Kongsi in SE Asia / Secret Societies in SE Asia

Kongsi (Chinese: 公司; pinyin: gōngsī) or "clan halls", are benevolent organizations of popular origin found among overseas Chinese communities for individuals with the same surname. This type of social practice arose, it is held, several centuries ago in China. The Chinese word Kongsi is used in modern Chinese to mean a commercial "company".

The system of kongsi was utilized by Chinese throughout the diaspora to overcome economic difficulty, social ostracism, and oppression. In today's overseas Chinese communities throughout the world, this approach has been adapted to the modern environment, including political and legal factors. The kongsi is similar to modern business partnerships, but also draws on a deeper spirit of cooperation and consideration of mutual welfare.

It has been stated by some that the development and thriving of Chinese communities worldwide are the direct result of the kongsi concept. A vast number of Chinese-run firms and businesses were born as kongsi--many ending up as multinational conglomerates. In the Chinese spirit, derived in large part from Confucian ideals, these kongsi members or their descendants prefer not to boast so much of their wealth but to take pride in earning worldly and financial success through their work ethic and the combined efforts of many individuals devoted to group welfare.

Among the largest Kongsi was the Lanfang Kongsi, which organised the mostly Hakka Chinese miners who had settled in western Borneo and established a republic, the Lanfang Republic, in what is now the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan. [1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongsi

Notable Kongsi

Ghee Hin Kongsi

The Ghee Hin Kongsi (simplified Chinese: 义兴公司; traditional Chinese: 義興公司; pinyin: yìxīng gōngsī) is a secret society in Singapore and Malaya, formed in 1820. Ghee Hin literally means "the rise of righteousness" in Chinese. The Ghee Hin often fought against the Hakka-dominated Hai San secret society.

Ghee Hin was initially dominated by the Cantonese, although Hokkiens formed the majority by 1860. Teochew, Hainanese, Hakka and Foochow form smaller minorities. Their main lodge was located in Lavender Street, which contained the ancestral tablets of important ex-members, before being donated to the Tan Tock Seng Hospital when it was torn down in 1892, following the Suppression of Secret Societies Ordinance.

The Ghee Hin were notorious for riots against Catholic Chinese in 1850 (killing over 500), as well as post offices in 1876, against a new, and more expensive, monopoly on post and remittances. The colonial government began to move towards surveillance, control, and finally suppression from 1890s onwards.

Ghee Hin and Hai San were the two secret societies that were involved in Perak civil war in the 19th century.

Hai San Secret Society

The Hai San (Chinese: 海山) Society which had its origins in Southern China[1] was a Penang-based Chinese secret society established around 1820 and in 1825 led by Low, Ah Chong[2] and Hoh Akow (also spelt Ho Ah Kow or Hok Ah Keow), its titular head. At that time the society's headquarters was located at Beach Street (Ujong Passir).[3]

Secret societies existed well before the establishment of the Hai San Society and their existence in Penang can be traced back to the founding of Penang (1799). Thomas John Newbold (1807-1850), an officer in the 23 Regiment, Madras Light Infantry, in Malacca (1832-1835) noted:

The secret fraternities in which they (the Chinese settlers) enroll themselves for mutual protection and support, prove powerful engines for political combinations, as the Dutch have repeatedly experienced during their long administration in Java and in the Malay States. In China itself, these societies are deemed so dangerous to the Government as to be interdicted under penalty of death. At Pinang in 1799, they set the administration in defiance and strong measures were necessary to reduce them to obedience. Even in the present-day, the ends of justice are frequently defeated both at Pinang, Malacca, and Singapore: by bribery, false swearing, and sometimes by open violence, owing to combinations of these fraternities, formed for the purpose of screening guilty members from detection and punishment. In European Settlements, they are under the general control of an officer, or headman styled "Capitan", who receives a salary from the Government and is responsible in some measure, for the orderly conduct of his countrymen, whose representative and official organ he is. Their interior affairs, disputes, and private interests are arranged by the heads of their respective "Kongsis" or fraternities.

[4]

Bolton et al making use of, among other things, an 1829 account by I. Pattullo, then Superintendent of Police and later Government Secretary, Notes on the Chinese of Pinang, Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, Singapore VIII (1854 and expanded in 1879) by J. D. Vaughan a Superintendent of Police at Penang, a Police Magistrate and Assistant Resident at Singapore and a Grandmaster of the Freemasons (1878 and 1879), and the Rule 11 (Appendix II) in the Rules of the Kian Tek (Toh Peh Kong) society dated 30 December 1844, suggest that the Hai San society started out mostly Cantonese and pro-Ghee Hin but by around 1854 had absorbed the Wah Sang society, become almost exclusively Hakka and anti-Ghee Hin.[5]

The Hai San society figure prominently in the Larut Wars of 1862-1873 and by that time was headed by Chung Keng Quee. At Larut, miners who were members of the Hai San society fought with miners who were members of the Ghee Hin society over the tin-rich fields of Kelian Pauh and Kelian Baru. The two warring factions also clashed in Selangor.[1]

The Hai San society was allied with the Penang-based Tokong or Tua Peh Kong society, members of whom financed the mining of tin in the Larut area.[1]

The incessant warfare between the Hai San and Ghee Hin brought tin mine production to a standstill. The fighting between the two societies was brought to an end with the signing of a treaty between the two parties in 1874, known as The Chinese Engagement.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hai_San_Secret_Society