Historical Data on Kuala LumpurKhoo Kay Kim*

Abstrak: Bagi mereka yang berminat pada sejarah Kuala Lumpur, sumber terbaik untukmaklumat, tetapi yang tidak digunakan dengan sepenuhnya, ialah akhbar-akhbar tempat-an. Sebelum 1896, di samping Straits Times dan Singapore Free Press yang menyiarkanberita-berita mengenai Kuala Lumpur, pengetahuan mengenai perkembangannya jugaboleh didapati dalam sumber-sumber utama yang lain seperti Selangor Journal dandokumen-dokumen rasmi kerajaan. 8eberapa buah kajian mengenai tempoh ini yangtelah diterbitkan juga adalah amat teliti dalam liputannya. Akan tetapi, tempoh selepas1896 telah diabaikan dalam penyelidikan. Akhbar-okhbar masih merupakan sumberutama bagi maklumat, khususnya akhbar Malay Mail. Sebagai sebuah akhbar yang ber-pusat di Kuala Lumpur, ia menerbitkan berita-be rita harian, peristlwa-pertstiwa penting,kenang-kenangan dan surat-surat daripada pembaca - semuanya perkara-perkara yangmempunyai kepentingan sejarah.

Abstract: For those interested in the history of Kuala Lumpur, the best source of inform-ation and one that has been overlooked, is the newspapers. Before 1896, besides theStraits Times and the Singapore Free Press which contained accounts of Kuala Lumpur,information concerning its development could also be obtained from other major sourceslike the Selangor Journal and official government documents. Several studies that havebeen published are excellent in their coverage of this period. But the post-1896 periodhas been neglected in research. Newspapers are still the major sources of information,particularly the Malay Mail. Being a Kuala Lumpur newspaper, it contained daily news,records of important events, reminiscences and letters from the public concerning KualaLumpur - all matters of historical significance.

It is probably not widely known that Victor Purcell,famous author of The Chinese in Malaya and TheChinese in Southeast Asia, wrote, in 1939, a lengthyarticle on Kuala Lumpur, published in three parts inthe Malay Mail of June-July. The first article dealtwith Kuala Lumpur in the late 1890s and the nexttwo focused on 'the Edwardian era'. His data was de-rived, as Purcell himself exaplained, 'from many oldminute papers, newspaper files, annual reports, andbooks in general'. But the document that seemed toPurcell 'to epitomize the age [the 1890sJ is a volumeof the Selangor Journal for 1896-97'.

The Selangor Journal which commenced publi-cation in 1892 does contain valuable information onKuala Lumpur in the 1890s, and also, occasionally,the earlier years. But, since it ceased publication by1897, the historian in search of material on 20thcentury Kuala Lumpur must turn to other sources.The Selangor Annual Reports and the State Secretariatfiles are no doubt valuable sources but it is difficultto obtain a rounded perception of Kuala Lumpurthrough sources which are at best general and, moreusually, fragmentary.

*Professor of Malaysian History, University of Malaya.

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The best sources for any study of Kuala Lumpurhistory are undoubtedly the newspapers. For theperiod before the appearance of the Selangor Journal,the Straits Times (Singapore) and the Singapore FreePress both help to fill in the gaps. However, news ofthe Malay States appeared on Iy periodically in theSingapore and Penang newspapers and often onlyvery briefly. The more lengthy reports were usuallyextracts from the Annual Reports. The following isan example. It appeared in the Straits Times of 25June 1885:

... the Malay population left the country [du-ring the Klang War J , and all efforts to repopul-ate it have to a great extent failed. The re-mission of the quit rents on agricultural landsfor three years from the 1st. January 1884 inthe depopulated district has had the effect ofconsiderably increasing the Malay population,who settle down on small fruit and padi plant-ations, and are excellent cultivators. It appears,however, that a large proportion of some13,700 acres of land that have been taken up inthe state during the year 1884 has been opened

Kekal Abadi 6(1) Mac 1987

under the wasteful conditions of periodical"Ladang" cu Itivation; that is, burn ing the treesand planting the ground with padi, maize, bana-nas, and sugar-cane, and abandoning it after ayear or two in favour of another tract, thus des-troying the forest and yielding the country tono permanent good.

The above is found in the Report on Selangor for7884 which also contains the following informationwith regard to Kuala Lumpur:

The Chinese market gardeners are verynumerous within a radius of some three milesfrom Kuala Lumpur, but besides these, most ofthe small planters are Malays from Sumatra.The few native Selangor Malays are distributedalong the banks of the three rivers, and culti-vate cocoanuts, durians, mangosteens, andother fruits.

By 1889, the Straits Times started to pay a littlemore attention to Kuala Lumpur for 'Kuala LumpurNews' became quite a regular feature in the paper. On19 January 1889, the following appeared under'Kuala Lumpur News':

The roads here are something awful just now.Those that have been metalled, the Rawang andCheras roads, are like the cobbled high streetsof old seaside towns in England. Driving overthem is almost as bad "as camel riding; and I ex-pect to see the Arab custom adopted of tying along scarf tightly round the chest, under thearms, to prevent the ribs being shaken to pieces.

And towards the end of the year, after the death ofKapitan Yap Ah Shak in Kuala Lumpur, the StraitsTimes {28 October 1889} commented on the subjectwhen no new appointment had yet been made:

I hear some moaning that no Capitan China isyet elected. The fact is that the best authoritiesare said not to see wherein the great value ofthis vague functionary lies. Certain it is that bysuch an appointment a single Chinaman iselected to a great eminence over his fellows.Certain it is that the opportunity given to suchan individual, if not too scrupulous to squeezethe pocket of every single Chinese immigrant,is obvious and tempting. It is true also that theCapitans of the past have all grown rich withcelerity. What is not so clear however is thenecessity and advantage of such an individual tothe Government. At present all the Chinese sec-tions stand on an equal footing from this pointof view. The appointment of any given indivi-dual would probably be distasteful to someother sections of the populace other than hisown. Cheow Ah Yeok, who is most popularamong Europeans, is said to be unwilling to

accept the post even if offered to him. He is,however, a Pun-ti [i.e. a pure Cantonese 1 anddoes not represent or closely sympathise withthe majority of the Chinese residents, very fewof whom are Pun-ti [the majority of the Chinesein Kuala Lumpur then were Hakka], It is be-lieved that all the more influential headmenwould prefer not to have another Capitan China.

But useful as the Straits Times is, for those whowould like to study the history of Kuala Lumpur inthe 1880s, it may be mentioned that the subject itselfhas not been hitherto neglected. J .M. Gullick's 'KualaLumpur, 1880-1895' UMBRAS, XXVIII, Pt. 4,1955}, cannot be easily improved upon. And it iscomplemented by A.B. Rathborne's Camping andTramping in Malaya {London, 1898} as well as EmilySadka's The Protected Malay States 7874-7895{Kuala Lumpur, 1968}, not forgetting S.M. Middle-brook's 'Yap Ah Loy' UMBRAS, XXIV, Pt. 2, 1951,edited by J .M. Gullick}.

It is the post-1896 period which has been badlyneglected. Gullick himself has attempted to fill thevoid in more recent years. But his book entitled TheStory of Kuala Lumpur (7857-7939), published in1983, is too sketchy; it is written clearly for thosewho require but a very general knowledge of thehistory of Kuala Lumpur. J .G. Butcher's The Britishin Malaya 7880--7947 (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), is amore successful attempt at writing social history andalthough his study is 'British Malaya' he draws heavilyon Kuala Lumpur for his examples. Still, he is primar-ily concerned with the European community inMalaya rather than the development of Kuala Lum-pur.

Two geographers have contributed to the study ofKuala Lumpur {its history included}. Manjit SinghSidhu's Kuala Lumpur and its Population {KualaLumpur, 1978} is concerned with the peopling ofKuala Lumpur, beginning from the mid-nineteenthcentury. Lim Heng Kow's The Evolution of theUrban System in Malaya {Kuala Lumpur, 1978} is alarger study; Kuala Lumpur is just one of a number ofurban centres discussed. Although both scholars haveadopted a historical perspective, neither has en-deavoured to collect a larger corpus of data than thatreadily available.

The source most neglected by historians studyingKuala Lumpur so far is the Malay Mail. First publishedin 1896, the paper has survived through the years and,as far as it has been possible to ascertain, did notcease publication at least during the early phase of theJapanese Occupation. Apart from daily news, thepaper also contained data, in various forms, of im-mense value to historians. In the issue of 20 April1904, for example, there appeared a reprint of a

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lengthy report by the Director of Public Works De-partment on the history of the Kuala Lumpu r Water-works (1888-1903). And, on 13 April 1904, thepaper printed a number of documents dealing withthe founding and development of the Malay Agri-cultural Settlement (now known as Kampong Baru)which, for the modern scholar, should usefully com-plement John Hands' article on the same subjectwhich was published in The Malayan Historicaljournal (Vol. 2, No.2, 1955).

The Malay Mail also published reports of the KualaLumpur Sanitary Board meetings though not fromthe beginning as the Board was established severalyears before the commencement of the paper. But forhistorians interested in the development of localgovernment in Kuala Lumpur, a particularly import-ant document was printed in the Malay Mail ofJanuary 1905. This was a memorandum submitted tothe Government by three members of the SanitaryBoard - H.C. Ridges, J.H.M. Robson and Dr. E.A.O.Travers. Entitled 'Memorandum On The FuturePolicy Of Municipal Schemes In The Town Of KualaLumpur' the authors explained the purpose of thememorandum in the following manner:

The Town of Kuala Lumpur as the Capitalof the Federated Malay States should continueto grow in importance with even greater stridesthan it has made in the past. Its developmenthas been phenomenal, but the lines on which ithas taken place have been somewhat haphazard.

There is a danger of repeating the kind ofmistake that has arisen hitherto. They may beattributed generally to a want of continuity ofpolicy, to the absence of a programme of devel-opment of a far-reaching nature, and there canbe no wonder that so simple a cause has suf-ficed to give occasion for a word of warn ingat the present epoch in the history of the town,when we consider the constant change ofofficials. The Resident, the Board and itsofficers, may be said to have found their handsfull from time to time with the municipal workof the year in hand, which one and another hashad to relinquish without formulating a pro-gramme for the remoter future, having, as a rule,held a responsible relation to the departmentfor a comparatively short period.

The lesson of the past is therefore the needof a programme of improvements, an outlinewhich may be kept in view and handed on fromyear to year for fulfilment. We have set out inthis memorandum a sketch of the progresswhich we think should be made in the course ofthe next few years. The evils for which we havetried to indicate a remedy are mainly those of

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overcrowding, with the consequent highermortality, and of dearness of living, and, with-out going into detail, we have made proposalswhich, we conceive, are suggestive of an advancein the right direction, and will, if acted upon,form a sound basis on which to found a pro-gressive policy with a view to later schemes.

Several years later (in October 1920) the MalayMail also published, in serial form, a lengthy articleon 'Malaria: Its History in Kuala Lumpur'. Together,these several reports and articles throw light on theproblems of municipal administration in KualaLumpur during its formative years. Apart from thesethere were also numerous brief reports and commentswhich were no less valuable such as the followingwhich appeared in the Malay Mail of 13 July 1905:

It is now July but little visible progress hasbeen made in carrying out the authorised KualaLumpur Municipal programme of new works,such as road improvement, new roads, etc. It isgetting on for two years ago, we believe, sincethe residents and builders on Weld's Hill askedthe Govern ment to give them a good approachroad from Klyne Street. The present Residentand the late Resident-General gave every help,but the matter was hung up elsewhere pendingthe taking over of a private road.

Writings on Kuala Lumpur have tended to ignorethe outskirts and to concentrate on the town centre.This could be due to want of material but, unknownto many, the Malay Mail, in August 1908, published aseries of fourteen articles dealing with 'fifteen town-ships, villages orhamlets in the Kuala Lumpur district'.Entitled 'Rural Rambles in Kuala Lumpur District'the intention was to draw the attention of the Govern-ment to the need for greater control over these placesto ensure more hygenic conditions of living. A fewexamples may be given.

Of Kepong it was said:Kepong, large as it is, in point of numbers,

possessed no properly-constituted school, butthere are two small private seminaries where afew only of the children in the place are in-structed. They say that labour is too valuable inKepong to waste any time.

The drainage and general system of sanitationin this place may be easily summed up in theword 'nil'.

Batu village, situated on the road to Rawang, was justas neglected. According to the Malay Mail correspon-dent:

The water supply in the main part of Batuover the bridge leaves something to be desired.The railway people are all right; they have agood supply on higher ground beyond the

township proper; but the bulk of the inhabit-ants obtain their allowances from two wells justround the corner of the Kepong road, some 300yards away. The first of these wells is situatedimmediately below a piggery and on the edge ofa vegetable garden, while the other, about fortyyards away, has a Chinese hut just above it,with the drainage in the direction of the well.

Apart from the poor sanitary conditions prevailing inthe outlying areas, the Malay Mail also drew attentionto two general shortcomings:

One was the apparently unnecessarily largenumber of liquor shops i.e. places in whichliquor was exposed for sale. There should besome limit based on population or number ofhouses. For instance, at Ampang there were 26,at Sungei Besi 15, at Kepong 15 and at SalakSouth 15. And as far as we know there isnothing to prevent the vendors from palmingoff the ran kest poison on the public, if theychoose to do so. The other point was thelimited educational facilities offered to Chinesechildren (by far the largest proportion) by theState.

Perhaps some of the most interesting materials arethose which represent various persons' reminiscencesor memories of Kuala Lumpur. There was, for in-stance, an old resident (name not given) who was al-ready in Kuala Lumpur at a time when the SelangorClub Padang did not exist. Instead, he said:

... there was to be seen a vegetable garden laidout in those ridge-like beds which now existonly outside town limits. Where the Bank nowstands, there was a swamp, which, extendingunder the Damansara Road, also occupied thesite of the present Railway Offices. Where ourfine pile of Government buildings now rears itshaughty head, there was then only low-lyingland, chiefly occupied by dhobies, who pursuedtheir avocations unhindered, even where LokeYew Buildings now stand. In passing, we maymention that the late Mr. Tamboosamy thenlived in a little attap hut on the side of the roadleading to Skew Bridge. The Gaol, with a bam-boo palisade around it, stood as a warning to allevil-doers on the spot which is now devoted tothe Recreation Club.

(Malay Mail, 3 March 1905)There was also 'an old colonist' from Ceylon who

had arrived in Kuala Lumpur in 1886. He remem-bered that when he arrived 'Kuala Lumpur was a wildplace altogether, and there were pirates on the riverwho gave no end of trouble. The Railway was justbeing opened out .... The only tiled building in this,the chief town of Selangor, was the railway bungalow,

and no one would think of making a half-an-hour'sjourney inland alone if he valued his life'. (MalayMail, 13 March 1906)

Pat Zilwa, of Ceylon origin and a well-knownKuala Lumpur personality, at a luncheon meeting ofthe Kuala Lumpur Rotary Club, recalled the periodafter 1907:

In those days, except for the big Govern-ment Office, Post Office, Survey Offices, Sanit-ary Board Offices, the P.W.D. and RailwaysOffices near the Chartered Bank, there were noother big buildings to speak of. Trains crossedour main arterial roads, and there were levelcrossings at Sultan Street, High Street, andResidency Road, which held up traffic severaltimes each day, much to the general annoyance.Trains to Singapore ran through Foch Avenue,and those to Penang, until a few years ago, ranpast the back of the Selangor Club, The Singa-pore train, leaving Kuala Lumpur, made its firststop at Sultan Street Station where it halted forseveral minutes. Here it picked up the Chinesepassengers, who preferred to take the trainthere as it was close to their business places.

(Malay Mail, 30 March 1939)

J .H.M. Robson, founder of the Malay Mail, whodied in Changi Gaol during the war, wrote frequentlyon Kuala Lumpur history for he had been one of thefirst to arrive here after British administration hadbeen consolidated. In one instance, he wrote onKuala Lumpur in 1889:

... I lived with the then Traffic Manager of theRailway (Mr. Snell) in the house (since muchenlarged) now occupied by Major J .e.G.Spooner. This house was then partly sur-rounded by jungle and was very much on theoutskirts of the residential quarter. There wereno European residences on the Ampang Ruadbeyond the Circular Road.

The Rest House, now an annexe to theSelangor Club, had just been opened.

There were no hotels.The first race course was on Rifle Range

Road. Only amateurs were allowed to ride.The only European shop was Maynard's near

the present Market Street Bridge. Medicine,provisions and drinks were sold there. The placewas a rendezvous for Europeans.

(Malay Mail, 14 Aug. 1933)No less interesting were Yong Shook Lin's reminis-

cences of the Victoria Institution. Yong Shook Lin(one of the founders of the legal firm of Shook Linand Bok) was a founder member of the MalayanChinese Association in 1949. He was a pupil at the

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Victoria Institution when it was located at the HighStreet. At an annual reunion dinner of the old boysof the school held at the Hotel Majestic, Yong ShookLin said:

My memory dates back to 1902 when some ofthe then boys sat in an ex-oil store which wasused as a class room. The name of our oldschool may have been adopted by that second-ary school on the top of Petaling Hill but thespirit of the Victoria Institution appears still tohover over those old buildings in High Street.

When I said just now that we had not for-gotten our old school, I meant to couple it withthe name of Mr. B.E. Shaw. It is difficult totalk about the old school and the good old dayswithout referring to him, to his many acts ofkindness and to his patience in teaching us alanguage entirely foreign to us ....

Some of you may remember that he gave usan hourevery week teachingus English literaturewith several set books on the Senior LocalExamination in his house after a good feed ofbiscuits and lemonade. To use the wordsapplied to a professor of Law at Cambridge,"He made dry bones live." Whether biscuits andlemonade were good flavouring matter forScott's Kenilworth and Waverly, it is difficultto say, but reading and studying those books inthose days was a very thirsty occuptation.Present masters may well take a leaf out of Mr.Shaw's unpublished book on teaching andadopt the lemonade and biscuits method iftheir boys find English idiomatic phrases diffi-cult to understand.

(Malay Mail, 5 August 1939)B.E. Shaw was also responsible for helping to esta-

blish the V.1. Cadet Corps, the first in the countryand the teacher who was directly involved was A.C.J.Towers. In Towers' words:

I came to Kuala Lumpur in 1897 as anAssistant Master when Mr. Bennett Eyre Shawwas your headmaster. I left exactly five yearslater so I never knew this building on the Peta-ling Hill, where I tried to play golf, a game Inever could get to like.

It was, 1 think, in the year 1898 that Istarted and had the honour of being the firstCommanding Officer of the Cadet corps, thenknown as "St. Mary's Boys' Brigade", while Mr.Shaw was on leave and the Rev. Knight-Clarkewas acting as headmaster.

On the return of Mr. Shaw, however, it wasmetamorphosed into the Victoria InstitutionCadet Corps. This would be in 1899, I think ...the V.1. Cadet Corps was the first Cadet Corps

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to see the light of the day in the whole ofMalaya.

(Malay Mail, 1 July 1939,reporting the presentation of a band leader'smace to the Cadet Corps by A.C.J. Towers)

The Malay Mail being a Kuala Lumpur newspaperrecorded all the important events which occurredhere - the opening of schools, riots, the founding ofassociations and the visits of dign itaries. The intro-duction of electricity, for example, was commendedupon, rather dramatically:

Something approaching a panic was causedlast night in the vicin ity of the Padang when thewhole region being suddenly brilliantly illumin-ated. This is a land of nerves, and the worst wasat once feared. Krakatoa was suggested - wealways think of it on these occasions; but thiswas contemptuously cast aside and in favour ofsome wonderful theory concerning the adventof a tropical Aurora Borealis. The Fire Brigadeand those in charge of the guns on Barrack Hillappeared to have been the only ones who tooka calm view of the situation from the outset;but then the latter never do things with a rush,while the former probably stole a march on thepublic by being informed beforehand.

Well, the first moment of alarm and con-fusion over, somebody suggested that thewonderful phenomenon was due to electricity.

(Malay Mail, 6 October 1905)One of the more unforgettable scenes ever witnes-

sed by Kuala Lumpur before World War II occurredduring the visit of the Prince of Wales (later EdwardVIII) in late March 1922. According to the MalayMail report (31 March 1922):

From the 3Y2mile New Petaling Road thecrowd of people from kampongs and housesalong the route were lined up four or five deepright up to the junction with Brickfields Road,and from there onwards the crowds grew denser.At the Malay village just on the border of the 3Y2mile, a huge and tastefully decorated arch hadbeen erected, while hundreds of Malay boyslined each side of the road, all of them wavingflags, and shouting and cheering right lustily.Several more arches lined this particular sectionof the route, the last and most striking onehaving been erected by the Malay and IndianPolice.

At the gateway leading up to the EuropeanHospital, all those patients able to walk had as-sembled together with a number of nurses toadd their quota to the cheering.

The Federal Capital was one mass of peoplefrom all parts. The Prince received a trernen-

dous ovation all along the route of the pro-cession. There were beautiful decorations andilluminations everywhere.

In Java Street little Miss Elizabeth Halpernran towards the Royal car carrying a bouquet.The Prince stopped the car and accepted thebouquet amidst thunderous cheering.

Other dignitaries who visited Kuala Lumpur before1941 included Sir P. Ramanathan, the 'grand old man'of Ceylon, member of the Legislative Council and ex-Solicitor-General, in 1924; R. Tagore, in 1927, andPandit Nehru, accompanied by his daughter, IndiraGandhi, in 1937.

Letters to the press are no less useful as historicalsources. Often they provide a significant contrast toofficial reports which may tend to gloss overexamples of incompetence and negligence. More im-portant still they may help the historian to see thepast inall its stark reality. The following, for example,is a 1915 description of Scott Road:

If one should walk down this street, anytime after six or seven p.m. these are the sightsthat "stare one in the face". First at the cornerof the street there is sure to be a drunken brawl,then a few yards away you see a number of riki-sha coolies discussing the doings of the day,seated where? On their rikishas which theykeep practically on the middle of the road.After you extract yourself from their shaftsand wheels you are rewarded with sweet andpleasant music, either from a gramophone, anaccordian, or a harmonium. This brings you tothe middle of the street, but 10 and behold,what meets your eyes next is a whole herd ofcattle standing stock still in the centre of theroadway ....

(Malay Mail, 11 December 1915)Yet another 1915 description of a street in KualaLumpur tends to reinforce the belief that the townthen needed more rigid municipal control. The writersaid:

The beggars and outcasts who swarm in thestreets of Kuala Lumpur present a problemwhich the general community can no longerdefer considering. Those who have, in thecourse of their work, to pass through Java-st.see the problem in its true magnitude. Theymeet with crowds of these unfortunates in allstages of misery and emaciation, wanderingabout from place to place begging for food orstretched along the pavements and verandahsand sometimes by the dusty roadside, sleepingthe sleep of the weary and worn, apparentlyovercome by hunger and exhaustion. The im-pression these pathetic figures leaves on our

minds is one of utter loneliness and desertion.Here are crowds of human beings for whom noone seems to care. They are just such crowds asmoved the Divine compassion in Galilee of oldand suggested the sad reflection of sheep havingno shepherd.

(Malay Mail, 8 April 1915)There were also descriptions of Kuala Lumpur by

visitors. Although these appeared very occasionally inthe papers, a few of them are true gems because oftheir authors' ability to describe with uncannyaccuracy and economy the scenes before them. Con-sider the following:

Kuala Lumpur ... contains some 30,000people. I fear it is impossible to describe it. Inthe basin of the hills is the busy native town.Broad streets, lined with Cantonese stores, wideopen as though the front of a modern Englishshop were taken completely out. Betweenstores and street, a narrow pavement under anarcade, which presents a welcome shade, whenthe sun rays threaten to penetrate one's felthelmet. Within the shops Chinamen, whoseonly clothing is a pair of trousers and a queue. Ithink of preserving as a curiosity one article ofclothing made most creditably by a firm ofChinese tailors. The men serve in the shop, theirfamilies live in the rooms above, which extendover the arcade. Among the shops are opiumdens, where the votaries of the drug are inhalingits fumes, and dreaming their luxurious dreams;or public gambling hells, where crowds of allnationalities are .staking their own or otherpeople's money; or houses of another descrip-tion, equally open to public inspection, in eachof which sit five or six gaily-dressed smilingJapanese women, chatting to each other, andplaying games of chance.

(Malay Mail, 22 July 1909)There is no dearth of material on Kuala Lumpur in

the local newspapers, more in the Malay Mail certain-ly but, occasionally, useful data can be found in theother papers too such as the Pinang Gazette andStraits Chronicle, the Times of Malaya (lpoh) and theStraits Times as well as the Malaya Tribune, both ofSingapore. But by the late 19305 there was, in fact, aKuala Lumpur edition of the Malaya Tribune. How-ever, while historical sources are easily available, thehistorian could still face a serious problem - one ofculture. For like many Malaysian towns, KualaLumpur too has had a very cosmopolitan population.It is not often that a historian can cope with all theethnic groups that form the subject of his study. Onthe other hand, unless he can, he cannot possibilywrite a rounded history of Kuala Lumpur.

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