A People's History of Malaysia

Syed Husin Ali's book is the most important alternative national historical narrative of Malaysia available. It is written very much in the spirit of the late Renato Constantino's The Nationalist Alternative,¹ translated into Malay as Pilihan Nasionalis.²

Why is this nationalist narrative still important more than six decades after Merdeka for Malaya in 1957? For at least two reasons. First, because Malaysia is a product of imperialism and anti-colonialism. Malaysia today is not some 'natural' cultural or geographic entity.

Rather, like most former colonial countries, it is a product of earlier globalizations, especially the British empire, preceded by the Portuguese conquest of Melaka from 1511, and then the Dutch conquest in 1641.

Without being legally pedantic, British colonialism was episodic and uneven, memorialized by history books as the Straits Settlements from almost two centuries ago, the Federated Malay States of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang from the late 19^th century, and the Unfederated Malay States of Johor and the former Siamese-ruled northern states of Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah and the British-created buffer of Perlis.

Although Labuan was a British colony earlier, where the Torrens land registration system was first tried in the British empire, Sabah came under the chartered British North Borneo Company in the late nineteenth century with the 'consent' of the Sultan of Sulu.

Over time, James Brooke and his descendants gained control of Sarawak after defeating 'native resistance'. Sarawak was their reward from the Sultan of Brunei, which gave its name to the island of Borneo.

Malaysia³ was proposed by the British, via Tunku Abdul Rahman, as a convenient post-colonial arrangement to 'reliably' govern British possessions in Southeast Asia, before the withdrawal of Brunei before its formation in 1963⁴ and Singapore in 1965, the two richest territories of the proposed federation.

Syed Husin's slim volume also reminds us of the often heroic resistance to Western, especially British, expansion, though little is said about resistance to Siamese and other 'local' or 'regional' expansions, or projections or extensions of power.

But what about popular resistance to oppression and exploitation by those geographically nearer and less culturally alien as status and class differences grew? So, this is not really a social history of popular resistance 'from below' in the pre-Merdeka or pre-Malaysia past.

The book would also have benefited from some treatment of the geographic terrain of today's Malaysia in relation to its neighbours, reminding us of interconnections before European colonization. This could have been incorporated into Chapter 2 which speaks of the prehistory of Malaysia. Recent archaeological and other findings could have been incorporated to give a fuller understanding of its peoples and links with the Nusantara world.

Syed Husin also reminds us that in 1947, a decade before Merdeka, radical nationalists—led by Dr Burhanuddin al-Helmy, Shamsiah Fakeh, Ishak Haji Muhamad (Pak Sako), Ahmad Boestamam and those in the AMCJA (All Malayan Council for Joint Action)—had agreed to the Perlembagaan Rakyat, or People's Constitution.⁵ This People's Constitution for an independent Malaya was agreed to by leaders of all ethnic communities in the peninsula, years before UMNO joined demands for independence in 1951, after Tunku replaced UMNO founding leader Onn Jaffar, with the British-sponsored MCA joining later.

After repressing patriotic anti-colonial forces, such as API (Angkatan Pemuda Insaf), from early 1948, well before declaring the 'Emergency' in June, and giving up on Dato' Onn, the British turned to Tunku's Alliance to protect imperial, especially business, interests in the post-colonial order.

Tun Razak is remembered for FELDA and NEP affirmative action efforts to reduce inter-ethnic socio-economic disparities, but he also saw greater national ownership of the economy, facilitated by the state, as necessary for national progress.

Perhaps this is the reason the young Razak was under British Special Branch (SB) surveillance from the late 1940s, together with the only two-time Agung, the late Sultan Abdul Halim of Kedah, according to long-serving former Inspector...