¹ (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1968; orig. pub. 1937.)

² , B. W. and Andaya, L. Y., A History of Malaysia (London: Macmillan, 1982.)Google Scholar

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⁴ Ibid., p. 211. See also pp. 145, 180, 251.

⁵ Ibid., p. 62.

⁶ Wright, A. and Reid, T. H., The Malay Peninsula. A Record of British Progress in the Middle East (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912.)Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid., p. 138.

⁸ Malaysia, pp. 176, 180, 251, 274, 348, 375.Google Scholar

⁹ Parkinson, C. N., British Intervention in Malaya 1867–1877 (Singapore: University of Malaya Press, 1960)Google Scholar

¹⁰ Cowan, C. D., Nineteenth-Century Malaya: The Origins of British Political Control (London: Oxford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar

¹¹ McIntyre, D., The Imperial Frontier in the Tropics 1867–75 (London: Macmillan, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹³ (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1968.)

¹⁴ Ghosh, Kalyan Kumar, Twentieth-Century Malaysia: Politics of Decentralization of Power, 1920–1929 (Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1977)Google Scholar

¹⁵ The Politics of Decentralization: Colonial Controversy in Malaya 1920–1929 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar

¹⁶ (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1984.)

¹⁷ Tales from the South China Seas: Images of the British in South-East Asia in the Twentieth Century (London: André Deutsch, 1983.)Google Scholar

¹⁸ British Rule in Malaya: The Malayan Civil Service and Its Predecessors 1867–1942 (Oxford: Clio Press, 1981.)Google Scholar

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²⁰ Heussler, British Rule, ch. 9.

²¹ Ibid., p. 238.

²² Ibid., p. 245.

²³ Ibid., p. 292.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 289.

²⁵ Tales, , p. 91.Google Scholar

²⁶ Emergence, p. 148.Google Scholar

²⁷ Decentralization, p. 327.Google Scholar

²⁸ Protected Malay States, pp. 120, 176, 283, 379.Google Scholar

²⁹ p. xvii.

³⁰ Islam and Islamic Institutions in British Malaya. Policies and Implementation (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, p. 39).Google Scholar

³¹ Emergence, p. 169. See also p. 133.Google Scholar

³² Decentralization, p. 9.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid., p. 50.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 25.

³⁵ Decentralization, p. 64.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ibid., p. 65.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 76.

³⁹ Ibid., p. 328.

⁴⁰ Ibid., p. 335. See also p. 211.

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 214.

⁴² Ibid., p. 215.

⁴³ British Rule, p. 240.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ These authors are by no means exceptional in adopting such a perspective. Thus, the recent general history by B. W. and L. Y. Andaya—evidently following Emerson—explains decentralization in terms of the desire among British officials for greater administrative economy; Malaysia, p. 241.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Emergence, p. 15.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 17.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 23.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 22.

⁵⁰ Decentralization, p. 161.Google Scholar This catalogue of ‘colonial records’ history is, of course, far from exhaustive. A recent study of Islam in colonial Malaya—Moshe Yegar, Islam and Islamic Institutions in British Malaya (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1979)—is a further example of that genre. Yegar, who has made diligent use of the British archives, presents the bureaucratization of Islamic religious institutions as emerging out of British colonial policy (see especially p. 267). It is possible, however, to portray this bureaucratization as a product of tension existing within Malay society even in the pre-colonial period. That is to say, British administrative models would have been of use to Malay rulers but they might nevertheless have been utilized to further Malay, not British, objectives. I begin to develop this argument in ‘Islam and Malay Kingship’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1981, no. 1, pp. 60ff.Google Scholar

⁵¹ For an introduction to that debate, see Legge, J. D., Indonesia (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1964), pp. 21–3, 64–6.Google Scholar

⁵² Roff, W. R., The Origins of Malay Nationalism (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967.)Google Scholar

⁵³ When Yeo (p. 67), for example, writes of administrators being aware of ‘Malay grouses over the relatively low positions and salaries of Malay administrators’, we see the extent to which the historian has entered the world of the colonial official. (‘Grouse’ is a slang word for grumble or complaint and is seldom used today.) In similar vein we learn (p. 25) that with the first world war nearing an end Governor Sir Arthur Young ‘decided to put things on a better footing in Trengganu before he retired’.

⁵⁴ See, for example, Kahin, G. McT., Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952)Google Scholar; Benda, H. J., The Crescent and the Rising Sun (The Hague: van Hoeve, 1958)Google Scholar; Niel, R. van, The Emergence of the Modern Indonesian Elite (The Hague, van Hoeve, 1960)Google Scholar; Legge, J. D., Central Authority and Regional Autonomy in Indonesia 1950–1960 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Feith, H., The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; and McVey, R. T., The Rise of Indonesian Communism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965.)Google Scholar

⁵⁵ C. Geertz's concept of ‘Agricultural Involution’, for instance, provides a model for examining Dutch policy and its impact on colonial Java; Agricultural Involution: The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia (Berkeley: University of California for Association of Asian Studies, 1963).Google Scholar This book has provoked considerable debate. See, for an introduction, Legge, J. D., Indonesia, third edition (Sydney: Prentice Hall, 1980), pp. 110ffGoogle Scholar; and Geertz, C., ‘Culture and Politics: The Indonesian Case’, Man, 19, 4, 12 1984, pp. 511–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The concept of ‘Plural Society’, developed by J. S. Furnival, provided insights into the Netherlands Indies state at an early stage of English-language writing about modern Indonesia. See Furnival, J. S., Netherlands India: A Study of Rural Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939)Google Scholar; see especially p. xv. The influence of Weber and other socialists on some Dutch Indonesianists is well known. See, in particular, Schrieke, B., Indonesian Sociological Studies, Part I (The Hague: van Hoeve, 1966)Google Scholar; and Wertheim, W. F., Indonesian Society in Transition (The Hague: van Hoeve, 1959)Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 15.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Ibid., p. 16.

⁵⁸ Ibid., pp. 16–17.

⁵⁹ Among studies in this general area are: Sarkisyanz, E., Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tambiah, S. J., World Conqueror and World Renouncer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Geertz, C., Agricultural Involution; Dahm, B., Sukarno (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; and Anderson, B. R. O'G., ‘The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture’, in Holt, C. et al. (eds), Culture and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972.)Google Scholar

⁶⁰ To what extent did the Malay elite, on the one hand, and commoners, on the other, share a cultural viewpoint? We cannot assume a complete ideological disjunction between the royal court and the Malay commoner community. On the contrary, there is evidence that even in the colonial period the kerajaan ideal continued to command the allegiance of considerable numbers of Malays at all social levels. For instance, L. Richmond Wheeler (writing in 1928), was well aware of the continuing importance of the Raja in Malay life; The Modern Malay (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1928), pp. 231, 233.Google Scholar But perhaps the best evidence of the resilience of the kerajaan ideal is to be found in the 1940s in the massive Malay protests against British ‘Malayan Union’ policy. This policy was the most serious threat faced by the Sultanate system during the whole colonial period. For a brief and introductory discussion see my ‘Malay Kingship in a Burmese perspective’, in Mabbett, I. W. (ed.), Patterns of Kingship and Authority in Traditional Asia (London: Croom Helm, 1985), pp. 176–7.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Twentieth-Century, p. 323.Google Scholar

⁶² Ibid., p. 220.

⁶³ Decentralization, p. 50.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Twentieth-Century, p. 303.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Protector? An Analysis of the Concept and Practice of Loyally in Leader-Led Relationships within Malay Society (Pinang: Aliran, 1929.)Google Scholar

⁶⁶ See especially his Modernisation and Social Change (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972.)Google Scholar

⁶⁷ See my Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, Association for Asian Studies Monograph No. XL, 1982), pp. 45ff, 71, 92f, 101, 110.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Protected Malay States, p. 71.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Winstedt, R. O. (ed.), ‘The Malay Annals, etc’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 16, 1938, p. 95.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Roff, , Origins, pp. 69ff.Google Scholar The emphasis must be on ‘formal’, see Hooker, M. B., ‘Muhammadan Law and Islamic Law’, in Hooker, M. B. (ed.), Islam in South-East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1983), pp. 171–2.Google Scholar

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⁷² Sadka, , Protected Malay States, p. 406Google Scholar; Yeo, , Decentralization, p. 51.Google Scholar

⁷³ Yegar, , Islam, p. 184Google Scholar; Sadka, , Protected Malay States, p. 260.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Exactly how Malays perceived the colonial period is difficult to determine. It may be fruitful to compare the Malay experience with that of other Southeast Asians who had been organized in kingship systems in the pre-colonial period. See, e.g., my ‘Malay Kingship in a Burmese Perspective’, pp. 158–83.

⁷⁵ Quoted in Ibid., p. 174.

⁷⁶ Swettenham, F., British Malaya (London: John Lane, 1907), p. 284.Google Scholar Also quoted in Johan, Khasnor, Emergence, p. 14.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Quoted in Emerson, , Malaysia, p. 210.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Gullick, J., Malaysia. Economic Expansion and National Unity (London, 1981)Google Scholar is an interesting document in this regard. As a former member of the Malayan Civil Service he knew ‘British Malaya’ from the inside. Gullick does not, for instance, present the establishment of the Malay College in 1905 in terms of British altruism but as one means of ‘conciliating’ the ‘Malay aristocratic class’ (pp. 36–7).

⁷⁹ Yeo, , Decentralization, p. 12.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Emerson, , Malaysia, p. 113.Google Scholar

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⁸⁵ Ghosh, , Twentieth-Century, p. 212.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Stevenson, R., Cultivators and Administrators. British Educational Policy Towards the Malays 1875–1906 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 147.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Quoted in Roff, , Origins, p. 101.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Bawri, Fawzi and Haron, Hasrom, Sejarah Johor Maden 1855–1940 (Kuala Lumpur: Muzium Negara, 1978). See especially p. 33.Google Scholar