From World City to the World in One City (eBook)

Liverpool through Malay Lives

Tim Bunnell (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-118-82771-0 (ISBN)

Infos

From World City to the World in One City examines changing geographies of Liverpool through and across the lives of Malay seamen who arrived in the city during its final years as a major imperial port.

• Draws upon life histories and memories of people who met at the Malay Club in Liverpool until its closure in 2007, to examine changing urban sites and landscapes as well as the city's historically shifting constitutive connections
• In considering the historical presence of Malay seamen in Liverpool, draws attention to a group which has previously received only passing mention in historical and geographical studies of both that city, and of multi-ethnic Britain more widely
• Demonstrates that Liverpool-based Malay men sustained social connections with Southeast Asia long before scholars began to use terms such as 'globalization' or 'transnationalism'
• Based on a diverse range of empirical data, including interviews with members of the Malay Club in Liverpool and interviews in Southeast Asia, as well as archival and secondary sources
• Accessibly-written for non-academic audiences interested in the history and urban social geography of Liverpool

Tim Bunnell is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Malaysia, Modernity and the Multimedia Super Corridor: A Critical Geography of Intelligent Landscapes (2004) and co-editor of Cleavage, Connection and Conflict in Rural, Urban and Contemporary Asia (2013).

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Tim Bunnell's book featured in the movie Pulang - the author has recently spoken in several interviews and programmes about how his fascination with the tales of Malay seamen in the UK led to writing this volume:https://www.nst.com.my/lifestyle/groove/2018/07/387898/showbiz-sailing-sea-heartwarming-tales http://www.thesundaily.my/news/2018/07/05/coming-home-last Coming home at last https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiFWYHLz5ok From World City to the World in One City examines changing geographies of Liverpool through and across the lives of Malay seamen who arrived in the city during its final years as a major imperial port. Draws upon life histories and memories of people who met at the Malay Club in Liverpool until its closure in 2007, to examine changing urban sites and landscapes as well as the city s historically shifting constitutive connections In considering the historical presence of Malay seamen in Liverpool, draws attention to a group which has previously received only passing mention in historical and geographical studies of both that city, and of multi-ethnic Britain more widely Demonstrates that Liverpool-based Malay men sustained social connections with Southeast Asia long before scholars began to use terms such as globalization or transnationalism Based on a diverse range of empirical data, including interviews with members of the Malay Club in Liverpool and interviews in Southeast Asia, as well as archival and secondary sources Accessibly-written for non-academic audiences interested in the history and urban social geography of Liverpool

Inhalt

Series Editors' Preface vii

List of Figures viii

Abbreviations and Acronyms ix

Glossary of Non-English Terms xi

Acknowledgements xiv

Prologue 1

1 Introduction: Locating Malay Liverpool 5

Worlds of Connection, Worlds in Cities 10

Sites and Routes of Fieldwork 14

Organization of the Book 20

2 From the Malay World to the Malay Atlantic 27

World City Liverpool in the Alam Melayu 28

Malays in the 'New York of Europe' ... and in New York 39

The Malay Atlantic 45

3 Home Port Liverpool and its Malay Places 56

Somewhere Worth Staying? 57

Remembering Cosmopolitanism and its Limits 62

Home and Away 68

Places to Be Malay 72

4 Merseyside Malaise and the Unmaking of British Malaya 83

Transnationalization and Malaysianization 84

Student Connections: From Kirkby to the Inner City 90

Urban Malaise 94

5 Diasporic (Re)connections 107

In Search of Lost Ancestors 108

Diaspora Envy and Worldly Malay-ness 114

Old Malays versus the Islamized New Malay 121

6 Relocating Expectations of Modernity 135

Kuala Lumpur: Journeys to the New Centre of the Malay World 136

Tandas-ization: Excremental Transition in Malacca 144

Returning to Singapore: From Third World to First 150

7 Community in the Capital of Culture 165

The Place of Community 166

Glasgowing and Beyond: Towards Multicultural Regeneration 172

Marking Malays(ia) on the Map of the World in One City 178

8 The Last Hurrah: From Independence Celebrations and Interculturalism to Club Closure 188

Merdeka on the Mersey 189

Performing Malay-ness on Jermyn Street 194

Community Conflict and Urban Interculturalism 198

Death in the Place of Community 202

9 Conclusion: Catching up with Kuala Lumpur? 211

Comparative, Conceptual and Methodological Returns 216

Key Lifepaths 227

Archival and Documentary Sources 231

References 233

Index 250

Rezensionen

'Here we have a distinctive approach to global and transnational urbanism, one that provides us with "sites and routes" that are markedly different from the normal science of urban studies. In this beautifully conceptualized and written book, Tim Bunnell draws us into life histories that are compelling world histories. In the process, cities are made and urban theory is remade.'
Ananya Roy, Professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare and Director, The Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin, USA

'This is an engagingly written and sensitively researched portrait of the Malays - from seafarers to students - who have lived in and through Liverpool, shaping this world city, which is now marketed as the 'world in one city'. Tracing the transnational lives of Liverpool Malays, it takes our understandings of diaspora cities and connected geographies in some exciting new directions.'
Richard Phillips, Professor of Geography, University of Sheffield, UK

'Bunnell's book demonstrates the range of ways in which Liverpool was transformed through the presence in the city of those who had left the alam Melayu (Malay world). It is a study of "the lives of people in places" (p. 14) which takes seriously Massey's (1994) work on a global sense of place. It makes a clear contribution to advancing the field of global urban studies and is a must read for those of us with an intellectual stake in the future of the field.'
(Kevin Ward, University of Manchester) Urban Geography, 2016

'Bunnell has created a text that will be useful for those interested in transnational phenomena that predate globalization as we know it today. His beautifully rendered moving ethnography will also be of interest to scholars concerned with the contemporary politics of ethnicity and multiculturalism, especially as they are marshaled in a capitalistic vein to create value for a city that once profoundly underestimated colored seamen's worth.'
(Jacqueline Nassy Brown, The City University of New York (CUNY)) Cultural Geographies, 2017

'This book is a well-written transnational urban geography through Malay lives. The author's sincere and tireless attitude in always turning his eyes to every detailed reality is especially praiseworthy.'
Tomizawa Hisao, University of Shizuoka (Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2)

Textauszug

2
From the Malay World to the Malay Atlantic

[T]he days of the far flung routes of Zamboanga and Moulmein, to Bangkok and Banjermassin are but a dream, and linger merely in the memories of old men.

K.G. Tregonning, circa 19601

The city of Liverpool may be one of the capitals of a long Atlantic twentieth century, but it is not the only such city. There are several. London is one. New York is another.

Ian Baucom (2005: 35)

The seafaring labour of Malay men sustained shipping networks that connected world city Liverpool to coastal settlements across a dispersed and ethnically diverse Malay world region (alam Melayu) in Southeast Asia, as well as to a wider world of port towns and cities. I begin this chapter by tracing back the life geographies of Liverpool-based ex-seamen in order to examine Malay seafaring mobilities in British colonial Southeast Asia and the surrounding islands and seas of the alam Melayu. Singapore was the hub for shipping networks in the region and an interface with wider oceanic routes. It was here that the Ocean Steamship Company of Liverpool located its regional headquarters. Interoceanic trade connections from Singapore to port cities along the east coast of the United States, in particular, expanded from the last decades of the nineteenth century. In the second section of the chapter I show how Malays and other lascars (Indian Ocean seafarers) followed commodities such as rubber along associated networks of commerce. The founder of Liverpool’s Malay Club moved to the city from New York, not directly from the alam Melayu. Seafaring work enabled Malay men to spin webs of social connection not only between the alam Melayu and Liverpool, but also between Liverpool and other major Atlantic port cities, especially New York.

World City Liverpool in the Alam Melayu

In 2004 Majid was the quiet man at Liverpool’s Malay Club on Jermyn Street. I can still picture him in the brown armchair next to the window of the front room, gazing at snooker on television. My suspicion was that he was half-watching while half-listening to other, much more animated, ex-seamen recounting their colourful life stories. Unlike me, Majid had no doubt heard them all before. Well into his eighties, he did not talk much in either Malay or English, but I was gradually able to piece together Majid’s life geography, including seafaring travels that extended back further than those of the more talkative septuagenarians at the club. Majid was born in 1917 in the village (kampung or kampong) of Serkam, Malacca.2 By the time he was old enough to go to sea in the 1930s, there was a well-established tradition of young men from the village working for the Straits Steamship Company which was headquartered in Singapore. More than three-quarters of the Malay men in the company’s service came from Serkam and ‘other kampongs behind Malacca’ (Tregonning, 1967: 88). According to K.G. Tregonning, in his official history of the Straits Steamship Company, Home Port Singapore, ‘[a]mong the Malays, in particular, a tradition of service built up from 1890 onwards. Son followed father, and generation succeeded generation of Straits Steamship Company men.’ Majid’s village, ‘on the main trunk road to Singapore’, is noted as ‘one particular kampong where this family tradition of Straits service was maintained’ (p. 88). Sadly, Tregonning does not tell us how the tradition began. It may well be that he was simply unable to find out. Most official documentation on the Straits Steamship Company was destroyed during the Japanese occupation of Singapore during the Second World War. As such, Tregonning’s comment that ‘far flung routes … linger merely in the memories of old men’3 was not only a statement about historical changes to regional transport linkages, but also an acknowledgement of the methodological difficulty of researching them.

What is not in doubt is that operations of the Straits Steamship Company formed part of a broader expansion of British commerce in Malaya from the late nineteenth century. The three British territories of Penang, Singapore and Malacca (see Figure 2.1) were controlled by the East India Company and consolidated as the Straits Settlements in 1826. When the Straits Settlements became a Crown colony in 1867, control was transferred from Calcutta to the Colonial Office in London. This meant that the governor of the Straits Settlements in Singapore and leading merchants were able to press London more effectively for a ‘new policy of intervention’ (Federation of Malaya, 1956: 472). The Straits Settlements became administrative bases from which the tentacles of British colonial rule and commerce found their way into adjacent peninsular territories. The Malay states of Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang came under British ‘protection’ between 1874 and 1888. By 1895 they were conjoined administratively as the Federated Malay States (FMS). Singapore-based Straits Steamship Company vessels were among the so-called ‘mosquito fleet’ of small coastal ships taking tin ingots to the smelter on Pulau Brani (Brani Island), off Singapore. Malacca was not prominent in this trade, but continued to form part of the Straits Steamship Company’s operations along the west coast of the Malay peninsula. The Straits Steamship Company opened an office in Malacca after the First World War (Jackson and Wurtzburg, 1952), and Malay deck crew and quartermasters from villages such as Serkam were prominent in networks of coastal commerce (Tomlinson, 1950).4 By the time Majid came to work for the Straits Steamship Company, its ships operating out of Johnston’s Pier in Singapore plied regular routes carrying hundreds of deck passengers on routes stretching ‘1000 miles in all directions’.5 The Straits Steamship Company’s fleet, and the seafaring labour of men such as Majid, ‘had played a major part both in opening up the Malay States and in placing Singapore in a pre-eminent position as a regional trade centre’.

Figure 2.1 The Malay peninsula and the wider Malay world region (alam Melayu).

Produced by Lee Li Kheng.

Through companies such as the Straits Steamship Company, British colonialism was accompanied not only by increased commercial activity but also by new possibilities for people to move across the region (Kahn, 2006: 37). This is certainly not to suggest that regional mobilities and networks started with late-nineteenth-century British colonial commerce. While the Straits Steamship Company may have afforded new opportunities for maritime employment, seafaring traditions were well established long before the company’s formation in 1890. More widely, as Joel S. Kahn (2006: 37) puts it,

before the advent of modern colonial rule, ordinary Malays inhabited a transborder world which encompassed dispersed territories in Singapore, British Malaya, parts of the Netherlands East Indies (Riau, Sumatra, parts of Borneo), the southern islands of the Philippines, southern Siam and parts of Indochina, across which large numbers of peoples who came to be classified as Malay moved relatively freely and more or less continuously.

The British ‘forward movement’ had three main regional implications. The first, referred to by Kahn, concerned the possibility for a diversity of ‘archipelagic groups’ coming to British Malaya – ‘Acehnese, Minangkabau and Mandailing from Sumatra, Banjarese from Borneo, and Bugis from Sulawesi (The Celebes)’ (p. 65) – to become ‘Malays’. Under British rule and administrative practices during the twentieth century, the term came to signify an ethnic grouping of Muslim people, ‘sufficiently homogeneous that they could be readily distinguished from the other two main races of colonial Malaya, namely the Chinese and the Indians’ (p. 47). Second, long-established Malay world networks – social, cultural and religious as well as economic – became entwined with the routes and schedules of British commerce. The list of Straits Steamship Company ships departing from Johnston’s Pier to ‘ports of call with fascinating names’ (Tomlinson, 1950: 29), for example, gave commercial regularity and colonial administrative legibility to routes across the alam Melayu. Third, colonial expansion served to centre Malay world networks more firmly upon British Malaya and, in particular, Singapore. Not only did the island flourish as a ‘staple port’ with the expansion of tin and rubber production in the Malay peninsula (Huff, 1994) but, during the period between the 1920s and 1950s, Singapore became ‘the commercial, political, religious and cultural/intellectual hub of the modern Malay World’ (Kahn, 2006: xvi).

Cultural and especially religious motivations for travelling along routes to or through Singapore often had important commercial dimensions. Perhaps the clearest example concerns Muslim pilgrimage. In an era prior to the take-off of commercial jet travel in the 1960s, Muslims from across the region came to Singapore to take ships to Jeddah. Singapore was the ‘pilgrim hub’. ‘From [what became] Peninsular Malaysia they came from towns and villages in Johore; from as far north as the state of Selangor, and as far away as Kelantan in the north-east. But there would...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.2.2016
• Reihe/Serie: IJURR Studies in Urban and Social Change Book Series
• Reihe/Serie: Studies in Urban and Social Change
• Reihe/Serie: Studies in Urban and Social Change
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Makrosoziologie
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Schlagworte: Anthropogeographie • British Empire • British Malaya • Culture-led Regeneration • Geographie • Geography • Granby Street • Human geography • inter-Asia networks • Liverpool • Liverpool 8 • Liverpool port • malay • Malay Club • Malay Liverpool • Malays • Malay seamen • Malaysia • Malay studies • maritime historical geography • Migration • multi-ethnic Britain • Ocean Steamship Company of Liverpool • Postcolonial • Singapore • Social Networks • Sociology • Southeast Asia • Soziologie • Stadtgeographie • Stadtsoziologie • toxteth • transnational urbanism • Urban Geography • Urban sociology • Urban space • world city
• ISBN-10: 1-118-82771-6 / 1118827716
• ISBN-13: 978-1-118-82771-0 / 9781118827710