Related Papers
The Interethnic Conflict in Perak: Ideology, Communalism and Resolution
Abdur-Razzaq Lubis
Journal of British Studies
[Book Review] Review of The Special Operations Executive in Malaya: World War II and the Path to Independence, by Rebecca Kenneison
2020 •
Kankan Xie
The past few years have seen a growing number of scholarly works on British operations in Southeast Asia and their relationships with local resistance in World War II. Particularly intriguing is the mysterious last-minute deal struck between the British in Malaya and the Chinese-dominated Malayan Communist Party, or MCP, before the Japanese takeover...
Making Malaysian Chinese: War Memory, Histories and Identities
2015 •
Frances Tay
This thesis proposes a new perspective on Malaysian Chinese studies by exploring issues of identity formation refracted through the lens of contestations of war memory, communal history and state-sponsored national history. In multiethnic Malaysia, despite persistent nation-building programs towards inculcating a shared Malaysian national identity, the question as to whether the Chinese are foremost Chinese or Malaysian remains at the heart of Malaysian socio-political debates. Existing scholarship on the Malaysian Chinese is often framed within post-independent development discourses, inevitably juxtaposing the Chinese minority condition against Malay political and cultural supremacy. Similarly, explorations of war memory and history echo familiar Malay-Chinese, dominant-marginalised or national-communal binary tropes. This thesis reveals that prevailing contestations of memory and history are, at their core, struggles for cultural inclusion and belonging. It further maps the overl...
Journal of Chinese Overseas
Revolutionary Cosmopolitanism and its Limits: The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese in Singapore, Medan and Jakarta Compared (1945–1949)
2020 •
Guo-Quan Seng
This article analyzes the extent and limits of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) revolutionary cosmopolitanism in Southeast Asia. Between 1945 and 1949, the CCP intellectuals Hu Yuzhi and Wang Renshu operated a network of leftwing newspapers in Southeast Asia's major urban centers. They championed the revolution in the homeland , while supporting anti-colonial nationalist movements in the region. Taking a comparative approach, I argue that the CCP's revolutionary cosmopolitanism developed and diverged on the ground according to the diasporic community's social structure , the contingency of events in the process of decolonization and initiatives taken by local CCP leaders. While the CCP in Jakarta turned neutral in the face of republican atrocities against Chinese, Singapore and Medan went on to mobilize merchants and youths to take part in local anti-colonial movements. The CCP stood for a moderate, anti-colonial Malayan nationalism in Singapore, in comparison with a more radical, non-assimilationist position in solidarity with Indonesia's independence struggle in Medan.
British Counterinsurgency in Malaya: Population Control, Intelligence and Military Operations
2017 •
Andrei Miroiu
An analysis of counterinsurgency operations in the Malayan Emergency.
The Journal of Strategic Studies
The Malayan Emergency as counter-insurgency paradigm
2009 •
Karl Hack
The Malayan Emergency of 194860 has been repeatedly cited as a source of counter-insurgency lessons, with debate over the relative importance of coercion,'winning hearts and minds', and achieving unified and dynamic control. This paper argues that all ...
Chapters on Asia
Squatters, Colonial Subjects and Model Citizens: Informal Housing in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong after World War Two
2014 •
Kah Seng Loh
Informal housing communities of semi-autonomous urban migrants emerged rapidly at the margins of Southeast Asian cities and Hong Kong after World War II. Their development constituted an important moment in postwar social history: the dwellers eked out a livelihood on land which initially lay beyond official control, relying on family, kinship and community ties to cope with the challenges of employment, environmental disaster and eviction. What was also historic was the response of the colonial and postcolonial states to the informal housing. Influenced partly by the advice of international experts on the need for controlled development, the region’s governments criminalised the informal housing as illegal, represented their dwellers as socially inert and warned of the dire impact such unplanned settlement, like a contagion, would have on the character and future of the society and nation. To varying degrees, they also undertook to either resettle the dwellers in emergency public housing or reorganise social life in the settlements through aided self-help. In only the former British-ruled city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong did the authorities succeed in transforming the face and character of the city; elsewhere, the pressure of patronage politics and the preference for “prestige projects’ greatly limited the scope of the actual reorganisation. Drawing upon James Scott’s concept of “high modernist’ planning and social governance, this paper examines the origins and development of informal settlements in urban Southeast Asia and Hong Kong and the different outcomes of state efforts to transform their residents into “squatters’, colonial subjects and, finally, model citizens of new nation-states.
Beyond the Tin Mines: Coolies, Squatters and New Villagers in the Kinta Valley, Malaysia c. 1880-1980
Beyond the Tin Mines: Coolies, Squatters and New Villagers in the Kinta Valley, Malaysia c. 1880s -1980s
1988 •
Francis Kok Wah Loh
Counterinsurgency as Armed Reform: The Political History of the Malayan Emergency
David H Ucko
Despite the emphasis in doctrine and academia that counterinsurgency is in its essence political, these operations are all too commonly discussed and approached as primarily military endeavors. Informed by the need to refocus counterinsurgency studies, this article revisits a foundational case of the canon—the Malayan Emergency—to discuss its political (i.e. not military) unfolding. The analysis distinguishes itself by emphasizing the diplomatic processes, negotiations, and deals that gave strategic meaning to the military operations underway. In so doing, the article also generates insight on the use of leverage and elite bargains in creating new political settlements and bringing insurgent conflicts to an end.
The Chinese International of Nationalities: the Chinese Communist Party, the Comintern, and the Foundation of the Malayan National Communist Party (1923-1939)
Anna Belogurova
