Historians & Their Discipline: The Call of Southeast Asian History

‘Politics in Command’: Studying Chinese Leadership in British Malaya

‘Politics in Command’: Studying Chinese Leadership in British Malaya By YONG CHING FATT Upon the completion of my postgraduate studies at the Australian National University in 1966, I returned to Singapore to take up an Assistant Lectureship in History at the University of Singapore. That was the beginning of my academic career, and I chose the history of ethnic Chinese in Malaya during the colonial era generally and their leadership in particular as my major research interest. The 1960s was a decade of many changes. While the war and revolution in Southeast Asia drew Western scholars to study the region, the advent of nation-states prompted Southeast Asian historians to take stock of past scholarship and to make contributing to research and writing on the history of the new nations a matter of urgency. Between 1958 and 1966, a sporadic, albeit heated, debate over Asiacentric as against Euro-centric history between John Bastin on one side and K.G. Tregonning, Harry Benda, John Smail, D.P. Singhal, F.J. West, F.W. Wertheim and Wang Gungwu on the other had largely been settled, Asian historians clearly favouring the latter as the way to go. My personal preference for research into Chinese leadership of the colonial era was partly a continuation of my interest in the history of the Australian Chinese during my postgraduate years and partly inspired by Tregonning, then Raffles Professor of History. Days after my joining the Department, he advised me that much more could be done on ethnic Chinese history in Malaysia and Singapore and pointed to the Malayan Kuomintang movement as a case in point. Before ending the conversation, he was quick to alert me with the saying ‘publish or perish’. His parting remarks insinuated the importance of historical studies and publication as a contribution to nation-building. Though it was an era of high hope, optimism and commitment, the 1960s presented some obstacles to and limitations on what a history researcher could do with his training. For a start, there were few publications that were closely related to Chinese leadership studies. Second, few Chinese community or political leaders during colonial times kept diaries or set up their own personal archives. Third, there were practically no 187 written works on the theory and methodology of Chinese leadership studies that might guide beginners. It was indeed a daunting task to undertake such a project with no promise of quick returns. A journey into the realm of Chinese leadership studies It may be fitting here to define what is meant by Chinese leadership in historical context. As a reflection of the complexity, diversity, fragmentation and divisiveness of the Chinese community, there existed various levels and patterns of leadership, such as clan (kinship ties), pang (dialect groupings, or Hui Kuan), community (Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Straits Chinese British Association), club (such as the Ee Hoe Hean Club), guilds and trade associations (such as the Singapore Rubber Dealers” Association), industrial (such as Singapore General Labour Union) and political (such as the Malayan Kuomintang, the Malayan Communist Party and Tan Kah-kee’s non-partisan leadership of the prewar years and Chinese Democratic League, Malayan Democratic Union and the People’s Action Party of the postwar era). Since leadership at pang, community and political levels all carried weight within the Chinese community and in the eyes of the British authorities, they deserve careful and detailed study. When tackling issues relating to Chinese leadership in the colonial era, I harboured few pre-conceived ideas and consciously maintained as detached an attitude as I could. I had some rudimentary and plausible questions about the Chinese leaders and attempted to find answers by identifying who they were, where they came from, how they emerged, what contributions they made to society, what legacy they left behind, how they got on with the British authorities and with the government in China, and why some leaders were more successful than others. The sure way to get the project started was to explore library and archival resources and to come into contact with the Chinese community in Singapore. I was encouraged on both counts. For the library resources were better than I had expected and the educated sector of the Chinese community was crying out for accurate historical knowledge of their people and for more scholarly works on Singapore and Malaysia. I left Singapore in August 1970 to join the History Discipline of Flinders University, South Australia. But there were few disruptions to my project, as...