Chin Peng and the Struggle for Malaya

Abstract

“Fifty years ago, the name of Chin Peng was feared almost as much as Osama bin Laden is today”. So wrote the Hong Kong-based journalist, Philip Bowring, in 2003. Fifty years ago the British empire, in the view of Field Marshal Montgomery, was locked in a struggle “between the East and West, between Communism and Democracy, between evil and Christianity”. It was a time when Chin Peng was Britain's enemy number one in Southeast Asia. A measure of his importance is the size of the reward offered in May 1952 for his capture: M$250,000 was equivalent to first prize in the Social Welfare Lottery and a huge sum compared with the wage rates of Malayan workers. Chin Peng is Malaya's Ho Chi Minh, but a Ho Chih Minh manqué. Like Ho Chi Minh, Chin Peng was a communist who, having played a key part in local resistance to the Japanese occupation, led the struggle against the post-war restoration of European colonialism. Yet, whereas Ho Chi Minh established the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Chin Peng was thwarted in his attempt to create a socialist state in Malaya. Consequently, while the one became a national hero, the other has been cast out from the land of his birth and until recently has been without a voice in its history. The publication of his memoirs in 2003, however, enables us to reappraise Chin Peng's part in the achievement of Malayan independence.

Darurat atau “Perang Kolonial” 1948 di Tanah Melayu: Satu Perbahasan Berdasarkan Beberapa Aliran Pemikiran dan Perspektif (Emergency or “Colonial War” 1948 in Malaya: A Debate Based on Several Schools of Thought and Perspectives)

“…Antara kajian tersebut ialah Purcell (1955), Hanrahan (1954), Miller (1954;1972), Short (1964;, Pye (1956), Brimmel (19561959), Renick (1965), O'Ballance (1966), Clutterbuck (1967;, Thompson (1966) dan Stenson dan de Cruz (1971). Kajian mutakhir, selain oleh beberapa penulis tempatan seperti Mahmud (2003;, Ramlah (2004), Cheah (2009) dan Ho (2010), umumnya turut dimonopoli oleh pengkaji Barat seperti Stenton (1980), Coates (1992), Furedi (1994), Carruthers (1995), Harper (1999), Short (2000), Stockwell (1987;2006), Deery (2003;2007), Stubbs (1989;2008), Hack (1995;2001;, Comber (2009) dan Stahl (2009). Tulisan mereka memaparkan pelbagai sudut pandangan yang dipegang oleh ahli sejarah.…”

The “Singapore Fever” in China: Policy Mobility and Mutation

“…Available at Eisenhower Archives, https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/ research/online_documents/declassified/fy_2015/082_022.pdf. 16 Stockwell 1993;2006;Ramakrishna 2002. 17 Cheah 2009Wang, Gungwu, and Ong 2009;cf.…”

Cold War scripts

“…The so-called ‘Emergency’ began shortly after the murder of three European planters in the state of Perak, an action that the MCP claimed it did not endorse. During the conflict the MCP operated largely in the jungles and attacked rubber estates and tin mines to try to disrupt the economy and put pressure on the British (Stockwell, 2006: note 6, at p. 281). After the killing of the British High Commissioner Sir Henry Gurney in 1952, the violence of the British-led campaign intensified under the leadership of Sir Gerald Templer (Kheng, 2009: 137–138).…”

“…After the killing of the British High Commissioner Sir Henry Gurney in 1952, the violence of the British-led campaign intensified under the leadership of Sir Gerald Templer (Kheng, 2009: 137–138). British-Malay forces resettled suspect populations (approximately 25% of Malaya’s ethnic Chinese) into ‘new villages’ in an attempt to thwart the supply of food and information to guerillas, and detained suspected MCP members for indefinite periods with only a small number of people receiving a trial (Stockwell, 2006: note 6, at pp. 281, 288).…”

“…3. Blackburn and Hack (2012); Khoo (2010);Stockwell (2006);Tan (2012). populations and to the broader world. I then turn to examining why narratives concerning these struggles persisted long past the commonly accepted end of the Cold War in 1989.…”