Reversing History: British Bina Railway Mengurang Kuasa Kerajaan, Najib Bina Keretapi Menguatkan Kerajaan

British bina dan majukan railway keretapi di Malaya sejak 1885 hingga 50 tahun selepas itu. Dari ekonomi timah dan getah ke pelabuhan hingga seluruh Malaya menjadikan British kuasa dominan politik dan melemahkan kuasa kerajaan Negeri-negeri Melayu.

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 in 1885. It was to take another half a century before the network in the British protectorate reached in its fullest extent. Together with the technologies of the 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 accelerating economic exploitation and growth through the enhancement of existing infrastructure for agriculture, industry and trade. As some historians have noted, the development of railways in British Malaya was indeed closely connected to the tin and rubber industries and the emergence of an export economy situated on the western coast of the Peninsula. Nonetheless, the railway functioned not just as a tool which served the colonial economy but also 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 apolitical unit; thus the Federated Malay States Railway (FMSR) facilitated the dissemination of British authority. As the railway became a site of imperial contestation and control over sovereignty in the Unfederated Malay States (UMS), the assertion of British dominance over the Peninsula railway facilitated the drawing of 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.

Untuk menguatkan kuasa imperialisma British terpaksa menundukkan Siam dengan mengenepikan pengaruh German bina railway keretapi dari Siam ke Malaya dan mengagalkan Perancis bina Terusan Segenting Kra demi kepentingan ekonomi dan politik British di Malaya dan Singapura.

Reversing History: British bina railway Keretapi ke seluruh Malaya untuk mengurangkan pengaruh dan kuasa elit kerajaan Negeri-Negeri Melayu, DS Najib bina dan majukan railways systems di Malaysia untuk menguatkan kembali kuasa dan pengaruh kerajaan dan yang penting masa kini Kerajaan BN.

DS Najib adalah Bapa Pembangunan Keretapi Malaysia 2009-seterusnya hingga pelan perancangan DS Najib Malaysia Maju 2050.

DS Najib bina dan majukan track Keretapi Utara, Keretapi Selatan, mengembangkan sistem pengangkutan awam MRT, LRT di Kota KL dan pinggir bandar dan yang terbaru...

Projek Laluan Keretapi Baharu Pantai Timur hingga ke Pengerang Johor melalui berbagai fasa dari Port Kelang-KL-Pahang-Terengganu-Kelantan seterusnya menghubungi banyak pelabuhan-pelabuhan yang telah dan sedang dibangunkan di Pantai Timur hingga ke Pengerang Johor.

DS Najib bina dan majukan railway keretapi ini bukan sahaja bagi kepentingan ekonomi Malaysia dan Pantai Timur terutamannya tapi adalah reversing the history apa yang British Malaya buat untuk menguatkan kembali pengaruh dan kuasa Kerajaan.

A new patron-client relationship with the rakyat.

CONCLUSION

The political impact of the railway as an imperial institution in British Malayahas been examined in this study. Internally, the FMSR consolidated British rule in theFMS with the extension of centralized authority over individual state railways and itsindirect influence over state treasuries through the control of railway receipts.Externally, the assertion of British control over the railway defined the extent and limitsof 

Britain’s sphere

of influence in the Malay Peninsula, as the railway projectedimperial authority into the UMS. At the same time, the railway served to undermine theindigenous political system, the

kerajaan

, as the British divested the Malay ruling eliteof their traditional control over land transportation, contributed to the erosion of the

kerah

system of labour and instituted a new patron-client relationship with the

rakyat 

.Regular interaction with the railway experienced by the individual, whether as acommuter or an employee, brought imperial rule deeper into the Malay politicalconsciousness. In the process, the railway contributed to the establishment of British asthe hegemonic power in the Malay states.Although some scholars may attribute railway development solely to a capitalistcolonial economy orientated towards resource exploitation in the Malayan hinterland,the economy was a factor only to the extent of its congruency with British interests inthe P

eninsula. As the definition of these ‘interests’ w

as left up to the interpretation of 

the proverbial ‘man on the spot,’ the development and control

of the railway couldtherefore be used as legitimate grounds to assert the imperial agenda. Hence, private orforeign railway initiatives in the Malay States were sometimes overridden by officialssuch as Swettenham and Anderson, who were principally concerned with the

perpetuation of British dominance in the Peninsula. This was made explicit by the roleMaxwell had envisioned for the railway in the defence of British Malaya. Swettenham,the chief architect of railway development, shared the same view and believed that a

continuous railway line ‘from India to Singapore’ might be of great ‘

imperialimportance

’ in time

of war. (Swettenham 1906: 193) Hence, British policies such asrailway development were engineered towards the consolidation of influence and whennecessary, as in the case of the UMS, its projection.While most historians have concentrated on the numerous treaties andagreements in the study of imperialism, these developments belonged to the realm of ruling elites between the colonizers and colonized. This version of imperial history isneither representative of the colonial experience among indigenous communities, nordoes it adequately explain how imperial rule was maintained among the masses. Thestudy of institutions such as the railway thus provides an additional perspective to theunderstanding of imperialism and empires in history. In doing so, this study argues thatBritish hegemony was established in Malaya because the penetration of institutions suchas the railway into indigenous communities laid the groundwork for imperial rule. Asthe colonized grew to recognize the authority of imperial institutions which oversawalmost all administrative aspects of their lives, they would have been socialized into

subjects of the empire. The rhetoric of imperial rule, such as ‘civilization’ and‘technological

progress,

’ would

then be

 promulgated among the ‘natives’ through such

institutions.As modern European imperialism grew to become a global phenomenon at theturn of the century, the imperial locomotive in British Malaya was contemporaneouswith other colonial railway enterprises, such as the Japanese Southern Manchurian

Railway in China or those in the British Raj and the African colonies, as a culturaltechnology of imperial rule. Nonetheless, each railway experience was unique anddistinct to its locality, and the same can be said for all other accompanying imperialinstitutions established within the colonies. For instance, the impact of the railway onthe k 

erajaan

in the Malayan Peninsula would almost certainly diverge from othervariations of indigenous political culture in the steppes of Manchuria, the plains of theIndian subcontinent and the savannahs of Africa.Although modern European imperialism is often portrayed as a domineeringforce, it is also very seldom a one-way street. More often than not, local factors haveconsiderable agency in the development of the colonial state. As observed in the presentstudy, railway developments may have had a huge impact on polities in the MalayPeninsula, but indigenous actors and circumstances have influenced and sometimesdetermined the laying of the tracks. No matter how imbalanced this interplay of forceswas, it demonstrates the fact that imperialism is usually a negotiated process betweentwo parties rather than a consummate imposition of political will and power of one overanother.