Newsletter - No.63 - Spring 2013 - 1876 Chinese post office riot in Singapore

Sep 15, 2026

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Newsletter No.63 (Spring 2013) examines the 1876 Chinese post office riot in Singapore through the lens of postal and remittance disputes. It explains how Chinese remittance agency owners helped trigger unrest as colonial regulation targeted emerging transportation and communication networks. The account traces events from a reward placard and an attack on the Chinese Sub-Post Office to arrests, deportation, and a citywide general strike. It also contrasts later “secret society conspiracy” narratives with broader political and economic context, including overseas South Seas agents and changing remittance strategies.

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The Study

The 1876 Chinese post office riot in Singapore

Overseas agents in the South Seas, 1850-1870

Networking empire, nation, and colony

The Newsletter | No.63 | Spring 2013 The Study | 5 The 1876 Chinese post office riot in Singapore The 1876 Post Office Riot is often lumped together with other nineteenth century Chinese secret society riots in Singapore, but it was in fact the owners of Chinese remittance agencies who instigated the riot to defend their new business practices against an intrusive colonial state trying to regulate modern transportation and communication networks. Lane J. Harris AT 7:30 iN The mORNiNg of 15 December 1876, an indian police officer of the Singapore colonial government noticed a crowd of Chinese reading a placard at the corner of Philip and King Streets. The placard offered a 100 tael reward for the decapitation of two Straits-born Chinese, Ong Kong Chang and Ong Kong Teng, who were opening the new Chinese Sub-Post Office () to handle letters and remittances to China, at 81 market Street at 8 o’clock that morning. Less than an hour later, someone in the crowd gathered outside the Sub-Post Office threw a brickbat inciting the‘mob’ to ransack the office. having demolished the premises, rioters attacked the ellensborough New market Police Station where the police fired into the crowd killing three and wounding several others. Police arrested 40 rioters, most of whom received a caning and a term of ‘rigorous imprisonment’. Deciding that the dead men were secret society members, the colonial government ordered the arrest of Lim Ah Tye, the leader of the Teochew (Taizhou) branch of the ghee hin () secret society. The government also detained a number of Chinese merchants involved in remitting letters and money to China, locally known as ‘towkays’. The next morning, Chinese merchants throughout the city shuttered their businesses in a general strike against the‘Red-haired Barbarians’. Shopkeepers refused to re-open until the towkays were freed. Defiantly, the colonial government marched the towkays to Boat Quay and placed them on the Pluto, which steamed out into the northeast monsoon swell. Two days later, the colonial government returned the towkays, green with seasickness, when they compliantly agreed to pay a bond guaranteeing their good behavior. Convinced that Lim Ah Tye was behind the riot, the government deported him. Local shops reopened on Sunday and by monday morning the owners of the Sub-Post Office, ‘in a considerable funk’, cleaned up their office as police patrolled the block.1 Colonial officials and newspaper reporters portrayed the riot asa conspiracy of secret society ‘evil winded rascals’ who ‘duped’the ‘coolies’ into rioting against the government. Sir William Jervois (1821-1897), governor of the Straits Settlements, described the ‘coolies’ as ‘unfortunate dupes of these crafty leaders’. Scholars have followed these contemporary accounts by arguing that the riot ‘emanated from some leaders of the secret societies’ or was ‘fomented by Chinese secret societies’.2 emphasis on secret society involvement in the riot, however, distracts attention away from the broader political context and slights the significance of the postal issues at stake. Overseas agents in the South Seas, 1850-1870 From the mid-nineteenth century onward, the emergence of new communications and transportation technologies transformed the information infrastructure around the world. in Singapore, the colonial state used the new technologies to interfere in existing communications and transportation networks under the guise of creating a state postal monopoly. For overseas Chinese involved in the remittance trade, the new networks allowed them to create more efficient profit-making strategies, but their very success brought them to the attention of the colonial state. The 1876 post office riot, then, was not a secret society affair, but a clash over control of the remittance business, Chinese resistance to the rise of the interventionist state, and a misunderstanding by colonial officials about how the remittance agencies earned their

FAQs

What triggered the 1876 Chinese post office riot in Singapore?

The riot was instigated by owners of Chinese remittance agencies defending new business practices against a colonial state attempting to regulate transportation and communication networks.

How did the riot unfold in relation to the Chinese Sub-Post Office?

A police officer noticed a placard offering a reward tied to attacks on two Chinese opening a new Chinese Sub-Post Office, followed by a crowd inciting ransacking of the office and violence spilling over into a police station.

Why does the text challenge explanations focused only on secret societies?

Emphasis on secret society involvement distracts from the broader political context and overlooks the postal issues at stake, including conflict over control of the remittance business and misunderstandings about how agencies earned profits.

Sep 15, 2026

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