Growing the Game of Golf in Colonial Kuala Lumpur: Elites and Privatized Urban Planning in Southeast Asia,1893-1957

Abstract

Golf courses played an important, yet understudied role, in urban colonial town planning in Southeast Asia during the first half of the twentieth century. This article explores the establishment and growth of the Selangor Golf Club, the pre-eminent golf club in Kuala Lumpur during the colonial period of British rule. Club members lobbied and worked for the Selangor and Federated Malay States governments to expand the physical size of the course and to influence regulations about the activities allowed at the club. The article argues that the close relationship between the colonial government and the Selangor Golf Club privatized the benefits of urban planning and stunted the development of municipal golf in Kuala Lumpur. The article concludes by arguing that the history of golf in Kuala Lumpur offers the first explanation about why public golf never became an important feature of municipal governance in colonial or post-colonial Southeast Asia.