Dato' John M. Gullick JSM (1916-2012)

Dato' John Michael Gullick, doyen of the historians of 19th- and early 20-century Malaysia, died peacefully on Sunday 8 April 2012 at his home in Essex, U.K., aged 96.

John Gullick was born in England in 1916, and was educated at Taunton School (1927-35) and Christ's College, Cambridge (1935-9), where he held an open major scholarship in classics. He passed both parts of the Cambridge classical tripos with first-class honours. After the war, during leave from Malaya, he studied at the London School of Economics under Professor (later Sir Raymond) Firth and Professor Maurice Freedman, obtaining a London postgraduate diploma in social anthropology with distinction. He was called to the Bar at Grays Inn in 1953, but later resigned to qualify as a solicitor in 1966. He had also become a chartered (company) secretary in 1960.

Modest prowess as an oarsman persuaded a dubious Colonial Office that Gullick might perhaps be suitable material for the Colonial Administrative Service. He attended the usual one year's training course (1938-9) before going out to Uganda, butwas soon called up for military service (1940-6). After serving with the King's African Rifles in the Ethiopian campaign, he was—like many other colonial administrators in the armed forces—selected for military government work, which took him from East Africa to Madagascar, the Middle East and, finally, Southeast Asia. For a year he lectured on military government at a training centre in London, and was then sent back to India to join the group being assembled for the military government of Malaya, in which he served until demobilized (in the rank of lieutenant colonel with a mention in despatches), and transferred to the Malayan Civil Service on the restoration of civil government in April 1946.

On arrival in Kuala Lumpur as part of the British Military Administration, he was billeted on the top floor of the old Coq d'Or Hotel in Jalan Ampang. He later recorded that on rowdy dance nights, the alabaster and elegantly draped classical sculptures of the muses which graced the entrance hall of the Coq d'Orwere turned on their rotating plinths to face the wall lest their alabaster eyes be affronted by the goings-on in the main dance hall.

Like most of the 200-odd BMA staff who landed in Malaya in September 1945, his command of Malay was on arrival limited to an army phrasebook whose contents proved incomprehensible to the villagers of Morib. In many parts of the country the situation verged on anarchy. Gullick was told, among other pressing tasks, to secure the immediate election of a new Undang (ruling chief) of the Jelebu district of Negri Sembilan to succeed the previous chief who had died a few weeks earlier (by natural causes). It had to be done in time for the newly elected chief to sign the Malayan Union treaty to be proffered to him (and other Negri Sembilan rulers) by Sir Harold MacMichael in mid-November. Meeting that deadline was a memorable crash course in the rules of the adat perpateh (while learning Malay, meanwhile).

During the Malayan Union (1946-8), Gullick remained in Negri Sembilan to perform the duties of state secretary, but was then transferred to a sequence of jobs in the federal government which continued until his retirement in 1956, despite unsuccessful requests to be sent to a district post. Among other federal posts he was secretary to the UK Police Mission (1949-50), which advised on improvements in police organization and methods during the Emergency, and to RIDA (now MARA) (1950-2) under Dato'Onn bin Jaafar—an association which he remembered with pleasure. He had a lively spell in 'economic affairs' under Oscar Spencer, the first professional economist in that sphere of government, and was, towards the end of his time (1955-6), secretary to the ministerial committee which planned Malayanization of the government services; this time the chairman was Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj—another very happy memory.

In the years after his retirement from the MCS, Gullick worked (1957-62...