on the security of a mortgage of their ground; and out of every three of them it is probable that two are subject to encumbrances of this description, the advances sometimes running on at a very high rate of interest, and often made in clothes and provisions at higher than market rates. The consequence is that frequently plantations are changing hands, the original settlers often absconding, leaving considerable debts behind them. Notwithstanding all this, however, the Chinese in town who support the planters, and the better class of planters themselves, affirm that a plantation is almost sure to clear off the original advances and finally yield a fair profit, if the planter is steady and industrious and abstains from gambling and opium smoking. …
Many of the old gambier plantations, and there are some, it seems, eighteen years old in the Island, have considerably diminished in value of late years, as well from the soil being partly exhausted as from the want of firewood, all the jungle in the neighbourhood having [37] been cleared away, and requiring the settlers to proceed to a considerable distance to bring it. This is the great drawback, and in consequence of it alone several bangsals have been given up altogether, and the ground abandoned to that inveterate enemy of all cultivation, the lalang grass.31
Major Low,32 concerned about the agricultural future of the Island, in his Journal kept during 1840 and 1841 made the following observations:
The Chinese have been the chief cultivators of gambier and pepper, but then they have no attachment to the soil. Their sole object is to scourge the land for a given time, and when worn out to leave it a desert. It seems clear that, if no general cultivation of a more permanent nature than pepper and gambier can be advantageously established, the forest must ultimately reassume its dominion. The only remaining chance, therefore, would seem to be the planting of coconut, areca, and other indigenous fruit trees and incorporating them gradually with sugar cane and trees yielding an exportable produce.33
Across the Johore Straits, where there was a vast expanse of unopened territory, the Temenggong34 was only too glad to welcome these Chinese agriculturalists who had been obliged to abandon their exhausted plantations in Singapore, and to encourage the more enterprising and adventurous among them by appointing them ‘kang-chus’ or concessionaires exercising jurisdiction and enjoying rights and privileges over certain rivers. In the course of opening up the plantations, there was great loss of life from wild animals, bad water supply and sickness. The planters did not sever their connection with Singapore altogether, for a number of Chinese merchants, especially Teochews, in this town, acted as financiers, making advances on the understanding that they were to have the monopoly of all produce from the plantations of their debtors.
In 1867 the Gambier and Pepper Society (or ‘Kongkek’) was established in Singapore for the mutual [38] protection and benefit of the financiers and planters and of the trade between Johore and this Island. The plantations in Rhio produced red gambier, which was an adulterated product, while Johore manufactured black gambier, which fetched better prices in the market. In the ‘Eighties the ‘Kong-kek’ Cup was regularly presented by the Gambier and Pepper Society, and the ‘Kang-chu’ Cup by the Kang-chus of Johore for the Spring and Autumn Race-meetings.
The cultivation of pepper was found to be unprofitable while coolie labour became more expensive, and after 1905, when the railway was opened, coolie labour became more difficult to retain, as the railway afforded the coolies better chances for absconding.
The Society is now in a moribund condition, but during a period extending over forty years when the gambier and pepper trade between Johore and Singapore was considerable, the Society discharged a useful duty in arbitrating between the financiers and the planters. One of its honoured Presidents was Mr Tan Joo Tiam, who came from China about fifty years ago and established himself in business as a gambier merchant under the chop ‘Hua Heng’35 in Teochew Street and as a cloth merchant under the chop ‘Kia Heng’ in Upper Circular Road. For many years he figured as one of the leading gambier and pepper planters in Johore, and he has had the honour of being decorated by the Sultan of Johore.36 He is an influential member of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and acted as President during the absence from the Colony of Mr Tan Jiak Ngoh,37 the substantive holder of the office.
A few Chinese landowners had tried nutmeg planting. The nutmeg had been introduced into Singapore in 1819 when 125 seedlings and 1,000 seeds were planted on Fort Canning and continued for more than thirty years with much success at the beginning, but ‘the circumstance that operated against the extension of its cultivation was the scarcity of manure.’ The trees took a long time before yielding any returns, and such [39] plantations as belonged to Chinese were generally so neglected that they were seldom brought up to the producing point.
Coffee planting was also tried, and Captain Newbold38, writing in 1839, says that the Chinese were so confident of success in coffee that they were