L ynn H ollen L ees . Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects

Beginning with the founding of Penang in 1786, Britain embarked on what became a 171-year imperial association with Malaya—a relationship that was interrupted only during World War II, when Japan invaded Malaya in 1941 and occupied it until 1945. Making Malaya “British,” however, was a protracted endeavor, mediated more by treaties with native rulers than by conquest—a lingering project that took well over a century to complete. Until the late nineteenth century, the British Empire in Malaya was limited to only the Straits Settlements, constituted in 1826 from Penang and two other well-placed bases acquired at different times—Melaka in 1795, and Singapore in 1824. Only in 1874 did Britain’s “forward movement” into the rest of Malaya begin in earnest, after treaties were progressively concluded with all the rulers of the nine Malay states in the peninsula, making Britain the common “protector” of their separate kingdoms. The establishment of “British Malaya” was finally completed only in the early decades of the twentieth century. Given its longevity, what, then, did the foisting of “empire” mean for Malaya and its peoples? In Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects, Lynn Hollen Lees seeks to answer this intriguing question by examining not just the nature and development of British colonial governance in Malaya, but also the experience of “empire” for the Malayan “subjects” living under imperial rule.

Ancient history · Biology · Botany · Empire · Sowing · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies