Migration as an International Issue

Migration had been an international issue since the late nineteenth century in Europe as well as in its colonial empires. Historically, migrants have shaped the world. They were the driving forces of human progress. Their movement exchanged goods, ideas, and cultures with distant communities. It sometimes triggered war, while also relieved poverty (Goldin et al. Reference Goldin, Cameron and Balarajan2011). Migration was the conjuncture of various other issues in one way or another, such as terrorism, transnational crimes, epidemics, environment issues, poverty, and labour.Footnote ⁴ In particular, the British Empire contributed to the dispersion of large number of populations by employing (un)forced migration from the metropole to its colonies and vice versa, as well as between its colonies (Ferguson Reference Ferguson2002; Harper and Constantine Reference Harper and Constantine2010). In fact, nineteenth century Europe established a regime of human movement when European countries introduced the region-wide passport system (Torpey 2000).

One of political and social realities in international society is the idea and reality of territorial borders. Since the 1870s, the Western concepts of modern political and territorial rules were introduced in Southeast Asia. The so-called Sumatra Treaty of 1871 – Convention between Great Britain and the Netherlands for the Settlement of their Mutual Relations in the Island of Sumatra (effective in January 1872) – marked the watershed. Following such modern territorial treaties, imperial powers drew colonial political borders and (re)located colonial centers. The rulers' power to govern rested more on routine administrative machinery than on the control by military force. It does not necessary mean, however, that colonial authorities established an absolute hold over their territory or at the border. As Eric Tagliacozzo (Reference Tagliacozzo2005: 3) convincingly argues, between 1865 and 1915 “the development of a border between British and Dutch colonial regimes in Southeast Asia was intimately linked with the massive amounts of smuggling that passed across this frontier.” It was the era when the idea of smuggling came to be criminalised in accordance with Western practices. Intriguingly, however, the British and the Dutch were not able to enforce their economic, moral and political wills over smuggling, which instead flourished as a forbidden and hidden economy. Still, before the First World War the internationalisation of crime had not yet reached the region (e.g. Knepper Reference Knepper2010), and it was only in the late 1910s that crime related issues became a regional concern largely because of the transportation revolution in terms of ships and railways, and communication revolution through telegraph and radio, which brought radical changes in the time-space dimension of life.Footnote ⁵ In other words, international borders in colonial Southeast Asia were still porous and did not yet work “as barriers to the movement of goods, ideas and people and as markers of the extent and power of the state” (Wilson and Donnan Reference Wilson, Donnan, Wilson and Donnan1998: 1). Colonial authorities had not established their power over international borders, and therefore the passing of the borders was not really considered a security problem.

In the 1920s, globalisation and migration became matters of growing concern for the colonial governments. Globalisation brought the political significance of the “erosion of the internal/external divide” (Clark Reference Clark1998: 480) to colonial Southeast Asia. At the beginning, the migration of Chinese to the region was a matter of domestic political intelligence for colonial authorities. It developed into a trans-border issue and a matter of security. However, not all colonial authorities shared the same perception of the threat. The most concerned colonial power against this newly emerging threat was the Dutch, while the British who enjoyed its informal empire in the region were initially rather dismissive.

Two Types of ‘China Problem’

There were two types of ‘China problem’ in East and Southeast Asia in the 1920s. The ‘China problem’ in East Asia is well known, while the one in colonial Southeast Asia is relatively understudied. The ‘China problem’ in East Asia motivated the establishment of the Washington System in the region, as well as eventually leading to its collapse. To explain this, the origin and the result of the Washington System, will be briefly discussed.

After the First World War political leaders from the Allies made it a priority to restore political and economic order in Europe. In January 1919, the Peace Conference between the Allies and Germany began in Paris. Twenty-seven representatives of the Allied nations participated in the conference, but it was Woodrow Wilson from the United States, David Lloyd George from Britain, and George Clemenceau from France who took the initiative. Half a year later, in June 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed to end World War One. The treaty was more than a closure of the war, rather it envisaged a new international order. It both restored and reshaped order in post-war Europe. This reestablished international system was named the ‘Versailles System’, which aimed to promote peace and international cooperation.

As for East Asia and the Pacific, the Washington Conference of 1921–1922 was held to establish a post-war regional order, the result of which included the dissolution of the Anglo-Japanese alliance. Since the turn of the century, the Anglo-Japanese alliance had shaped the regional order in East Asia. It was, however, an alliance in decline by the end of the First World War. In the British judgment, Japan was unwilling to contribute wholeheartedly to the European war effort at its height. In reality, the alliance was a regional agreement that saved Britain a great deal of expenditure in building up its navy. It was not an alliance that entailed a joint action in the event of war. Neverthless, after the war, Anglo-Japanese relations needed to be reconsidered (Nish Reference Nish and Nish1982).

In 1917 the United States had entered the war and thereby became allied to Japan in the Pacific. The United States had two rationales for participation in the creation of a new order in East Asia.Footnote ⁶ First, the United States aimed to curtail Japanese naval power and restrain it from further expansion in China. Second, the US government identified the influence of Bolshevism in the region as a regional threat (Foster Reference Foster2010). Thus it was natural for the United States to take the initiative to search for a new regional order in East Asia. The newly established system was called the ‘Washington System’, after the Washington Conference in 1921–1922. The conference made a decision to replace the Anglo-Japanese alliance in Asia with the Four-Power Treaty, a loose agreement among the United State, Britain, France and Japan for regional cooperation.

The Washington System was, however, to be short-lived. By the end of the 1920s, the rise of anti-imperialistic Chinese nationalism and the threat of Soviet Bolshevism created new challenges for the major powers in the region. In the middle of the 1920s, the Kuomintang government in Canton rapidly grew in strength and governability. This was made possible by the formation of the First National Front between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China in 1924 as well as the military, with political and financial support from the Soviet Union. In 1926 Chiang Kai-shek led the Northern Expedition to unify the country, becoming China's nominal leader in 1928. His biggest political slogan was anti-imperialism including anti-Japanese elements. At the same time, by the late 1920s, the Soviet Union was revived as a military power, Stalin had consolidated his dictatorial position and the Soviet Union focused on the development of heavy industry. Along with the emerging power of the Soviet Union, the Comintern activated its international and regional operations, including those in East Asia as well as colonial Southeast Asia (Iriye Reference Iriye1978).

While the ‘China problem’ in East Asia motivated the establishment of the Washington System, the one in colonial Southeast Asia had four different factors. First, politically speaking, unlike semi-colonised China, Southeast Asia was colonised by Western powers, except Siam. Although there was no formally recognised regional order, the British informal empire was dominant economically and politically in the region until Japan came to occupy Southeast Asia. Second, in addition to China's domestic political development, the ‘China problem’ in Southeast Asia involved political activism by migrant Chinese. Their activities moreover differed from colony to colony depending on local political and social conditions. Third, the level of threats to colonial powers was hard to measure or predict. In fact, the authorities did not have sufficient evidence regarding the connection between the Kuomintang and the Comintern, and their trans-border activities. The threats were arguably imaginary. Because they lacked credible evidence, colonial powers took time to share their security threat concerning the ‘China problem’ in Southeast Asia. Fourth, although essentially imaginary, it directly affected domestic colonial orders. In order to prevent and confine its political influence over the local population, colonial authorities established policing agencies and system. Lastly, because Chinese migration can be said to be the cause of this problem, creating some instrument or level of border control was required. This, subsequently, raised the question of sovereignty as well as how to build international cooperation.

Colonial Policing 1: British Malaya

Since their arrival in Southeast Asia, British policy to the region was determined by mercantile considerations as well as strategic elements. In the 1920s the British had to recognise the radicalisation of Chinese nationalism and the need for a sympathetic response to it, although they had vast imperial interests in the region (Nish Reference Nish and Nish1982). Why and how did the Chinese population constitute political concerns to the colonial authorities?

Between 1880 and 1940, millions of Chinese left Fukien and Kwangtung in southeastern China for Southeast Asia. There were mainly two reasons for them to leave China: local economic conditions and colonial policy. Periodic poor harvest, flood-caused famines, the rising price of rice, over-population, and the policies of landlords pushed them out of their hometowns and villages. On the other hand, the development and expansion of colonial capitalism in rural agricultural enterprises in Southeast Asia required massive labour forces from other regions. It also opened up various job opportunities in the public works, trade, and the finance sectors of port cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Saigon, Penang, and Batavia (Warren Reference Warren2003: 14–19).

The secret societies were in charge of recruiting and distributing the Chinese labourers. Most of them sailed from Hong Kong to Singapore, by scheduled passenger steamers. By the late 1880s, however, as work drew more Chinese migrants to the British Malaya, the power and influence of the secret societies over the Chinese population grew. This resulted in competition and hostility among the societies, as well as between the societies and the British colonial government. By then the British had perceived the secret societies not as an instrument of indirect rule, but as a threat. In 1890 the British declared the secret societies illegal. In this context, the Chinese Protectorate was established in 1877 in Singapore and gained an important political role. This office was designed to maintain colonial order in the Chinese communities by regulating the Chinese immigration, work, custom, and taking care of their welfare. By 1911 the Singapore Protectorate had become “a formidable institution headed by a Chinese-speaking British official,” known as the Secretary for Chinese Affairs (Yong and McKenna Reference Yong and McKenna1990: 48). Protectorate and Secretariat officials also cooperated with the police by relying on a number of Chinese informers. By so doing, they were able to gain information on political activity, illegal immigration, gambling and opium trading (e.g. Trocki Reference Trocki1990).

Towards the end of the First World War, political and security intelligence emerged as an important instrument for the colonial governments to maintain order in their territories. Up until the end of the war, counter-espionage and political intelligence were the responsibility of the armed forces because there was no civilian intelligence agency competent to combat subversion, espionage, and sedition. After the war a civilian intelligence agency and the police replaced the armed forces in conducting the intelligence activities.Footnote ⁷

Colonial Southeast Asia was no exception. As early as 1918, the British established the Criminal Intelligence Department (CID) in its colony of British Malaya. It comprised three political and administrative entities – the crown colony of the Straits Settlements of Singapore, Malacca, and Penang; the Federated Malay States of Perak, Pahang, Selangor and Negri Sembilan; and the Unfederated Malay States of Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah, Perlis and Johore. What triggerred the establishment of the CID was the 1915 Singapore Munity – a regular Indian army unit station in Singapore on internal security duties rose up against its British officers and went on a rampage throughout the city shooting at random. The CID monitored closely the police intelligence organisation of the British Indian Police. Its task was to deal with subversive activities, and in the early years focused on keeping under surveillance supporters of the Indian national movement in the Straits Settlements. In January 1919 control of political and security intelligence passed from the armed forces to the police (Comber Reference Comber2009). The CID now was allowed to monitor “political organisation – primarily those connected with growing nationalist subversive activities” (Yong and McKenna Reference Yong and McKenna1990: 53).

In the middle of 1919 Singapore experienced a series of anti-Japanese boycotts following the ‘1919 May Fourth Movement’ in China. While no organised demonstration or movement existed, these boycotts included sporadic riots. No Chinese communal leaders, such as members of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce, were involved in the boycotts (Kuo Reference Kuo2006: 386). The fact that no registered Chinese organisation coud be linked to the boycotts raised the British anxiety and pushed the authorities to reorganise policing institutions.

In July 1919 Governor General Arthur Young reestablished the position of Secretary for Chinese Affairs in Singapore. He appointed David Beatty as the Secretary. Beatty was deeply concerned with the Bolshevik component of the Chinese political activism, and paid particular attention to the Hainanese community (Yong and McKenna Reference Yong and McKenna1990: 65), which received Chinese anarcho-communists from Hainan.

Under Beatty's leadership, the British closely monitored the activities of these communists. It was successful at the outset. Later in 1919 for the first time in history, several Chinese anarchists were deported back to China from British Malaya. Those Chinese anarchists had arrived in British Malaya during the War. In the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which approved Japanese takeover of ex-German concessions in Shantung province, these Chinese anarchists promoted and advocated an anti-Japanese boycott as a means of Chinese national defense. Some others formed an anarchist society in Singapore and mobilised for such a boycott, while others founded a Chinese daily newspaper called Yik Khuan Poh (益群日報; literally ‘To benefit the people’) and wrote a series of editorials with anti-Japanese contents (Yong Reference Yong1991, Reference Yong1997: 13–40).

Young and Beatty elevated political control of the Chinese to a significant degree in British Malaya's policy. The focus changed from the general tendency of Chinese nationalism to particular political organisation and activities of the Kuomintang (Yong and McKenna Reference Yong and McKenna1990: 66), along with the Chinese anarcho-communists. Laurence Guillemard, the successor of Young, tightened surveillance policies towards the Kuomintang movement. He introduced punitive policies against the Kuomintang: the Schools Ordinances of 1920, Printing Press Ordinances of 1920, and amendments to the Banishment Ordinance. Futher, in 1922 he created the Malayan Bureau of Political Intelligence (Yong and McKenna Reference Yong and McKenna1990: 68–9).

Guillemard was alarmed by international communism. In his memorandum to the Colonial Office in December 1922, he advocated a complete ban on the Kuomintang activities. His rationale for it was the plot that international communism aspired to create an imperium in imperio in British Malay through the agency of the Malayan branch of the Kuomintang. He imagined a “vast Soviet organisation” that extended beyond migrant Chinese nationalist activities in British Malay and cooperated with anti-British movement in India and anti-Dutch subversion in the Netherlands Indies. Because the Malayan Kuomintang was a part of this international political activism, the Chinese nationalists should be treated as dangerous people domestically as well as internationally (Yong and McKenna Reference Yong and McKenna1990: 69–70). Three months later, on 2 February 1923, Guillemard sent telegram to the Colonial Office concerning the China's Kuomintang. In it he reported that China's Kuomintang “was working secretly [with a] reorganised anti-European Bolshevik body directly under Lenin and [the] Soviet.” Moreover, he asserted that, taking from Sun Yat-sen's confirmation, there was a large anti-British association in Singapore, which meant presumably the Kuomintang branch (Yong and McKenna Reference Yong and McKenna1990: 74).

After confirming the Kuomintang-Communist Concord between Sun Yat-sen and M. Borodin in China in October 1924 (Saich Reference Saich1991), the British government in 1925 came to a conclusion that the Malayan Kuomintang branch was affected by China's Kuomintang's alliance with the communists. This changed the British international concern to neighbour colonies as will be described below. On 26 October 1925 all the Kuomintang Branches in the British Malaya were forced to close down.

In this way at the heart of the British informal empire in the region, these Kuomintang and Communist political activities had their own ‘external’ relations and went beyond colonial territories. As C. F. Yong and R. B. McKenna (1990) describes in their study of the Kuomintang Movement in British Malaya, the CID “grew slowly in the 1920s, monitoring KMT and communist activities, cooperating with the Dutch in Java, the Siamese Government and British authorities in Hong Kong, tracing such travelling communists as Tan Malaka, Alimin and Ho Chi Minh” (Yong and McKenna Reference Yong and McKenna1990: 53). However, it was not until 1925 that this region-wide threat forced colonial powers to form a regional intelligence network.

Colonial Policing 2: the Dutch Indies

Unlike British Malaya, in the case of the Dutch Indies, the Chinese population was not regarded as a political concern.Footnote ⁸ However, the flood of new Chinese immigrants from the 1880s onwards eventually caused social problems in many places. It forced the Dutch Indies to appoint Officials for Chinese Affairs (Ambtenaren voor Chineesche Zaken) at major port cities under the Department of Justice in 1896. Its establishment on 1 October 1896 came two years earlier than the establishment of Bureau for Native Affairs, which was under the Department of Internal Affairs. This fact indicates that the Ducth Indies was also concerned about the Chinese population in its territory, though not so much in the political sense. The Dutch authorities called it the ‘Chinese question’ (de Chineesche kwestie), that is, a problem that had more to do with the Chinese people in the Indies, rather than with China.Footnote ⁹

The ‘Chinese question’ pertains to the way the Indies government perceived the Chinese. It refers to a set of issues related to the position of the Chinese in the Indies, similar to those faced by minority groups in other countries. It consists of discussions and debates on the relationship between the Chinese and non-Chinese populations in the Indies, the legal restrictions placed upon the Chinese, and their emancipation and assimilation. The Dutch experts on the Chinese in the Indies played an important role in these discussions, because they understood the Chinese situation well. They were aware of the Chinese grievances stemming from their relative disadvantaged position compared with the Dutch and other Europeans, and in some regards, the indigenous population. In books or journal articles, these experts described in detail the socio-cultural life of the Indies Chinese, suggesting that the majority of the Chinese were already to a great extent assimilated into the local culture. However, despite their writings, a set of stereotypes of Indies Chinese remained in the society – that they had pigtails, wore Chinese outfits, resided in designated zones in the city, and were predominantly merchants.Footnote ¹⁰ These stereotypes derived from the Dutch policy towards the Chinese population especially after 1830, which consisted of the travel restrictions and zoning system. Furthermore, a new social reality reinforced the image of the Chinese as a separate population in the Indies. Since the 1880s, the Dutch saw a flood of new Chinese immigrants speaking various dialects of Chinese, with which most Dutch officials were not familiar. This influx of ‘Chinese’ speaking people overshadowed the fact that Indies Chinese spoke local languages and the Malay lingua franca. So the colonial experts in effect found themselves dealing with two different kinds of Chinese, each requiring different approaches.

For the nineteenth century colonial government, the ‘Chinese question’ had been a minor problem, but at the turn of the century it became a more significant issue affecting the indigenous population. At that point, two distinct aspects of the ‘Chinese question’ emerged: how, on the one hand, to ‘protect’ the indigenous people from exploitations by the Chinese; and, on the other, on how to deal with demands from and concessions to the Chinese residents of the Indies.

It is no secret that the Indies government saw the Chinese as the main cause of the diminishing welfare among the natives. Many officials saw confronting the Chinese as part of their duty in order to protect the natives. The Chinese were often blamed for fraudulent transactions with both Europeans and natives. They were seen as taking advantage of the native residents, especially in connection with the revenue farming system. The latter was a system whereby the government granted a private contractor (revenue farmer) the exclusive right to collect a certain tax in a specified area for a set number of years in return for a fixed rent, and the farmer kept for himself any amount which he collected over and above what he owed the government in rent (Rush Reference Rush1990: 43–178). The most notorious Chinese ‘exploitation’ was in the sale of opium. This was why in 1900 opium farming was abolished and a government monopoly was instituted in its place. This was followed by the decision to extend the government monopoly of pawnshops throughout the Indies. The government also began its system of agricultural credit banks with the objective of furnishing cheaper credit to indigenous farmers and rescuing them from the clutches of loan sharks, which not infrequently were Chinese. All these measures affected the livelihoods of the Chinese in the Indies.

On their part, the Chinese had their own grievances, the most important of which involved their legal status and the restrictions placed on travel and residency. The Ethical Policy gradually removed those grievances. On 17 March 1900, the Chinese Association (Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan or THHK) was established in Batavia. It marked the beginning of overseas Chinese nationalism as an organised movement in the Indies. It exemplified the re-sinicisation of the indigenised Chinese (peranakan), because the THHK promoted Chinese-medium education as well as Confucianism.Footnote ¹¹ In reaction to the development of the THHK, as well as in compliance with peranakan (creolised) Chinese demand, the government established the Dutch-Chinese Schools in 1908. The unpopular pass system was relaxed in 1904 by the granting of passes valid for a year instead of for a single journey, and in 1910 the right of free passage along the main highways without a permit was conceded. In 1911, the Indies government recognised Chinese consuls; and in a succession of orders between 1914 and 1916 it allowed the Chinese greater freedom of residence and movement. In 1919, the government abolished all restrictions regarding place of residence for Chinese people in Java, and in 1926 extended the ruling to those in the Outer Islands. The Chinese were also admitted to advisory councils at the central and local levels. In sum, these concessions provided the Chinese with greater social freedom and a legal status closer to that of Europeans.

Although the Chinese gained more freedom in the Indies, it did not pose any political threat to the colonial authorities. On the one hand, top Dutch colonial officials obviously lacked concerns for Chinese affairs. In his capacity as Adviser for Native Affairs, A. D. Rinkes, for instance, appears to believe that there was a distinct line between Indies Chinese and the Chinese nationalist movement in the Indies (William Reference William1960). Dutch authorities put more focus on Indies Chinese to whom they accorded the status of Dutch subjects. And since their politics became somehow detached from the ‘mainstream’ of Chinese nationalist movement in China, the newcomers (totok) took over the initiative for the movement, and soon quarreled among themselves.Footnote ¹² On the other hand, in 1913 the Indies government reorganised the position of the Officer for Chinese Affairs from the umbrella of the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Three years later, in 1916, its status was raised within the government to the Office for Chinese Affairs. The Office closely monitored Chinese periodicals in both Chinese and Malay languages, as well as those published in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Conducting surveillance over the Chinese schools was also its important role. Such policing appeared to pay off because no Chinese-led social disturbances ever occurred in the 1910s and 1920s.

In 1919, the year when British Malaya created the CID, the General Investigation Service (Algemeene Recherche Dienst) was established under the jurisdiction of the attorney general's office (hoofdparket). After 1921 Governor General Dirk M. G. Fock (1921–1926) enacted a series of repressive policy and legal codes against communist movements and actions. The police apparatus expanded and became more important in the surveillance network over native political and social movements. It spread over the Dutch Empire in Southeast Asia, and penetrated into the indigenous population in the 1920s with the creation of regional intelligence apparatus in each residency. This political intelligence was popularly known as the PID (Politieke Inlichtingendienst, Political Intelligence Service) and was often mentioned even in local newspapers, although this was not its official name (Shiraishi Reference Shiraishi, Siegel and Kahin2003). The PID took over the political role of the Office for Native Affairs (Kantoor voor Inlandse Zaken), which used to provide basic information on native affairs for policy-makers. It grew along with the Indies Communist Association (Perserikataan Kommunist di India or PKI)Footnote ¹³ as its first and foremost adversary, as its officers built access to the PKI and its affiliate, the People's Union (Sarekat Rakjat). As for the Chinese affairs, the PID collaborated closely with the Office for Chinese Affairs, mainly exchanging regular reports, and sometimes transmitting clandestine intelligence information and conducting related operations.

It should be noted, however, unlike in British Malaya where migrant Chinese held significant roles, the communist movement in the Indies was almost exclusively led by indigenous people of middle class and elite backgrounds such as Semaoen, Darsono, Hadji Misbach, and Tan Malaka. Little connections were found between the communist movement and the Chinese, and the Indies Communist Party had very few Chinese members.

It appears that there were some Communist hands from China in the territory, some of which had connections with the Kuomintang movement. In fact, Dutch colonial secret documents carried several reports on the Chinese communists: in 1919 mention is made of the existence of the Labour Party of China;Footnote ¹⁴ in 1921, a story of a Chinese Communist doctor (Mr. x 489x/1921); in 1922, several reports about Communists' contact between China and the Indies (Mr.x 801x/1922); and in 1924, the attempts by the Communists to get the Chinese involved in their action in the Indies (Mr.x 521x/1924). After the 1926–27 Communist uprisings in West Java and West Sumatra, the Kuomintang-affiliated Chinese activists and journalists became targets of monitoring and intimidation, along with the Indonesian Communists. Between 1927 and 1929, nearly 60 Kuomintang-related Chinese individuals were deported from the Indies.Footnote ¹⁵ This firm attitude towards the Chinese was conspicuous in colonial Southeast Asia.

For the Dutch authorities in the Indies, controlling immigration had been a major internal security concern since the mid-1910s, and the Dutch authorities took the ‘external’ factors seriously. In 1916, the Dutch introduced a series of regulations on admission and residence of Dutch and foreigners in the Indies (Binnenlandsch Bestuur Reference Bestuur1919). It restricted the ports where foreigners were allowed to enter the Indies, while regulating the shipping companies that could carry such foreign citizens to the territory. However, the regulations did not apply for the ‘Foreign Orientals’ that resided in the Indies. In the early 1920s the Office for Chinese Affairs introduced the numbering system for the Chinese who entered the Indies (Yamamoto 2011a), and as will describe below, this systematic monitoring was praised by the British authorities in the early 1930s.

Internationalisation of Immigration Control

By the middle of the 1920s both British Malaya and the Dutch Indies faced emerging challenges from the Kuomintang and Communist movements. In British Malaya it is rather clear, according to official reports, that there was a connection between the Kuomintang and the Communists; the Communists were establishing a cell in the Kuomintang. Contrary to this, the Dutch Indies colonial documents mainly focused on the Indonesian Communist movement, while it had limited space for the Chinese radical political activism.

Returning now to the confidential letter written by the Dutch Foreign Minister van Karnebeek on 21 July 1923 to his colleague the Minister of Colonies de Graaf. The letter indicated that the Dutch government had two kinds of fear. First, the fear related to internal security concerning the Indies. “Undesirable elements,” one colonial document describes, had penetrated the Indies and their activities could destabilise social order within the territory. By then the Indies authorities had carried out counter measures against them. As of February 1923 the government expressed its determination to exercise Governor General's exorbitant rights to deport such “undesirable elements” from the Indies. In fact by the end of June, seven “undesirable elements” had been expelled.Footnote ¹⁶

Second, the anxiety also rose from the fact that the neighbouring colonial power, British Malay, did not share the same concern as the Indies. For the Dutch, “undesirable elements” were not limited to the Indies, but were potentially dangerous to the region. Because of such understanding, the Dutch were eager to cooperate with the British to confront such potential threats. In reality, however, the British showed their tolerance towards such activities, and had no interest in cooperating with the Dutch on the matter. The document obviously shows Dutch irritation towards the British.

What the Dutch feared, according to the confidential document, was “foreign bolshevist influences” (buitelandsche bolshewistische invloeden). The “foreign influences” refers to the political influence and maneuvering of the Comintern (the Communist International or the Third International). Here the Dutch Indies authorities connected Chinese political activities with the hands of the Comintern, while, according to the authorities in the Netherlands, the British colonial authorities saw no such connection in its territories (DBBPN 1923: 543–4).

This fact explicitly indicates that, at least up until 1923 when the correspondence was written, there was no exchange of information, not to mention intelligence reports, between the Dutch and the British. As discussed above, since 1919, the British Secretary for Chinese Affairs, Beatty, took the initiative to monitor the activities of Chinese anarcho-communists and turned the political focus from Chinese nationalism in general to the Kuomintang movement in particular. In December 1922, more than a half year before the above-mentioned Dutch correspondence was sent, the Governor General of the British Malaya, Guillemard, advocated a ban on the Kuomintang because he sensed the hands of the Comintern in it. However, it was not yet the official British policy, and thereby diplomatically the British did not agree with the Dutch proposal to exchange the Kuomintang and the Comintern related information.

The Dutch authorities initiated all the negotiations for cooperation. They had more experience on Communist related protest movements in Java since 1913 compared with British and French colonial powers.Footnote ¹⁷ The key and controversial person was the Dutch Marxist Henk Sneevliet.Footnote ¹⁸ As a radical labour union activist affiliated with the Social-Democratic Workers' Party (Sociaal Democratische Arbeiders Partij, SDAP) in the Netherlands, Sneevliet had moved to the Indies in 1913 where he became active in the anti-capitalist movement. In 1914 he founded the Indies Social Democratic Association (Indische Sosiaal Democratische Vereniging, ISDV) while committing himself to the Association for Railway and Tramway Personnel (Vereeniging voor Spoor-en Tramwegpwersoneel, VSTP) movement. In 1916 he joined the Social Democratic Party (Sociaal Democratische Arbeiders Partij, SDP) in the Netherlands, a predecessor of the communist Party of Holland (Communistische Partij Holland, CPH). After having been deported to the Netherlands in 1918, he became active in the CPH as well as the Comintern. In 1921, as a Comintern agent under his pseudo name “Maring,” he was assigned to go to Shanghai to establish contacts with the movement in China as well as in Japan, Korea, the Dutch Indies, Indo-China, and the Philippines. In October 1921 Sneevliet met Sun Yat-sen at Sun's headquarters based in the city of Guilin, Guangxi Province (Saich Reference Saich1991: 1–198).

The sea change came from China. In 1924 the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China decided to merge under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen. They chose the Bolshevik style of party leadership and structure. The perceived Dutch fear proved to be true. This political move in China pushed the British to change its attitude towards the (imagined) enemy in Southeast Asia.

The British started to pay closer attention to its neighbour colonies and territories concerning Kuomintang activities. On 11 April 1925, British Acting Consulate-General Shanghai, J. Drummond Hogg, sent a diplomatic letter to the British Embassy in Paris. In it Hogg warns that potential communist influence can be detected in French Indochina. He suggests that Communist ideology can penetrate into Vietnamese society, partly because there exist local people who ask to travel to Europe and the United States without obtaining travel permit from the Indochinese authorities, and partly because a new generation has emerged, although the number is small, of those who have received a French style education. With this social background, Hogg signals the rapid socio-political change of the colony, and in particular recommends that the French Indochina authorities closely monitor foreigners and their activities in its colony.

In the same context, on 9 September 1925 Hogg distributed another confidential letter addressed to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs as well as the Ambassador to Paris, and Ministers in Bangkok and Hong Kong. This letter is suggestive because Hogg uses two significant phrases interchangeably – “the alleged existence in French Indo-China of Kuomintang influence” and “the alleged prevalence of communism in French Indochina.”Footnote ¹⁹ In the document, Hogg introduces the quarrel between two local journals in Indochina, Imperial and L'Indochine. In the quarrel the former journal accuses the latter of receiving an editor from the Kuomintang's judicial adviser in Indochina of the Canton Kuomintang. Imperial even argues that the editor is “the source of Chinese bolshevism to bring about the downfall of his rivals.”

The problem Hogg faces in his letter was the fact that Indochinese authorities pay little attention to such allegations. This document demonstrates that British and French colonial authorities did not find “common interests” (Foster Reference Foster2010: 25) powerful enough to create a cross-boundary structure.Footnote ²⁰ It shows that imperial cooperation was embryonic, and around 1925 imperial powers had just begun to exchange their confidential documents at certain levels. Although they had started informal exchange of information over the Communist forces and the Comintern, this did not immediately lead to cooperative work against their “common threat” at formal levels.

Concluding Remarks: the End of the British Informal Empire in Southeast Asia

Anxiety among colonial powers shaped an international concern in 1920s Southeast Asia. This anxiety arose from the gap in perception concerning the emerging threat. The discrepancy remained until all major colonial powers came to agree that they shared a common threat: the Kuomintang and the Comintern activities in the region. International collaboration took place in the form of immigration control and exchange of information on the matter.

However, this international collaboration took time to be realised mainly because the dominant power of the region – the British – did not make an official commitment to establish information exchange among the neighbouring colonial powers, even though they faced a ‘common threat’. The reason for this was because the British empire in Asia had the prevalent ethic of free trade. The British treated migrants as objects of commerce, thus their policy towards migration was laisez-faire (McKeown Reference McKeown2008: 149, 213). However, this does not necessarily means that the migrants were overlooked. In the course of the 1920s, according to the British diplomatic documents from Bangkok, they paid attention to the movement of Chinese labour from South China to Southeast Asia, as well as within Southeast Asia.Footnote ²¹

In 1928 the British attitude towards the Chinese migrants finally began to change. The top officials started to discuss how to regulate the Chinese immigration to its colonies in Southeast Asia. This common threat altered the British laisez-faire policy and led to border control. On 25 May 1928, for instance, the Consul-General stationed in Bangkok, Sir Josiah Crosby, wrote a confidential letter to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1924–29), Sir Austen Chamberlain, concerning the political aspect of the ‘Chinese question’:

Crosby paid special attention to the Kuomintang movement and proposed to introduce strict border controls in the Straits Settlements. This proposal would deny the essence of free trade on which the British Empire had been built.

The British finally changed their policy of immigration control, in particular regarding the Chinese immigration. Two years later, on 18 August 1930, the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, Straits Settlements, A. Goodman, sent a confidential correspondence to the Colonial Secretary of Straits Settlements, Singapore. In it Goodman praised the ways in which the Dutch authorities handled the Chinese: they controlled any Chinese political and educational organisers at the port of entry; the Dutch Immigration Law prevented the residence of and ensured the exclusion from the Indies of “undesirable Chinese” and did well “in making a sharp distinction between the Chinese who is a Dutch subject and the one who is an alien.”Footnote ²³

This confidential letter indicates that the British reviewed their immigration policy and border control by learning from the Dutch examples. Back in 1923 such things were highly unlikely. In particular, the British looked into the discriminatory Dutch system; the discriminatory measures for immigration were not the Dutch creation. In colonial Southeast Asia, French Indochina carried out similar restrictions over immigration. Historically, they had been well established since the 1880s in the United States and Canada (McKeown Reference McKeown2008: 149–184, 213).Footnote ²⁴ However, because the idea of border control did not match the philosophy of free trade and informal empire that the British had relied on in Southeast Asia, this letter marked a fundamental policy change for the British.

More importantly, as this letter was compiled as part of a Dutch secret colonial document it is evidence that the British and the Dutch had established formal institutional and personal relationships among officials: on 9 September 1930, the Dutch adviser to the Office of Chinese Affairs, H. Mouw, sent a confidential letter to the General Secretary, P. J. Gerke, within which was a copy of Goodman's secret correspondence. The content of the letter tells an important diplomatic development. Goodman paid a visit to Batavia, and Mouw took him to the Governor General's office at 2 p.m. on 30 July. The letter is a detailed study based on his trip to Batavia about the function of the Dutch Office of Chinese Affairs by comparing it to the Secretary of Chinese Affairs in British Malaya, in order to make a recommendation to the Governor of the Straits Settlements (Mr.x 899x/1930). The letter shows a cordial personal relationship between Mouw and Goodman. It carries an honest attitude that the British acknowledges the defects of their system. Most of all the exposure of the content of secret correspondence is the way to build trust between the two colonial authorities. The era of international immigration control was just around the corner.

In this way, the ‘China problem’ shaped the politics of border control in the 1920s Southeast Asia. However, the 1930s would see a slightly different story. By 1930, the Washington System in East Asia had fallen apart. In China, Chiang Kai-shek seized power of the Kuomintang after Sun Yat-sen passed away in 1925, purged the Kuomintang-Left and broke the united front deal with the Chinese Communist Party in 1927, which ultimately led China into civil war. By taking advantage of China's internal situation, Japan had begun to penetrate into China's northern territory since the late 1920s. A politically-divided and unstable China threw a shadow over Southeast Asia. After Japan seized Manchuria in 1931, anti-Japanese sentiments among the overseas Chinese populations intensified. Colonial powers in Southeast Asia sensed the on-coming Japanese aggression to the region as well. Thus the ‘China problem’ was transformed and the politics of international immigration controls in Southeast Asia would enter a new phase in the 1930s.