This chapter will explore how the ideologies of rule developed in British India, namely British prestige; indirect rule; incorporation of elites into the formal structures of administration; and racial ideologies built around the principles of Social Darwinism and the tenets of Victorian anthropology, were reproduced within colonial Malaya.

PRESTIGE

As with other parts of the Empire, British society was shaped by the doctrine of prestige. This manifested as an inherent sense of superiority characterized by aloofness and social distance from the subject population. The British adopted a number of strategies to emphasize their difference in racial terms from those they ruled. The most obvious of these were levels of income and patterns of consumption. The Governor and Residents of the Federated Malay States (FMS) and Unfederated Malay States (UFMS) were representatives of the British sovereign and as such lived in a style which was intended to reflect the majesty and dignity of the Crown. High officials occupied grand residences and were served by numerous officials and full households of servants. But even among lower ranks, the British administration took every precaution to ensure that “white” prestige was not challenged. Salaries and wages, including those of the lowest paid workers, were fixed at rates which ensured that even working class Europeans could enjoy, and more importantly be seen to enjoy, a standard of living conspicuously higher and largely unattainable by all but a handful of the Asian population.

While, in general, anything less than total acquiescence to British rule was viewed by the administration as rank insubordination, the imposition of a strict racial hierarchy in colonial Malaya was nowhere near as inflexible or absolute as it had become in the British Raj. There were elites among all communities, most particularly the Malay aristocracy and the Chinese business classes, whose sensitivities had to be taken into account, and who would effectively resist any attempts by Europeans to introduce complete racial segregation. Thus, the establishment of whites-only compartments within the Malayan railways, begun in 1904, was withdrawn in 1915 against a background of Asian resentment, having in the interim caused great offence to the Chinese population.

British colonialism in Malaya imported specific ideologies of governance to administer their new colonial possessions. These ideologies, developed by British theorists in reaction to the Great Rebellion (Indian Mutiny) of 1857–58, were incorporated into the formal structures of British imperialism. Later chapters will explore how significant aspects of these ideologies, in particular those pertaining to the concept of “race”, were applied in colonial Malaya, and how in certain respects these continue to resonate within the racial policies of contemporary Malaysia.

In the period leading to the Great Rebellion, the British, through the agency of the East India Company (EIC), adopted an aggressive policy of reform based on an amalgam of three dominant ideologies, namely:

1. The philosophical utilitarianism of, among others, James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham and Baron Thomas Macaulay.

2. Evangelical Protestantism, seen as the principal factor underlying and sustaining the elevated character of the British ruling classes. The 1813 reform of the East India Company Act provided missionaries with the freedom to proselytize in India.

3. In the 1840s, free trade, portrayed as the dynamic upholding British pre-eminence and global power.

The reform programme comprised nothing less than “an ideological offensive against the foundations of Indian life”. It was assumed that under the benevolent and wise guidance of British rule — and liberated from the tyrannies of idolatry and false religions, superstition and meaningless traditions representing the dead hand of antiquity — Indians would naturally aspire to and attain the same level of civilization as post- Enlightenment Britain. This civilizing role was to become the imperial mission; a great enterprise in which British rulers would envisage themselves not so much as conquerors, but as emancipators.

The Great Rebellion thus came as a profound shock to all levels of British society in both India and metropolitan Britain. The mutineers had not only rejected the British as rulers but had also, in imperial terms, launched a direct onslaught on the entire Victorian world view and had disparaged some of the Victorians’ most cherished values. At its deepest level, the Rebellion challenged the very precepts which had informed the entire nineteenth-century imperial project.

In 1976 Tun Abdul Razak, the architect and overseer of much of the NEP, died in office. He was succeeded by Datuk Hussein Onn who had entered Tun Abdul Razak's first Cabinet as Minister of Education in September 1970. Datuk Hussein Onn's premiership was seen as an interregnum, a stewardship. In general, Hussein continued Razak's policies. Although PAS left the BN coalition in 1977, Hussein led BN to a comprehensive victory in the 1978 elections.

On his accession to the premiership, Hussein appointed Dr Mahathir Mohamad as his Deputy. Given Mahathir's chequered background, the appointment was considered controversial. Following the release of his infamous “open letter” to the Tunku in 1969, which explicitly imputed responsibility for the deaths of those slain in the mob violence of 13 May to the Tunku's leadership, Mahathir had been expelled from UMNO. He had subsequently returned to his medical practice in Alor Setar, where he wrote the book The Malay Dilemma, a work regarded as so contentious that it remained banned in Malaysia until after Mahathir's accession to the Prime Ministership. Mahathir was re-admitted to UMNO in 1972, and was allocated the Education portfolio under Tun Abdul Razak. Upon Hussein's retirement on 16 July 1981, Mahathir assumed the Prime Ministership.

Mahathir came to office with a mission to transform Malaysia into a sophisticated, developed and respected nation, with Malays playing a dominant role. His earliest political manifesto and guiding template for political action is established within The Malay Dilemma. This insists, inter alia, that the Malays comprise the founding and definitive “race” within Malaysia, and thus form the normative basis for Malaysian culture to which other “races” must acculturate themselves. Mahathir's analysis of the Malay character and capabilities consist of a series of broad, superficial and occasionally contradictory generalizations which collectively place Malays at an intrinsic disadvantage in their quest to achieve economic and intellectual parity with other “races”.

These views consolidated a nationalist narrative which had been bequeathed by, and had continued unbroken from, the racial ideologies of British colonialism, and which had been largely accepted by the UMNO leadership. In 1971, UMNO had published Revolusi Mental (Mental Revolution), which portrayed Malays in a completely negative light; as people who lacked the courage to face the truth, and as a “race” weakened by the qualities of fatalism and irrationality.

Appendix 4 Distribution of Dongzong Executive Branch Staff by Academic Qualification, Age, and Years of Service (1995–2011)

THE BACKGROUND: JAPANESE WAR AIMS

Throughout the 1930s the idea of creating an economic zone, later to be termed a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, based on the pan-Asian ideal of universal brotherhood (hakko ichi'u — the eight corners of the world under one roof), gained wide currency in Japanese academic and political circles. Japan saw itself as the natural leader, indeed the dominant power, in any such regional grouping. This concept was more fully developed by the Japanese government and adopted as policy on 1 August 1940. The new order was to consist of a core economic unit centred on Japan, China and Manchukuo (Manchuria), and to include the mandated islands, French Indo-China, Thailand, Malaya, Borneo, and the Netherlands East Indies, and possibly Australia, New Zealand, and India. While the Japanese were prepared to grant nationhood to the Buddhist countries of the mainland, they intended to hold the “undeveloped” Islamic lands of the Malay Archipelago as permanent colonies. With regard to the Malay Peninsula, Singapore and the other Straits Settlements were to be placedc under direct rule, the four northern states (Kelantan, Perlis, Kedah, and Terengganu) were to be ceded to Thailand, while the remaining states were to be maintained under the existing structure but subject to the close guidance of Japanese advisors.

On 7 December 1941, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, U.S. military installations in the Philippines, Guam, Midway and Wake, and British airfields in Hong Kong. On 8 December the Japanese landed forces in Singora (in Southern Thailand) and Kota Bharu in Kelantan. The Japanese fleet, carrying 24,000 combat troops, effected a landing at Kelantan within two hours, despite heavy seas. The town was fully occupied by 9 December. Another Japanese force made a virtually unopposed landing at a number of strategic points in the Kra Isthmus.

BRITISH SOCIETY ON THE EVE OF THE INVASION

The Japanese invasion met a British administration and society both psychologically and militarily unprepared for war. Undoubtedly the major factor underlying the British sense of security was the massive Singapore naval base, the so-called arsenal of democracy. The base, a vast annexe covering twenty-one square miles, was widely viewed as impregnable, a bastion of the British Empire in the East, a guarantee of protection for both India and Australia, as well as the future site of the Royal Air Force headquarters in the East.

Najib Abdul Razak succeeded Abdullah Badawi as Prime Minister on 3 April 2009. The son of former Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, Najib entered politics following his father's demise. Najib ascended to the Prime Ministership with a somewhat mixed reputation; he was perceived in some circles as a womanizer who gave his wife far too much public space and a politician prone to occasional race-baiting. However, he was also known as a highly skilled politician and tactician, a clever and patient negotiator with an ability to strike a compromise, and largely free of undue racial and religious baggage. He was also held to be aware of the problems confronting BN and the urgent need for far-reaching reforms. However, it was recognized that Najib had limited room in which to manoeuvre, and that deeply entrenched and vested interests would oppose any overhaul of a system dominated by networks of patronage and the imperatives of “race”. The rise of the Malay chauvinist body Perkasa, with its extremist agenda, and linked to Mahathir and Mahathir loyalists within UMNO, was cited as indicative of the forces arraigned against meaningful reform.

Following his appointment as Prime Minister Najib introduced a new political philosophy known as “1Malaysia”. This approach appeared to represent an attempt to rebuild the political and social consensus that had prevailed in pre-Mahathir Malaysia. Najib was aware that certain groups (for example, Indians and the Orang Asli) had been marginalized from the main body politick, that their concerns were not being addressed, and that there was a need for greater inclusivity in formulating public policy. The election of 8 March 2008 had demonstrated the need to address these concerns.

1Malaysia, opposed by large sections of UMNO, suggested a fresh and more dynamic approach to the politics of ethnicity, and as with Mahathir's Bangsa Malaysia it generated considerable enthusiasm among those yearning for a Malaysian identity which ranged beyond the primary considerations of race/communalism.

Najib introduced a range of reforms, including further liberalization of the NEP (however without significantly diluting the affirmative action provisions of the policy), and financial reforms designed to attract foreign investment. He oversighted the repeal of the hated Internal Security Act and removed other colonial-era restrictions designed to limit freedom of speech and political association.

International relations in Southeast Asia in the twenty-first century began to reflect a new phase, most notably in 2003, when the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) embarked on community building. Furthermore, ASEAN's extra-regional efforts resulted in the establishment of the East Asia Summit (EAS) in 2005. It was ASEAN's political will that indeed continued to be the hub of East Asian cooperation. Most significantly, in August 2007, the heads of member states signed the historic ASEAN Charter. With the strong foundation established by the charter, ASEAN is expected to manage the key challenges of regional integration, globalization and economic growth.

After several years of political instability, Japan also entered a new phase in domestic politics in 2009. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was doomed by its intraparty problems, especially after the Koizumi administration. The LDP changed its chairman three times, thereby appointing three prime ministers, within a period of three years, suggesting the need for a fundamental change in Japanese politics. Most importantly, the Japanese voters became disillusioned by a series of ineffectual prime ministers. The September 2009 general elections saw the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) come to power, ending the long-term political monopoly of the LDP. Adopting an alternative strategy, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama advocated the creation of an East Asian Community based on the political philosophy of “fraternity”, although due to strained relations with the United States over military bases in Okinawa he was not able to pursue this for more than a year. Prime Minister Naoto Kan also announced Japan's new development strategy, which made East Asia one of the main target areas of foreign policy.

Thus, beginning in 2007, Japan-ASEAN relations have entered a new phase. The focus is on a new regionalism in East Asia where advanced countries and developing countries are required to act and work together to improve regional cooperation and integration. Whether a new ASEAN and a new Japan under the DPJ continue to serve as a hub of East Asian regionalism remains to be seen. In this last chapter, ASEAN's renowned quest for three-pillared community building and Japan's upgraded contributions to East Asian regionalism through sustainable Japan-ASEAN partnership will be explored.

This chapter will examine European conceptions of the institution of slavery, the crucial role played by slavery in the development of Iberian and North European colonialism, its ultimate abolition in the British Empire, and its replacement by Indian indentured labour. The latter sections will highlight the linkages and similarities between slavery and indentured labour, in particular the all-encompassing regime under which labourers toiled, and the unremitting severity with which it was enforced. It will also demonstrate how class and race were deployed by the plantation industry to simultaneously justify indentured labour and to stigmatize and tyrannize those entrapped within the system.

The late medieval era coincided with an unprecedented expansion of European power and subsequent control of substantial areas of the globe. In the period following the Renaissance, Europeans increasingly sought the produce of the tropics which could not be cultivated in the northern latitudes. During the subsequent mercantile expansion, Europeans secured a commanding role in the purchase, transport, and marketing of tropical goods. The conquest of the New World provided European powers with the opportunity to acquire their own colonies and to develop trading economies based on the supervised production of commodities which were in demand in Europe. Initially this trade revolved about the procurement and sale of spices, but later expanded to include sugar, chocolate, tobacco and cotton. However, the profitability of the new economy depended upon the maintenance of low-price structures. This necessarily required the deployment of a disciplined and easily controlled workforce which was paid low wages or, preferably, none at all.

The Iberian colonization of the Americas was driven by a voracious appetite for territorial expansion and colonial settlement and was accompanied by a total disregard for the cultures and welfare of subject peoples. Enslavement of the indigenous populations having been thwarted by a Papal Bull of 1537 which declared the American Indians “full people”, the Iberians turned to African slaves. Medieval Christians were able to call upon Biblical exegesis to justify the enslavement of black Africans. Thus, while St Paul had sanctioned the principle of slave ownership (in I Corinthians), Noah's cursing of Ham and his descendants to eternal servitude (in Genesis) legitimized the subjection of designated branches of humanity.

We have already noted that British control over the Straits Settlements and the FMS was followed by economic exploitation of its new possessions. The Malayan colonies were not only viewed as suppliers of raw materials and potential producers of tropical commodities which could be profitably retailed on the world market, but also as consumers of British-manufactured goods. The colonial authorities encouraged commercial plantation agriculture over every other form of enterprise. Early commercial agriculture concentrated upon the production of spices and pepper, but from the 1820s onwards, exports of both commodities were increasingly eclipsed by sugar. Sugar plantations, with their ceaseless demands for labour, were largely concentrated in Penang and Province Wellesley. Other plantations diversified into the cultivation of tapioca and coconuts. Throughout the 1870s, coffee and gambier estates were developed in Perak, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. After the turn of the century, rubber production dominated the Malayan plantation industry. Later, the plantation economy widened to include the production of palm oil, tea and pineapple.

We also observed that British penetration of Malaya was supported by an ambitious programme of infrastructure development designed to promote and enhance economic activity. Successive colonial administrations embarked on a series of far-ranging projects which included capital works, the construction of ports, roads and railways, reticulated water supplies (at least to major towns and cities), and (later) the provision of an electricity grid and a telecommunications network.

The development of a viable colonial economy was dependent on ready access to a pool of cheap, pliable, and easily managed labour. As observed in Chapter 4, the Malays were not interested in hiring themselves for plantation or infrastructure labour and, in fact, the British made repeated attempts to insulate the Malays from the emerging colonial economy. Having thus ruled out indigenous labour, and after early and unsuccessful experiments with African slave labour, the British broadened their search to tap Chinese, Indian and Javanese coolie sources.

While the system of indentured labour furnished the majority of the Indian workforce in Malaya between 1844 and 1910, some of the earliest Indian labour was supplied by convicts. Between 1790 and 1860 approximately 80,000 Indian convicts were dispatched to various colonial destinations, not only to the Straits Settlements but also to Burma and Mauritius.

THE EMERGENCY

The war against the Chinese-dominated MCP, known as the Emergency, endured for twelve years — from 1948 to 1960. The insurgency claimed the lives of 6,697 members of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), while a further 3,000 surrendered and 1,286 were captured by security forces. On the government side, 1,865 members of the security forces, mainly Malays, were killed, and a further 2,560 wounded. A total of 2,473 civilians, mainly Chinese, died in the insurgency. Over 12,000 personnel passed through the ranks of the MNLA. Despite the high financial and human toll the British had no intention of withdrawing from their most valuable colony. In 1948 rubber brought $120 million into the sterling zone, and by 1952–53, following the Korean War boom, Malayan exports were providing 35.26 per cent of Britain's balance of payments within the dollar area. Moreover, the retention of the Singapore naval base was regarded as essential in projecting Britain's military posture as a great power within Southeast Asia.

In launching the insurrection, the MCP adopted the essential principles of Leninist theory, namely creating a revolutionary situation, vitiating the machinery of government and exsanguinating its military power, and assuming party control of all state functions both during and after the revolution. The military campaign was planned around the theories of protracted revolutionary war developed by Mao Tse-tung and based on his experiences in China. The MCP programme failed dismally. The MNLA's actions were often poorly coordinated and frequently concentrated upon immediate military outcomes rather than the political agitation and education necessary to create a climate of widespread popular support. The MNLA never seriously threatened British rule.

A unified strategy for defeating the MCP was developed by a retired general, Sir Harold Briggs, who was appointed Director of Operations on 21 March 1950. Briggs realized that the early failures of the British counter-insurgency could be largely attributed to a dearth of reliable intelligence and the fact that the British neither understood the Chinese community, nor acknowledged their permanency within the Malayan political landscape. He also drew attention to the existence of the two complementary strands of the MCP, namely the MNLA and the Min Yuen (Mass Organisation, which worked among the civilian population), and the role ascribed to each.

INTRODUCTION

The development of the Chinese education movement in Malaysia parallels Malaysia's domestic politics after the British colonial era. The decolonization of the Malaya Peninsula in the post-World War II years redefined the balance of power, especially amongst the English-educated ethnic leaders. Although these elites dominated official state decision-making mechanisms, Malaya (renamed as Malaysia after the Peninsula merged with Singapore, Sabah, and Sarawak to form the new federation in 1963) was vulnerable during its infancy and therefore allowed space for negotiation with the influential vernacular-speaking ethnic elites. This chapter gives special attention to the role of Chinese elites in raising political awareness and creating a series of social movements amongst Malaya's Chinese communities through three main platforms: Chinese political parties, Chinese guilds and associations, as well as Chinese schoolteachers and Chinese school committees associations.

The chapter first explores the formation of political parties such as UMNO and MCA, and the significance of the Alliance coalition in making a peaceful demand for state independence from the British. To strengthen intra-Chinese collaboration, MCA established the Grand Three Associations of Chinese Education in collaboration with Dongzong and Jiaozong in 1952. The Grand Three was successful in bridging the state and the Chinese education movement actors until it started crumbling in 1960, when its pro-vernacular education leaders left MCA. From then on, the Chinese education movement began to nurture stronger bonds with Chinese guilds and associations, which laid the foundation for the movement's trajectories from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The efforts of nation building by the Malay-dominated state unavoidably posited threats that would dilute the vernacular identities of the non-Malay communities, especially after the departure of Singapore from the Federation of Malaysia in 1965. The Chinese’ resistance against the state's assimilation attempts is best demonstrated in their overwhelming support of Dongjiaozong's Merdeka University campaign in 1967. The chapter ends with a discussion on the impact of the implementation of the New Economic Policy in 1971, and the political consequences of normalization of diplomatic relations between Malaysia and the People's Republic of China in 1974.

IMPACT OF COMMUNIST THREATS

Prior to World War II, massive migration had resulted in the number of Chinese and Indian immigrants outnumbering the Malays in the Peninsula, making it possible for immigrants to challenge the status quo of the native majority.

In Chapter 6 we noted that the form of recruitment known as the “kangany system” had become firmly established in Malayan plantations well before the abolition of indenture in 1910. The Sanderson Report of that year had commented that an increasing proportion of the estate workforce was being recruited under the kangany system, and had observed that this form of recruitment generally produced a more reliable and stable workforce than that obtained under indenture. The Committee had also commented that while kangany labour was popular with coffee and rubber planters, sugar planters were resolutely opposed to the system.

Kangany recruitment entered Malaya via Ceylon where it had been successfully used to procure labour for European-owned coffee estates. While a handful of Malayan planters had experimented with kangany labour in the early 1860s, the system did not achieve broad acceptance until the establishment of coffee plantations in the 1880s and 1890s. The introduction of rubber to the Peninsula in the 1890s coincided with a protracted downturn in coffee prices, and encouraged many coffee planters to convert their estates to the new crop with the consequence that rubber rapidly became the leading plantation crop in Malaya. In 1909–10 rubber entered a prolonged boom period. Rubber estates were invariably staffed by kangany labour. Until the abandonment of indenture, the two systems of immigration — indenture and kangany — ran parallel, with coffee and rubber planters importing kangany labour and sugar planters preferring indentured labour.

What was the kangany system? The term originates from the Tamil kankani, meaning owner or foreman. It is a word that connotes some degree of power and respect. Kanganies were “coolies of standing” who not only recruited labour to work on estates, but as field foremen (“headmen”) undertook to supervise those whom they had recruited. The kangany came from a non-Brahman “clean” (that is, non-polluting) caste, almost always drawn from the Vanniyar, Kallar or Goundar castes,8 and preferably headed a large family. He was a man who enjoyed a reputation for probity and fairness in his dealings, and who thus could be expected to command respect within his home taluk (district).

Immediately after the war, how could Japan secure the freedom of action to advance into Southeast Asia again when ill feelings towards the nation were prevalent? The answer seems to lie in the process of mutual persuasion between Japanese and U.S. decision-makers, who incorporated Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida's “economics above all” principles and Washington's “superdomino” metaphor, bridging the two with the concept of U.S.-Japan economic cooperation. Consequently, a triangular, mutually reinforcing relationship among the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asia had come into existence and had become integral to American objectives in Asia, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff cogently put it in July 1952:

For Prime Minister Yoshida, U.S.-protected Southeast Asia was simply a region of abundant natural resources and of lucrative markets for Japanese products. The region was all the more important for the Yoshida government as a means through which to bring about economic success at home, which in turn could guarantee a conservative party's dominance in Japanese politics. In other words, Southeast Asia was an integral part of the Yoshida Doctrine, which consisted of three principles of foreign policy: (1) minimum defence, (2) economic development at home and economic diplomacy abroad as the ultimate goal, and (3) the separation of politics from economics. However, the very success of the Yoshida Doctrine brought home the fact that Japan's economic diplomacy needed a complete reappraisal in the early 1970s. Through stormy anti-Japanese movements, Japanese foreign policy was forced to make a gradual shift from bilateral to multilateral relations. Why and how did Japan decide to shift its foreign policy orientation? The answer can be found rather easily if we carefully examine the very first decade of Japan-ASEAN relations.