BOOK REVIEWS—SOUTHEAST ASIA 717
           The Sociology of Secret Societies: A Study of Chinese Secret Societies in
               Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia. By MAK LAU FONG. Kuala Lumpur:
               Oxford University Press, 1981. ix, 178 pp. Tables, Maps, Diagrams, Ap-
               pendixes, Bibliography, Index. $29.95.
               This book is an interesting attempt to subject the history of Chinese secret
           societies in Singapore and western Malaysia to sociological analysis. Data were drawn
           both from documentary sources and from interviews with some 149 members of
           contemporary societies. Disconcertingly little use was made of interviews with older        Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-asian-studies/article-pdf/42/3/717/1733568/s0021911800074064.pdf by guest on 20 January 2023
           people to reconstruct social arrangements in the immediate past. The overarching
           analytical framework, based on three "conditions" for the persistence of secret
           societies, is a total bore that serves only to obscure the considerable theoretical
           interest of the subject matter.
               In general terms, Mak Lau Fong's argument is that, despite their historical
           derivation from the anti-Manchu Triads in China, secret societies in the early Straits
           Settlements were essentially conformist organizations that helped the colonial govern-
           ment rule Chinese immigrants. Then, during the subsequent period of heavy Chinese
           immigration, from the second quarter of the nineteenth century on, secret societies
           served primarily to protect the occupational monopolies of their particularistically
           denned memberships. At some unspecified time after 1890, their primary function
           shifted once again, this time to the "protection" of businesses within territorially
           defined urban turfs.
               With regard to the emergence and function of secret societies in the early period,
           Fong takes issue with J. J. M. de Groot and Maurice Freedman, who suggested that
           secret societies appeared overseas only when Chinese were faced by a challenge to their
           control of their own affairs. Fong argues instead that, when government is unable to
           provide adequate legal protection to a minority, it necessarily has recourse to indirect
           rule, in this case the kapitan system, and that Chinese headmen (kapitans) needed the
           secret-society infrastructure to rule effectively wherever local Chinese society was
           ethnically heterogeneous. Unfortunately, the author does a poor job of mustering
           evidence for this plausible proposition. Instead of classifying overseas Chinese
           communities according to the degree of ethnic heterogeneity, Fong treats the variable
           as binary. The West Borneo case is pronounced homogeneous (largely Hakka),
           overlooking what may have been even in the nineteenth century a Teochiu majority in
           the city of Pontianak, whereas the Philippines is considered heterogeneous despite the
           overwhelming preponderance of Hokkiens. Nor is he able to show that kapitan leaders
           actually relied on secret societies in more than one or two of the Chinese communities
            that boasted both. As for the Straits Settlements, he asserts that, prior to the outbreak
           of intersocietal violence during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the
           various secret-society lodges were all organizationally subordinate to the Ghee Hin,
           and that the symbols and ideology of brotherhood prevailed over ethnic divisiveness,
            but unfortunately there is no real evidence for either assertion. Why were secret
            societies helpful to kapitans in their efforts to control a heterogeneous community?
            Primarily, Fong maintains, because Triad gestures, passwords, and other arcane
            symbols enabled Chinese ethnics who spoke no common language to communicate.
            Quite apart from considerations of how much true communication these symbols
            afforded, this formulation overlooks a good deal of evidence that Hokkien was
            something of a lingua franca in the Straits Settlements during the nineteenth century.
               Fong is quite right in pointing to the important role of secret societies in helping
           718 JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES
           ethnic groups maintain a grip on their respective economic niches, but his under-
           standing of Chinese ethnicity is simplistic. His units of analysis are the usual speech
           groups of comparative overseas Chinese studies, which he takes to be essentially
           homogeneous, as did the colonial census takers. Recent research on native-place
           particularism in China, however, has made it clear that we are dealing here with a
           hierarchy of regionally based ethnicity and subethnicity. The relevant units for
           cumulating native-place ties ranged from subcounty townships-cum-marketing com-
           munities up to conventional groupings of provinces; how sojourners organized with            Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-asian-studies/article-pdf/42/3/717/1733568/s0021911800074064.pdf by guest on 20 January 2023
           respect to native place was a function of the relative numbers from various local
           systems as well as of the competitive situation. In China proper as well as overseas,
           sojourners from local systems within a trading system or an administrative unit joined
           forces at whatever level in the hierarchy was necessary to claim a prize and deny it to
           other similar alliances. With respect to the heyday of secret societies during the later
           half of the nineteenth century, Fong writes: "It is quite apparent that during this
           period speech ties had been greatly weakened since . . . Hainanese gangs fought
           against other Hainanese gangs, and similarly Cantonese gangs fought against
           Cantonese gangs." This conclusion is dead wrong. Note, for instance, the violent
           strife during the same historical era between Chang-chou and Ch'iian-chou peoples
           (Hokkien subethnics) in Taiwan and between Sam Yap and Sze Yap (both "Cantonese")
           in California.
               The extent to which secret-society lodges were ethnically homogeneous is critical
           to a sociological understanding of secret-society conflict. Yet Fong's approach to the
           issue is haphazard and equivocal. Writing in I960, Freedman argued that "although
           there was violence enough, there might well have been more" if societies had lacked
           cross-cutting ties altogether. In the 1870s, a local observer in Penang asserted that in
           several riots the opposing parties were speech groups per se rather than secret
           societies: "The solemn obligations of the secret societies were cast to the winds. ..."
           But in fact at least some societies had an ethnically mixed membership. Thus, in
           Freedman's words, "overlapping ties were likely to reinforce the solidarity of the
           Chinese vis-a-vis the outer world even as they temporarily weakened a dialect group or
           secret society by distracting the loyalty of some of its members." Any serious
           sociological treatment of Chinese secret societies would have to follow up this
           insightful lead, but Fong ignores it altogether.
               The author avoids major gaffes in analyzing his interview data on the recent
           situation, but he asks quite simple questions of them. The most interesting part of
           the contemporary analysis shows that a corrupt police force provides much of the
           protection needed by businessmen, thereby precipitating the decline of the protection
           rackets on which contemporary secret societies rely for income.
               At several points, we are able to glimpse a promising sociological imagination at
           work, but the promise is not fulfilled in this book, which is essentially unfinished,
           unvetted, and unedited. Above all, it is an arrogant book that dismisses relevant
           scholarship, both sociological and Sinological. Simmel's work on conflict should have
           been the author's analytical bible, but the master is referred to only for his definition
           of secret societies. Lawrence Crissman, whose sociological model is a must for anyone
           setting out to analyze overseas Chinese social organization, is not even cited. And
           when not belittled, Freedman is ignored. Tant pis.
                                                                       G. WILLIAM SKINNER
                                                                           Stanford University