Panoramic Kuala Lumpur 1884
July 5, 2009
This panoramic photo of Kuala Lumpur in 1884 was taken from the book “A Vision of the Past – A history of early photography in Singapore and Malaya, The photographs of G.R.Lambert & Co., 1880-1910″ by John Falconer published by Times in 1987 in Singapore. Almost every single history books requiring some kind of photographic representation of the late 19th century Malaya have in some way refered to this book. The following passage is the caption from the book.
“Panoramic view of Kuala Lumpur, ca. 1884. The settlement at the confluence of the Klang and Gombak rivers, later to become the capital of Malaysia, had come into existence as a Chinese tin trading post around 1860. From the mid-1860s the town, growing apace, was largely under the control of the remarkable entrepreneur and administrator Yap Ah Loy, and by the end of the 1870s was outstripping Klang, which had been originally settled on as the centre of British administration in Selangor. In 1880, therefore, the greater part of the administration was transferred to Kuala Lumpur. This historically important series of views of the town in the early days of British control — probably taken at official behest — was photographed from the site of the future hospital to the west of the main town and comprises a field of view of about 90° looking from north to east. At the left is the Padang (then known as the Parade Ground), along the east side of which the Government Offices were erected in the 1890s. The ramshackle building at the far end of the Parade Ground is possibly the first home of the famous Selangor Club, which later moved to the west edge of the Padang. Leading off from the Parade Ground, Market Street runs into the centre of the Chinese town. The central sections of the panorama, occupied by attap roofed houses and garden plots, were later largely taken up by the railway workshops and yards, while at the right the Gombak road runs down to the Klang River. The rapid development of the town after these photographs were taken is clearly seen in Sir Frederick Weld’s account of a visit to Kuala Lumpur in early 1886:It is fast becoming the neatest Chinese and Malay town in the Colony or the States, as within my remembrance it was the dirtiest and most disreputable looking. The streets have been widened, metalled and drained, and rows of sufficiently regular, yet picturesque houses and shops brightly painted and often ornamented with carving and gilding form the streets…
(Royal Commonwealth Society Library, London)”
Many of these early photographs now only available in UK. Although the Royal Commonwealth Society Library has a good documentation of their collection but most of the pictures are not available online. The same picture was also featured in another book “Malaysia, A Pictorial History 1400-2004″ by Wendy Khadijah Moore. No photographer’s name was credited to the photograph in both books.
Another great source of information during this period is the amazingly detailed “Twentieth Century Impressions of British Malaya: Its History, People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources” by Arnold Wright and H A Cartwright in 1908. We really owe much to the British for preserving such facts and figures in history. There are even some very detailed ethnographic description of local arts and culture at the time. And for the most part, the writers had been very candid and transparent about their objective opinions regarding various races in Malaya. They were not at all apologetic about making racist statement such as the one below. Of course considering the time and place, I would probably come to the same conclusion if I were the writer myself.
“The future of the Malay race in British Malaya is a question about which opinions differ very considerably. It has often been asserted that the Malays are too indolent by nature to be able to hold their own against the more enterprising Asiatic races with whom circumstances make it necessary that they should compete. It is said that their doom is sealed, that as time progresses they must go to the wall, and that they will survive only as objects of scientific interest to the ethnologist and the historian. There is no doubt that at present they are somewhat handicapped by the lack of those qualities which help the Chinaman and the Tamil to play a useful part in the economic development of the peninsula.” (p.227)
The most interesting fact from Falconer’s book is perhaps the mention of the first trace of photographic activity in Malaya, or rather Singapore (most historian still prefer to make distinct separation between the art history in Malaya and Singapore) . Surprisingly it was not recorded by any westerners but rather mentioned in the local malay literature Hikayat Abdullah, an autobiographical book by Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir (1797-1854). He vividly described his encounter with a British Reverand Benjamin Keasberry who showed him a dagguerreotype. And that was only, as mentioned in the book, 4 or 5 years ago from the invention of dagguerreotype in France in 1839. The link here is the introduction from the book.
