The settlement of Chinese Christian converts in Sitiawan, Perak
from 1902 was an instance of a planned attempt at the peopling of the
Federated Malay States1 with permanent colonies of agriculturists. The
predominantly transient nature of the population of the Federated Malay
States at the end of the 19th century had given rise to feelings of
disquietude. The immigrant Chinese and the Indians, while accounting
for the bulk of the population of these states, were definitely of a
temporary nature,Z and the migrational turnovers and fluctuations of
these two components of the population had adversely affected many
aspects of settlement of the country, for instance, the inavailability of
labour for many economic undertakings, the depopulation of a host
of villages and towns, the uneven distribution of population, etc. Immigrant
groups of Malays from Indonesia had also arrived at this time
to seek employment and eventually too, to return to their islands of
origin, and they added a further dimension to the problem of a fluid
population .in an undeveloped country. Besides posing difficulties of
control to the administrators in question, and being unable to be depended
upon indefinitely to provide labour for the various economic undertakings-
for instance, the introduction and planting of rubber, the
prospecting and mining of tin, etc., the transients also did not help
economically, in that the flow of money in the form of remittances,
for example, to the settlers' homelands, meant the non-accumulation
of capital in these states. The administrators increasingly were convinced
that a 'back-bone' 3 of permanent population to form and to
provide increasingly a pool of all types of labour must be established
to offset both economic and human problems.