Head Hunters in the Malayan Emergency

Head Hunters in the Malayan Emergency

Author: Dan Poole

Publisher: Pen and Sword Military

Published: 2023-12-30

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1399057456

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Head Hunters in the Malayan Emergency investigates the infamous political scandal sparked after horrific photographs of war crimes during the Malayan Emergency were leaked to the British press. These photographs depicted British forces and their allies in Malaya scalping corpses and posing with decapitated human heads. The subsequent scandal, involving British generals, police, trade unions, and even Winston Churchill, led to the further discoveries that British forces had deployed over 1,000 men from Bornean headhunting tribes to Malaya, were publicly displaying corpses to terrify Malaya's civilian population into submission, and that photographs of such atrocities had become popular souvenirs among British troops. Using newly uncovered photographs, eyewitness accounts, and government documents, this research is the first ever attempt by any historian to create a complete history of the British-Malayan Headhunting Scandal, its political consequences, the stories of those involved, and its attempted cover-up.


Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60

Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60

Author: Leon Comber

Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 9812308296

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Malayan Emergency lasted from 1948 to 1960. During these tumultuous years, following so soon after the Japanese surrender at the end of the Second World War, the whole country was once more turned upside down and the lives of the people changed. The war against the Communist Party of Malaya's determined efforts to overthrow the Malayan government involved the whole population in one form or another. Dr Comber analyses the pivotal role of the Malayan Police's Special Branch, the government's supreme intelligence agency, in defeating the communist uprising and safeguarding the security of the country. He shows for the first time how the Special Branch was organised and how it worked in providing the security forces with political and operational intelligence. His book represents a major contribution to our understanding of the Emergency and will be of great interest to all students of Malay(si)a's recent history as well as counter-guerrilla operations. It can profitably be mined, too, to see what lessons can be learned for counterinsurgency operations in other parts of the world.


The Malayan Emergency

The Malayan Emergency

Author: Karl Hack

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-12-16

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 110708010X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first in-depth and multi-perspective study of anti-colonial resistance and counterinsurgency in the Malayan Emergency and its impact on Malaysia.


Behind Barbed Wire

Behind Barbed Wire

Author: Tan Teng Phee

Publisher: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre

Published: 2022-12-06

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 9672464592

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Behind Barbed Wire looks behind the façade to ask what it was really like to be moved to, and live in, a 'New Village'. Tan, who himself lived in New Villages growing up, combines archival sources and oral history to give us a rounded account . . . We need Tan's book, because up to now the outsider's view has predominated, and outsiders have their own agenda." Karl Hack, in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society This unique book revisits the moment in the Malayan Emergency when some 500,000 women, children and men were uprooted from their homes and moved into new settlements, guarded day and night by police and troops. A majority were rural Chinese: market gardeners, shopkeepers, rice farmers, tin miners and rubber tappers who had long made Malaya their home and had lived through the hardships of the Japanese Occupation. Based upon newly accessible archival materials and painstaking multilingual interviews with more than 80 informants in four New Villages, Tan Teng Phee rewrites the history of the Emergency, exposing the voices of those at the heart of this lauded ‘social experiment’. In Francis Loh’s words, these were ordinary villagers ‘caught in the crossfire between the British security forces and the Malayan Communist Party’ whose lives were turned inside-out and re-ordered completely, with daily curfews, body searches and food controls alongside the carrots and sticks of registration, (re)education, sanitation, psychological warfare and swift punishment. Highlighting the disciplinary aims of British policy, as well as the ways in which villagers resisted this discipline through ‘weapons of the weak’, this book forms a unique history from below of the Malayan Emergency, and of a resettlement programme which shaped the social and geographical landscape of Malaysia for generations to come.


50 Years of Malaysia: Federalism Revisited

50 Years of Malaysia: Federalism Revisited

Author: Dr. Andrew J. Harding

Publisher: Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd

Published: 2014-08-15

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 9814561967

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

On 16 September 1963 Malaysia came into being with the accession of Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore to the existing Federation of Malaya. This book marks the 50th anniversary of this notable event in South East Asia’s history. The focus of the book will be mainly on the experience of Sabah and Sarawak as subjects of the federation. It looks at the experience of federalism from a number of different perspectives, keeping in mind not just the effects of federalism on Sabah and Sarawak but also the effects on the federation as a whole. Has the bargain of 1963 been adhered to? Has Malaysian federalism been a successful example of this form of government in Asia, or has the bargain been undermined in ways contrary to the original deal in the Malaysia Agreement of 1963? What have been the practical effects on East Malaysia during 50 years?


Massacre in Malaya

Massacre in Malaya

Author: Christopher Hale

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 683

ISBN-13: 0750951818

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Malayan Emergency (1948–60) was the longest war waged by British and Commonwealth forces in the twentieth century. Fought against communist guerrillas in the jungles of Malaya, this undeclared 'war without a name' had a powerful and covert influence on American strategy in Vietnam. Many military historians still consider the Emergency an exemplary, even inspiring, counterinsurgency conflict. Massacre in Malaya draws on recently released files from British archives, as well as eyewitness accounts from both the government forces and communist fighters, to challenge this view. It focuses on the notorious 'Batang Kali Massacre' – known as 'Britain's My Lai' – that took place in December, 1948, and reveals that British tactics in Malaya were more ruthless than many historians concede. Counterinsurgency in Malaya, as in Kenya during the same period, depended on massive resettlement programmes and ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate aerial bombing and ruthless exploitation of aboriginal peoples, the Orang Asli. The Emergency was a discriminatory war. In Malaya, the British built a brutal and pervasive security state – and bequeathed it to modern Malaysia. The 'Malayan Emergency' was a bitterly fought war that still haunts the present.


Boots on the ground: Troop Density in Contingency Operations

Boots on the ground: Troop Density in Contingency Operations

Author: John J. McGrath

Publisher: Government Printing Office

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780160869501

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This paper clearly shows the immediate relevancy of historical study to current events. One of the most common criticisms of the U.S. plan to invade Iraq in 2003 is that too few troops were used. The argument often fails to satisfy anyone for there is no standard against which to judge. A figure of 20 troops per 1000 of the local population is often mentioned as the standard, but as McGrath shows, that figure was arrived at with some questionable assumptions. By analyzing seven military operations from the last 100 years, he arrives at an average number of military forces per 1000 of the population that have been employed in what would generally be considered successful military campaigns. He also points out a variety of important factors affecting those numbers-from geography to local forces employed to supplement soldiers on the battlefield, to the use of contractors-among others.


Historical Dictionary of Malaysia

Historical Dictionary of Malaysia

Author: Ooi Keat Gin

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-12-18

Total Pages: 687

ISBN-13: 1538108852

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Malaysia is one of the most intriguing countries in Asia in many respects. It consists of several distinct areas, not only geographically but ethnically as well; along with Malays and related groups, the country has a very large Indian and Chinese population. The spoken languages obviously vary at home, although Bahasa Malaysia is the official language and nearly everyone speaks English. There is also a mixture of religions, with Islam predominating among the Malays and others, Hinduism and Sikhism among the Indians, mainly Daoism and Confucianism among the Chinese, but also some Christians as well as older indigenous beliefs in certain places. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Malaysia contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Malaysia.


War Memory and the Making of Modern Malaysia and Singapore

War Memory and the Making of Modern Malaysia and Singapore

Author: Karl Hack

Publisher: NUS Press

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 9971695995

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Singapore fell to Japan on 15 February 1942. Within days, the Japanese had massacred thousands of Chinese civilians, and taken prisoner more than 100,000 British, Australian and Indian soldiers. A resistance movement formed in Malaya's jungle-covered mountains, but the vast majority could do little other than resign themselves to life under Japanese rule. The Occupation would last three and a half years, until the return of the British in September 1945. How is this period remembered? And how have individuals, communities, and states shaped and reshaped memories in the postwar era? The book response to these questions, presenting answers that use the words of Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians, British and Australians who personally experienced the war years. The authors guide readers through many forms of memory: from the soaring pillars of Singapore's Civilian War Memorial, to traditional Chinese cemeteries in Malaysia; and from families left bereft by Japanese massacres, to the young women who flocked to the Japanese-sponsored Indian National Army, dreaming of a march on Delhi. This volume provides a forum for previously marginalized and self-censored voices, using the stories they relate to reflect on the nature of conflict and memory. They also offer a deeper understanding of the searing transit from wartime occupation to post-war decolonization and the moulding of postcolonial states and identities.