Times of Malaya when Pioneers, Planters, Miners, Civil Servants, Merchants, Police and the Military - both regulars and volunteers, during British Colonisation period, lived in the Straits Settlements of Singapore, Malacca and Penang and the Federated Malay States of Perak, Selangor, Pahang, Negri Sembilan including Unfederated States of Johore, Terengganu, Kelantan & Perlis. From 1786, the arrival of Francis Light; 1819, landing of Stamford Raffles with the Honourable East India Company & the administration of the Straits Settlements by British India through to being The Crown Colony in 1867 leading to WW1 and WW2 in Malaya. The Times of Malayan Emergency to the independence of Malaya in 1957 and the Republic of Singapore in 1965.

Tuesday 29 May 2012

Sir Richard Winstedt, FMS Civil Service


Sir Richard Winstedt, KBE, CMG, FBA, D. Litt (Oxford), MA, Hon LLD (Malaya)


Sir Richard arrived in Malaya as a “griffin” in the Federal Malay States Civil Service. About late 1902, he was posted to Taiping as a junior administrator. His impression of the Colonel Walker, Commander of the Malay State Guides (MSG) based in Taiping, was pretty hilarious – “old hooky, as he was then known (his nose was broken by one of Kipling’s Lang men of Laut) was recalled through one of the many incidents:
The guides (MSG) fighting a few of the Malay rebels, after many empty days of pursuit, the Indian Sepoys fired wildly and shot one of the Colonel’s greatest friends, the Civil Commissioner, through the back. “My God” shouted the Colonel, “he’s killed. Open a bottle of beer.”
Colonel Walker was also figured in Miss Bird’s travel book, the Golden Chersonese.
“ Because a man wears khaki and a solar topi and has traveled 1,000 miles in a British Ship to a British Colony to live among British settlers, the world is disposed to fancy that his life bas been more venturesome than life in London. Are not Conrad and Somerset Maugham witnesses that the Malay Archipelago pullulates with romance?”
“Much as I enjoyed the free local life of outstations, my temperament hardly fitted me to find romances there was in types a born novelist would have loved; the Scottish planter, the Australian miner, the New Zealand surveyor, the Irish doctor, the Cockney Inspector.”
Sir Richard’s personal motto following a Malay saying:
“If you really want (to do) something, there are 1,000 ways achieving it”
Another favourite saying and quote:
“When you tread the soil of a country and live beneath the skies, follow the customs of that country”

Extracted from Sir Richard Winstedt’s “Start from Alif, Count from One”

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