When did modern scholarship begin to recognise the autonomous Chinese organisations created in the colonial migration context as criminal syndicates, commonly referred to as ‘secret societies’? For a significant period, the British colonial government itself grappled with a confusing array of terms used to describe the Chinese organisations they encountered in Malaya. These groups were variously labelled as Kongsi, hoey, sworn brotherhoods, fraternities, provincial groups, surname groups, tribes vis-à-vis language groups, and monolingual labour syndicates, among others. This peculiar continuum of terminology greatly bewildered the British colonial administrators for more than half a century. Despite this confusion over nomenclature, the British understood that the criminalisation of these so-called ‘dangerous (secret) societies’ did not occur prior to the emergence of Chinese autonomy in labour sourcing, which began in the 1850s. It was only later, particularly during the 1870s and 1880s, when the British colonial authorities faced the challenges posed by an ever-increasing Chinese migrant population, that a full-scale criminalisation effort was undertaken. This effort targeted a broad spectrum of unruly Chinese riots and disturbances, which had become more frequent and difficult to manage.