Selangor Includes Three Large
Districts, Each On A Considerable River Of Its Own - Selangor, Klang,
And Langat.
The Sultan was actually, as he is now nominally, supreme, but the story
of disturbances under this government is a very old one, internal
strife having been the normal condition of the State ever since
Europeans have been acquainted with it.
It seems to have been an
undoubted fact that its rivers and island channels were the resort of
pirates, and that its Rajahs devoted themselves with much success to
harrying small vessels trading in the Straits of Malacca.
The name of this State is not found in the earlier Malayan records.
Negri Calang, or the land of tin, was the designation of this part of
the peninsula, and this depopulated region was formerly a flourishing
dependency under the Malay sovereigns of Malacca. The population, such
as it is, is chiefly composed of the descendants of a colony of Bugis
from Goa in the Celebes, who settled in Selangor at the beginning of
the eighteenth century under a Goa chief, who was succeeded by Sultan
Ibrahim, an intense hater and sturdy opponent of the Dutch. He attacked
Malacca, looted and burned its suburbs, and would have captured it but
for the opportune arrival of a Dutch fleet. He surprised the Dutch
garrison of Selangor by night, routed it, and captured all its heavy
artillery and ammunition, but was afterward compelled to restore his
plunder, and acknowledge himself a vassal of the Dutch East India
Company. After this he attacked the Siamese, and was mainly
instrumental in driving them out of Perak.
He was succeeded in 1826 by an ignoble prince, and under his weak and
oppressive rule, and under the extortions and cruelties of his
illegitimate brothers, the State lapsed into decay. Mr. Newbold, who
had charge of a military post on the Selangor frontier in 1833,
witnessed many of the atrocities perpetrated by these Bugis princes,
who committed piracies, robbed, plundered, and levied contributions on
the wretched Malays, without hindrance. In Mr. Newbold's day the whole
population of Kwala Linggi, where he was stationed, fled by night into
the Malacca territory, where they afterward settled to escape from the
merciless exactions to which they were subjected. Slavery and debt
slavery added to the miseries of the country, and it is believed that
by emigration and other causes the Malay population was reduced to
between two thousand and three thousand souls.
Only one event in the recent history of Selangor deserves notice. This
miserable ruler, Sultan Mohammed, had no legitimate offspring, but it
was likely that at his death his near relation, Tuanku Bongsu, a Rajah
universally liked and respected by his countrymen, would have been
elected to succeed him. Unfortunately for the good of the State this
Rajah took upon himself the direction of the tin mines at Lukut,
formerly worked by about four hundred Chinese miners on their own
account, paying a tenth of their produce to the Sultan. One dark, rainy
night in September, 1834, these miners rose upon their employers,
burned their houses, and massacred them indiscriminately, including
this enlightened Rajah; and his wife and children, in attempting to
escape, were thrown into the flames of their house.
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