The Ghee Hin Kongsi () was a

secret society A secret society is a club or an organization whose activities, events, inner functioning, or membership are concealed. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence a ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

and Malaya, formed in 1820. Ghee Hin literally means "the rise of righteousness" in

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

and was part of the

Hongmen The Tiandihui, the Heaven and Earth Society, also called Hongmen (the Vast Family), is a Chinese fraternal organization and historically a secretive folk religious sect in the vein of the Ming loyalist White Lotus Sect, the Tiandihui's a ...

overseas network. The Ghee Hin often fought against the

Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...

-dominated

Hai San secret society The Hai San Society (), which had its origins in Southern China,Encyclopædia Britannica was a Penang-based Chinese secret society established around 1820 and in 1825 led by Low, Ah ChongTriad Societies: Western Accounts of the History, Sociology ...

Ghee Hin was initially dominated by

Cantonese people The Cantonese people () or Yue people (), are a Yue-speaking Han Chinese subgroup originating from or residing in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi (collectively known as Liangguang), in Southern Mainland China. Although more accurately, ...

, although

Hokkien people The Hoklo people or Hokkien people () are a Han Chinese (also Han Taiwanese) subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to Southeastern Fujian, China and known by various endonyms or other related terms su ...

formed the majority by 1860. Teochew,

Hainanese Hainanese (Hainan Romanised: ', Hainanese Pinyin: ',), also known as Qióngwén, Heng2 vun2 () or Qióngyǔ, Heng2 yi2 (), is a group of Min Chinese varieties spoken in the southern Chinese island province of Hainan and Overseas Chinese su ...

, and

people formed smaller minorities. One of the major leaders of Ghee Hin was Chin Ah Yam, a Hakka peasant from rural

Dabu County Dabu County () is a county in Meizhou City, in the east of Guangdong Province, China. A center of Hakka culture, it has a population of 375,000. Famous natives This is the ancestral hometown of 1st Guyana President Arthur Chung even though the ...

, Guangdong. The secret society was of Hongmen origin and set up to provide mutual aid and support for Chinese migrants, with the common aim of overthrowing the Qing dynasty and restoring the Ming. Their main lodge in Singapore was located on Lavender Street, and contained the ancestral tablets of important ex-members, before being donated to the

Tan Tock Seng Hospital Tan Tock Seng Hospital (abbreviation: TTSH) is a tertiary referral hospital in Singapore, located in Novena. The hospital has 45 clinical and allied health departments, 16 specialist centres and is powered by more than 8,000 healthcare staff. ...

when it was torn down in 1892, following the "Suppression of Secret Societies Ordinance". The Ghee Hin were notorious for committing mass killings of such targets as the

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

ethnic group in 1850 (with approximately 500 casualties), and post office workers in 1876, due to their opposition to a new, more expensive monopoly on postage and remittances. The colonial government began to move towards surveillance, control, and finally suppression of Ghee Hin from the 1890s onwards. The Teochew people who belonged to the Ghee Hin secret society were massacred by the hundreds, if not thousands.

References

* Lim, Irene. (1999) ''Secret societies in Singapore'', National Heritage Board, Singapore History Museum, Singapore

External links

Ghee Hin — Encyclopædia Britannica
{{asia-hist-stub Secret societies in Singapore Organized crime groups in Malaysia Organised crime groups in Singapore History of Perak Triad groups Chinese secret societies Hokkien-language phrases Teochew culture in Singapore