Ledakan tottam Tanah-tanah Melayu (1876 - 1941)

Tuan-tuan pimpinan, para perwakilan, para pemerhati sekalian, hari ini kita akan membincangkan satu sejarah yang amat penting.

Iaitu bagaimana getah¹—ya, getah—pernah menjadi macam Bitcoin, tetapi dengan lebih banyak penipuan kolonial.

Benih Diperkenalkan, Tetapi Kita Belum Sedar

Pada tahun 1876, benih getah dibawa masuk.² Tetapi, tuan-tuan, tiada siapa sedar. Tiada siapa memberi perhatian. Seperti Bitcoin pada zaman awal— tiada ceramah, tiada sesi “Jom Celik Getah”. Mereka anggap ia cuma pokok biasa. Begitulah manusia bila tiada kesedaran.

Modal: Sangat Mahal

Untuk buka tottam² 500 ekar, modalnya £10,000 dan pendapatan sifar selama lima tahun pertama. Tuan-tuan, ini bukan pelaburan. Ini ujian, tuan-tuan. Kalau sekarang, orang akan tanya,

Ini skim cepat kaya ke?

Tidak. Ini skim lambat kaya.
Kecuali kalau anda British.

In the 1890s, Tan Chay Yan 陳齊賢 visited Henry Nicholas Ridley, the director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, whose advocacy of commercial rubber cultivation was then widely ridiculed. Ridley provided Tan with seedlings of Ficus elastica and Hevea brasiliensis. Encouraged by his friend Lim Boon Keng 林文慶, Tan recognised the commercial potential of rubber and planted the seedlings on 43 acres of land at Bukit Lintang. In 1896, he thus established the first rubber plantation in Malaya and the earliest in Asia. Tan Chay Yan, a grandson of Tan Tock Seng 陳篤生, benefited from the rapid expansion of the motorcar industry, which fuelled a growing demand for rubber. As his initial plantation prospered, Tan and his associates went on to establish a much larger estate of 3,000 acres at Bukit Asahan in 1898.

Dasar Tanah Dilonggarkan

Kerajaan British pun buka pintu pelaburan asing. Dasar tanah dilonggarkan. Ibarat kerajaan umum:

“Semua miner Bitcoin, sila datang! Janji jangan buat bising bila elektrik trip.”

Ini bukan kerana British sayang rakyat. Ini kerana mereka sayang hasil. Liberalisasi Kolonial. Kononnya.

Orang Melayu Jual Tanah

Cash is king, masa itu pun sama.

Orang Melayu pun jual tanah. Bukan kerana tamak, tapi kerana ekonomi mendesak. Mereka perlukan tunai: Beli beras, beli keperluan, dan mungkin beli baju raya yang tidak ditaja mana-mana influencer. Tanah yang berpotensi jadi compute infra bagi “Bitcoin masa depan” hilang begitu sahaja.

British Bertindak Lindungi Orang Melayu

Bila non-Malay mula beli tanah dan buat tottam secara berjaya, Agency Houses British gelabah. Mereka pun datang kepada kerajaan British dan berkata:³ “Kita mesti lindungi orang Melayu! Nanti bangsa Melayu pupus!” Tuan-tuan, inilah dia kolonial: kalau mereka kata mereka buat sesuatu demi Melayu, itu maknanya demi poket mereka. Orang Melayu tidak digalakkan tanam getah pun. Mereka hanya digalakkan jadi alasan. British bertindak lindungi orang Melayu, tapi sebenarnya lindungi monopoli getah.

1913: Enakmen Rizab Melayu

Maka lahirlah Malay Reservation Enactment 1913. Alasan rasmi: Untuk jaga tanah Melayu. Alasan sebenar: Untuk pastikan pesaing British tak boleh beli tanah, dan orang Melayu tak boleh buat apa-apa dengannya kecuali duduk diam. Undang-undang ini lebih kurang begini:

Tanah Melayu untuk Melayu, tetapi Melayu tidak dibenarkan guna tanah itu tanam getah

Dengan itu, monopoli British pun selamat. Dan umat Melayu pun, selamat dalam kemiskinan. Undang-undang yang nampak saja bijaksana, tetapi sebenarnya melemahkan.

Kesimpulan Muktamar

Tuan-tuan, sejarah ini mengajar kita satu perkara: kalau nampak kuasa besar datang bawa pokok, jangan tepuk tangan dulu. Esok-esok pokok itu jadi Bitcoin mereka, kita pula hanya jadi “content” dalam laporan kolonial.

1. Two years after the Pangkor Treaty was signed, in 1876, rubber seeds were smuggled out of the Amazon by Henry Wickham and planted in Malaya by H. N Ridley. For almost 20 years, Ridley was ignored by planters, until he was visited by Tan Chay Yan 陳齊賢 (b. 1871, d. 1916), and with the seeds given to him, Tan created the first Rubber estate in Asia in 1896 with a capital of $0.2 million. Tan eventually sold the Bukit Asahan estate to the British for $2 million in 1906, i.e. a return of +26% p.a.
   
   
   
   Think of this as Satoshi publishing the Bitcoin white paper—a breakthrough almost nobody paid attention to, rubber trees stood there for many years like early Bitcoin nodes: Groundbreaking, misunderstood, and completely ignored. The market shrugged. Rubber planting required absurdly high upfront capital with zero income until the trees matured. This is equivalent to trying to mine Bitcoin in 2010 using a warehouse full of GPUs: (a) massive electricity bills (b) expensive hardware (c) and you’re earning, practically nothing.
   
   
   Thus only the deep-pocketed pioneers like Tan Chay Yan, Tan Kah Kee 陳嘉庚, and Lee Kong Chian 李光前 could afford to play this game. Noticing the potential, the British administration relaxed land policies. This was like a government suddenly saying: “Crypto mining is now legal, zero taxes, land is cheap—come in and make money!” British agency houses (Harrisons & Crosfield, Guthrie, etc) swarmed in because the barriers to entry were lowered artificially. Malay villagers, seeing no immediate use in their land as a breeding ground for rubber (just as many early adopters saw no value in Bitcoin), started selling their land cheaply. It was like people in 2010 selling 1,000 BTC for a pizza. They didn’t realize they were sitting on a future goldmine. When non-Malays (especially Chinese planters) began buying Malay land to start plantations, the British agency houses panicked and they quickly lobbied the FMS government. Officially, they said: “This will wipe out the Malay peasantry!” But the real reason? They didn’t want competition in what was about to become the Bitcoin bull run of the 20th century. They wanted to keep the hash power—and the profits—within their own circle.
   
   The British then introduced the Malay Reservation Enactment 1913 to hack the rubber ecosystem, which restricted the sale of Malay land to non-Malays but also prevented Malays from using their land productively (like planting rubber or securing loans) This was like the government passing a law that says: “Cryptocurrency X is reserved only for Group A, but Group A cannot trade it, stake it, or capitalize on it.” A cunning regulatory move that claimed to “protect natives” (PR spin) but actually crippled non-Malay competitors and entrenched British economic dominance in the rubber boom.
   
   
2. The Tamil word for estate is toṭṭam தோட்டம். The word is omitted when the name of Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Tamil Ladang Emerald is rendered in Tamil script: தேசிய வகை எமரல்ட் தமிழ்ப்பள்ள Tēciyavakai Emaralṭ Tamiḻppaḷḷi (Emerald National-type Tamil school). The word toṭṭam தோட்டம், however, is preserved in the name of the hall: எமரல்ட் தோட்டத் தமிழ்ப்பள்ளி = Emaralṭ Toṭṭat Tamiḻppaḷḷi = Emerald Estate Tamil school.
   
   
   When nouns are combined with other nouns to show possession, description, or compound phrases, the ending -ம் often changes. Typically -ம் is replaced by -த் before another noun. This is called the aṭaippu-urupu form (அடைப்பு உருபு / sandhi form) in Tamil. Examples: (a) பசுமை மரம் → பசுமை மரத் இலை (leaf of the green tree) (b) தோட்டம் → தோட்டத் (of the garden)
   
   
   Malays show a strong fondness for Indic loanwords, a tendency clearly reflected in the rhetoric of prominent political leaders. The construction of palnokku mandapam is as follows: பல + நோக்கு + மண்டபம் = Pala + nōkku + mandapam = poly + function + space. The word mandapam is borrowed by the Malays to mean the same thing but they spell it without the final -m sound (منداڤ). In Javanese, the word is spelt as pendapa ڤنداڤ.
   
   
   
   The word PALA பல is rendered as bala (بال), e.g. bala-tentera (தந்திரம் tantiram). தந்திரம் is also the source word for tenteram تنترم and tantra (meaning program, loom, warp, groundwork, principle, system, doctrine, etc)
   
   
   Palnokku mandapam பல்நோக்கு மண்டபம் means multipurpose hall. The final m-sound in word மண்டபம் is canceled when the word entered Malay lexicon and became mandapa (or mendapa or pendapa). Mandapa is the space or porch in front of a vimana in a typical temple.
   
   
3. The FMS government noted in 1912 that it had been caused

   . . . graved anxiety and apprehension by the fact that our Malay subjects, deluded by visions of all but transitory wealth, have been divesting themselves of their homestead and family lands to anyone willing to pay in cash for them. The rulers of the Federated Malay States and their Advisers conclusively feel that unless a better judgedment is exercised on their behalf, the result will be the extinction of the Malay yeoman peasantry . . .

   See J. T. Lindblad (1998) Foreign investment in Southeast Asia in the Twentieth century, Macmillan, London, p. 47.