Karl Hack
Biographic Data
| ID | 3922395 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karl Hack |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karl |
| FAMILY NAME | Hack |
| SIGNATURE | HACK K |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Open University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4253-3334 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 78 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Behind Barbed Wire: Chinese New Villages during the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960 by Tan Teng Phee
Reviewed by: Behind Barbed Wire: Chinese New Villages during the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960 by Tan Teng Phee Karl Hack Behind Barbed Wire: Chinese New Villages during the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960, by Tan Teng Phee. Petaling Jaya: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, 2020. 24, 318 pp. ISBN 9789672165798 Behind Barbed Wire looks behind the façade to ask what it was really like to be moved to, and live in, a 'New Village'. Ta…
Unfinished Decolonisation and Globalisation
This article locates John Darwin’s work on decolonisation within an Oxbridge tradition which portrays a British world system, of which formal empire was but one part, emerging to increasing global dominance from the early nineteenth century. In this mental universe, decolonisation was the mirror image of that expanding global power. According to this point of view, it was not the sloughing off of individual territories, but rather the shrinking a…
Devils that suck the blood of the Malayan People’: The Case for Post-Revisionist Analysis of Counter-insurgency Violence
This article addresses the ‘revisionist’ case that post-war Western counter-insurgency deployed widespread, exemplary violence in order to discipline and intimidate populations. It does this by using the Malayan Emergency of 1948–60 as a case study in extreme counter-insurgency ‘violence’, defined as high to lethal levels of physical force against non-combatants’ (civilians, detainees, prisoners, and corpses). It confirms high levels of such viol…
The Malayan Emergency: Essays on a Small, Distant War
One of the first conflicts of the Cold War, the Malayan Emergency was a guerrilla war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and communist insurgents in Malaya from 1948 to 1960. Souchou Yao tell
“Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency 1
This chapter provides the historiography of the Malayan Emergency. It does so by challenging two archetypal works on the conflict those of Anthony Short and Richard Stubbs. Colonel Young, seconded from London as the new Commissioner of Police, retrained the Malayan force to emphasise normal policing and service to the public. The Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) originated in the communist-led, wartime Malayan People&s;s Anti-Japanese Army…
Detention, Deportation and Resettlement: British Counterinsurgency and Malaya's Rural Chinese, 1948–60
To understand how empires control ‘hostile’ populations, we need to penetrate below overarching terms such as ‘counter-terror’ and ‘winning hearts and minds’, in order to understand discrete constituent techniques on their own terms. Yet technique lifecycles tend to be inadequately researched. This article examines three key techniques used to control rural Chinese during the Malayan Emergency of 1948–60. Detention, deportation and, to a lesser e…
Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence: The Wars of Independence in Kenya and Alger
After the Second World War, in the shadow of the Holocaust, of Japanese maltreatment of POWs and of collective punishment of civilians for nearby partisan activity across occupied Europe, internati
Defence and Decolonisation in South-East Asia: Britain, Malaya and Singapore 1941-1967
This book explains why British defence policy and practice emerged as it did in the period 1941-67, by looking at the overlapping of colonial, military, economic and Cold War factors in the area. Its main focus is on the 1950s and the decolonisation era, but it argues that the plans and conditions of this period can only be understood by tracing them back to their origins in the fall of Singapore. Also, it shows how decolonisation was shaped not …
War Memory and the Making of Modern Malaysia and Singapore
Singapore fell to Japanese forces on 15 February 1942. Within a matter of days, the occupying army took prisoner more than 100,000 British, Australian and Indian soldiers, and massacred thousands of Chinese civilians. A resistance movement formed in Malaya's jungle-covered mountains, but the vast majority of people resigned themselves to life under Japanese rule. The Occupation of Malaya would last three and a half long years, until the British r…
Everyone lived in fear: Malaya and the British way of counter-insurgency
Recent research on Palestine, Kenya, and Malaya has emphasised the coercive nature of ‘Britain’s dirty wars’. Abuses have been detailed and a selfcongratulatory Cold War-era account of British counter-insurgency – as ‘winning hearts and minds’ and using minimum force – subjected to intensifying attack. The result has been a swing from over sanitised narratives of the primacy of ‘winning hearts and minds’, towards revisionist accounts of relentles…
Between Terror and Talking, the Place of ‘Negotiation’ in Colonial Conflict
Over the last two decades there has been an increasing flow of publications on insurgency and counterinsurgency in European empires. This journal, for instance, issued a special edition in September 1993 on ‘Emergencies and Disorder in the European Empires after 1945’. Its preface finished by highlighting recurrent themes for further, comparative study, including differing legal structures, subversive security organisation, ‘the grim but recurren…
Negotiating with the Malayan Communist Party, 1948–89
This article looks at one of the best documented examples of negotiations with insurgents in a British colonial territory: the Baling Talks of 28–29 December 1955. At these, the Malayan Communist Party Secretary-General, Chin Peng, attempted to negotiate an end to the Malayan Emergency. It examines how the communist leadership came to desire negotiations over the period 1954–56, how it viewed them, and on what terms they might have succeeded. It …
Singapore from Temasek to the 21st Century: Reinventing the Global City
Once a centre for international trade and finance, Singapore is now a Singapore from Temasek to the 21st Century: Reinventing the Global City examines its evolution from trading port to city-state, showing how Singapore has repeatedly reinvented itself by creating or re-asserting qualities that helped attract capital, talent and trade. In the 14th century, the island's prosperity rested on regulating the regional carrying trade passing through th…
Contending with Nationalism and Communism: British Policy Towards Southeast Asia, 1945–65
Contending with Nationalism and Communism: British Policy Towards Southeast Asia, 1945–65 Peter Lowe London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 xii+312 pp., ISBN: 978-0-230-52123-0 (£55.00 hardback) Peter Lo
The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm
The Malayan Emergency of 1948–60 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 these techniques and more were important, but that their weight varied dramatically across quite distinct campaign phases. The conclusions include that effective counter-insurgency analysis must i…
The origins of the Asian Cold War: Malaya 1948
From the 1970s most scholars have rejected the Cold War orthodoxy that the Malayan Emergency (1948–60) was a result of instructions from Moscow, translated into action by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). They have instead argued that local factors precipitated violence, and that the MCP was relatively unprepared when the Emergency was declared. This article puts the international element back into the picture. It shows that the change from a ‘u…
The origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Forgotten Captives in Japanese-Occupied Asia
Introduction Part 1: Background 1. Captivities in the East: Contrasting Experiences, Contrasting Narratives Karl Hack and Kevin Blackburn Part 2: National Memories 2. Memory and the POW Experience: The United Kingdom Sibylla Jane Flower 3. Beyond Slogans: Assessing the Experiences and the History of Australian Prisoners of War of the Japanese Hank Nelson 4. Monument and Ceremony: The Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial and the Incorporation o…
Colonial Armies in Southeast Asia
Colonial armies were the focal points for some of the most dramatic tensions inherent in Chinese, Japanese and Western clashes with Southeast Asia. The international team of scholars take the reader on a compelling exploration from Ming China to the present day, examining their conquests, management and decolonization. The journey covers perennial themes such as the recruitment, loyalty, and varied impact of foreign-dominated forces. But it also …
Did Singapore Have to Fall?
This book provides a sophisticated summary of up-to-date knowledge on the Fall of Singapore, including the critical tensions between Churchill and local commanders. A focus on the role of Churchill, and on his understanding of the guns and Singapore's fortifications, makes the Fortress central to understanding why and how Singapore fell as it did. The book includes a range of quotations that give the flavour of the time and the essence of the deb…
Biar Mati Anak: Jangan Mati Adat [Better Your Children Die Than Your Traditions]
Colonial armies are often studied as microcosms of imperial power and society. This paper makes the case for looking at local defence contributions in wider terms as well: as reflections of a colony's place within a system of world power. It argues that different types of colony played different roles in Britain's system of world power, producing different kinds of security. Hence, while maritime South East Asia at first appears to be a mere appe…
Defence and Decolonisation in South-East Asia: Britain, Malaya and Singapore 1941-1967
This re-examines British postwar defence and decolonisation through one region, Southeast Asia. Covering metropolitan policies, local reactions and agency, the Malayan Emergency, and the Cold War
Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency
This article addresses the historiography of the Malayan Emergency (1948–60). It does so by challenging two archetypal works on the conflict: those of Anthony Short and Richard Stubbs. These argue the Emergency was locked in stalemate as late as 1951. By then, a “population control” approach had been implemented — the so-called Briggs Plan for resettling 500,000 Chinese squatters. The predominantly Chinese nature of the Malayan National Liberatio…
The Limits of British Influence in Asia
Journal Article The Limits of British Influence in Asia Get access The Key to the South Britain, the United States, and Thailand during the Approach of the Pacific War, 1929–1942. By Richard Aldrich. Singapore and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. xxiii + 416 pp ISBN 0-19-588612-7. £25.00 hb. The Limits of British Influence: South Asia and the Anglo-American Relationship 1947–56. By Anita Inder Singh. London: Pinter, 1993. xvi + 309 pp. ISBN…
The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm
The Malayan Emergency of 1948–60 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 these techniques and more were important, but that their weight varied dramatically across quite distinct campaign phases. The conclusions include that effective counter-insurgency analysis must i…
Everyone lived in fear: Malaya and the British way of counter-insurgency
Recent research on Palestine, Kenya, and Malaya has emphasised the coercive nature of ‘Britain’s dirty wars’. Abuses have been detailed and a selfcongratulatory Cold War-era account of British counter-insurgency – as ‘winning hearts and minds’ and using minimum force – subjected to intensifying attack. The result has been a swing from over sanitised narratives of the primacy of ‘winning hearts and minds’, towards revisionist accounts of relentles…
Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency
This article addresses the historiography of the Malayan Emergency (1948–60). It does so by challenging two archetypal works on the conflict: those of Anthony Short and Richard Stubbs. These argue the Emergency was locked in stalemate as late as 1951. By then, a “population control” approach had been implemented — the so-called Briggs Plan for resettling 500,000 Chinese squatters. The predominantly Chinese nature of the Malayan National Liberatio…
Detention, Deportation and Resettlement: British Counterinsurgency and Malaya's Rural Chinese, 1948–60
To understand how empires control ‘hostile’ populations, we need to penetrate below overarching terms such as ‘counter-terror’ and ‘winning hearts and minds’, in order to understand discrete constituent techniques on their own terms. Yet technique lifecycles tend to be inadequately researched. This article examines three key techniques used to control rural Chinese during the Malayan Emergency of 1948–60. Detention, deportation and, to a lesser e…
The origins of the Asian Cold War: Malaya 1948
From the 1970s most scholars have rejected the Cold War orthodoxy that the Malayan Emergency (1948–60) was a result of instructions from Moscow, translated into action by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). They have instead argued that local factors precipitated violence, and that the MCP was relatively unprepared when the Emergency was declared. This article puts the international element back into the picture. It shows that the change from a ‘u…
The Malayan Emergency: Essays on a Small, Distant War
One of the first conflicts of the Cold War, the Malayan Emergency was a guerrilla war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and communist insurgents in Malaya from 1948 to 1960. Souchou Yao tell
Devils that suck the blood of the Malayan People’: The Case for Post-Revisionist Analysis of Counter-insurgency Violence
This article addresses the ‘revisionist’ case that post-war Western counter-insurgency deployed widespread, exemplary violence in order to discipline and intimidate populations. It does this by using the Malayan Emergency of 1948–60 as a case study in extreme counter-insurgency ‘violence’, defined as high to lethal levels of physical force against non-combatants’ (civilians, detainees, prisoners, and corpses). It confirms high levels of such viol…
Negotiating with the Malayan Communist Party, 1948–89
This article looks at one of the best documented examples of negotiations with insurgents in a British colonial territory: the Baling Talks of 28–29 December 1955. At these, the Malayan Communist Party Secretary-General, Chin Peng, attempted to negotiate an end to the Malayan Emergency. It examines how the communist leadership came to desire negotiations over the period 1954–56, how it viewed them, and on what terms they might have succeeded. It …
Unfinished Decolonisation and Globalisation
This article locates John Darwin’s work on decolonisation within an Oxbridge tradition which portrays a British world system, of which formal empire was but one part, emerging to increasing global dominance from the early nineteenth century. In this mental universe, decolonisation was the mirror image of that expanding global power. According to this point of view, it was not the sloughing off of individual territories, but rather the shrinking a…
The origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Limits of British Influence in Asia
Journal Article The Limits of British Influence in Asia Get access The Key to the South Britain, the United States, and Thailand during the Approach of the Pacific War, 1929–1942. By Richard Aldrich. Singapore and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. xxiii + 416 pp ISBN 0-19-588612-7. £25.00 hb. The Limits of British Influence: South Asia and the Anglo-American Relationship 1947–56. By Anita Inder Singh. London: Pinter, 1993. xvi + 309 pp. ISBN…
Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency
This article addresses the historiography of the Malayan Emergency (1948–60). It does so by challenging two archetypal works on the conflict: those of Anthony Short and Richard Stubbs. These argue the Emergency was locked in stalemate as late as 1951. By then, a “population control” approach had been implemented — the so-called Briggs Plan for resettling 500,000 Chinese squatters. The predominantly Chinese nature of the Malayan National Liberatio…
Defence and Decolonisation in South-East Asia: Britain, Malaya and Singapore 1941-1967
This re-examines British postwar defence and decolonisation through one region, Southeast Asia. Covering metropolitan policies, local reactions and agency, the Malayan Emergency, and the Cold War
Biar Mati Anak: Jangan Mati Adat [Better Your Children Die Than Your Traditions]
Colonial armies are often studied as microcosms of imperial power and society. This paper makes the case for looking at local defence contributions in wider terms as well: as reflections of a colony's place within a system of world power. It argues that different types of colony played different roles in Britain's system of world power, producing different kinds of security. Hence, while maritime South East Asia at first appears to be a mere appe…
Did Singapore Have to Fall?
This book provides a sophisticated summary of up-to-date knowledge on the Fall of Singapore, including the critical tensions between Churchill and local commanders. A focus on the role of Churchill, and on his understanding of the guns and Singapore's fortifications, makes the Fortress central to understanding why and how Singapore fell as it did. The book includes a range of quotations that give the flavour of the time and the essence of the deb…
Colonial Armies in Southeast Asia
Colonial armies were the focal points for some of the most dramatic tensions inherent in Chinese, Japanese and Western clashes with Southeast Asia. The international team of scholars take the reader on a compelling exploration from Ming China to the present day, examining their conquests, management and decolonization. The journey covers perennial themes such as the recruitment, loyalty, and varied impact of foreign-dominated forces. But it also …
Forgotten Captives in Japanese-Occupied Asia
Introduction Part 1: Background 1. Captivities in the East: Contrasting Experiences, Contrasting Narratives Karl Hack and Kevin Blackburn Part 2: National Memories 2. Memory and the POW Experience: The United Kingdom Sibylla Jane Flower 3. Beyond Slogans: Assessing the Experiences and the History of Australian Prisoners of War of the Japanese Hank Nelson 4. Monument and Ceremony: The Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial and the Incorporation o…
Contending with Nationalism and Communism: British Policy Towards Southeast Asia, 1945–65
Contending with Nationalism and Communism: British Policy Towards Southeast Asia, 1945–65 Peter Lowe London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 xii+312 pp., ISBN: 978-0-230-52123-0 (£55.00 hardback) Peter Lo
The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm
The Malayan Emergency of 1948–60 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 these techniques and more were important, but that their weight varied dramatically across quite distinct campaign phases. The conclusions include that effective counter-insurgency analysis must i…
The origins of the Asian Cold War: Malaya 1948
From the 1970s most scholars have rejected the Cold War orthodoxy that the Malayan Emergency (1948–60) was a result of instructions from Moscow, translated into action by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). They have instead argued that local factors precipitated violence, and that the MCP was relatively unprepared when the Emergency was declared. This article puts the international element back into the picture. It shows that the change from a ‘u…
The origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Singapore from Temasek to the 21st Century: Reinventing the Global City
Once a centre for international trade and finance, Singapore is now a Singapore from Temasek to the 21st Century: Reinventing the Global City examines its evolution from trading port to city-state, showing how Singapore has repeatedly reinvented itself by creating or re-asserting qualities that helped attract capital, talent and trade. In the 14th century, the island's prosperity rested on regulating the regional carrying trade passing through th…
Between Terror and Talking, the Place of ‘Negotiation’ in Colonial Conflict
Over the last two decades there has been an increasing flow of publications on insurgency and counterinsurgency in European empires. This journal, for instance, issued a special edition in September 1993 on ‘Emergencies and Disorder in the European Empires after 1945’. Its preface finished by highlighting recurrent themes for further, comparative study, including differing legal structures, subversive security organisation, ‘the grim but recurren…
Negotiating with the Malayan Communist Party, 1948–89
This article looks at one of the best documented examples of negotiations with insurgents in a British colonial territory: the Baling Talks of 28–29 December 1955. At these, the Malayan Communist Party Secretary-General, Chin Peng, attempted to negotiate an end to the Malayan Emergency. It examines how the communist leadership came to desire negotiations over the period 1954–56, how it viewed them, and on what terms they might have succeeded. It …
War Memory and the Making of Modern Malaysia and Singapore
Singapore fell to Japanese forces on 15 February 1942. Within a matter of days, the occupying army took prisoner more than 100,000 British, Australian and Indian soldiers, and massacred thousands of Chinese civilians. A resistance movement formed in Malaya's jungle-covered mountains, but the vast majority of people resigned themselves to life under Japanese rule. The Occupation of Malaya would last three and a half long years, until the British r…
Everyone lived in fear: Malaya and the British way of counter-insurgency
Recent research on Palestine, Kenya, and Malaya has emphasised the coercive nature of ‘Britain’s dirty wars’. Abuses have been detailed and a selfcongratulatory Cold War-era account of British counter-insurgency – as ‘winning hearts and minds’ and using minimum force – subjected to intensifying attack. The result has been a swing from over sanitised narratives of the primacy of ‘winning hearts and minds’, towards revisionist accounts of relentles…
Defence and Decolonisation in South-East Asia: Britain, Malaya and Singapore 1941-1967
This book explains why British defence policy and practice emerged as it did in the period 1941-67, by looking at the overlapping of colonial, military, economic and Cold War factors in the area. Its main focus is on the 1950s and the decolonisation era, but it argues that the plans and conditions of this period can only be understood by tracing them back to their origins in the fall of Singapore. Also, it shows how decolonisation was shaped not …
Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence: The Wars of Independence in Kenya and Alger
After the Second World War, in the shadow of the Holocaust, of Japanese maltreatment of POWs and of collective punishment of civilians for nearby partisan activity across occupied Europe, internati
Detention, Deportation and Resettlement: British Counterinsurgency and Malaya's Rural Chinese, 1948–60
To understand how empires control ‘hostile’ populations, we need to penetrate below overarching terms such as ‘counter-terror’ and ‘winning hearts and minds’, in order to understand discrete constituent techniques on their own terms. Yet technique lifecycles tend to be inadequately researched. This article examines three key techniques used to control rural Chinese during the Malayan Emergency of 1948–60. Detention, deportation and, to a lesser e…
“Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency 1
This chapter provides the historiography of the Malayan Emergency. It does so by challenging two archetypal works on the conflict those of Anthony Short and Richard Stubbs. Colonel Young, seconded from London as the new Commissioner of Police, retrained the Malayan force to emphasise normal policing and service to the public. The Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) originated in the communist-led, wartime Malayan People&s;s Anti-Japanese Army…
Devils that suck the blood of the Malayan People’: The Case for Post-Revisionist Analysis of Counter-insurgency Violence
This article addresses the ‘revisionist’ case that post-war Western counter-insurgency deployed widespread, exemplary violence in order to discipline and intimidate populations. It does this by using the Malayan Emergency of 1948–60 as a case study in extreme counter-insurgency ‘violence’, defined as high to lethal levels of physical force against non-combatants’ (civilians, detainees, prisoners, and corpses). It confirms high levels of such viol…
The Malayan Emergency: Essays on a Small, Distant War
One of the first conflicts of the Cold War, the Malayan Emergency was a guerrilla war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and communist insurgents in Malaya from 1948 to 1960. Souchou Yao tell
Unfinished Decolonisation and Globalisation
This article locates John Darwin’s work on decolonisation within an Oxbridge tradition which portrays a British world system, of which formal empire was but one part, emerging to increasing global dominance from the early nineteenth century. In this mental universe, decolonisation was the mirror image of that expanding global power. According to this point of view, it was not the sloughing off of individual territories, but rather the shrinking a…
Behind Barbed Wire: Chinese New Villages during the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960 by Tan Teng Phee
Reviewed by: Behind Barbed Wire: Chinese New Villages during the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960 by Tan Teng Phee Karl Hack Behind Barbed Wire: Chinese New Villages during the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960, by Tan Teng Phee. Petaling Jaya: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, 2020. 24, 318 pp. ISBN 9789672165798 Behind Barbed Wire looks behind the façade to ask what it was really like to be moved to, and live in, a 'New Village'. Ta…
History (19 works) · Political science (19 works) · Law (14 works) · Military History and Strategy (14 works) · Asian Studies and History (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Ancient history (10 works) · History (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Sociology (10 works)