Prologue

Summary

This book came about as a result of a conversation I had with Ambassador K. Kesavapany, then Director of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore, in May 2010, when he asked me whether I thought there would be a place for a new book on General Sir Gerald Templer, High Commissioner and Director of Operations, Malaya, 1952–54. I replied that I thought there would be, provided it focused on General Templer's time in Malaya and the implementation of the political and socio-economic sides of the Directive he had been given by the British Government rather than the military side, which has already been adequately covered, though there might be some overlapping at times of the two sides.

On the political side of his Directive, the British Government instructed him to “assist the peoples of Malaya in due course to become a fully selfgoverning nation within the British Commonwealth” and “to promote such political progress of the country as will, without prejudicing the campaign against the terrorists, further our democratic aim in Malaya.” On the military side, he was instructed to restore law and order and defeat the Communist Party of Malaya's uprising, which has become known as the Malayan Emergency.

Templer never wrote his memoirs and the only full-scale biography of him is John Cloake's Templer, Tiger of Malaya: The Life of Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer which was published several decades ago. John Cloake, an old family friend, was commissioned to write it by Lady Peggie Templer, General Templer's widow. It is well written but much new material has become available since then. There is, too, a short thirty-nine-page monograph, Templer in Malaya, by C. Northcote Parkinson, then Professor of History at the University of Malaya in Singapore, which is brief and insightful, but it was published rather hastily in Singapore to coincide with Templer's departure from Malaya in 1954.

The part played by Templer in his short but important two-year Malayan proconsulship at a vital time in Malaya's history undoubtedly helped to shape the beginning of the road to self-government leading to independence, although both came about after he left Malaya in 1954.