The Larut Wars and the Pangkor Treaty

It is January 1874 on the Perak coast. A pen scratches across a treaty. The British Governor of the Straits Settlements, Sir Andrew Clarke, and a Malay ruler are signing a paper that will end years of fighting over the tin mines of Larut.

The story

Larut, in northern Perak, was one of the richest tin fields in Malaya. The district's ruler, Ngah Ibrahim, and his father before him brought in Chinese miners, and their numbers grew many times over. Chinese society was organised into groups led by a Kapitan Cina (a Chinese headman).

The miners were not one group. They belonged to two big secret societies, Ghee Hin and Hai San. A secret society, in those days, was a brotherhood that looked after its own members. These two groups divided the mines between them. Between 1861 and 1873 there were four separate wars.

The first was in 1861. The Governor in Singapore intervened because many Ghee Hin members were British subjects, and Ngah Ibrahim paid over 17,000 Straits dollars in compensation. A second war in 1865 spread to Penang. The last war ran from February to August 1873. By then the quarrel had become tangled up with a dispute about who should be the next Sultan of Perak, with Malay leaders backing different sides.

Penang's British Lieutenant Governor called the parties to a meeting and asked the Chinese groups to make peace. Then, on 20 January 1874, the Pangkor Treaty was signed. It ended the Larut fighting. It also said that the Sultan would accept a British officer called a Resident. The Sultan was to ask for the Resident's advice and act on it, except on matters of Islam and Malay custom. This is why historians call the treaty the start of British control over the Malay states.

Captain Speedy had been hired in 1873 to bring order to Larut. He arrived with 110 men from India, mostly Sikhs. They became the first Perak police force. That story is told in "Punjabi Sikh: police, guards and dairy farmers".

Where you can still see it today

Taiping, in the old Larut district, and the former mining land around it.
The Perak police and the Sikh gurdwaras (temples) that grew out of Captain Speedy's force.
Chinese clan halls and temples in Perak, many of which began as community associations.
Place names along the Perak coast, including Pangkor Island, where the treaty is named.

What DNA can tell, and what it cannot

This is a story of events, not of descent. DNA cannot say whose family was on which side of the wars, because the people who fought came from many backgrounds and had children who lived together afterwards.

A region estimate or a mother line or father line can show deep links, such as to southern China, to Sumatra or to South Asia. They cannot show whether an ancestor was a miner, a chief or a policeman.

DNA does not decide race, religion or bumiputera status. A test cannot say anything about who held power in a past age.