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New Theories and Challenges in Malaysian History
- Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
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New Theories and Challenges in Malaysian History Cheah Boon Kheng Introduction In this paper I shall discuss new theories and debates in historiography (i.e. historical writing), which present challenges to Malaysian historians in the transmission of historical knowledge. The new theories and debates occur within the current three main schools of modern historiography: (a) the Rankean/ reconstructionist or empiricist/objective; (b) the constructionist /analytical; and (c) the post-modernist/deconstructionist.1 In Malaysian historiography, the three schools have their proponents. The third – the postmodernist - presents the greatest challenge to the other two. At the outset, let me state my position. I believe in the use of theory, which is tied up with understanding the past. We study history to explain the past, to make the past intelligible to the present. In the study and writing of history there is a dialogue between the past and the present. The past presents difficulties because it is no longer with us, so we attempt to recapture, create or represent the past.2 In writing history it is difficult to divorce the historian from the need to convey meaning through the creation of a context derived from the use of facts or evidence. When a historian writes history, he/she unavoidably imposes himself/herself on the past, whether through collecting the evidence for its true meaning, or, more obviously, through the creation, writing and use of social theories. Evidence is there for the historian to infer meaning from and thus create historical knowledge. Is it possible for a historian to recover the past accurately and reconstruct it? How does the historian capture historical truth? The three schools of historians basically differ on how the historian can recover and represent the past. It is this objective alone, which determines whether theory is a useful tool to the historian in conveying the past meaningfully. I intend to discuss the views and approaches of the three different schools 119 1 For a fuller description of these approaches to historical knowledge, see Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History, Routledge, London and New York, 1997, p.18. 2 Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History, Granta Books, London, 1997, p.9. on this issue, in order to show how historians go about their work of trying to explain the past to the present-day world in which they live. In short, we should ask, how can the reality of the past be known to us? Or, how accurate can be its representation? Modern Historiography in Malaysian universities Modern or Western ‘scientific’ historical writing was first introduced in the University of Malaya in Singapore in the early 1950s. Since then, most historians studying and teaching history at Malaysian and Singaporean universities have been trained in the Western tradition, and in Western methods of research and historical writing. The struggle for the recovery of indigenous or autonomous history began only in the late 1950s and in the 1960s and received a big boost in the debates on Euro-centric versus Asia-centric types of historical writing. It began really in the period after Malaya’s independence in 1957. Autonomous indigenous history had centuries-old origins in Asia and in Southeast Asia, but it had been virtually abandoned due to the influence of Western scholarship. Yet within current Malaysian indigenous or autonomous history the Western influence is still strong. We cannot ignore this influence. In this age of globalization we need to be aware of the latest developments in historical writing taking place in the West, and, in particular, the challenges and issues posed by the latest school of postmodern theories. (a) The Reconstructionist or objective/empiricist school of history The Western tradition of ‘scientific’ or’ objective’ history-writing began with the nineteenth century German historian, Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), who is regarded as the father of modern historiography with his emphasis on knowing history as it actually happened. The act of formulating and selecting a topic for a thesis, then observing, collecting and verifying the historical facts in the archives; the citation of sources to verify the facts in the text and in footnotes; and the seminar system – these historical practices were all first popularized by Ranke and his contemporaries , and later spread to Europe and the rest of the world. They constitute a major part of the historical discipline, as we understand it today. Although he wrote no manual on ‘how to do history’, many of Ranke’s methods have been imitated all over the world, and are still used...