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Home > JOURNAL > Vol. 5 (2016) > Number 1

 

Abstract

One of the most important sources of revenue for the early government of the Protected Malay States was the farms that gave the prominent Chinese businessmen who held them the exclusive right to operate gambling houses and issue passes for gambling in other places. Initially, British officials had no qualms about deriving so much revenue from the gambling losses of the Chinese workers who were the target of these farms. In 1894, however, they were forced to defend the farms when the Colonial Office asked the authorities in Malaya to look into the possibility of abolishing the farms. Most officials argued that, far from encouraging gambling, the farms actually restricted gambling. In keeping with the view that Chinese were born gamblers they claimed that any attempt to abolish the farms would merely drive gambling underground and foster lawlessness. In the end the Colonial Office acquiesced and the gambling farms continued to provide the Federated Malay States (FMS) with a large source of income for several more years. In 1905, however, an anti-gambling petition signed by nearly all the leading Chinese businessmen forced the government to reconsider its policy. After first introducing a number of reforms to the farms, the government decided in 1911 to replace the farms with licensed gambling houses, and the following year it prohibited gambling altogether. But the structure of the revenue system of the FMS remained in place, as the government came to rely on its opium monopoly as the most effective means of extracting revenue from Chinese workers.

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