In May 1854, a war broke out between Chinese clans living in and around the British naval base of Singapore; thousands fought in the streets of the city over twelve days. The scale of the fighting took the European authorities by surprise, and they suddenly understood that cheap convict labourers recruited into the settlement, without women, brought frustration and violence with them from China, as well as historic animosities.1 Some 400 people were killed and 300 homes destroyed. Merchants feared for the safety of their goods and their godowns. Although the immediate cause of the riots was an increase in the price of rice, and the consequent discontent of the labour force, the underlying trouble lay in the inherited feuds between existing secret societies and more recent immigrants from China. China itself was being shaken by the campaigns of the Taiping Rebellion.
The riots were not directed against the European community, but the battles were so extensive that the Europeans organised a self-defence militia, the Singapore Volunteer Rifle Corps - the first white settler militia set up in Asia. William Butterworth, governor of the colony, was appointed its colonel, but his militia did not have the strength to suppress the Chinese quarrels. He asked for assistance from the naval commander of the East India and China station, and the Chinese rebels soon faced Indian sepoys and British marines. ‘These people must fully understand that this is not their country’, Butterworth declared in a proclamation to the Chinese community on 11 May, ‘and they must learn to attend to their own business, instead of molesting each other by going about the country to destroy the houses and properties of their neighbours.’ If they continued in these outrages, he went on, ‘they must expect to be treated like madmen’2
The fighting spread to the country areas where the Chinese communities were established, and reports told of whole villages being wiped out.3 Hundreds of Chinese were alleged to be preparing an attack on the city, and troops were deployed to guard the roads into town. Yet after days of sporadic fighting, life returned to normal. According to one report, the warring parties were appeased with the help of influential Chinese merchants. Some 500 Chinese were detained, and half were put on trial; six were sentenced to death, and two were executed. Yet the Europeans remained nervous, and the underlying
Threat of violence persisted. Similar disturbances were to take place in 1867 and 1872.
On the morning of 15 January 1857, the European community in Hong Kong woke up to discover that their bread had been poisoned. Several hundred people collapsed with arsenic poisoning, among them the wife of the governor, Sir John Bowring. They had all eaten bread supplied by the E-sing Bakery.
The bread poisoning was immediately assumed to be a form of Chinese sabotage against the imperial authorities. The Chinese population was in close touch with the Chinese at the great port of Canton, across the water on the mainland, and a few months earlier, during the so-called Arrow War between Britain and China in October 1856, Canton had come under British bombardment. Fearing that the hostility aroused by this small war might spill over into Hong Kong, the British anchored a gunboat off the Central Market in December - a visible warning to the Chinese population to remain quiet.
The bread-poisoning episode caused considerable alarm among the Europeans. Suspicion fell first on Cheong Ah-lum, the owner of the E-sing bakery, who had left Hong Kong that morning for Portuguese Macao. Yet Cheong Ah-lum was a major player in the bakery business, supplying bread and other provisions to the Europeans during the weeks they had been fighting on the mainland, and he was not the most likely candidate to have organised a poisoning campaign. When he was arrested in Macao, it emerged that he too had eaten the poisoned bread and been extremely ill.
The British authorities then imagined that one of Cheong Ah-lum’s bakery workmen might have been guilty of making the poisoned bread, and fifty-one bakers were arrested. They were detained for two weeks in an underground police cell, measuring fifteen feet square, and the Chinese called it the ‘Black Hole of Hong Kong’, for the colony had recently marked the centenary of Calcutta’s ‘Black Hole’, of 1756.
When the bakers appeared in court, the British prosecutor argued that the poisoning had been ordered from Canton; but since no evidence was forthcoming, the jury called for their acquittal.4 The authorities ordered their immediate re-arrest. Governor Bowring was concerned by the adverse publicity arising from their gaol conditions, and recommended their deportation. The fifty-one bakers were eventually released and ordered to leave the colony. Several members of the European community thought the island of Formosa would be a suitable destination. Cheong Ah-lum sought refuge in Saigon.
The Chinese in the colony, undaunted by the exile of the bakers, continued in their criticism of the British attacks on Canton. In February, they again took action against the European food supply. The bakery of George Duddwell, which had taken over the task of supplying bread to the European community, was burned down, and again the authorities arrested many people. Some 200 ‘suspicious-looking characters’ were arrested in Bonham Strand, 500 others detained, and 167 deported to Hainan.
By such methods, Chinese passions were slowly brought under control, and by 1858 the atmosphere in the colony was less volatile. The administration was able to recruit a corps of 2,000 Hong Kong ‘coolies’ to act as porters for an Anglo-French military expedition launched against Peking in 1858.
World History
