Malaya and the Philippines: Colonial Contrasts

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THE NETHERLANDS, the United States, and Great Britain are today the rulers of that widespread section of the human race known as the Malays. The Dutch exercise sovereignty over the great and sparsely settled island of Sumatra, crowded Java and Madura, and most of the myriad isles which dot the Pacific west to New Guinea and north and west to the Philippines. They share with Britain the possession of Borneo, which is fifteen times as large as Holland itself. The 48,000,000 inhabitants of their island empire, Insulinde they call it, are subjects of Queen Whilhelmina. The Philippine Archipelago, stretching a thousand miles northward from Borneo and embracing a land area as great as that of England, is a dependency of the United States. Its 11,500,000 inhabitants are "nationals", although not citizens, of this country. Great Britain directly or indirectly rules the southern portion of the Malay Peninsula, now generally denominated British Malaya. Most of the 3,350,000 people there under her sway owe allegiance not to George V but to Malay sultans whose thrones and lineage are, in some instances, more ancient than those of any reigning sovereign in Europe.

Not all the inhabitants of the Malay peninsula and of the islands which fringe southeast Asia are Malays. They are predominantly so, however, and this tropical sea-encompassed world of pepper, pearls, spices, coffee, copra, sugar, and now of rubber, is characteristically the Malay world. The story of its government by three Occidental nations offers many parallels and contrasts of significance to all countries which possess colonial dependencies or which are affected by the increasing contact of the East and the West. British rule in Malaya is of especial interest to Americans, whose attention has recently been directed thither rather sharply by Britain's dominance over the world's supply of crude rubber through her control of the Malay Peninsula, and by the investigation of conditions in the Philippines made by Col. Carmi Thompson as the personal representative of President Coolidge.

That part of the Malay peninsula which is under British rule or influence has an area of 52,500 square miles. It is thus about equal in size to peninsular Florida, which it somewhat resembles in configuration. A through railway from Singapore to Bangkok connects it with Siam, to the north, while most of the great ocean highways of the Orient focus at Singapore, its southern tip...