The Politics of Disease and Disorder in Post-War Malaya

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9083947
AutoresT N Harper (autor de correspondencia)
Año1990
Volumen21
Número1
Páginas88-113
Fecha de publicación1990-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Southeast Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-4634 • E-ISSN: 1474-0680
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0022463400001971
OpenAlexW2128605381
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas21

It has become a commonplace of Malayan historiography that the period following the end of the Pacific War witnessed the establishment of a pattern of political life which has persisted in its main features into the present decade. Existing accounts have focused around the restructuring of the British presence in Malaya under a military administration and the introduction of, and opposition to, the Malayan Union scheme in 1946 and the Federal structure which succeeded it in April 1948. These years saw the emergence of an ethnically based nationalist movement and the defeat of a radical challenge to its predominance. The communal and insurrectionary violence which was a feature of the period has been represented as a constraint to subsequent political action — as a limit to what the structure of Malaya's pluralism could tolerate — and the constitutional struggles as a lost opportunity to effect its transformation. Whilst it is hard to exaggerate the importance of these events in shaping the landscape of Malaysian politics, there is a sense in which the sophistication of these political and constitutional preoccupations suggests uneven development within the historical writing as a whole. The social context which stimulated change, and the breadth of the local response which dignified it, has been marginalized in many accounts. There has been a tendency to conceive the state system and the colonial presence in Malaya within the bounds of a paradigm governed by the constitutional settlement, and the various phases of insurrection and political change as primarily the products of the subversive or nationalist imagination

Historiography · Nationalism · Opposition (politics) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Asian Studies and History · History · Law · Maritime Security and History · Military History and Strategy