PROLOGUE: AN UNENDING WAR
1. Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at war: an oral history (New York, 1992), p. 306.
2. Stuart Ball (ed.), Parliament and politics in the age of Churchill: the Headlam Diaries, 1935–51 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 473.
3. John W. Dower, ‘The bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese memory’, in Michael J. Hogan (ed.), Hiroshima in history and memory (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 116–42.
4. John W. Dower, Embracing defeat: Japan in the wake of World War II (London, 1999), p. 45.
5. Dr Constantine Constantinovich Petrovsky interview, OHD, SNA.
6. The Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the physical, medical and social effects of atomic bombings (New York, 1981), p. 478; Rinifo Sodei, Were we the enemy? American survivors of Hiroshima (Boulder, 1998).
7. Petrovsky interview.
8. Brian MacArthur, Surviving the sword: prisoners of the Japanese, 1942–45 (London, 2005), pp. 420–1.
9. Hugh V. Clarke, Twilight liberation: Australian POWs between Hiroshima and home (Sydney, 1985), pp. 63–95, 121.
10. The best account of the campaign remains Louis Allen, Burma: the longest war 1941–45 (London, 1984).
11. Datuk Mohd Yusoff Hj. Ahmad, Decades of change (Malaysia – 1910s–1970s) (Kuala Lumpur, 1983), pp. 283–4.
12. Sheila Allan, Diary of a girl in Changi, 1941–45 (2nd edn, Roseville, NSW, 1999), p. 137.
13. The title of a vivid early memoir by N. I. Low & H. M. Cheng is This Singapore (our city of dreadful night) (Singapore, 1946).
14. See Chin Kee Onn, Malaya upside down (Singapore, 1946), pp. 199–202.
15. Cheah Boon Kheng, Red star over Malaya: resistance and social conflict during and after the Japanese occupation of Malaya, 1941–1946 (Singapore, 1983), pp. 130–1. This is a classic study.
16. Romen Bose, The end of the war: Singapore’s liberation and the aftermath of the Second World War (Singapore, 2005), p. 101. He quotes a figure of 300 suicides.
17. Carl Francis de Souza interview, OHD, SNA.
18. Takao Fusayama, Memoir of Takao Fusayama: a Japanese soldier in Malaya and Sumatera (Kuala Lumpur, 1997), pp. 147–50.
19. Nicholas Tarling, Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (Cambridge, 1998), p. 26.
20. Mountbatten to H. R. Hone, 1 February 1944, in A. J. Stockwell (ed.), British documents on the end of empire: Malaya, part I (London, 1995), p. 73.
21. Nicholas J. White, Business, government and the end of empire: Malaya, 1945–1957 (Kuala Lumpur, 1996), pp. 64–5.
22. Paul H. Kratoska, The Japanese occupation of Malaya, 1941–45 (London, 1998), p. 32.
23. M. E. Dening, ‘Review of events in South–East Asia, 1945 to March 1946’, 25 March 1946, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part I, p. 211.
24. Richard J. Aldrich, Intelligence and the war against Japan: Britain, America and the politics of secret service (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 172, 186–7, 330.
25. S. Woodburn Kirby, The war against Japan, vol. V, The surrender of Japan (London, 1969), pp. 77–82.
CHAPTER 1 1945: INTERREGNUM
1. Bengal press adviser’s report for the first half of August 1945, L/P and J/5/142, OIOC.
2. Rajmohan Gandhi, Patel: a life (Ahmedabad, 1990), p. 341.
3. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: the viceroy’s journal (London, 1973), entry for 7 August 1945, p. 162.
4. Bengal press adviser’s report for the second half of August 1945, reporting the Dainik Basumati, L/P and J/5/142, OIOC.
5. Reuter report 18 November 1945, CASB weekly intelligence reports for Burma, f. 211, Clague Papers, Mss Eur E252/55, OIOC.
6. Angelene Naw, Aung San and the struggle for Burmese independence (Copenhagen, 2001).
7. Robert H. Taylor, Marxism and resistance in Burma, 1942–45: Thein Pe Myint’s ‘Wartime Traveler’ (Athens, OH, 1984), introduction; Joseph Silverstein (ed.), The political legacy of Aung San (Ithaca, 1972).
8. Abu Talib Ahmad, The Malay Muslims, Islam and the Rising Sun: 1941–45 (Kuala Lumpur, 2003), pp. 10–11.
9. Firdaus Haji Abdullah, Radical Malay politics: its origins and early development (Petaling Jaya, 1985), p. 67.
10. Mustapha Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno: the memoirs of Mustapha Hussain, translated by Insun Mustapha and edited by Jomo K. S. (Kuala Lumpur, 2005), p. 313.
11. Cheah Boon Kheng, ‘The Japanese occupation of Malaya, 1941–45: Ibrahim Yaacob and the struggle for Indonesia Raya’, Indonesia, 28 (1979), pp. 85–120.
12. Gandhi, Patel, p. 348.
13. S. A. Das and K. B. Subbaiah, Chalo Delhi! An historical account of the Indian independence movement in East Asia (Kuala Lumpur, 1946), pp. 221–2.
14. Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers against the Raj: a biography of Indian nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (New York, 1990), p. 539.
15. SEATIC (Southeast Asian Translation and Interrogation Corps) intelligence bulletin, 17 May 1946, interrogation of Ono Ishire, formerly Hikari Kikan Rangoon, WO203/6312, TNA.
16. Karuppiah N. interview, OHD, SNA.
17. Gandhi to Amrit Kaur, 24 August 1945, Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 81 (Ahmedabad, 1980), p. 161.
18. Karuppiah interview.
19. Joya Chatterji, Bengal divided: Hindu communalism and partition, 1932–1947 (Cambridge, 1994).
20. New Times of Burma, 23 October 1945.
21. Mamoru Shinozaki, Syonan – my story: the Japanese occupation of Singapore (Singapore, 1979), p. 24.
22. David L. Kenley, New culture in a new world: the May Fourth Movement and the Chinese diaspora in Singapore, 1919–1932 (London, 2003), ch. 7.
23. Reynolds News, 10 June 1945.
24. Ibid., 15 April 1945.
25. S. R. Rahman, ‘The new storm over Asia’, ibid., 4 November 1945.
26. Francis Wheen, Tom Driberg: his life and indiscretions (London, 1990), p. 2.
27. Ibid., p. 211.
28. John H. McEnery, Epilogue in Burma, 1945–48: the military dimension of British withdrawal (Tunbridge Wells, 1990), p. 74.
29. Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, p. 288.
30. ‘The AJUF in Perak’, WO208/3928, TNA.
31. Innes Tremlett, ‘Memorandum by Head of Malaya Country Section Force 136 on resistance forces in Malaya on the eve of the Japanese capitulation, 15 August, 1945’, WO203/4403, TNA.
32. The biographical details that follow are taken from Yoji Akashi, ‘Lai Teck, Secretary General of the Malayan Communist Party, 1939–1947’, Journal of the South Seas Society, 49 (1994), pp. 57–103.
33. By the Singapore communist Ng Yeh Lu, quoted in C. F. Yong, The origins of Malayan Communism (Singapore, 1997), p. 188.
34. Anthony Short, The communist insurrection in Malaya, 1948–60 (London, 1976), p. 41.
35. Akashi, ‘Lai Teck’.
36. James Wong Wing On, From Pacific War to Merdeka: reminiscences of Abdullah C. D. Rashid Maidin, Suriani Abdullah and Abu Samah (Petaling Jaya, 2005), p. 33.
37. Interviewed by James Wong Wing On, ibid., p. 7.
38. John Davis to SACSEA, 21 August 1945, HS1/114, TNA.
39. Chin Peng, My side of history (Singapore, 2003), pp. 111–12.
40. Dorothy Thatcher and Robert Cross, Refugee from the Japanese ([1959] Kuala Lumpur, 1993), p. 156.
41. ‘Operational report by Major T. A. Wright, Sergeant Orange, PLO’, n.d., HS1/117, TNA.
42. J. P. Hannah, ‘MPAJA personalities 5th (Perak) Independent Regiment’, HS1/107, TNA.
43. Ah Yeow [Liew Yao] to Major D. K. Broadhurst, 16 June and 21 July 1945, Broadhurst Papers, SNA.
44. M. E. Dening to Foreign Office, 3 September 1945, in A. J. Stockwell (ed), British documents on the end of empire: Malaya, part I (London, 1995), p. 123.
45. Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 120–1; C. C. Chin and Karl Hack (eds.), Dialogues with Chin Peng: new light on the Malayan Communist Party (Singapore, 2004), pp. 106–10.
46. John Davis interview, OHD, SNA; Commander Force 136 to HPD SACSEA, 19 August 1945, HS1/114, TNA.
47. Col. L. F. Sheridan to Edward Gent, 27 August 1945, ibid.
48. Quoted in Cheah Boon Kheng, Red star over Malaya: resistance and social conflict during and after the Japanese occupation of Malaya, 1941–1946 (Singapore, 1983), p. 137.
49. Richard Gough, Jungle was red: SOE’s Force 136 Sumatra and Malaya (Singapore, 2003), p. 147.
50. Khoo Salma Nasution and Abdur-Razzaq Lubis, Kinta Valley: pioneering Malaysia’s modern development (Ipoh, 2005), pp. 290–1; Wong, From Pacific War to Merdeka, pp. 10, 19.
51. ‘Operational report by Mai. H. H. Wright, Carpenter State PLO’, 28 December 1945, HS1/107, TNA.
52. Yoji Akashi, ‘The Anti-Japanese movement in Perak during the Japanese occupation, 1941–45’, in Paul H. Kratoska (ed.), Malaya and Singapore during the Japanese occupation (Singapore, 1995), pp. 113–16.
53. ‘Operational report by Maj. H. H. Wright’, HS1/107, TNA.
54. Chin Peng, My side of History, pp. 123–5.
55. I. D. Ross, ‘Operational report Funnel Blue PLO’, 19 October 1945, HS1/107, TNA; Michael Stenson, Class, race and colonialism in West Malaysia: the Indian case (Queensland, 1980), p. 101.
56. Netaji Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: a Malaysian perspective (Kuala Lumpur, 1992), pp. 228–9.
57. For example, Datuk Mohd Yusoff Hj. Ahmad, Decades of change (Malaysia – 1910s–1970s) (Kuala Lumpur, 1983), p. 293; Laurence K. L. Siaw, Chinese society in rural Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, 1983), p. 74.
58. ‘Operational report D. R. W. Alexander, Sergeant GLO’, 5 December 1945, HS1/107, TNA. Chin Peng, who visited the National Archives in Kew, later endorsed Alexander’s report; Chin Peng, My side of history, p. 128;Ho Thean Fook, Tainted glory (Kuala Lumpur, 2000), pp. 240–2.
59. ‘Operational report by Maj. H. H. Wright, Carpenter State PLO’, 28 December 1945, HS1/107, TNA.
60. Shinozaki, Syonan – my story, p. 97; Heng Chiang Ki interview, OHD, SNA.
61. N. I. Low, When Singapore was Syonan-to ([1947] Singapore, 1995), pp. 130–1.
62. Mustapha Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, p. 288.
63. The most thorough and balanced account of the conflict is Cheah, Red star over Malaya, ch. 8. For Malay religious anxieties, Abu Talib Ahmad, The Malay Muslims, Islam and the Rising Sun, esp. chs. 4 and 5.
64. Syed Naguib al-Attas, Some aspects of Sufism as understood and practised by the Malays (Singapore, 1963), pp. 47–8, 100.
65. ‘Sabilu’llah and invulnerability’, supplement to Malayan Security Service, Political Intelligence Journal, No. 9/1947, 15 June 1947, Dalley Papers, RHO; A. J. Stockwell, British policy and Malay politics during the Malayan Union experiment, 1945–1948 (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), p. 150, and n. 21.
66. ‘Report on incidents of banditry, Langkap area’, 25 September 1945, HS1/107, TNA.
67. Cheah, Red star over Malaya, p. 225.
68. J. K. Creer, ‘Report on experiences during Japanese occupation of Malaya’, 3 November 1945, Heussler Reports, RHO.
69. Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 110–11.
70. Wilfred Blythe, The impact of Chinese secret societies in Malaya: a historical study (London, 1969), pp. 327–38.
71. Mahmud bin Mat, Tinggal kenangan: the memoirs of Dato’ Sir Mahmud bin Mat (Kuala Lumpur, 1997), pp. 271–88; Gough, Jungle was red, p. 163.
72. Tunku Abdul Rahman, As a matter of interest (Petaling Jaya, 1981), pp. 162–3.
73. Pamela Ong Siew Im, One man’s will: a portrait of Dato’ Sir Onn bin Ja’afar (Penang, 1998), pp. 170–1.
74. Anwar Abdullah, Dato Onn (Petaling Jaya, 1971), p. 111.
75. Cheah, Red star over Malaya, pp. 225–30.
76. S. Chelvasingham-MacIntyre, Through memory lane (Singapore, 1973), p. 128.
77. Rahman, As a matter of interest, pp. 160–1.
78. John Tan Boon Liang, A bamboo flower blooms (New York, 1984), pp. 215–16.
79. O. W. Gilmour, With freedom to Singapore (London, 1950), pp. 74–9; Romen Bose, The end of the war: Singapore’s liberation and the aftermath of the Second World War (Singapore, 2005), pp. 2–11.
80. Gilmour, With freedom to Singapore, pp. 89–93, 150.
81. Note by Lt Cdr W. E. Machin, HQ British East India Fleet, 13 September 1945, ADM1/25907, TNA.
82. S. Woodburn Kirby, The war against Japan, vol. V, The surrender of Japan (London, 1969), pp. 266–9.
83. Chin Peng, My side of history, p. 130; Alan Stripp, Codebreaker in the Far East (Oxford, 1989), p. 176.
84. Capt. G. P. Brownie, quoted in Gough, Jungle was red, p. 158.
85. R. W. Holder, Eleven months in Malaya: September 1945 to August 1946 (Kuala Lumpur, 2005), p. 24.
86. Chin Peng, My side of history, p. 129.
87. Gough, Jungle was red, p. 161.
88. Gilmour, With freedom to Singapore, pp. 101–2.
89. Holder, Eleven months in Malaya, pp. 37–8.
90. Frank Gibney (ed), Sensō: the Japanese remember the Pacific War: letters to the editor of Asahi Shimbun (London, 1995), pp. 226–7.
91. ‘Report on RAPWI in Malaya and Singapore’, 7 January 1946, BMA/ADM/2/34.
92. Arshak Catihatoer Galstaun interview, OHD, SNA.
93. A. J. F. Doulton, The Fighting Cock: being the history of the 23rd Indian Division, 1942–1947 (Aldershot, 1951), p. 222.
94. Madelaine Masson, Edwina: the biography of the Countess Mountbatten of Burma (London, 1958), p. 150.
95. Dato Haji Mohamed Yudof Bangs interview, OHD, SNA.
96. Gilmour, With freedom to Singapore, p. 96.
97. Sheila Allan, Diary of a girl in Changi, 1941–45 (2nd edn., Roseville, NSW, 1999), pp. 137–47.
98. Sjovald Cunyngham-Brown, Crowded hour (London, 1975), pp. 147–9.
99. Letter to his wife, 10 September 1945, John Lowe Woods, An Irishman in Malaya (Peterhead, 1977), p. 136.
100. Gilmour, With freedom to Singapore, p. 100.
101. ‘Appendix A: The psychological state of RAPWI’, Lt. Col. R. F. Tred-gold, ‘Psychiatry in ALFSEA’, March 1946, WO222/1319, TNA; Robert H. Ahrenfeldt, Psychiatry in the British army in the Second World War (London, 1950), p. 235.
102. ‘Appendix D: Talks to groups of repatriates’, Lt Col. R. F. Tredgold, ‘Psychiatry in ALFSEA’, March 1946, WO222/1319, TNA.
103. Bose, The end of the war, pp. 116–24.
104. Note by Lt Cdr W. E. Machin, HQ British East India Fleet, 13 September 1945, ADM1/25907, TNA; Low, When Singapore was Syonan-to, pp. 132–3.
105. Wong, From Pacific War to Merdeka, pp. 21–2.
106. Chelvasingham-MacIntyre, Through memory lane, pp. 128–9.
107. L. F. Pendred, Director of Intelligence, ‘The visit of Pandit Nehru to Malaya’, 30 March 1946, CO717/149/8, TNA.
108. Kevin Blackburn and Edmund Lim, ‘The Japanese war memorials of Singapore: monuments of commemoration and symbols of Japanese imperial ideology’, South East Asia Research, 7, 3 (2001), pp. 321–40; Gilmour, With freedom to Singapore, pp. 118–19.
109. Kevin Blackburn, ‘The collective memory of the sook ching massacre and the creation of the civilian war memorial of Singapore’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 73, 2 (2000), p. 76.
CHAPTER 2 1945: THE PAINS OF VICTORY
1. T. L. Hughes to H. Stevenson, 15 August 1945, fortnightly reports f. 24, Clague Papers, Mss Eur E252/55, OIOC.
2. Slim to HQ ALFSEA, 15 May 1945, in Hugh Tinker (ed.), Burma: the struggle for independence, 1944–1948, vol. I: From military occupation to civil government, 1 January 1944 to 31 August 1946 (London, 1983), p. 250.
3. Loyal resolution by leading Burmese monks at Rangoon victory celebrations, 15 June 1945, Governor of Burma’s Papers, M/3/1736, OIOC.
4. The naming of Aung San’s forces is extremely confusing, to say the least. The Burma Independence Army (BIA) of 1941–2 became the Burma Defence Army (BDA) shortly after the Japanese invasion. On ‘independence’ in 1943 it became the Burma National Army (BNA). In July 1945, along with other armed elements, it became part of the Burma Patriotic Forces (PBF), though many of its personnel were stood down and became members of the People’s Volunteer Organizations (PVOs or, in Burmese, PYTs). To avoid alphabet soup we have continued to refer to the predominantly Burman forces of the PBF as BNA. For a comprehensive account using Burmese-language material, see, Mary P. Callahan, Making enemies: War and state building in Burma (Ithaca, 2004).
5. Maung Maung, To a soldier son (Rangoon, 1974), p. 77.
6. Ibid., p. 79.
7. Ibid., pp. 74–5.
8. ‘Twelfth Army report upon the state of civil affairs departments and conditions in Burma, 16 October 1945’, WO203/2269, TNA.
9. Rangoon Liberator, 27 September 1945, copy in Governor of Burma’s Papers, M/3/1693, OIOC.
10. Ibid.
11. Fortnightly intelligence report, civil censorship, no. 2, Burma and Malaya, 23 August 1945, R/8/41, OIOC.
12. ‘Report on the general feelings of the people in the Rangoon area’, c. July–August 1945, in fortnightly reports, Clague Papers, Mss Eur E252/55, OIOC.
13. Balwant Singh, Independence and democracy in Burma, 1945–52: the turbulent years (Ann Arbor, 1993), p. 14.
14. Gordon S. Seagrave, Burma surgeon (London, 1944), and Burma surgeon returns (London, 1946).
15. Gordon S. Seagrave, My hospital in the hills (London, 1957).
16. Ibid, p. 36.
17. Comments of Sir William Slim, SAC meeting, 5 September 1945, WO/203/5240, TNA; Angelene Naw, Aung San and the struggle for Burmese independence (Copenhagen, 2001), p. 135.
18. Naw, Aung San, p. 135.
19. Minute by S. Brooke-Wavell, RAF Public Relations Officer on Than Tun, November 1945, Tom Driberg papers, S3, 23, Christ Church, Oxford.
20. Aung Sang to Mountbatten, 25 September 1945, Dorman-Smith Papers, Mss Eur E215/14, OIOC.
21. Dorman-Smith to Leo Amery, 25 June 1945, L/PO/9/10, OIOC.
22. Maurice Collis, Last and first in Burma, 1941–48 (London, 1956), p. 243.
23. Meeting between the governor of Burma and representatives of organizations and communities in Burma, WO203/5238, TNA; Tinker, Burma, vol. I, pp. 339–40.
24. U Ba U, My Burma: the autobiography of a president (New York, 1959), pp, 176, 183.
25. ‘Victory dinner, 15 September 1945’, menu in Tom Driberg Papers, S3, 1, Christ Church, Oxford.
26. Naw, Aung San, p. 141.
27. Mountbatten to Dorman-Smith, 1 August 1944, Dorman-Smith Papers, Mss Eur E215/28, OIOC.
28. Sir R. MacDougall to Dorman-Smith, 20 October 1944, Dorman-Smith Papers, Mss Eur E215/15, OIOC.
29. Joseph Silverstein (ed.), The Political Legacy of Aung San (Ithaca, 1976); Gustaaf Houtman, Mental culture in Burmese crisis politics (Tokyo, 2002), pp. 181–9.
30. Callahan, Making enemies, pp. 109–11.
31. Aung San to Mountbatten, 25 September 1945, Dorman-Smith Papers, Mss Eur E215/28, OIOC.
32. Tom Driberg, Ruling passions (London, 1979), p. 215.
33. Driberg’s column in Reynolds News, 14 October 1945.
34. Ibid.
35. Francis Wheen, Tom Driberg: his life and indiscretions (London, 1990), p. 216.
36. Driberg, Ruling passions, p. 216.
37. Reynolds News, 14 October 1945.
38. Extract from a letter from Tom Driberg, SEAC to Dorman-Smith, 4 October 1945, Dorman-Smith Papers, Mss Eur E215/28, OIOC.
39. A/C Allen, A. G., 346 Wing, SEAF, to Driberg, 19 December 1945, Tom Driberg Papers, S3, 5 (miscellaneous), Christ Church, Oxford.
40. Col. John Ralston, 2 Area Singapore, to Driberg, 25 November 1945, Tom Driberg Papers, S3, 1, 25, Christ Church, Oxford.
41. Kyin Hla to Driberg, 28 September 1945, Tom Driberg Papers S3, 1, 16, Christ Church, Oxford.
42. See Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten armies: Britain’s Asian empire and the war with Japan (London, 2004).
43. Montagu Stopford to Mountbatten, 26 December 1945, Mountbatten Papers (microfilm), 8, OIOC.
44. Letter of Aung San in Rangoon Liberator, 5 October 1945, Governor of Burma’s Papers, M/3/1694, OIOC.
45. Rangoon Liberator, 27 October 1945, ibid.
46. Naw, Aung San, pp. 142–9.
47. Ibid, p. 143.
48. See, e.g., ‘Karen memorial’, memorandum presented by H. N. C. Stevenson and T. L. Hughes, February 1946, FO643/39, TNA, printed in Tinker, Burma, vol. I, pp. 650–1.
49. San C. Po, Burma and the Karens (London, 1929).
50. Jonathan Falla, True love and Bartholemew: rebels on the Burmese border (Cambridge, 1991), p. 25.
51. Callahan, Making enemies, pp. 86–113.
52. Peter Clarke, The Cripps version: the life of Sir Stafford Cripps (London, 2002).
53. Lady Pethick-Lawrence to Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, 5 September 1945, Pethick-Lawrence Papers, Box 5/83, Trinity College, Cambridge.
54. Krishna Menon to Pethick-Lawrence, 31 March 1954, ibid., 5/91.
55. Pethick-Lawrence to Huxley, 29 November 1943, ibid., 5/61.
56. Nehru to Cripps, 3 December 1945, ibid., 5/64.
57. Gandhi to Pethick-Lawrence, 12 January 1946, ibid., 5/66.
58. Intelligence report quoting soldiers’ letters, no. 172, 16 February 1945, appendix A, L/WS/1/1433, OIOC.
59. Personal communication from Eric Stokes, 1979.
60. Provincial officers and Intelligence Bureau conference on INA, 19–20 November 1945, L/WS/1/1577, OIOC.
61. Appended to above, ibid.
62. Statesman, 5 October 1945.
63. W. L. Alston ‘My day and age’: this was a compilation of memoirs and contemporary letters etc., 8005–151, box 10, National Army Museum.
64. Note from Deputy Director of Military Intelligence (S), f. 112, L/WS/1/1577, OIOC.
65. Conference of provincial officers, ibid.
66. Amrita Bazaar Patrika, 2 November 1945.
67. Statesman, 23 July 1947.
68. Governor of Bengal to viceroy, 22 August 1946, ‘Calcutta riots 1947’, L/P and J/8/655, OIOC.
69. Amrita Bazaar Patrika, 24 October 1945.
70. Amrita Bazaar Patrika, 3 November 1945.
71. Amrita Bazaar Patrika, 22 November 1945.
72. Amrita Bazaar Patrika, 2 November 1945.
73. Amrita Bazaar Patrika, 6 November 1945.
74. Amrita Bazaar Patrika, 27 October 1945.
75. S. N. Arseculeratne, Sinhalese immigrants in Malaysia and Singapore, 1860–1990: history through recollections (Colombo, 1991), p. 337.
76. ‘INA in Siam’, WO203/2462, TNA.
77. Attachments to WO203/4673, TNA.
78. Girishchandra Kotari interview, OHD, SNA; Arseculeratne, Sinhalese immigrants, p. 338.
79. Memo, 15 October 1945, WO203/4203B, TNA.
80. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: the viceroy’s journal (London, 1973), statement of the governor of North West Frontier Province, entry 24 November 1945, p. 188.
81. Ibid., entry 5 November 1945, p. 182.
82. V. S. Kulkarni and K. S. N. Munshi, The First Indian National Army trial (Poonah, 1946), p. i.
83. Ibid., pp. xv–xviii.
84. Ibid., p. 58.
85. Ibid. p. 47.
86. Conference of provincial officers, L/WS/1/1577, OIOC.
87. For instance, Sir Dalip Singh, K. N. Katju and J. N. Sapru; Kulkarni and Munshi, First Indian National Army trial, p. 171.
88. Moon, Wavell, p. 191.
89. D. K. Palit, Major General A. A. Rudra: his services in three armies and two world wars (Delhi, 1997), pp. 282, 284.
90. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 17 October 1945, CAB119/191, TNA; Cabinet Defence Meeting, minutes of meeting on 19 October 1945, CAB121/698, TNA.
91. S. K. Chettur, Malayan adventure (Mangalore, 1948), pp. 12–30.
92. Wavell to Mountbatten, 4 December 1945, WO203/4203B, TNA.
93. Malaya Command to SACSEA, 7 January 1946, WO203/4303B, TNA.
94. Chettur, Malayan adventure, pp. 31–60.
95. Mustapha Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno: the memoirs of Mustapha Hussain, translated by Insun Mustapha and edited by Jomo K. S. (Kuala Lumpur, 2005), pp. 295–327.
96. F. S. V. Donnison, British military administration in the Far East (London, 1956), p. 304. See the discussion by Abu Talib Ahmad, The Malay Muslims, Islam and the Rising Sun: 1941–45 (Kuala Lumpur, 2003), pp. 133–6.
97. Mamoru Shinozaki, Syonan – my story: the Japanese occupation of Singapore (Singapore, 1979), p. 107.
98. Herman Marie de Souza interview, OHD, SNA.
99. Cited in Romen Bose, A will to freedom: Netaji and the Indian independence movement in Singapore and Southeast Asia, 1942–45 (Singapore, 1993), p. 49.
100. T. T. Hui to unnamed official, 8 November 1945, on NARA/XL30328, SNA.
101. Wee Kim Guan, letter, 13 May 1946, BMA HQ S.DIV/151/45, SNA.
102. Examples from New Democracy, 6 October, 1945.
CHAPTER 3 1945: A SECOND COLONIAL CONQUEST
1. Cited in Robert Pearce, Attlee (London, 1977), p. 122.
2. Ibid, p. 281.
3. Note on the paper ‘Religion in the army’ by R. Savory, 7603–93/90, National Army Museum, London.
4. Sir Donald Cameron, ‘Give an account of Thy Stewardship’, 15 May 1942, CO875/19/13, TNA.
5. Wavell cited in Rajmohan Gandhi, Patel: a life (Ahmedabad, 1990)p, 433.
6. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: the viceroy’s journal (London, 1973), entry for 31 August 1945, p. 170.
7. Harold Macmillan, Tides of fortune (London, 1969), p. 246, cited in Nicholas Owen, ‘The Conservative Party and Indian independence, 1945–47’, Historical Journal, 46, 2 (2003), p. 411.
8. Victor Purcell, The memoirs of a Malayan official (London, 1965), p. 293.
9. Ralph Hone to E. V. G. Day, 21 February 1945, BMA/ADM/239, ANM.
10. Chua Ai Lin, ‘Negotiating national identity: the English-speaking domiciled commmunities in Singapore, 1930–41’, MA thesis, National University of Singapore, 2001.
11. Captain L. D. Gammans, ‘Post-war planning in South-East Asia’, British Malaya, November 1942.
12. Ralph Hone, Report on the British Military Administration of Malaya, September 1945 to March 1946 (Kuala Lumpur, 1946).
13. Amy and Richard Haggard, ‘An account of the British Military Administration of Upper Perak, Malaya – 1945/46: being memories based on diaries and letters’, 4 April 2000, RCS, CUL.
14. Melanie Chew, Of hearts and minds: the story of Sembawang (Singapore, 1998), p. 58.
15. O. W. Gilmour, With freedom to Singapore (London, 1950), p. 117.
16. Nicholas J. White, Business, government and the end of empire: Malaya, 1945–1957 (Kuala Lumpur, 1996), p. 75.
17. Sydney Caine to Lord Keynes, 19 March 1945, in A. J. Stockwell (ed.), British documents on the end of empire: Malaya, part I (London, 1995), pp. 90–1.
18. Arthur Alexander Thompson interview, OHD, SNA; J. Pickering, ‘Monthly report for January 1946, Refugees and Displaced Persons Branch, Peninsula Division’, BMA/ADM/2/28, ANM.
19. T. N. Harper, The end of empire and the making of Malaya (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 41, 66; ‘A report on the damage resulting from the war and the Japanese occupation’, 10 December 1946, CSO/6929, SNA.
20. S. K. Chettur, Malayan adventure (Mangalore, 1948), p. 22. For the figures see Michiko Nakahara, ‘Labour recruitment in Malaya under the Japanese occupation: the case of the Burma–Siam railway’, in Jomo K. S. (ed.), Rethinking Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, 1997), pp. 215–45.
21. J. Pickering, ‘Monthly report for December 1945, Refugees and Displaced Persons Branch, Peninsula Division’, BMA/ADM/2/28, ANM; ‘Monthly report for January 1946’, ibid.
22. For example, Lau Siew Foo (Malayan Security Service) and J. C. Bary, ‘A brief review of Chinese affairs during the period of the Japanese occupation’, BMA/ADM/8/1, ANM.
23. R. W. Holder, Eleven months in Malaya: September 1945 to August 1946 (Kuala Lumpur, 2005), pp. 91–2. These images are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum; see, for example, Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten armies: Britain’s Asian Empire and the war with Japan (London, 2004), illustration no. 24.
24. Jan Ruff-O’Herne, 50 years of silence (Sydney, 1994), p. 131. For pioneering work on the Malayan case, Nakahara Michiko, ‘Comfort women in Malaysia’, Critical Asian Studies, 33, 4 (2001), pp. 581–9.
25. Minutes of the inaugural meeting of the Singapore Social Welfare Council, 26 July 1946; H. R. Horne, ‘Girls’ training school’, 26 September 1946, BMA/CH/27/45, SNA.
26. V. Purcell, minute, 25 March 1946, BMA/ADM/2/46, ANM.
27. Harper, The end of empire, pp. 42–4, 97, 229–30.
28. Nutrition Unit Visit to Mersing, BMA/HQ S.DIV/466/45; Matthews to Purcell, 22 September 1945, BMA/CH/7/45, SNA; Nutrition Unit, BMA, Malaya, ‘Final Report’, BMA/DEPT/1/13, ANM.
29. Sudarajulu Laksmana Perumal interview, OHD, SNA.
30. ‘Monthly report on labour, December 1945’, BMA/DEPT/2/1, ANM.
31. Pickering, ‘Monthly report for December 1945’; ‘Monthly report for January 1946’.
32. R. E. Vine, ‘Memorandum on the medical aspects of the use of opium and allied drugs in Malaya’, 5 December 1944; War Office to ALFSEA, 18 April 1945, BMA/DEPT/1/14 Pt 1, ANM.
33. Nanyang Siang Pau [Singapore], 23 November 1945; Pook Luk, ‘Broad-casting station’, Nanyang Siang Pau, 27 November 1945. Citations from the Chinese, Malay and Tamil press come from the translations in a variety of ‘Chinese Press Summaries’ and ‘Vernacular Press Digests’ prepared by the colonial government and to be found in the Singapore National Archives, the National Library of Singapore, the Arkib Negara Malaysia and the library of SOAS, London. The translations were selective and made in haste, but in some cases they form the only extant record of these journals.
34. Chang Cheng Yean interview, OHD, SNA.
35. Heng Chiang Ki interview, OHD, SNA.
36. ‘The Civilians’ to Victor Purcell, 9 December 1945, BMA/CH/7/45, SNA.
37. Ralph Hone to F. S. V. Donnison, 25 March 1953, Hone Papers, RHO.
38. Wilfred Blythe, The impact of Chinese secret societies in Malaya: a historical study (London, 1969), pp. 338–44.
39. D. F. Grant diary, 17 June 1946, DF/370/45, ANM.
40. J. P. Mead, ‘Renewed collection of forest revenue’, 19 October 1945, DF/90/45, ANM.
41. Ang Keong Lan interview, OHD, SNA.
42. Haggard and Haggard, ‘An account of the BMA of Upper Perak’.
43. Peter Bates, Japan and the British Commonwealth Occupation Force, 1946–52 (London, 1994), p. 105.
44. Hone to F. S. V. Donnison, 1 May 1952, Hone Papers, RHO; H. T. Pagden, ‘Unrest in Malaya’, in letter to O. H. Morris of the Colonial Office, 12 October 1948, CO537/3757, TNA.
45. Charles Gamba, The origins of trade unionism in Malaya (Singapore, 1960), pp. 46–7; Arshak Catihatoer Galstaun interview, OHD, SNA.
46. Nanyang Siang Pau, 20 November 1945.
47. Victor Purcell to Maj. General G. N. Wood, 28 December 1945, WO203/5302, TNA.
48. Kin Kwok Daily News [Ipoh], 12 December 1945.
49. Sin Chew Jit Poh [Singapore], 19 November 1945.
50. Dr Benjamin Chew interview, OHD, SNA.
51. Victor Purcell to CCAO, 31 October 1945; H. S. Lee to Purcell, 29 October 1945, BMA/CH/31/45, SNA.
52. James to Purcell, 13 November 1945, BMA/CH/31/45, SNA.
53. Gay Wan Guay interview, OHD, SNA.
54. Straits Times [Singapore], 20 December 1945; HQ SACSEA, ‘Discipline: Singapore Island’, 12 January 1946, WO203/4362, TNA.
55. Kung Pao [Singapore], 18 April 1946.
56. B. Dean, The theatre at war (London, 1956), p. 490.
57. Brig, E. H. A. J. O’Donnell to Norman Collins, BBC, 21 September 1945; Minister of Food to First Lord of the Admiralty, 5 September 1945, WO32/11479, TNA.
58. Holder, Eleven months in Malaya, pp. 55–66.
59. Malaya Tribune [Kuala Lumpur], 9 December 1945.
60. For a rare historical study, Haryati Hasan, ‘Malay women and prostitution in Kota Bahru, Kelantan, 1950s–1970s’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 78, 1 (2005), pp. 97–120.
61. Memo: V. D.’ DA & QHG 14th Army, 15 October 1945; C. E. C. Davis, ‘Report on the VD situation in Singapore, 4 March 1946’; ‘Special meeting held at HQ SACSEA to consider methods to combat VD in SEAC, 7 December 1945’, BMA/DEPT/1/2, AMN.
62. Acting Commissioner of Police, Malayan Union, ‘Suppression of brothels – reasons against’, n.d. [November 1946], SCA/28/46, SNA.
63. Singapore City Committee Malayan Communist Party to Civil Affairs Department, 23 October 1945, BMA/CA/8/45, SNA.
64. Min Sheng Pau [Kuala Lumpur], 18 October, 11 December, 1945.
65. New Democracy, 27 October 1945.
66. Maj. General G. N. Wood (25 Indian Division) to Victor Purcell, 24 December 1945; Purcell to Wood, 28 December 1945, WO203/5302, TNA.
67. Min Sheng Pau, 22 October 1945.
68. New Democracy, 22 January 1946.
69. ‘BMA Monthly Report for February 1946’, WO220/564, TNA; Mubin Sheppard, Taman Budiman: memoirs of an unorthodox civil servant (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), pp. 144–5; Datuk Mohd Yusoff Hj. Ahmad, Decades of change (Malaysia – 1910s–1970s) (Kuala Lumpur, 1983), p. 325.
70. Gilmour, With Freedom to Singapore, pp. 133, 152, 155.
71. Chin Kee Onn, Malaya upside down (Singapore, 1946), pp. 190–8.
72. Wong Yunn Chii and Tan Kar Lin, ‘Emergence of a cosmopolitan space for culture and consumption: the New World Amusement Park – Singapore (1923–70) in the inter-war years’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 5, 2 (2004), pp. 279–304.
73. M. S. Daud, ‘Popularity of the “Bangsawan” is declining’, Malaya Tribune, 18 July 1948.
74. Sin Chew Jit Poh, 22 October 1945.
75. New Democracy, 4 October 1945.
76. Modern Daily News, 10 October 1945.
The ‘Eight Principles’ are:
(1) Support the Democratic Alliance of Soviet Russia, China, Britain and America. Support the new International Peace Organization.
(2) Materialize the Malayan Democratic polity. Establish organs of peoples’ wish for the whole of Malaya as well as the respective States by universal suffrage of the various nationalities and Anti-Japanese organizations of Malaya.
(3) Abolish the political structure formed by the domination of the Japanese Fascists in Malaya. Abolish all Japanese laws and decrees.
(4) Practise the absolute freedom of speech, publication, organization, public meeting and belief. Assure the legal position of all parties and organizations.
(5) Relinquish the old system of education and exercise democratic education with the respective national languages. Expand national culture.
(6) Improve the living conditions of the people; develop Industry, Agriculture and Commerce; relieve the unemployed and refugees; increase wages universally and practise the ‘8 hours’ work system’.
(7) Reduce the prices of goods to the level; stabilize the living conditions of the people; punish corrupt officials, profiteers and hoarders.
(8) Treat the Anti-Japanese armies kindly, and help the families of the fallen warriors. (Cheah Boon Kheng, Red star over Malaya: resistance and social conflict during and after the Japanese occupation of Malaya, 1941–1946 (Singa-pore, 1983), appendix D, ‘Statement of the Selangor State Committee, The Communist Party of Malaya’, 27 August 1945, pp. 308–9.)
77. Victor Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate IV: 10–30 November 1945’, WO203/5302, TNA.
78. ‘Number of cases receiving relief and amount of cash issued’, 11 October 1945, BMA/CA/48/45, SNA.
79. Cheah Boon Kheng, The masked comrades: a study of the Communist United Front in Malaya, 1945–48 (Singapore, 1979), pp. 24–5.
80. Modern Daily News [Penang], 25 December 1945.
81. Sin Chew Jit Poh, 6 October 1945.
82. See the testimonies in Agnes Khoo, Life as the river flows: women in the Malayan anti-colonial struggle (Petaling Jaya, 2004).
83. Tai Ngo, ‘To our sisters’, Kin Kwok Daily News [Ipoh], 3 November 1945.
84. A. F. P. Hulsewe, ‘Survey of current Chinese periodicals in Malaya’, Chinese Press Summary, 60 [Jan. 1946], pp. 13–18.
85. Victor Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate II: 1–19 October 1945’, WO203/5302, TNA.
86. Ibid.
87. Purcell, Memoirs of a Malayan Official, p. 353.
88. Quoted in Gamba, The origins of trade unionism in Malaya, p. 19.
89. Min Sheng Pau, 26 October 1945.
90. ‘Report on Labour troubles in Singapore’, 27 October 1945; ‘Labour sitrep Singapore’, 27 October 1945, BMA/DEPT/2/15, ANM; New Democracy, 23 October 1945.
91. Michael Stenson, Industrial conflict in Malaya: prelude to the communist revolt of 1948 (London, 1970); Leong Yee Fong, Labour and trade unionism in colonial Malaya (Penang, 1999). For Brazier, see Gamba, The origins of trade unionism, p. 101.
92. Under the name Wee Mong Cheng, Ng Yeh Lu embarked on a successful business career; he became an office bearer in the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and between 1973 and 1980 Singapore’s ambassador to Japan and Korea, C. F. Yong, The origins of Malayan Communism(Singapore, 1997), pp. 190–2, 253. Also Yoji Akashi, ‘Lai Teck, Secretary General of the Malayan Communist Party, 1939–1947’, Journal of the South Seas Society, 49 (1994), pp. 57–103.
93. Kin Kwok Daily News [Ipoh], 27 November 1945.
94. Victor Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate V: 1–20 December 1945’, WO203/5302, TNA.
95. ‘Appendix I: Lai Teck, Communist leader’, in CO537/3737, TNA.
96. Mamoru Shinozaki, Syonan – my story: the Japanese occupation of Singapore (Singapore, 1979), pp. 101–2; Yoji Akashi, ‘The Anti-Japanese movement in Perak during the Japanese occupation, 1941–45’, in Paul H. Kratoska (ed.), Malaya and Singapore during the Japanese occupation (Singa-pore, 1995), p. 118.
97. We have here drawn on the detective work of Cheah Boon Kheng, Red star over Malaya: resistance and social conflict during and after the Japanese occupation of Malaya, 1941–1946 (Singapore, 1983), pp. 244–7.
98. Quoted in Charles B. McLane, Soviet strategies in Southeast Asia: an exploration of Eastern Poicy under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, 1966), p. 306.
99. US Army, Kuala Lumpur, ‘Interview with Communist leaders’, 15 October 1945, NARA/XL26313, SNA. Lim Cheng Leng, The story of a psy-warrior: Ta Sri Dr C. C. Too (Batu Caves, 2000), pp. 67–9.
100. Shih Tai Jit Poh, 21 October 1945; Min Sheng Pau, 24 October, 1945.
101. Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate V’.
102. The following report is complied from notes taken by William McDougall of United Press during an interview with ‘Wu Tain Want’ [Wu Tian Wang], spokesman of the Singapore City Committee of the Malayan Communist Party, 23 September 1945, NARA/XL27129, SNA.
103. OSS, ‘Activities of Liu Yau’, 31 August 1946, NARA/A-71322, SNA.
104. Hu Ti Jun, ‘A letter to the British Advisor of Malayan Affairs (The Parkerton Open Letter)’, in Foong Choon Hon (ed.), The price of peace: true accounts of the Japanese occupation (Singapore, 1991), p. 288.
105. War Office to ALFSEA, 27 June, 1946; Chief Secretary to HQ Malaya District, 20 April 1950, WO32/17642, TNA.
106. Ho Thean Fook, Tainted glory (Kuala Lumpur, 2000), pp. 252–9.
107. Purcell, Memoirs of a Malayan official, pp. 352, 357.
108. Mary Turnbull, ‘British planning for post-war Malaya’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 5, 2 (1974), pp. 239–54.
109. H. M. Cheng, ‘Re: Malayan Nationality’, 5 December 1945, BMA/CH/68/45, SNA.
110. Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate II’.
111. Mountbatten to Oliver Stanley, 19 July 1944, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part 1, pp. 82–3.
112. Report by H. C. Willan, 7 October 1945, ibid., pp. 140–2. For the Sultan’s tiger kills, A. Locke, The tigers of Trengganu (London, 1954), p. 149.
113. A. J. Stockwell, British policy and Malay politics during the Malayan Union experiment, 1945–1948 (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), p. 40.
114. Sir Harold MacMichael to Sir George Gator, 22 October 1945, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part I, pp. 171–5.
115. Notes by Sir Harold MacMichael, 30 November–3 December 1945, ibid., pp. 181–6.
116. Badlishah’s letter to Yang di-Pertuan Besar [ruler] of Negri Sembilan, in Ismail bin Haji Salleh, The Sultan was not alone: a collection of letters written by Sultan Badlishah in his effort to repeal the Malayan Union policy imposed by the British Government on Malaya in 1946, and other supporting letters and documents written by others (Alor Setar, 1989), p. 2; ‘Extract from letter from an official in Malaya’, 6 January 1946, Maxwell Papers, BAM Papers, CUL.
117. Warta Negara, 11 December 1945.
118. Majlis [Kuala Lumpur], 12 December 1945.
119. Utusan Melayu [Singapore], 2 November 1945.
120. Ahmad Boestamam (trans. William R. Roff), Carving the path to the summit (Athens, OH, 1979), pp. 22–7.
CHAPTER 4 1945: THE FIRST WARS OF PEACE
1. Bengal press adviser’s report for the first half of August 1945, L/P and J/5/142, OIOC.
2. Dirk Bogarde, Cleared for take-off (London, 1995), pp. 100–110.
3. As reported in John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde: the authorised biography (London, 2005), p. 164.
4. Dirk Bogarde, Backcloth (London, 1985), pp. 125–35.
5. M. E. Dening, ‘Review of events in South-East Asia 1945 to March, 1946’, 25 March 1946, in A. J. Stockwell (ed.), British documents on the end of empire: Malaya, part I (London, 1995), p. 211.
6. Peter Bates, Japan and the British Commonwealth occupation force, 1946–52 (London, 1993).
7. George Rosie, The British in Vietnam: how the twenty-five year war began (London, 1970), p. 15.
8. David Marr, Vietnam 1945 (Berkeley, 1995), p. 135.
9. Cited in Rosie, The British in Vietnam, p. 25; there is a recent reassessment of these events in John Springhall, ‘Kicking out the Vietminh: how Britain allowed France to reoccupy south Indochina’, Journal of Contemporary History, 40, 1 (2005), pp. 115–30.
10. Marr, Vietnam, p. 458.
11. E.g. ‘A short note on Indochina’, intelligence summary appended to orders of 20th Indian Division, Gracey Papers, 4/1, LHCMA.
12. Paul Mus, Le destin de l’union française de l’Indochine à l’Afrique (Paris, 1955), cited in Susan Bayly, ‘French anthropology and the Durkheimians in Indochina’, Modern Asian Studies, 34, 3 (2000), p. 603, n. 49.
13. Germaine Krull, ‘Diary of Saigon, following the Allied occupation in September 1945’, WOS special file RG 59, lot file 59 D 190, Box 9, US National Archives, Washington, DC. We are grateful to Professor Christopher Goscha for making this available.
14. SACSEA, ‘Note on relations with surrendered Japanese forces’, Gracey Papers, 4/1, LHCMA.
15. ‘Medical History of Allied Forces in French Indo China’, September 1945–February 1946, Gracey Papers, 4/7, LHCMA.
16. Marr, Vietnam, p. 526.
17. Krull, ‘Diary of Saigon’, p. 3.
18. Ibid., p. 8.
19. Ibid., pp. 1–2.
20. Gracey’s minute in SACSEA to Cabinet, 23 September 1945, ‘Indo China Intelligence’, WO203/4431, TNA.
21. Krull, ‘Diary of Saigon’, p. 18.
22. Ibid., p. 19.
23. 12th Army to SACSEA, 27 September 1945, enclosing despatch from McKelvie, dateline Saigon, 25 September 1945, WO203/4431, TNA; cf. Krull, ‘Diary of Saigon’, p. 20.
24. Leclerc to French Minister of War, 24 September 1945, in SACSEA to Cabinet, 24 September 1945, WO203/4431, TNA.
25. See Christopher Goscha, ‘Belated Asian allies: the technical and military contribution of Japanese deserters (1945–50)’, in Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War (Oxford, 2002), pp. 37–64.
26. Reynolds News, 30 September 1945.
27. Francis Wheen, Tom Driberg: his life and indiscretions (London, 1990), p. 221.
28. Driberg regularly received copies of the nationalist ‘Viet Nam news’ and other publications and notices of nationalist activities in France and Indo-China; see Tom Driberg Papers, S3, 1–3, Christ Church, Oxford.
29. Minutes of a meeting between General Gracey and Vietnamese representatives, 10 October 1945, Gracey Papers 4/18, LHCMA.
30. Gracey to Slim, 13 October 1945, WO203/4431, TNA.
31. SACSEA to Saigon Control Commission, 24 September 1945, ibid.
32. Mountbatten to Driberg, 4 October 1945, Driberg Papers, Christ Church, Oxford, cited in Wheen, Tom Driberg, p. 219.
33. Slim to CIGS, 6 October 1945, ‘The future of Indo China’, CAB 121/741, TNA.
34. Political report 13 September to 9 November 1945, Saigon Control Commission, Gracey Papers, 4/8, LHCMA.
35. Gracey to Leclerc, 12 December 1945, Gracey Papers, 4/11, LHCMA.
36. ‘Medical History’, Gracey Papers, 4/7, LHCMA.
37. ‘To Indian Soldiers’, leaflet, Gracey Papers, 4/20, LHCMA. There were also leaflets directed to British and French soldiers, some in Vietnamese and some in French. The catalogue of Gracey’s papers also refers to pamphlets in Hindi but we were unable to locate any of these.
38. ‘Appeal to the Indian Officers and soldiers among the British troops’, Gracey Papers, 4/20, LHCMA.
39. Reynolds News, 30 September 1945.
40. Everard to M. E. Dening, 30 October 1945, ‘Indians in French Indo China, etc.’, WO203/5650, TNA.
41. Appendix to report, apparently by M. S. Aney, agent of the government of India, ‘Report on conditions of Indians in French Indo China’, early 1946, WO203/6217, TNA.
42. Viceroy’s telegram enclosed in SACSEA to Cabinet, 2 September 1945, WO203/4431, TNA.
43. Times of Saigon, 1 December 1945, WO203/4584, TNA.
44. Times of Saigon, 15 January 1946, ibid.
45. Gracey to Slim, 5 November 1945, Gracey Papers 4/11, LHCMA.
46. Krull, ‘Diary of Saigon’, p. 21.
47. Andrew Roadnight, ‘Sleeping with the enemy: Britain, Japanese troops and the Netherlands East Indies, 1945–46’, History, 87, 286 (2002), pp. 245–68, p. 248.
48. Sir John Anderson to Prime Minister, 8 August 1945, CAB126/76, TNA.
49. P. S. Gerbrandy, Indonesia (London, 1950), p. 26.
50. Frances Gouda, Dutch culture overseas: colonial practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900–1942 (Amsterdam, 1992), p. 237.
51. This is evoked wonderfully in Takashi Shiraishi, An age in motion: popular radicalism in Java, 1912–26 (Ithaca, 1990).
52. For this, see Peter Carey, ‘Myths, heroes and war’, in Peter Carey and Colin Wild (eds.), Born in fire: the Indonesian struggle for independence: an anthology (Athens, OH, 1986), pp. 6–11.
53. Harry J. Benda, The Crescent and the Rising Sun: Indonesian Islam under Japanese occupation, 1942–1945 (The Hague, 1958).
54. Goto Ken’ichi, ‘Modern Japan and Indonesia: the dynamics and legacy of wartime rule’, in Peter Post and Elly Touwen-Bouwsma (eds.), Japan, Indonesia and the war: myths and realities (Leiden, 1997), pp. 14–30.
55. Burton Raffel (trans. and ed.), The Voice of the Night: complete poetry and prose of Chairil Anwar (1993).
56. Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, Java in a time of revolution: occupation and resistance, 1944–46 (Ithaca and London, 1972), pp. 2–10.
57. Ali Sastroamijoyo, Milestones on my journey: the memoirs of Ali Sastroamijoyo, Indonesian patriot and political leader (St Lucia, 1979), p. 120.
58. Two classic accounts are G. McT. Kahin, Nationalism and revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca, 1952), and A. J. S. Reid, The Indonesian national revolution, 1945–50 (Sydney, 1974).
59. J. D. Legge, Sukarno: a political biography (Harmondsworth, 1972), pp. 181–202.
60. Tan Malaka (trans. and intro. Helen Jarvis), From jail to jail, vol. III, ([1948] Athens, OH, 1991), p. 100.
61. For more about this remarkable figure, see Rudolf Mrázek, ‘Tan Malaka: a political personality’s structure of experience’, Indonesia, 14 (1972), pp. 1–47; Anderson, Java in a time of revolution, pp. 269–83. For the Bose comparison: C. W. Watson, Of self and nation: autobiography and the representation of modern Indonesia (Honolulu, 2000), p. 74.
62. Richard Aldrich, Intelligence and the war against Japan: Britain, America and the politics of secret service (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 315–16.
63. Abu Hanifah, Tales of a revolution: a leader of the Indonesian revolution looks back (Sydney, 1972), p. 191.
64. Bogarde, Backcloth, p. 167.
65. William H. Frederick, Visions and heat: the making of the Indonesian revolution (Athens, OH, 1989), p. 200.
66. Idrus, ‘Surabaja’, trans. S. U. Nababan and Benedict Anderson, Indonesia, 5 (1968), p. 1.
67. Rudolf Mrázek, Sjahrir: politics and exile in Indonesia (Ithaca, 1994), pp. 669–70.
68. A. J. F. Doulton, The Fighting Cock: being the history of the 23rd Indian Division, 1942–1947 (Aldershot, 1951), p. 230.
69. William H. Frederick, ‘The man who knew too much: Ch. O. van der Plas and the future of Indonesia, 1927–1950’, in Hans Antöv and Stein Tønesson (eds.), Imperial policy and South East Asian Nationalism (London, 1995), p. 53.
70. Laurens van der Post, The admiral’s baby (London, 1996), p. 225.
71. F. S. V. Donnison, British military administration in the Far East (London, 1956), pp. 413–24.
72. Frederick, ‘The man who knew too much’, p. 51.
73. Van der Post, The admiral’s baby, p. 220.
74. Anthony Reid, ‘Pictures at an exhibition’, in Antöv and Tønesson (eds.), Imperial policy, p. 15.
75. Yong Mun Cheong, H. J. van Mook and Indonesian independence: a study of his role in Dutch–Indonesian relations, 1945–48 (The Hague, 1982), pp. 8–23.
76. As shown in a new and detailed study of the campaign, published since this account was completed: Richard McMillan, The British occupation of Indonesia, 1945–1946: Britain, the Netherlands and the Indonesian Revolution (London, 2005), revised from his ‘The British occupation of Indonesia, 1945–46’, unpublished PhD dissertation, London University, 2002.
77. Alberic Stacpoole, ‘Christison, Sir (Alexander Frank) Philip, fourth baronet (1893–1993)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography, Oxford, 2004; http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/51563, accessed 12 Sept. 2005.
78. Christison to Mountbatten, 13 October 1945, CAB119/191, TNA. See also Kahin, Nationalism and revolution in Indonesia, pp. 141–2.
79. SACSEA to Chiefs of Staff, 15 October 1945, CAB119/191, TNA.
80. ‘Report on morale of British, Indian and Colonial troops of ALFSEA, November 1945–January 1946’, WO203/4539, TNA.
81. Testimony of William H. Maaskemp, in Jan A. Krancher (ed.), The defining years of the Dutch East Indies, 1942–1949: survivors’ accounts of Japanese invasion and enslavement of Europeans and the revolution that created free Indonesia (London, 1996), p. 84.
82. Abu Hanifah, Tales of a revolution, pp. 194–8. See also McMillan, British occupation of Indonesia, pp. 156–64.
83. Anthony Reid, The blood of the people: revolution and the end of traditional rule in Northern Sumatra (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), p. 167.
84. Kahin, Nationalism and revolution, pp. 142–4.
85. Roadnight, ‘Sleeping with the enemy’.
86. Takao Fusayama, A Japanese memoir of Sumatra: love and hatred in the liberation war (Ithaca, 1993), pp. 102, 136–7; Reid, The blood of the people, pp. 166–9, 195.
87. Dening to Foreign Office, 3 October 1945, CAB119/191, TNA.
88. Dening to Cabinet, 24 October 1945, CAB121/698, TNA.
89. SACSEA to Cabinet, 14 October 1945, CAB119/191, TNA.
90. SACSEA to chiefs of staff, 16 October 1945, ibid.
91. We have here drawn chiefly on Frederick, Visions and heat, pp. 263–9, and Anderson, Java in a time of revolution, pp. 151–66.
92. Idrus, ‘Surabaja’, p. 1.
93. Timothy Lindsey, The romance of K’tut Tantri and Indonesia: text and scripts, history and identity (Kuala Lumpur, 1997), p. 146. For K’tut Tantri’s own highly coloured version, Revolt in paradise (New York, 1960), pp. 176–98.
94. Idrus, ‘Surabaja’, p. 23.
95. Quoted in Frederick, Visions and heat, p. 255.
96. Doulton, The Fighting Cock, p. 253. For recent accounts see John Springhall, ‘“Disaster in Surabaya”: the death of Brigadier Mallaby during the British occupation of Java, 1945–46’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 24, 3 (1996), pp. 422–43; McMillan, British occupation of Indonesia, pp. 31–46.
97. Foreign Office to Dominion governments, 6 November 1945, CAB121/698, TNA.
98. SACSEA to Cabinet, 2 November 1945; ARNEI to SACSEAC, 3 November 1945, CAB121/698, TNA.
99. ‘Indonesian version of Brig. Mallaby’s death’, WO203/2455, TNA.
100. For the Mallaby controversy see J. G. A. Parrott, ‘Who killed Brigadier Mallaby?’, Indonesia, 20 (1975), pp. 87–111; Springhall, ‘“Disaster in Surabaya”’. Richard McMillan continues the debate in British occupation of Indonesia, pp. 46–52. McMillan’s account is more sympathetic to Mallaby than previous studies.
101. SEAC to Cabinet, CAB121/698, TNA.
102. This was certainly the view of Mallaby’s deputy, Major Lewis Pugh; see David Jordan, ‘“A particularly exacting operation”: British forces and the battle of Surabaya, November 1945’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 11, 3 (2000), p. 109.
103. D. Wehl, The birth of Indonesia (London, 1949), pp. 65–7.
104. AFNEI to ALFSEA, [?]16 November 1945, WO203/2650, TNA.
105. Idrus, ‘Surabaja’, p. 13.
106. Christison to Sir Archibald Nye, 23 November 1945, CAB121/698, TNA.
107. Mrázek, Sjahrir, p. 308.
108. Anderson, Java in a time of revolution, pp. 2–10; Reid, The Indonesian national revolution, pp. 54–7. For a thoughtful discussion see William H. Frederick, ‘Shadows of an unseen hand: some patterns of violence in the Indonesian revolution, 1945–1949’, in F. Columbijn and T. Lindblad (eds.), Roots of violence in Indonesia: contemporary violence in historical perspective (Singapore, 2002), pp. 143–72.
109. Robert Cribb, Gangsters and revolutionaries: the Jakarta People’s Militia and the Indonesian revolution, 1945–1949 (Honolulu, 1991).
110. Abu Hanifah, Tales of a revolution, p. 175.
111. Ibid.
112. SACSEA to Chiefs of Staff, 22 December 1945, CAB121/699, TNA; Wehl, Birth of Indonesia, pp. 77–80.
113. Raymond (‘Turk’) Westerling, Challenge to terror (London, 1952), pp. 41–57.
114. Mrázek, Sjahrir, pp. 274–83.
115. Martha Gellhorn, ‘Java journey’, in The face of war (Harmondsworth, 1991). Mrásek, Sjahrir, pp. 209–18.
116. Frances Gouda with Thijs Brocades Zaalberg, American visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia: United States foreign policy and Indonesian nationalism, 1920–1949 (Amsterdam, 2002), p. 126.
117. Woodman’s file has been released to the National Archive, KV2/1609, TNA.
118. John Coast, Recruit to revolution: adventure and politics in Indonesia (London, 1952), pp. 1–25.
119. Dening to SACSEA, 9 November 1945, CAB121/698, TNA.
120. Aldrich, Intelligence and the war against Japan, pp. 356–7.
121. Danilyn Fox Rutherford, ‘Trekking to New Guinea: Dutch colonial fantasies of a virgin land, 1900–1942’, in Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda (eds.), Domesticating the empire: race, gender and family life in French and Dutch colonialism (London, 1998), pp. 255–71.
122. Testimony of Hendrik B. Babtist in Krancher, The defining years of the Dutch East Indies, pp. 151–3.
123. S. Woodburn Kirby, The war against Japan, vol. V, The surrender of Japan (London, 1969), pp. 334–6. Christison to Sir Archibald Nye, 23 November 1945, CAB121/698; SACSEA to Cabinet, 3 December 1945, CAB121/699, TNA.
124. The Times, 29 December 1945.
125. Doulton, The Fighting Cock, pp. 290–1.
126. Bogarde, Backcloth, p. 175; Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde, pp. 176–9. The milieu is captured in Bogarde’s first novel, A gentle occupation (London, 1980).
127. Van der Post, The admiral’s baby, p. 279.
CHAPTER 5 1946: FREEDOM WITHOUT BORDERS
1. ‘Vernacular Press Digest, No. 4’, 24 November 1945, SNA.
2. ‘Peace or Destruction’, New Demcracy, 22 November 1945.
3. Utusan Melayu, 30 November 1945.
4. We have used the account of the Australian Communist Party leader John Lockwood, Black Armada: Australia & the struggle for Indonesian independence 1942–49 (Sydney, 1975).
5. Margaret George, Australia and the Indonesian revolution (Melbourne, 1980), p. 36.
6. Batavia to Foreign Office, 6 November 1945, CAB121/698, TNA.
7. Christopher E. Goscha, Thailand and the Southeast Asian networks of the Vietnamese revolution, 1885–1954 (London, 1999), ch. 5.
8. C. C. Chin and Karl Hack (eds.), Dialogues with Chin Peng: new light on the Malayan Communist Party (Singapore, 2004), pp. 126–7.
9. Suryono Darusman, Singapore and the Indonesian revolution, 1945–50 (Singapore, 1992), ch. 3; Twang Peck Yang, The Chinese business elite in Indonesia and the transition to independence, 1940–1950 (Kuala Lumpur, 1998).
10. Yong Mun Cheong, The Indonesian revolution and the Singapore connection, 1945–1949 (Singapore, 2003), p. 118.
11. New Democracy, 14 January 1946.
12. ‘Report on RAPWI in Malaya and Singapore’, 7 January 1946, BMA/ADM/2/34, ANM.
13. Wim Willems, ‘No sheltering sky: migrant identities of Dutch nationals from Indonesia’, in Andrea L. Smith (ed.), Europe’s invisible migrants (Amsterdam, 2003) pp. 33–60.
14. Quoted in Frances Gouda with Thijs Brocades Zaalberg, American visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia: United States foreign policy and Indonesian nationalism, 1920–1949 (Amsterdam, 2002), p. 126.
15. Malayan Security Service, Political Intelligence Journal [MSS/PIJ], 15 July 1946, Dalley Papers, RHO; Commissioner of Police, ‘Dutch–Malay fracas’, 6 July 1946, CSO/2206/46, SNA.
16. Mustapha Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno: the memoirs of Mustapha Hussain, translated by Insun Mustapha and edited by Jomo K. S. (Kuala Lumpur, 2005), pp. 318–19.
17. We have here drawn on Yong, The Indonesian revolution and the Singapore connection, ch. 3.
18. Khatijah Sidek, Memoirs of Khatijah Sidek: Puteri Kesateria Bangsa (Kuala Lumpur, 2001 [1960]), pp. 71–2.
19. Firdaus Haji Abdullah, Radical Malay politics: its origins and early development (Petaling Jaya, 1985), pp. 52–3.
20. Ahmad Boestamam (trans. William R. Roff), Carving the path to the summit (Athens, OH, 1979), p. 40. We are also grateful to Dr Syed Husin Ali for his recollections. For Bose’s influence on Boestamam, see A. J. Stockwell, British policy and Malay politics during the Malayan Union experiment, 1945–1948 (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), p. 46.
21. Shamsiah Fakeh, Memoir Shamsiah Fakeh: dari AWAS ke Rejimen Ke-10 (Bangi, 2004), pp. 34–3; MSS/PIJ, 15 July 1946.
22. Farish A Noor, Islam embedded: the historical development of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS (1951–2003), vol. I (Kuala Lumpur, 2004), pp. 113–16.
23. ‘Temubual dengan Saudara Abdullah C. D., tokoh nasional tanahair kita’, an interview which appeared in the publication Suluh Rakyat in 1988.
24. Han Suyin, ‘An outline of Malayan Chinese literature’, Eastern Horizon, 3, 6 (June, 1964), pp. 6–16; My house has two doors (London, 1980), p. 71.
25. ‘Fu-sheng’, ‘A new understanding is indispensable to the Malayan Overseas Chinese’, New Democracy, 9 December, 1945.
26. Victor Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate VII: 12 December 1945–7 January 1946’, WO203/5302, TNA.
27. ‘Pa-Jen’ [Hu Yuzhi], ‘The emancipation of the Chinese intelligentsia in Malaya’, Feng Hsia, 21 January 1946.
28. Speech by Hu Yu-chih [Hu Yuzhi], ‘Twofold mission of the democratic movement’, Min Sheng Pau, 12 October 1945.
29. T. J. Danaraj, Japanese invasion of Malaya and Singapore, memoirs of a doctor (Kuala Lumpur, 1990), pp. 153–4.
30. Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore story (Singapore, 1998), pp. 89, 138.
31. Yeo Kim Wah, Political development in Singapore, 1945–55 (Singapore, 1973), pp. 88–98.
32. ‘The Malayan Democratic Union manifesto’, in Charles Gamba, The origins of trade unionism in Malaya (Singapore, 1960), pp. 433–7.
33. Lim Hong Bee, Born into war: autobiography of a barefoot colonial boy who grew up to face the challenge of the modern world (London, 1994), p. 373.
34. Charles B. McLane, Soviet strategies in Southeast Asia: an exploration of eastern policy under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, 1966), pp. 308, 318.
35. ‘A manifesto to the people of different races for the realisation of democratic policies, issued by the Central Executive Committee of the Malayan Communist Party on 5 February, 1946’, New Democracy, 8 February 1946.
36. Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate VII’.
37. Chin Peng, My side of history (Singapore, 2004), pp. 157–8.
38. McLane, Soviet strategies in Southeast Asia, pp. 310–12. McLane was one of the few scholars to be given access to the Special Branch’s four-volume, Basic paper on the Malayan Communist Party (1950).
39. Min Sheng Pau, 8 March 1946.
40. Sin Chew Jit Poh, 18 January 1946.
41. Manicasothy Saravanamuttu, The Sara saga (Singapore, n.d. [1969]), p. 132; New Democracy, 29 January 1946.
42. René Onraet to Hone, 6 March 1946, CO537/1579.
43. P. A. B. McKerron, ‘Minute of the meeting of the local civil labour employment committee, Fort Canning, 5 January 1946’, BMA/DEPT/2/4, ANM.
44. Diary 29 January 1946 to 1 February 1946, in Philip Ziegler (ed.), Personal diary of Admiral the Lord Mountbatten: Supreme Allied Commander, South-East Asia, 1943–1946 (London, 1988), p. 289.
45. ‘SAC’s 316th Meeting’, 9 February 1946, Hone Papers, RHO.
46. Mountbatten to chiefs of staff, 11 February 1946, CO537/1579.
47. Khong Kim Hoong, Merdeka: British rule and the struggle for independence in Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, 1984), p. 60. See also, John Springhall, ‘Mountbatten versus the generals: British military rule of Singapore, 1945–46’, Journal of Contemporary History, 34, 4 (2001), pp. 335–52.
48. Mountbatten to Brazier, 9 March 1946, CO537/1579, TNA.
49. Mountbatten to Stanley, 26 March 1946, ibid.
50. Hone to Gater 13 March 1946, ibid.
51. Ralph Hone to F. S. V. Donnison, 25 March 1953, Hone Papers, RHO.
52. Hone to Gator, 2 April 1946, CO537/1579, TNA.
53. Victor Purcell, The memoirs of a Malayan official (London, 1965), pp. 353–6.
54. ‘Crisis in Malaya’, New Democracy, 21 February 1946.
55. Mountbatten to George Hall, 4 January 1946, in A. J. Stockwell (ed.), British documents on the End of Empire: Malaya, part I (London, 1995), p. 191.
56. Summarized by Hone to Chinese Consul, Singapore, 8 March 1946, CO537/1580, TNA.
57. Amy and Richard Haggard, ‘An account of the British Military Administration of Upper Perak, Malaya – 1945/46: being memories based on diaries and letters’, 4 April 2000, RCS, CUL.
58. James de Vere Allen, The Malayan Union (New Haven, 1967), pp. 34–6.
59. Sultan of Johore to G. H. Hall (Colonial Office), 15 February 1946, RCS, CUL.
60. Johore Malays to Sultan Ibrahim, 22 February 1946, Maxwell Papers, RCS, CUL.
61. George Maxwell, ‘The enigma of Ibrahim of Johore’, n.d., ibid.
62. For these debates see Ariffin Omar, Bangsa Melayu: Malay concepts of democracy and community, 1945–50 (Kuala Lumpur, 1993).
63. See the seminal essay by Kassim bin Ahmad, Characterization in Hikayat Hang Tuah: a general survey of character-portrayal and analysis and interpretation of the characters of Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat (Kuala Lumpur, 1966), p. 43.
64. John Coast, Recruit to revolution: adventure and politics in Indonesia (London, 1952), p. 41; Donna J. Amoroso, ‘Dangerous politics and the Malay nationalist movement, 1945–47,’ South East Asia Research, 6, 3 (1998), p. 259.
65. Quoted in Amoroso, ‘Dangerous politics’, p. 259.
66. O. W. Gilmour, With freedom to Singapore (London, 1950), p. 186.
67. Henry Barlow, Swettenham (Kuala Lumpur, 1995), p. 727.
68. ‘Notes of a discussion at the Colonial Office on 26 February 1946 on the White Paper on Malayan Union’, ibid.
69. The Times, 16 April 1946.
70. MacDonald to Hall, 21–22 June 1946, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part I, pp. 252–5.
71. Pelita Malaya, 6 May 1946.
72. Firdaus Haji Abdullah, Radical Malay politics: its origins and early development (Petaling Jaya, 1985), pp. 82–4; Amoroso, ‘Dangerous politics’; Boestamam, Carving the path, p. 49.
73. Lt. Col. R. F. Tredgold, ‘Psychiatry in ALFSEA’, March 1946, WO222/1319, TNA.
74. ‘HMS Northway: minutes and findings of a Board of Enquiry’, 20 October 1945, ADM116/6422, TNA.
75. MSS/PIJ, 31 May 1947.
76. MSS/PIJ, 31 May 1946.
77. New Democracy, 30 January 1946.
78. David Duncan, Mutiny in the RAF: the Air Force Strikes of 1946, The Socialist History Society, Occasional Papers Series, no. 8, London, 1998.
79. R. D. Heanly, ‘Final Report on SIB investigation of RAF Mutinies in India’, 21 May, 1946; Tom Driberg to William Attwood, 11 April 1946; minute 23 July 1946, AIR20/11516, TNA.
80. The Times, 14 August 1946.
81. The Times, 11 October 1946.
82. Stopford to Roberts, 9 October 1946, WO203/6249; Roberts to Stopford to Roberts 11 October 1946, WO203/6249; TNA.
83. Montgomery to All Commanders at Home and Overseas, 15 October 1946, WO32/16169, TNA.
84. Brigadier K. T. Darling to Montgomery, 24 May 1946, WO32/16169, TNA.
85. Quoted in Robert H. Ahrenfeldt, Psychiatry in the British army in the Second World War (London, 1950), p. 210.
86. Brian Aldiss, The twinkling of an eye, or my life as an Englishman (London, 1998), p. 201.
87. Northern Star, 6 May 1946; Straits Echo, 13 May 1946.
88. G. B. Folliot, OSPC Island, memorandum, 3 January 1947, FO371/69629, TNA; Sunday Gazette, 17 February 1946.
89. Aisha Akbar, Aishabee at war: a very frank memoir (Singapore, 1990), p. 229.
90. Stokes to Jessie Muirhead, 24 June 1945, Stokes Papers, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge.
91. Patrick French, Liberty or death: India’s journey to independence and division (London, 1997), pp. 222–3.
92. Dash Diaries, February 1946, Mss Eur C188/6, f. 74, OIOC.
93. Sir Arthur Dash, Bengal Diary, vol. 9, p. 67, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge. This is an extended version of the contemporary diary in the India Office Collection.
94. Intelligence Report, 26 January, 1946, L/PO/9/15, OIOC.
95. Report by Thakin Than Tun on AFPFL Congress, 17–23 January 1946, L/PO/9/15, OIOC.
96. See, e.g., Karen Memorial presented by H. Stevenson and T. L. Hughes, 2 February 1946, in Hugh Tinker (ed.), Burma: the struggle for independence 1944–48, vol. I: From military occupation to civil government, 1 January 1944 to 31 August 1946 (London, 1983), pp. 650–2.
97. Dorman-Smith, memoir, Mss Eur E215/32b, f. 272, OIOC.
98. Dorman-Smith to David Monteath, 5 April 1946, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/72, OIOC.
99. S. K. Chettur, Malayan adventure (Mangalore, 1948), pp. 84–5.
100. F. V. Duckworth, ‘The visit of Pandit Nehru to Malaya, 18 March to 26 March 1946’, 4 April 1946, CO717/149/8, TNA.
101. Chettur, Malayan adventure, pp. 78–80.
102. Tamil Nesan, 22 June 1946; Jananayakam, 24 June 1946.
103. L. F. Pendred, Director of Intelligence, ‘The visit of Pandit Nehru to Malaya’, 30 March 1946, CO717/149/8, TNA.
104. Saravanamuttu, The Sara saga, pp. 133–4.
105. Cabinet meeting, London, 13 March 1946, in Tinker, Burma, vol. I, p. 686.
106. Note on political matters by Major E. G. Robertson, 25 August 1946, Clague Papers, Mss Eur E252/54, OIOC.
107. Dorman-Smith to Pethick-Lawrence, 6 January 1946, Dorman-Smith Papers, Mss Eur E215/10, OIOC.
108. Dorman-Smith to Pethick-Lawrence, 22 January 1946, ibid.
109. Dorman-Smith to Pethick-Lawrence, 6 and 22 January 1946, ibid.
110. ‘Ralph Michaelis’s Independent Newsletter Reports from Burma’, 13 December 1945, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/72, f. 41, OIOC.
111. The fullest discussion of this whole incident from both the British and Aung San’s side can be found in the papers of Sir Hubert Rance, ‘Prosecution of Aung San’, Mss Eur F169/1, OIOC. This is essentially Dorman-Smith’s file, with a note by Sir Henry Knight passed on to Rance.
112. Reynolds News, 24 March 1946, cited in Angelene Naw, Aung San and the struggle for Burmese independence (Coperhagen, 2001), p. 238, n. 72.
113. B. Fase to Tom Driberg, 9 March 1946, Tom Driberg Papers, S3, 2, 25, Christ Church, Oxford.
114. Mountbatten to government of Burma, 27 March 1946, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/1, OIOC.
115. Cabinet Mission, Delhi, to Cabinet, London, 18 April 1946, L/PO/9/15, OIOC.
116. Pethick-Lawrence to Attlee, 7 April 1946, Pethick-Lawrence Papers, Box 1/72, Trinity College, Cambridge.
117. Dorman-Smith memoirs, Mss Eur E215/32b, ff. 264–6, OIOC.
118. Ibid., f. 266.
119. Government of Burma to Burma Office, 13 May 1946, ‘Prosecution of Aung San’, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/1, OIOC.
120. Ibid; also ‘Humble petition of Ma Ahma, wife of the late Abdul Raschid, residing at Paung’, M/5/102, OIOC, reproduced in Tinker, Burma, vol. I, p. 728.
121. Dorman-Smith Papers, Mss E215, 32 a/b, f. 218, OIOC.
122. GB to BO, 13 May 1946; Aung San’s rejoinder to the charges in the Legislative Council was printed in the Hanthawaddy newspaper c. 4 April 1946.
123. Ibid.
124. Naw, Aung San, p. 156, citing Hanthawaddy newspaper.
125. Appreciation by G. Appleton, 27 March 1946, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F 169/1, ‘Prosecution of Aung San’, OIOC.
126. Dorman-Smith Papers, Mss Eur E215/32, f. 64, OIOC.
127. Ibid., f. 207.
128. Report of the Tantabin Enquiry Committee (Rangoon, 1947), pp. 1–36. There is an unpaginated copy in the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
129. Kyaw Win to an associate, 17 May 1946, ibid. p. 5.
130. Ibid., pp. 7–12.
131. Aung San to T. L. Hughes, 22 May 1946, M/4/2619, OIOC.
132. Attlee to Pethick-Lawrence, 7 May 1946, in Tinker, Burma, vol. I, p. 773.
133. Pearce to Dorman-Smith, 18 August 1946, Dorman-Smith Papers, Mss Eur E215/15, OIOC.
134. Tom Driberg, Ruling passions (London, 1978), pp. 215–16.
135. Aung San to Driberg, 12 June 1946, Driberg Papers, S3, Christ Church, Oxford.
136. Naw, Aung San, p. 166, citing Maurice Collis, Last and first in Burma, 1941–48 (London, 1956), p. 280.
137. Dorman-Smith to John Humphrey Wise, 8 November 1946, Dorman-Smith Papers, Mss Eur E215/16, OIOC.
138. Ibid.
139. U Thein Pe Myint, ‘A critique of the communist movement in Burma’, 1973, Mss Eur C498, f. 12, OIOC.
140. Burma and the insurrections, Government of the Union of Burma Publications, September 1949 (Rangoon, 1949), p. 3; Thein Pe, ‘A critique’, f. 19.
141. M. E. Dening, ‘Review of political events in South-East Asia 1945 to March 1946’, 25 March 1946, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part I, p. 218.
142. Clyde Sanger, Malcolm MacDonald: bringing an end to empire (Montreal and London, 1995).
143. John Falconer to Hugh Bryson, 3 October 1969, Heussler Papers, RHO.
144. Ibid., p. 80. The description of the palace is by Han Suyin, a frequent guest of MacDonald’s.
CHAPTER 6 1946: ONE EMPIRE UNRAVELS, ANOTHER IS BORN
1. Nicholas Mansergh (ed.), Constitutional relations between Britain and India: the transfer of power 1942–47, vol. VII, The Cabinet Mission (London, 1977), introduction.
2. Maulana Azad to Wavell, 13 June 1946, ibid., p. 914.
3. Wavell, note of 29 June 1946, ibid., p. 1085.
4. Penderell Moon (ed.), Wavell: the viceroy’s journal (London, 1973), entry for 24 October 1946, p. 363
5. Patrick French, Liberty or death: India’s journey to independence and division (London, 1997), pp. 247–9.
6. Moon, Wavell, entry for 27 August 1946, p. 341.
7. Joya Chatterji, Bengal divided: Hindu communalism and partition, 1932–1947 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 230–40; Suranjan Das, Communal riots in Bengal, 1905–1947 (Delhi, 1991), p. 165.
8. Extract in ‘Calcutta riots 1946–7’, L/P and J/8/655, OIOC.
9. Cited in Das, Communal riots, p. 168.
10. Press release of Working Committee of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, 6 September 1946, ‘Calcutta riots 1946–7’, L/P and J/8/655, OIOC.
11. Sim to Col. F. J. Erroll MP, n.d. August 1946, extract in ‘Calcutta riots 1946–7’, ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Governor Bengal to viceroy, 22 August 1946, entry Monday 19 August, ibid.
14. Das, Communal riots, p. 171.
15. This paragraph follows Das, Communal riots, the most authoritative secondary account of these events. This narrative itself is largely based on the 10-volume, Calcutta disturbances commission of enquiry: minutes of evidence (Calcutta, 1946).
16. Statesman, 26 August 1946.
17. Das, Communal riots, pp. 183–4.
18. Statesman, 24 August 1946; the newspaper’s coverage of these events was collected in the ‘Great Calcutta Killing, August 1946–September 1946’, copy in Stephens Papers, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge.
19. Dash, Bengal diary, vol. IX, p. 80, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge.
20. Moon, Wavell, entry for 3 November 1946, p. 370.
21. Diary entry for 17 August, ‘Report on the disturbances in Calcutta commencing August 16 1946 issued by HQ Eastern Command’, Bucher Papers, 7901–87 A, National Army Museum.
22. Diary entry for 18 August, ibid.
23. Dash diaries, August 1946, ff. 74–80, Mss Eur C188/6, OIOC.
24. Governor Bengal to viceroy, 28 August 1946, ‘Calcutta riots 1946–7’, L/P and J/8/655, OIOC.
25. ‘Record of life in the Indian Civil Service 1930–47’, F. O. Bell Papers, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge.
26. A retrospective account; Edward McInery to J. H. Habbakuk, 14 February 1976, McInery diary, Mss Photo Eur 148, OIOC.
27. Personal communications to the authors, 2001, from Professor F. M. L. Thompson.
28. Secret report on the political situation in Bengal for the second half of September 1946 by chief secretary to government of Bengal, J. M. G. Bell Papers, 2, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge.
29. ‘Note on recent experiences’, late 1946, J. M. G. Bell Papers, 3, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge.
30. Manju Bandyopadhyay, cited in Sandip Bandyopadhyay, ‘The riddles of partition: memories of the Bengali Hindus’, in Ranabir Samaddar (ed.), Reflections on partition in the east (Calcutta, 1997), p. 68.
31. J. Tyson to his family, 30 November 1946, Tyson Papers, Mss Eur E341/41, OIOC.
32. Moon, Wavell, entry for 27 August 1945, p. 341.
33. Tyson to his family, 17 November 1946, Tyson Papers, Mss Eur E341/41, OIOC.
34. Counter-Intelligence summary, Burma Command, fortnight to 15 August 1946, f. 11, L/WS/1/744, OIOC.
35. Ibid., f. 21.
36. Counter-Intelligence summary, fortnight to end July, 1946, f. 35, ibid.
37. Note by Rance, 15 September 1946, in Hugh Tinker (ed.), Burma: the struggle for independence 1944–1948, vol. II: From general strike to independence, 31 August 1946 to 4 January 1948 (London, 1984), p. 19.
38. SACSEA to Cabinet, 17 September 1946, L/PO/9/15, OIOC.
39. John H. McEnery, Epilogue in Burma, 1945–48 (Tunbridge Wells, 1990), p. 56.
40. See daily progress reports of general strike, 24–30 September 1945, ‘The strike of September 1946’, Arnold Papers, Mss Eur F145/38 OIOC.
41. Mr Binns’s press release and note ‘immediate’ by F. Donnison, 21 September 1946, ibid.
42. Appeal by Maung Tin and F. B. Arnold, c. 23 September 1946, ibid.
43. Note by Montgomery, 23 September 1946, L/PO/9/15, OIOC.
44. Note by Rance, 15 September 1946, in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, p. 22.
45. ‘His Excellency’s interview with U Saw’, 12 September 1945, L/PO/9/15, OIOC.
46. Note by Rance, ‘Interview with U Saw’, 12 September 1946, in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, p. 17.
47. Memorandum of U Saw to Rance, October 1946, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/72, OIOC.
48. Ibid.
49. SACSEA to Cabinet, 21 September 1946, L/PO/9/15, OIOC.
50. Rance To Pethick-Lawrence, 21 September 1946, in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, p. 56.
51. Aung San to Rance, 17 September 1946, L/WS/1, 669; reproduced in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, p. 33.
52. Rance to Pethick-Lawrence, 19 September 1946, ibid. pp. 47–8.
53. The Burman, 3 November 1946, clipping, FO/643/38 (G6/G546), TNA, reproduced in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, p. 105.
54. Cabinet India and Burma Committee, 18 September 1946, ibid. pp. 36–9.
55. Progress Report for October 1946, Government of Burma Commerce and Supply Department, Arnold Papers, Mss Eur F145/24, OIOC.
56. Ibid.
57. Wavell reproducing Nehru to Aung San, 8 October 1946, in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, p. 78, citing Mansergh, Transfer of Power in India, vol. VIII, p. 682.
58. ‘Hon. Aung San’s proposal for the immediate grant of a fuller measure of self-government to the people of Burma’, 11 November 1946, R/8/36, OIOC.
59. Rance to Pethick-Lawrence, 13 November 1946, in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, pp. 139–40
60. Rance to Pethick-Lawrence, 13 November 1946, R/8/36, OIOC.
61. Rance to Pethick-Lawrence, 12 November 1946, ibid.
62. Rance’s memorandum on the need to accelerate the progress of constitutional advance for Burma, 12 November 1946, ibid.
63. Rance to Pethick-Lawrence, 13 November 1946, in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, pp. 139–44.
64. Angelene Naw, Aung San and the struggle for Burmese independence (Copenhagen, 2001), pp. 177–81.
65. Extract from The Burman, 3 November 1946, 643/38, TNA, cited in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, p. 105.
66. Thein Pe, ‘A critique of the communist movement in Burma’, a note to Indian communsists, 1973; Mss Eur C498, OIOC.
67. Invitation to reception 22 October 1946, Tom Driberg Papers, S3, 2, 51, Christ Church, Oxford; cf. ibid., no. 54, conversation between Tom Harrisson (Mass Observation) and Karen representatives, passed on to Driberg.
68. Combined civil and military intelligence for December 1946, ff. 70–4, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/5, OIOC.
69. ‘Reuter interview with Bogyoke Aung San, 16 December 1946’, in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, p. 194.
70. John H. McEnery, Epilogue in Burma, 1945–48 (Tunbridge Wells, 1990), pp. 75–90.
71. Hansard, House of Commons debates, vol. 431, col. 2343–5, cited in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, p. 209.
72. Laithwaite to Monteath, 17 December 1946, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/72, OIOC.
73. Ibid.
74. Laithwaite to Monteath, 20 December 1946, ibid.
75. Excerpt from Hansard, House of Commons debates, 20 December 1946, col. 2343; clipping in Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/72, OIOC.
76. McEnery, Epilogue in Burma, pp. 95–6.
77. ‘Memorial service for the men who died in captivity at work on the Burma–Siam Railway, 1942–5, December 18 1946’, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/72, OIOC.
78. Fujio Hara, Malayan Chinese and China: conversion in identity consciousness, 1945–57 (Singapore, 2003), p. 32.
79. Charlie Cheah Fook Yong, OHD, SNA.
80. Kevin Blackburn, ‘The collective memory of the sook ching massacre and the creation of the civilian war memorial of Singapore’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 73, 2 (2000), pp. 76–7.
81. Beatrice Trefalt, Japanese army stragglers and memories of the war in Japan, 1950–1975 (London, 2003), p. 25.
82. ‘Jap nationals in SEAC area’, 19 September 1946, WO208/3909, TNA.
83. SEALF to SCAP, 1 March 1947, WO208/3910, TNA.
84. ‘Japanese Surrendered Personnel in Central Malaya’, December 1946, WO 208/3910, TNA.
85. Kazuo Tamayama, Railwaymen in the war: tales by Japanese railway soldiers in Burma and Thailand, 1941–1947 (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 274–5.
86. Ibid., pp. 233–7.
87. Mamoru Shinozaki, Syonan – my story: the Japanese occupation of Singapore (Singapore, 1979), pp. 102–4.
88. Enclosures on BMA/CH/43/46, SNA.
89. Wee Hock Chye, Comfort homes and early years (Kuala Lumpur, n.d.) pp. 45–7.
90. Kevin Blackburn and Edmund Lim, ‘The Japanese war memorials of Singapore: monuments of commemoration and symbols of Japanese imperial ideology’, South East Asia Research, 7, 3 (2001), p. 336.
91. Kenichi Goto, Tensions of empire: Japan and Southeast Asia in the colonial and postcolonial world (Singapore, 2003), p. 196.
92. Chin Peng, My side of history (Singapore, 2003), pp. 146–7; C. C. Chin and Karl Hack (eds.), Dialogues with Chin Peng: new light on the Malayan Communist Party (Singapore, 2004), p. 96.
93. O. W. Gilmour, With freedom to Singapore (London, 1950), pp. 16–18.
94. Victor Purcell, Memoirs of a Malayan official (London, 1965), p. 303.
95. Letter of 7 July 1946, in Amy and Richard Haggard, ‘An account of the British Military Administration of Upper Perak, Malaya – 1945/46: being memories based on diaries and letters’, 4 April 2000, RCS, CUL.
96. E. T. Campbell in 1931, quoted in Margaret Shennan, Out in the midday sun: the British in Malaya, 1880–1960 (London, 2000), p. 114.
97. ‘Notes for women proceeding to Malaya: 21st May 1946’; minute 8 June, 1946, CO717/149/2, TNA.
98. Vernon Bartlett, Go East, old man (London, 1948), p. 103.
99. J. M. Gullick, ‘My time in Malaya’, June 1970, Heussler Papers, RHO.
100. Bartlett, Go East, old man, p. 103.
101. A. H. Dickenson to Gent, 22 December 1945; W. S. Morgan, minute, 25 October 1945, CO273/673/7, TNA.
102. Nicholas J. White, Business, government and the end of empire: Malaya, 1945–1957 (Kuala Lumpur, 1996), p. 82.
103. S. K. Chettur, Malayan adventure (Mangalore, 1948), p. 178–87.
104. Philip Warner, ‘Hone, Sir (Herbert) Ralph (1896–1992)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/51132, accessed 3 May 2005.
105. Gent to Sir George Cator, 5 November 1946, A. J. Stockwell (ed.), British documents on the end of empire: Malaya, part I (London, 1995), pp. 271–4.
106. A. J. Stockwell, British policy and Malay politics during the Malayan Union experiment, 1945–1948 (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), ch. 5; Malayan Security Service, Political Intelligence Journal [MSS/PIJ], 31 December 1946, Dalley Papers, RHO.
107. Creech Jones to Gent, 1 May 1946, CO537/1529, TNA.
108. Nicholas Tarling, ‘“Some rather nebulous capacity”: Lord Killearn’s appointment in Southeast Asia’, Modern Asian Studies, 20, 3 (1986), pp. 559–600.
109. Charles Gamba, The origins of trade unionism in Malaya (Singapore, 1960), p. 67; Ronald Milne interview, OHD, SNA.
110. Office of the Special Commissioner in South East Asia, ‘Social Welfare Conference, Singapore 19–23 August 1947: Minutes’, SCA/5/47, SNA.
111. ‘Youth Welfare in Singapore, 10 July 1947’, ibid.
112. Gent to Creech Jones, 1 October 1946, CO537/1579, TNA.
113. Gamba, The origins of trade unionism in Malaya, pp. 100–113.
114. ‘Malayan Communist Party policy’, Supplement No. 9 to MSS/PIJ, 31 July 1948; HQ Malaya Command, Weekly Intelligence Review, 2 April 1946, CO537/1581, TNA.
115. Singapore General Labour Union, ‘An account of experiences derived from strikes’, printed in MSS/PIJ, 31 May 1946.
116. MSS/PIJ, September, 1946.
117. Gamba, The origins of trade unionism in Malaya, p. 196; Min Sheng Pau, 5 December 1946.
CHAPTER 7 1947: AT FREEDOM’S GATE
1. Viceroy (Wavell) to Secretary of State, 21 January 1947, ‘INA and Free Burma Army’, L/WS/1/1578, OIOC.
2. Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: the viceroy’s journal (London, 1973), entry for 31 December 1946, p. 403.
3. Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 1 March 1947, Pethick-Lawrence Papers, Box 5/73, Trinity College, Cambridge.
4. Moon, Wavell, entry for 27 March 1947, p. 433.
5. Mountbatten to Secretary of State, 20 March 1947, L/WS/1/1578, OIOC.
6. Viceroy’s personal report, 1 August 1947, in Nicholas Mansergh (ed.), The transfer of power in India, vol. XII, The Mountbatten viceroyalty: princes, partition and independence, 8 July–15 August 1947 (London, 1983), p. 455.
7. Attlee to Mountbatten, 17 July 1947, ibid., p. 215.
8. Discussion between Jinnah and Mountbatten, 12 July 1947, ibid., p. 122.
9. ‘Report of the Armed Services Nationalisation Committee’ and minutes, papers of Major-General D. A. L. Wade, 8204/797–2, NAM.
10. New Times of Burma, 13 July 1947.
11. Sri Krishna, special correspondent, Delhi, draft article 4 July 1947, papers of Lady Edwina Mountbatten, MB Q4, Southampton University Library.
12. Ayesha Jalal, The state of martial rule: the origins of Pakistan’s political economy of defence (Cambridge, 1990), p. 29.
13. Viceroy’s Personal Report, 1 August 1947, in Mansergh, Transfer of power in India, vol. XII, p. 452.
14. Ibid.
15. Benjamin Zachariah, Nehru (London, 2004), p. 200.
16. Darbar Notes, no. 6, December 1946, L/WS1/1654, OIOC.
17. Personal memorandum by Lt. Gen. R. A. Savory, 4–9 May 1947, ibid.
18. Discussion between Mountbatten and Gandhi, early July 1947, in Mansergh, Transfer of power in India, vol. XII, p. 50.
19. Meeting of Partition Council, 10 July 1947, ibid., p. 51.
20. Fauj Akhbar: Indian Forces Weekly, 3 May 1947, 7403–28, NAM.
21. Note on ‘The Sikhs’ by Lt. Gen. R. A. Savory, endorsed by Auchinleck 29 September 1947, Savory Papers, 7603/93–92, NAM.
22. Jalal, State of martial rule, p. 43.
23. Lt. Col. Siddiq to Lt. Gen. R. A. Savory, 27 August 1947, Savory Papers 7603/93–83, NAM.
24. W. Alston Papers, vol. X, 8005/151–11, NAM.
25. Ibid., entry for 15–16 August 1947.
26. Nehru to Pethick-Lawrence, 20 October 1947, Pethick-Lawrence Papers, Box 5/76, Trinity College, Cambridge.
27. Statesman, 5 May 1947.
28. Statesman, 10 May 1947.
29. Statesman, 1 May 1947.
30. Statesman, 2 May 1947.
31. People’s Age (Bombay), 20 April, 18 May 1947.
32. Statesman, 6 May 1947.
33. John Tyson to his family, 16 January 1947, Tyson Papers, Mss Eur E341/41, OIOC.
34. John Tyson to his family, 2 February 1947, ibid.
35. Joya Chatterji, ‘The fashioning of a frontier: the Radcliffe line and Bengal’s border landscape, 1947–52’, Modern Asian Studies, 33, 1 (1999), pp. 185–243.
36. An excellent brief account of Nagas and Naga nationalism can be found in Julian Jacobs with Alan Macfarlane, Sarah Harrison and Anita Herle, Hill peoples of northeast India, the Nagas: society, culture and the colonial encounter (Stuttgart, 1990), esp. pp. 151–70.
37. Mildred Archer, ‘Journey to Nagaland, an account of six months spent in the Naga Hills in 1947; entry for 23 8 1947’, typescript in Archer private collection cited in Jacobs, The Nagas, ch. 14, n. 24.
38. William Saumarez Smith, ‘Seventy four days in 1947’, p. 27, Mss Eur C409, OIOC; Dash, Bengal Diary, vol. IX, p. 106, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge.
39. Statesman, 15 August 1947.
40. Tapan Raychaudhuri, Romonthon Atharba Bhimratipraptar paracharit charcha (Calcutta, 1993), p. 98, cited in Sandip Bandyopadhyay, ‘The riddles of partition: memories of the Bengali Hindus’, in Ranabir Samaddar (ed.), Reflections on partition in the East (Calcutta, 1997), p. 68.
41. Statesman, 4 August 1947.
42. Statesman, 8 September 1947.
43. Statesman, 30 October 1947.
44. Dash, Bengal Diary, vol. X, p. 6, Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge.
45. Samar Sen, ‘Birthday’, translated by Subhoranjan Das Gupta, ‘Poems on a divided world’, in Samaddar, Reflections on partition, p. 201.
46. Attlee to Nehru, 17 July 1947, Mansergh, Transfer of power in India, vol. XII, p. 214.
47. Angelene Naw, Aung San and the struggle for Burmese independence (Copenhagen, 2001), p. 186, citing Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, 4 January 1947, in Mansergh, Transfer of power in India, vol. XI, p. 503.
48. Naw, Aung San, p. 188.
49. Dawn [Karachi], 6 January 1947.
50. New York Times, 6 January 1947, cited in Uma Shankar Singh, Burma and India 1948–62 (Delhi, 1979), p. 43.
51. Dr R. H. Taylor, ‘Interview with U Kyaw Nyein’, 19 November 1976, Mss Eur D1066/2, OIOC.
52. See CAB 133/3, TNA; the key documents are printed in Hugh Tinker (ed.), Burma. The struggle for independence 1944–48, vol. II: From general strike to independence, 31 August 1946 to 4 January 1948 (London, 1984), pp. 271–84 and following.
53. Taylor, ‘Interview with U Kyaw Nyein’.
54. Ibid.
55. Cabinet India–Burma Committee meeting, 22 January 1947, L/WS/1/1578, OIOC.
56. E.g. summaries in Rance to Pethick-Lawrence, 9 January 1947, in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, pp. 242–3.
57. Central intelligence staff Singapore telegram, 5 January, military appreciations 1946–7, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/5, OIOC.
58. John H. McEnery, Epilogue in Burma 1945–48 (Tunbridge Wells, 1990), p. 173.
59. Rance to Laithwaite, 28 January 1947, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/4, OIOC; Rance to Pethick-Lawrence, 22 January 1947, Tinker, Burma, vol. II, p. 328.
60. Rance to Laithwaite, 28 January, 1947, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/4, OIOC.
61. Naw, Aung San, pp. 188–9; ‘Bogyoke Aung San speaks to press conference,’ 3 February 1947, M/4/2590, OIOC.
62. Tom Driberg, Ruling passions (London, 1978), p. 217.
63. Naw, Aung San, pp. 191–2.
64. Taylor, ‘Interview with U Kyaw Nyein’.
65. Naw, Aung San, p. 198.
66. Narrative of Arthur George Bottomley, Mss Eur E362/2, OIOC, reproduced in part in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, pp. 841–8.
67. Ibid., p. 842.
68. ‘Note of a meeting of a Karen deputation with the Governor on Tuesday 25 February, 1947, ibid., pp. 437–8.
69. Pethick-Lawrence to Rance, 3 April 1947, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/2, OIOC.
70. Aung San to the frontier peoples, Times of Burma, 15 June 1947.
71. ‘Frontier Areas Commission of Enquiry; Recommendations and Observations’, 24 April 1947, R/8/33, OIOC.
72. New Times of Burma, 5 June 1947.
73. Rance to Burma Office, 29 May 1947, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/2, OIOC.
74. Rance to Listowel, 3 June 1947, ibid.
75. Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/6, OIOC.
76. McEnery, Epilogue in Burma, pp. 98–9.
77. New Times of Burma, 14 June 1947.
78. New Times of Burma, 11 June 1947.
79. New Times of Burma, 3 June 1947.
80. New Times of Burma, 31 May 1947.
81. New Times of Burma, 4 June 1947.
82. Governor of Burma to Secretary of State, 16 July 1947, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/13, OIOC.
83. Ibid.
84. Khin Myo Chit, ‘Memoir’, f. 105, Mss Eur D1066/1, OIOC.
85. Governor of Burma to Secretary of State, 19 July 1947, 12.00 hours, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/13, OIOC.
86. Governor of Burma to Secretary of State, 19 July 1947, 16.25 hours, ibid.
87. Khin Myo Chit, ‘Memoir’, f. 105.
88. McEnery, Epilogue in Burma, p. 110.
89. G. E. Crombie to Laithwaite, 19 July 1947, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/74, OIOC.
90. New Times of Burma, 22 July 1947.
91. June Bingham, U Thant of Burma: the search for peace (London, 1966), pp. 164–6.
92. Governor of Burma to Secretary of State, 20 July 1947, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/13, OIOC.
93. Governor of Burma to Secretary of State, 22 July 1947, 12.45 hrs, ibid.
94. Governor of Burma to Secretary of State, 20 July 1947 15.25 hrs, ibid.
95. Taylor, ‘Interview with U Kyaw Nyein’.
96. G. E. Crombie to Laithwaite, 23 July 1947, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/74, OIOC.
97. Rance to Laithwaite, 29 July 1947, ibid.; in the event it was Lord Listowel, the new secretary of state, and not Cripps who visited the country.
98. Laithwaite to Rance, 6 August 1947, ibid.
99. R. E. Gibson, Govt Burma, to R. E. McGuire, Burma Office, 24 July 1947, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/13, OIOC.
100. J. A. Moore’s statement, Governor of Burma to Secretary of State, 28 July 1947, ibid.
101. Governor of Burma to Secretary of State, 28 July 1947, second telegram, ibid.
102. New Times of Burma, 28 July 1947.
103. McEnery, Epilogue in Burma, p. 112.
104. Governor of Burma to Secretary of State, 2 August 1947, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/13, OIOC.
105. Maung Maung, A trial in Burma: the assassination of Aung San (The Hague, 1962), p. 27.
106. Governor of Burma to Secretary of State, 27 August 1947, Rance Papers, Mss Eur F169/13, OIOC.
107. Richard Butwell, U Nu of Burma (Stanford, 1963), p. 88.
108. See ‘Lord Listowel in Burma’, correspondence and press releases, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/74, OIOC.
109. Laithwaite to Rance, 7 November 1947, ibid.
110. Frank N. Trager, Burma from kingdom to republic (London, 1966), p. 97.
111. Sangayama Monthly Bulletin, 1, 6 October 1953, p. 10; cited in Gustaaf Houtman, Mental culture in Burmese crisis politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (Tokyo, 1999), p. 205.
112. Rance to Laithwaite, 12 November 1947, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/74, OIOC.
113. Balwant Singh, Independence and democracy in Burma, 1945–52, the turbulent years (Ann Arbor, 1993), p. 58.
114. Rance to Laithwaite, 17 November 1947, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/74, OIOC.
115. ‘Speech to Orient Club, 27 December 1947’, Rance Papers, F169/6, OIOC.
CHAPTER 8 1947: MALAYA ON THE BRINK
1. T. A. Keenleyside, ‘Nationalist Indian attitudes towards Asia: a troublesome legacy for post-Independence Indian foreign policy’, Pacific Affairs, 55, 2 (1982), pp. 210–30.
2. For the conference, Nicholas Mansergh, ‘The Asian Conference’, International Affairs, 23, 3 (July 1947), pp. 295–306; Philip Hoalim, The Malayan Democratic Union: Singapore’s first democratic political party (Singapore, 1973), pp. 20–24. For Sjahrir’s role, Rudolf Mrázek, Sjahrir: politics and exile in Indonesia (Ithaca, 1994), pp. 334–9.
3. Abu Hanifah, Tales of a revolution: a leader of the Indonesian revolution looks back (Sydney, 1972), p. 236.
4. Mohamed Noordin Sopiee, From Malayan Union to Singapore separation: political unification in the Malaysia region, 1945–65 (Kuala Lumpur, 1974), pp. 56–71; Clive J. Christie, A modern history of Southeast Asia: decolonisation, nationalism and separatism (London, 1996), pp. 39–47. Robert Cribb and Lea Narangoa, ‘Orphans of empire: divided peoples, dilemmas of identity, and old imperial borders in East and Southeast Asia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 46, 1 (2004), pp. 164–87.
5. Alfred Lelah interview, OHD, SNA; ‘A profile of the late Mr Albert Abraham Lelah’, The Scribe [Journal of Babylonian Jewry], 70 (October 1998), http://www.dangoor.com/70012.html. For the refugees in India, Joan G. Roland, The Jewish communities of India: identity in a colonial era (New Brunswick, 1998), p. 222.
6. Jacob Ballas interview, OHD, SNA.
7. Chan Heng Chee, A sensation of independence: a political biography of David Marshall (Singapore, 1984).
8. Manicasothy Saravanamuttu, The Sara saga (Singapore, n.d. [1969]), p. 134. MSS/PIJ, May 1946.
9. Gerald de Cruz, Rojak rebel: memoirs of a Singapore maverick (Singapore, 1993), pp. 68–73.
10. Malaya Tribune, 28 November 1947.
11. Rajeswary Ampalavanar, The Indian minority and political change in Malaya, 1945–1955 (Kuala Lumpur, 1981), pp. 18–19.
12. For Thivy, Michael Stenson, Class, race and colonialism in West Malaysia: the Indian case (Queensland, 1980), pp. 141–51; ‘Draft proposals for an All-Malaya Indian Organisation (MIC) to be inaugurated at the All-Malayan Indian Conference, Kuala Lumpur 1–4 August 1946’, Thivy Papers, Perpustakaan Universiti Malaya. See also S. Arasaratnam, ‘Social and political ferment of the Malayan Indian community, 1945–55’, Proceedings of the First International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies, Kuala Lumpur April 1966 (Kuala Lumpur, 1966), pp. 141–55.
13. Malayan Security Service, Political Intelligence Journal [MSS/PIJ], 15 April 1947.
14. MSS/PIJ, 30 June 1946, 31 August 1947, John Dalley Papers, RHO; Ampalavanar, The Indian minority and political change in Malaya, pp. 25–32.
15. See Halimah Mohd Said and Zainab Abdul Majid, Images of the Jawi Peranakan of Penang; assimilation of the Jawi Peranakan community into the Malay society (Universiti Pendikikan Sultan Idris, 2004), pp. 53–57, 104–7; Khoo Boo Teik, Paradoxes of Mahathirism: an intellectual biography of Mahathir Mohamad (Kuala Lumpur, 1995), p. 81–8.
16. ‘British Defence Committee in South East Asia, 10th meeting’, 12 March 1947, CO537/2503, TNA.
17. MSS/PIJ, 30 September 1947; UK High Commission Ceylon to Commonwealth Relations Office, 10 April 1948; FARELF to War Office, 13 April, 28 April, 4 May, 14 May 1948; ‘Aide Memoire’, DO35/2406, TNA. Charles Gamba, The origins of trade unionism in Malaya (Singapore, 1960), p. 208.
18. Gent to Creech Jones, 11 May 1947, in A. J. Stockwell (ed), British Documents on the End of Empire: Malaya, part I (London, 1995), p. 335.
19. M. V. del Tufo, Malaya: a report on the 1947 census of population (London, 1949); Charles Hirschman, ‘The meaning and measurement of ethnicity in Malaysia: an analysis of census classifications’, Journal of Asian Studies, 46, 3 (1987), pp. 555–82.
20. Utusan Melayu, 18 November 1946.
21. Malaya Tribune, 13 November 1947.
22. Gamba, The origins of trade unionism, p. 436.
23. C. S. V. K. Moorthi, President of Selangor Estate Workers’ Trade Union, 24 March 1947, Thivy Papers.
24. R. Shlomowitz and L. Brennan, ‘Mortality and Indian labour in Malaya, 1877–1933’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 29 (1992), pp. 57–75.
25. Pierre Boulle, Sacrilege in Malaya ([1958] Kuala Lumpur, 1983), pp. 35–6, 44.
26. For a first-hand description of a planter’s work see Margaret Shennan, Out in the midday sun: the British in Malaya, 1880–1960 (London, 2000), pp. 176–81. For the quotation, Henri Falconnier, The soul of Malaya ([1931] Singapore, 1985), p. 52.
27. Gamba, The origins of trade unionism, pp. 32–3, and for general conditions on estates, pp. 252ff.
28. ‘Report: Work on the plantations’, FS13622/49, ANM.
29. ‘Special meeting of the Malayan Union Labour Advisory Board… 3 July 1947’, MU Labour/167/47, ANM.
30. We are grateful to Dr Emma Reisz for her comments. See also, J. Norman Palmer, ‘Estate workers’ health in the Federated Malay States in the 1920s’, in P. Rimmer and L. Allen (eds.), The underside of Malaysian history: pullers, prostitutes and plantation workers (Singapore, 1990), pp. 179–92.
31. Stephen Dobbs, Tuan Djek: a biography (Singapore, 2002).
32. Scorpio, ‘ITBA’, The Planter, 22, 9 (September 1947), p. 235.
33. ‘Planters in Malaya’, The Times, 9 October 1951.
34. S. K. Chettur, Malayan adventure (Mangalore, 1948), pp. 249–50.
35. Ravindra K. Jain, ‘Leadership and authority in a plantation: a case study of Indians in Malaya (c. 1900–42)’, in G. Wijeyewardene (ed.), Leadership and authority: a symposium (Singapore, 1968), pp. 163–73; P. Ramasamy, ‘Indian war memory in Malaysia’, in P. Lim Pui Huen and Diana Wong (eds.), War and memory in Malaysia and Singapore (Singapore, 2000), pp. 90–105.
36. Arasaratnam, ‘Social and political ferment of the Malayan Indian community, 1945–55’, pp. 141–55.
37. This paragraph and the next is drawn from ‘[Draft] Summary of reports regarding recent disturbances on estates in South Kedah’, in Gent to Creech Jones, 8 April 1947, CO537/2173, TNA; K. Nadaraja, ‘The Thondar Pedai movement of Kedah, 1945–47’, Malaysia in History, 24 (1981), pp. 95–103; Leong Yee Fong, Labour and trade unionism in colonial Malaya: a study of the socio-economic and political bases of the Malayan labour movement, 1930–1957 (Pulau Pinang, 1999), pp. 164–7, and Gamba, The origins of trade unionism, pp. 252–303.
38. Gamba, The origins of trade unionism, p. 284.
39. Brazier to Commissioner for Labour, 19 September 1947, LAB/158/47, ANM; For example, ‘Trade dispute Rengo Malay Estate, 12 November 1947’, LAB/139/47, ANM.
40. Quoted in Gamba, The origins of trade unionism, p. 296.
41. Gimson to Creech Jones, 4 March 1947, CO537/2171, TNA; Malaya Tribune, 14 February 1947.
42. Minutes of sixth Governor General’s conference in Singapore, 11 March 1947, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, Part I, pp. 303–6.
43. Labour Report for October 1947, LAB/54/47, ANM.
44. Malaya Tribune, 16 October 1947.
45. Chin Peng, My side of history (Singapore, 2004), pp. 195–6; ‘Lawlessness and insecurity’, The Planter, 23, 10 (October, 1947), pp. 240–44.
46. Quoted in Nicholas J. White, Business, government and the end of empire: Malaya, 1945–1957 (Kuala Lumpur, 1996), p. 82.
47. Ibid., p. 103; Norman Cleaveland, Bang! Bang! in Ampang (San Pedro, CA, 1973), p. 54.
48. Gimson to Creech Jones, 2 March 1947 and 20 March 1947, CO537/2171, TNA.
49. Gent to J. J. Paskin, 20 September 1946; Paskin to Gent, 4 October 1946, CO537/1522, TNA.
50. ‘Report on the Special Conference on the threat of Communism in Malaya and Singapore, 1947’, 26 June 1947, Dalley Papers, RHO.
51. Michael Stenson, Repression and revolt: the origins of the 1948 communist insurrection in Malaya and Singapore (Athens, OH, 1969).
52. C. W. Lyle, ‘Selangor Protest Committee’, 16 July 1947, LAB/158/47, ANM.
53. Returns on LAB/562/47, ANM. See also Leong, Labour and trade unionism in Malaya pp. 168–73.
54. Laurence K. L. Siaw, Chinese society in rural Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, 1983), p. 86.
55. MSS/PIJ, 15 October 1947.
56. They were also written with access to British documents and ‘as told’ to a retired Daily Telegraph journalist, Ian Ward, and his wife and collaborator Norma Miraflor. Chin Peng discusses the relationship briefly in his preface to My side of history, pp. 4–5.
57. Ibid., pp. 167–74.
58. MSS/PIJ, 31 March 1947.
59. There is a discrepancy here over the dates. Chin Peng, in his memoirs, gives the date as late January, and the subsequent meeting at which the dossier of evidence was presented as 6 March. However, this must be an error. Most other sources give the date of Lai Teck’s disappearance as 6 March and of the meeting to expel Lai Teck as May, and we have followed them. The March date was also given by Chin Peng when questioned directly in an earlier interview: Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 171–9; C. C. Chin and Karl Hack (eds.), Dialogues with Chin Peng: new light on the Malayan Communist Party (Singapore, 2004), pp. 124–6. See also Anthony Short, In pursuit of mountain rats: the communist insurrection in Malaya (Singapore, 2000 [1975]), pp. 40–41. We are grateful to C. C. Chin for clarification of this point.
60. Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 178–9.
61. ‘The Wright (@ Lye Teck) Document: “A written statement on Lye Teck’s case issued on 28 May 1948 by the MCP Central Committee”’, supplement to MSS/PIJ, 31 July, 1948.
62. Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 179–84.
63. Christopher E. Goscha, Thailand and the Southeast Asian networks of the Vietnamese revolution, 1885–1954 (London, 1999), ch. 5.
64. Ibid., pp. 187–8.
65. Chin and Hack, Dialogues with Chin Peng, p. 130.
66. Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 188–9.
67. Ibid., pp. 187–91; Chin and Hack, Dialogues with Chin Peng, pp. 106–10.
68. ‘The Wright (@ Lye Teck) Document’; MSS/PIJ, 31 July 1948.
69. Ibid.
70. ‘Interrogation of a Perak prisoner, MCP area representative, political’, Supplement No. 7 to MSS/PIJ, 15 July 1948.
71. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, p. 44; C. C. Chin, ‘In search of the revolution: a brief biography of Chin Peng’, in Chin and Hack, Dialogues with Chin Peng, pp. 355–8.
72. Yoji Akashi, ‘Lai Teck, Secretary General of the Malayan Communist Party, 1939–1947’, Journal of the South Seas Society, 49 (1994), pp. 57–103; Chin Peng, My side of history, p. 159; Lim Cheng Leng, The story of a psy-warrior: Tan Sri Dr C. C. Too (Batu Caves, 2000), pp. 113–25.
73. ‘Malayan Communist Party policy’, supplement no. 9 to MSS/PIJ, 31 July 1948.
74. Michael Stenson, The 1948 Communist revolt in Malaya: a note on historical sources and interpretation with a Reply by Gerald de Cruz (Singapore, 1971), p. 29–30.
75. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, p. 41; ‘Malayan Communist Party Affairs 25 April 1984 to 26 June 1948’, Appendix A to MSS/PIJ, 30 June 1948.
76. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, p. 40.
77. Malayan Security Service, ‘Report on BMA Period’, 3 April 1946, SNA; Leon Comber, ‘The Malayan Security Service (1945–1948)’;Intelligence and National Security, 18, 3 (2003), pp. 128–53.
78. Robert Cribb, ‘Opium and the Indonesian revolution’, Modern Asian Studies, 22, 4 (1988), pp. 710–22; Young Mun Cheong, The Indonesian revolution and the Singapore connection, 1945–1949 (Singapore, 2003), pp. 101–37.
79. Onn to Gent, 17 February 1947, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part I, p. 294.
80. Majlis, 2 April 1946.
81. ‘Report on UMNO General Assembly, 10–12 January 1947’, in Gent to Creech Jones 27 January 1947, Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part I, pp. 292–3.
82. Ahmad Boestamam (trans. William R. Roff), Carving the path to the summit (Athens, OH, 1979), pp. 82–5. Mustapha Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno: the memoirs of Mustapha Hussain, translated by Insun Mustapha and edited by Jomo K. S. (Kuala Lumpur, 2005), pp. 330–31.
83. Quoted in Farish A Noor, Islam embedded: the historical development of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS (1951–2003), vol. I (Kuala Lumpur, 2004), pp. 113–16.
84. Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, pp. 334–9.
85. Shamsiah Fakeh, Memoir Shamsiah Fakeh: dari AWAS ke Rejimen Ke-10 (Bangi, 2004), pp. 40–45.
86. Khatijah Sidek, Memoirs of Khatijah Sidek: Puteri Kesateria Bangsa (Kuala Lumpur, 2001 [1960]), p. 160.
87. Malaya Tribune, 17 March 1947; Wazir Jahan Karim, Women and culture: between Malay adat and Islam (Boulder, 1992), pp. 96–100.
88. Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, pp. 61–2; MSS/PIJ, 30 April 1947.
89. MSS/PIJ, 31 March 1947; Gent to Creech Jones, 24 February 1947, CO537/2151 TNA.
90. Utusan Melayu, 14 August 1947.
91. This pamphlet has recently been republished, in facsimile form, in Ahmad Boestamam, Memoir Ahmad Boestamam: merdeka dengan darah dalam api (Bangi, 2004).
92. Malaya Tribune, 20 March and 21 March 1947; Firdaus Haji Abdullah, Radical Malay politics: its origins and early development (Petaling Jaya, 1985), pp. 98–101.
93. Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, p. 90–91.
94. A. J. Stockwell, British policy and Malay politics during the Malayan Union experiment, 1945–1948 (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), pp. 149–50.
95. ‘Sabilu’llah and invulnerability’, supplement to MSS/PIJ, 15 June 1947.
96. ‘Activities of the organisation known as API for the information of the Secretary of State’, enclosure to Gent to Creech Jones, 1 July 1947, CO537/2151, TNA.
97. Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, p. 126.
98. ‘Annual Medical Report, 1949’, SUK Tr/118/50.
99. ‘Infant mortality rates per 1000 births’, 7 May 1949, FS/13157/47, ANM.
100. ‘Annual Report on the social and economic progress of the people of Kelantan for the year 1947’, FS/9358/48, ANM.
101. Ahmed Tajuddin, ‘Economic survey of the padi planters in Krian South’, 22 November 1946, Coop/1045/46, ANM.
102. Mahathir bin Mohamad, The early years, 1947–1972 (Kuala Lumpur, 1995), p. 59.
103. For example, Utusan Malaya, 24 November 1947.
104. See enclosures in FS/2255/48, ANM.
105. Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, pp. 335–6.
106. Pelita Malaya, 6 April 1946.
107. Firdaus, Radical Malay politics, pp. 30–44.
108. Malaya Tribune, 2 June 1947.
109. ‘Malayan Communist Party Policy’, supplement no. 9 to MSS/PIJ, 31 July 1948.
110. MSS/PIJ, 30 June 1947.
111. We have drawn here on A. J. Stockwell, ‘The formation and first years of the United Malays National Organization (U.M.N.O.), 1946–1948’, Modern Asian Studies, 11, 4 (1977), pp. 481–513.
112. MSS/PIJ, 15 May 1947.
113. Ariffin Omar, Bangsa Melayu: Malay concepts of democracy and community, 1945–50 (Kuala Lumpur, 1993), pp. 106–10; Tan Liok Eee, ‘The rhetoric of bangsa and minzu: community and nation in tension, the Malay peninsula, 1900–1955’, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, Working Paper no. 52, 1988, pp. 18–20.
114. K. J. Ratnam, Communalism and the political process in Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, 1965), pp. 75–84.
115. ‘Malayan policy’, Cabinet memorandum, 28 June 1947, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part I, pp. 352–8.
116. See M. R. Stenson, ‘The Malayan Union and the historians’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, 10, 2 (1969), pp. 344–54, and Wong Lin Ken, ‘The Malayan Union: a historical retrospect’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 13, 1 (1982), 184–91. For a full discussion see Albert Lau, The Malayan Union controversy, 1942–48 (London, 1991).
117. For the origins of AMCJA, Yeo Kim Wah, ‘The anti-Federation movement in Malaya, 1946–48’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 4, 1 (1973), pp. 31–51.
118. Malaya Tribune, 21 December 1947. This was the reasoning of Ahmad Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, pp. 98–9.
119. Quoted in Sopiee, From Malayan Union to Singapore separation, p. 41; Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, p. 365.
120. Tan Cheng Lock to representative Chinese leaders throughout Malaya, 9 July 1946, SCA/161/46, SNA.
121. See K. G. Tregonning, ‘Tan Cheng Lock: a Malayan nationalist’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 10, 1 (1979), pp. 25–76; for his thought, we have drawn on his daughter’s memoir: Alice Scott-Ross, Tun Dato Sir Cheng Lock Tan: a personal profile (Singapore, 1990).
122. ‘Public meeting under the auspices of the Pan-Malayan Council of Joint Action: Speech at Kuala Lumpur on 23 December 1946’, in Tan Cheng Lock, Malayan problems from a Chinese point of view (Singapore, 1947), p. 134.
123. Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, pp. 333–4.
124. ‘The hartal of 20 October 1947’, supplement to MSS/PIJ, 31 October 1947.
125. Wu Tian Wang in the MCP Review, of June 1948, quoted in Sopiee, From Malayan Union to Singapore separation, p. 47. Chin Peng in his memoirs suggests that it was ‘not exactly a communist front but… firmly under our influence’, My side of history, p. 199, but on other occasions he has suggested that control was weak; personal communication, June, 1998.
126. Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno, pp. 341–7.
127. Quoted and discussed in Ariffin Omar, Bangsa Melayu, pp. 115–16; Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, p. 110.
128. For this, see the seminal essays by Tan Liok Eee, ‘The rhetoric of bangsa and minzi’, and Muhammad Ikmal Said, ‘Ethnic perspectives on the left in Malaysia’, in Joel Kahn and Francis Loh Kok Wah (eds.), Fragmented vision: culture and politics in contemporary Malaysia (Sydney, 1992), pp. 254–81.
129. Malayan Democratic Union, ‘Memorandum on counter-proposals for future constitution, for consideration of PMCJA’ (signed by John Eber), SP13/A/5, Tan Cheng Lock Papers ANM. The People’s Constitutional Proposals for Malaya 1947 drafted by PUTERA–AMCJA (Pusat Kajian Bahan Serjarah Kontemporari Tempatan, Kajang, 2005), quotes on p. 35 and p. 100.
130. O. H. Morris, minute, 13 November 1947, reprinted in The People’s Constitutional Proposals for Malaya 1947, pp. i–ii.
131. Hoalim, The Malayan Democratic Union, pp. 18–20.
132. Yeo, ‘The anti-Federation movement’, pp. 43–5.
133. Tregonning, ‘Tan Cheng Lock’, pp. 54–5.
134. Boestamam, Carving the path to the summit, p. 110.
135. ‘Minutes of the Third Delegates Conference of the PUTERA and AMCJA held at Kuala Lumpur at the premises of the New Democratic Youth League, Selangor Branch, at 7 Foch Avenue (3rd Floor) at 11 am on Monday November 3rd 1947’, Tan Cheng Lock Papers, SP13/A/7, ANM.
136. ‘The hartal of 20 October 1947’, supplement to MSS/PIJ, 31 October 1947.
137. Tregonning, ‘Tan Cheng Lock’, pp. 53–5.
138. ‘Report on the Special Conference on the threat of Communism in Malaya and Singapore, 1947’, 26 June 1947, Dalley Papers, RHO.
139. Malaya Tribune, 6 October 1947.
140. Sopiee, From Malayan Union to Singapore separation, pp. 41, 48–9.
141. For this see The People’s Constitutional Proposals for Malaya 1947 drafted by PUTERA–AMCJA.
CHAPTER 9 1948: A BLOODY DAWN
1. Cited in Frank N. Trager, Burma: from kingdom to republic (London, 1966), p. 108.
2. Burma’s Independence Celebrations (Copygraph London Ltd, 1948), p. 15.
3. Roy Bucher to Miss Elizabeth Bucher, 5 January 1948, Bucher Papers, 7901/87–5, National Army Museum.
4. Balwant Singh, Independence and democracy in Burma (Ann Arbor, 1993) pp. 67–8.
5. Ibid., pp. 74–5.
6. Notably, J. S. Furnivall, Netherlands India: a study of a plural economy (London, 1939), which compared British administration in Burma and Malaya unfavourably with Dutch Indonesia; see also Julie Pham, ‘Furnivall and Fabianism: reinterpreting the plural society in colonial Burma’, Modern Asian Studies, 39, 2 (2005), pp. 321–48.
7. J. S. Furnivall to C. W. Dunn, 9 April 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
8. Furnivall to Dunn, 11 January 1948, ibid.
9. Furnivall to Dunn, 28 March 1948, ibid.
10. Furnivall in New Times of Burma, 10 April 1949.
11. Furnivall to Dunn, 11 January 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
12. Marginal notes in FO371/61595, TNA.
13. P. J. Murray, note 20 August 1948, FO371/69518, TNA.
14. Edgar Snow in Saturday Evening Post, 29 May 1948, FO371/69515, TNA.
15. Ibid.
16. Furnivall to Dunn, 11 January 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
17. Richard Butwell, U Nu of Burma (Standford, 1963), pp. 73–84.
18. Furnivall to Dunn, 4 July 1947, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
19. The estimate is in Mary Callahan, Making enemies: war and state building in Burma (Ithaca, 2004), p. 121.
20. ‘Nationalisation of British assets in Burma’, FO371/69491, TNA.
21. Security service report on communism in Burma, March 1948, FO371/69515, TNA.
22. Trager, Burma, pp. 97–8.
23. Thein Pe Myint, ‘Critique of the communist movement in Burma’, 1973, Mss Eur C498, OIOC.
24. Dossier on Thein Pe including his manifesto of 19 March, enclosed in Bowker to Foreign Office, FO371/69517, TNA.
25. Ghosal was a student labour activist at Rangoon University in 1940–1. He had been evacuated to India during the war and worked as a war correspondent for People’s War, the Indian Communist Party journal, and was a close aide of P. C. Joshi, the party’s Secretary General. He returned to Burma in 1945 and later went underground. Intelligence report, received 13 May 1948, FO371/69515, TNA.
26. ‘On the present political situation in Burma’, January 1948, enclosed in Bowker to Foreign Office, 20 July 1948, FO371/69516, TNA.
27. British Services Mission, preliminary report, 9 February 1948, p. 3, L/WS/1/1705, OIOC.
28. Note by Peter Murray, ‘Establishment of British Services Mission in Burma’, and report by Major General G. K. Bourne, 9 February 1948, FO371/69481, TNA.
29. Smith Dun, Memoirs of the four-foot Colonel: General Smith Dun, first commander in chief of independent Burma’s armed forces (Ithaca, 1980), pp. ii–vii.
30. Notes by R. B. Pearn, 26 November 1948, on minutes by Bowker and Bourne, FO371/69486, TNA.
31. British Services Mission, preliminary report, 9 February 1948, pp. 4–6, L/WS/1/1705, OIOC.
32. Rangoon to London, 15 May 1948, minute by Bourne, FO371/69482, TNA.
33. Ibid.
34. Rangoon to London, 9 April 1948, FO371/69481, TNA.
35. Peter Murray, minute, 14 September 1948, FO371/69484, TNA.
36. Furnivall to Dunn, 29 February 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
37. ‘Effect of Communist Party advance in China on communists in Burma’, Rangoon to FO, 4 December 1948, FO371/69522, TNA.
38. Bertil Lintner, The rise and fall of the Communist Party of Burma (Ithaca, 1990), p. 11.
39. Thein Pe Myint, ‘Critique of the communist movement in Burma’, 1973, Mss Eur C498, ff. 26, OIOC.
40. Rangoon to London, 26 May 1948, FO371/69515, TNA.
41. Bowker to Foreign Office, FO371/69481, TNA.
42. Furnivall to Dunn, 28 March, 9 April 1948, Furnival Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
43. Bowker to Foreign Office, 12 April 1948, FO371/69515, TNA.
44. Nu to Cripps, 7 October 1948, Cripps–Nu correspondence, CAB127/151, TNA.
45. Rangoon to Foreign Office, 3 July 1948, FO371/69483, TNA.
46. Furnivall to Dunn 12 April 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
47. Maung Maung, A trial in Burma: the assassination of Aung San (The Hague, 1962), p. 68.
48. Clipping from the Sunday Despatch, 15 February 1948, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/74, OIOC.
49. Furnivall to Dunn, 12 April 1948 with some additions 2 May, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
50. See Bertil Lintner, Burma in revolt: opium and insurgency since 1948 (Boulder, 1994).
51. Report of British Mission, Rangoon to London, 30 June 1948, FO371/69483, TNA.
52. Ibid.
53. Rangoon to London, 14 August 1948, FO371/69484, TNA.
54. Butwell, U Nu of Burma, p. 62.
55. News Chronicle, 27 August 1948.
56. News Chronicle, 23 September 1948.
57. P. Murray, Foreign Office, to Major A. K. Rugg-Price, FO371/69486, TNA.
58. For a detailed account of these events and the Karen insurgency see Callahan, Making enemies, pp. 124–42.
59. Ibid., p. 127.
60. Bowker to Foreign Office, ‘Karen movement and British complicity’, 12 September 1948, FO371/69509, TNA.
61. Bowker to Foreign Office, 19 June 1948, ibid.
62. Bowker to Foreign Office, 28 February 1948, ibid.
63. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten armies: Britain’s Asian empire and the war with Japan (London, 2004), p. 336.
64. Note by P. J. Murray, 16 September 1948, FO371/69509, TNA.
65. ‘Translation of speech by the Honble Thakin Nu, Prime Minister of Burma, delivered in Parliament on 14 June 1949’, CAB127/151, TNA.
66. Note by P. J. Murray, 16 September 1948, FO371/69509, TNA.
67. Bowker to Foreign Office, 15 September 1948, ibid.
68. Bowker to Foreign Office, 18 September 1948, FO371/69510, TNA.
69. Bowker to Foreign Office, 21 September, ibid.
70. Anon to ‘Pop’, 2 September 1948; ‘Skunk’ to ‘Ewan’, 14 September 1948, Tom Driberg Papers, S3 (miscellaneous), Christ Church, Oxford.
71. Bowker to Foreign Office, 13 September 1948, FO371/69510, NA; cf. Furnivall to Dunn, 14 December 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
72. Bowker to Foreign Office, 13 September 1948, FO371/69510, TNA.
73. Rangoon to Foreign Office, ‘Burma insurrection’, 13 July 1948, FO371/69516, TNA.
74. ‘Red star over Asia’, News Chronicle, 27 August 1948.
75. Note, September 1948, FO371/69519, TNA.
76. Murray to Laithwaite, 25 October 1948, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/74, OIOC.
77. Bowker to Foreign Office, 11 November 1948, FO371/69522, TNA.
78. Bowker to Foreign Office, 18 November 1948, FO371/69519, TNA.
79. Furnivall to Dunn, 21 September 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
80. Callahan, Making enemies, p. 132.
81. Jonathan Falla, True Love and Bartholomew: rebels on the Burmese border (Cambridge, 1991), p. 26; cf. Callahan, Making enemies, p. 132.
82. Falla, True Love, p. 27.
83. Furnivall to Dunn, 24 December 1948, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
84. Furnivall to Dunn, 28 March 1948, ibid.
85. John de Chazal, memoir, p. 4, Mss Eur D1041/3, OIOC.
86. Military adviser to UK High Commission in India to London, 30 March 1948, L/WS/1/1187, OIOC.
87. Correspondence appended to situation report, 28 November 1950, FO371/84243; prime minister Pakistan to prime minister UK, 20 July 1948, DO35/3163, TNA.
88. K. K. Tewari, A soldier’s voyage of self discovery (Auroville, 1995), p. 46.
89. Roy Bucher to Miss Elizabeth Bucher, 24 September 1948, Bucher Papers, 7901/87–5, NAM.
90. People’s Age, 1 February 1948.
91. People’s Age, 29 February 1948.
92. People’s Age, 14 March 1948.
93. Military adviser to UK High Commission in India to London, 6 May 1948, L/WS/1/1187, OIOC.
94. Ashton Wade, A life on the line (Tunbridge Wells, 1988), pp. 147–9.
95. Andrew Gilmour, My role in the rehabilitation of Singapore, 1946–53 (Singapore, 1973), p. 16.
96. J. P. Cross and Buddhiman Gurung, Gurkhas at war in their own words: the Gurkha experience, 1939 to the present (London, 2002), pp. 178–80; Ahmad Boestamam (trans. William R. Roff), Carving the path to the summit (Athens, OH, 1979), p. 95.
CHAPTER 10 1948: THE MALAYAN REVOLUTION
1. Gent to H. T. Bourdillon, 22 January 1948, A. J. Stockwell (ed.), British Documents on the End of Empire: Malaya, Part I (London, 1995), pp. 372–3.
2. Malaya Tribune, 13 November 1947.
3. Gent to Creech Jones, 30 December 1947, 4 January 1948, CO537/3667, TNA.
4. Thio Chan Bee, The extraordinary adventures of an ordinary man (London, 1977), pp. 70–74.
5. Simon C. Smith, British relations with the Malay rulers from decentralization to independence, 1930–1957 (Kuala Lumpur, 1995), pp. 97–9, 118–19.
6. Editorial, Malaya Tribune, 15 December 1947.
7. A. J. Stockwell, ‘British imperial strategy and decolonization in South-east Asia, 1947–57’, in D. K. Basset and V. T. King (eds.), Britain and South-East Asia (University of Hull Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Occasional Papers, no. 13, 1986), pp. 79–90, at pp. 81–2.
8. ‘Note: W. Linehan’, 2 March 1948, CO537/3746, TNA.
9. Christopher Blake, A view from within: the last years of British rule in South-East Asia (Castle Cary, 1990), pp. 84–5.
10. John Ede interview, OHD, SNA.
11. Malaya Tribune, 24 September 1947; Yeo Kim Wah, Political development in Singapore, 1945–55 (Singapore, 1973), pp. 254–66.
12. Lady Percy McNiece interview, OHD, SNA.
13. Lee Kam Hing and Chow Mun Seong, Biographical dictionary of the Chinese in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, 1997), pp. 88–90.
14. Yong Ching Fatt, Tan Kah Kee: an Overseas Chinese legend (Singapore, 1987), pp. 312–18; Chui Kwei-chiang, ‘The China Democratic League in Singapore and Malaya, 1946–48’, Review of Southeast Asian Studies, 15 (1985), pp. 1–28.
15. ‘KMT party funds: their sources and investments’, supplement to Malayan Security Service, Political Intelligance Journal, [MSS/PI], 31 August 1947.
16. C. F. Yong and R. B. McKenna, The Kuomintang movement in British Malaya, 1912–1949 (Singapore, 1990), ch. 8.
17. Lt. Col. T. N. Glazebrook to C.H. Tarner, MI2, 20 April 1948, WO208/3929, TNA.
18. ‘The KMT guerrillas, North Perak’ supplement no. 4 of 1948 to MSS/PIJ, 31 May 1948; Wilfred Blythe, The impact of Chinese secret societies in Malaya: a historical study (London, 1969), pp. 388–91.
19. ‘Statement of Yuin See’, appendix A to supplement no. 4 of 1948 to MSS/PIJ, 31 May 1948.
20. Blythe, The impact of Chinese secret societies, pp. 368–78, 392–9.
21. Ibid, pp. 380–83; Charles Gamba, The origins of trade unionism in Malaya (Singapore, 1960), pp. 230–31.
22. MSS/PIJ, 15 May 1947; ‘Politico-Triad activities in Malaya’, supplement no. 2 to MSS/PIJ, 15 January 1948.
23. Anthony Short, In pursuit of mountain rats: the communist insurrection in Malaya (Singapore, 2000 [1975]), pp. 52–3; Chin Peng, My side of history (Singapore, 2004), pp. 202–5.
24. ‘Translation of a cyclostyled pamphlet marked “Passed at the 4th Plenary Conference of the MCP Central Executive Committee held from 17–21 March 1948’, supplement to MSS/PIJ, 30 June 1948.
25. ‘Malayan Communist Party policy’, supplement No. 9 to MSS/PIJ, 31 July 1948.
26. For example, MSS/PIJ, 6 March 1948.
27. Clive J. Christie, A modern history of Southeast Asia: decolonisation, nationalism and separatism (London, 1996), pp. 183–6; Gurney to Creech Jones, 10 November 1948, CO537/3685, TNA.
28. Straits Echo, 20 March 1948.
29. Firdaus Haji Abdullah, Radical Malay politics: its origins and early development (Petaling Jaya, 1985), pp. 44–7.
30. MSS/PIJ, 31 May 1948.
31. Straits Times, 26 April 1948; MSS/PIJ, 15 May 1948.
32. Shamsiah Fakeh, Memoir Shamsiah Fakeh: dari AWAS ke Rejimen Ke-10 (Bangi, 2004), pp. 53–4; Ibrahim Chik, Ibrahim Chik: dari API ke Rejimen Ke-1 (Bangi, 2004), pp. 64–6.
33. MSS/PIJ, 31 May 1948.
34. We have drawn here on the richly descriptive and sumptuously illustrated study by Khoo Salma Nusution and Abdur-Razzaq Lubis, Kinta Valley: pioneering Malaysia’s modern development (Ipoh, 2005).
35. Ooi Jin Bee, ‘Mining landscapes of Kinta’, Malayan Journal of Tropical Geography, 4 (1955), p. 52.
36. For this, see Francis Loh Kok Wah’s seminal work, Beyond the tin mines: coolies, squatters and New Villagers in the Kinta valley, c. 1880–1980 (Singapore, 1988), pp. 66–85.
37. T. N. Harper, The end of empire and the making of Malaya (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 96–101.
38. For a contemporary assessment see E. H. G. Dobby, ‘Some aspects of the human ecology of South-East Asia’, Geographical Journal, 108, 1/3 (1946), pp. 40–51.
39. State Forest Officer to Resident Commissioner, Perak, 3 July 1947, ibid.
40. Farmers of Bekor Sakai Reserve and Keledong Saiong Forest Reserve to Resident Commissioner, Perak, 3 January 1948, Pk. Sec/2777/47, ANM.
41. Petition of Chin Wong Peng and others, ‘Cultivation in Kg Bahru, Kuala Selangor’, 29 August 1946, MU/1437/46, ANM.
42. Harry Fang, ‘Who are the squatters?’, Malaya Tribune, 5 February 1949.
43. Farmers of Pokang (Kampar) to the District Forest Officer, 14 June 1947, Pk. Sec/1006/48, ANM.
44. District Officer Kuala Kangsar, memo, 16 March 1948, Pk. Sec/690/48, ANM.
45. ‘Pulling out tapioca in Comp. 16 Bikam and Comp 2. Changkat Jong Forest Reserves’, 12 May 1948, Pk. Sec 830/48, ANM.
46. Labour Department monthly report, April 1948, MU4181/47, ANM.
47. Labour Department monthly report May 1948, ibid.
48. Gamba, The origins of trade unionism, pp. 323–7.
49. ‘Interrogation of a Perak prisoner, MCP area representative, political’, supplement no. 7 to MSS/PIJ, 15 July 1948.
50. John Dalley to Hugh Bryson, 7 June 1967; 3 July 1965, BAM, II/19, RCS, CUL.
51. A. J. Stockwell, ‘“A widespread and long-concocted plot to overthrow government in Malaya”? The origins of the Malayan Emergency’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 21 (1993), pp. 66–88.
52. J. B. Williams, minute, 28 May 1948, CO537/3755, TNA.
53. J. D. Dalley, ‘Internal Security – Malaya – 14 June 1948’, CO537/6006, TNA.
54. H. James and D. Sheil-Small, A pride of Gurhkas: the 2nd King Edward VII’s Own Goorkhas, 1948–71 (London, 1971), p. 7.
55. Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 214–15.
56. J. M. Gullick, ‘My time in Malaya’, Heussler Papers, RHO.
57. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, p. 118–19.
58. Dalley to Hugh Bryson, 3 July 1965, BAM, II/19, RCS, CUL.
59. Jean Falconer, Woodsmoke and temple flowers: memories of Malaya (Edinburgh, 1992), p. 136.
60. Quoted in Gamba, The origins of trade unionism, p. 346.
61. ‘Interrogation of a Perak prisoner, MCP area representative, political’, supplement no. 7 to MSS/PIJ, 15 July 1948.
62. C. C. Chin and Karl Hack (eds.), Dialogues with Chin Peng: new light on the Malayan Communist Party (Singapore, 2004), p. 136.
63. Chin Peng, My side of history, p. 238.
64. Ibid., pp. 209–22.
65. The Times, 16 July 1948.
66. ‘Document B.12: Translation of a diary found among the papers of Lau Yiew’, supplement no. 7 to MSS/PIJ, 15 July 1948.
67. ‘Document B.18: Translation from a pocket book in the possession of Lau Yiew’, ibid.
68. Noel Barber, The war of the running dogs: how Malaya defeated the communist guerrillas, 1948–1960 (London, 1971), pp. 56–7.
69. Ahmad Khan interview, OHD, SNA.
70. Kumar Ramakrishna, Emergency propaganda: the winning of Malayan hearts and minds, 1948–1958 (Richmond, 2002), p. 30.
71. J. N. McHugh, Anatomy of communist propaganda (Kuala Lumpur, 1949), p. 12.
72. Shamsiah Fakeh, Memoir Shamsiah Fakeh, p. 59.
73. Ishak Haji Muhammad to Chief Secretary, 28 June 1949, Tan Cheng Lock Papers, TCL/3/187, ISEAS.
74. Ahmad Boestamam (trans. William R. Raff), Carving the path to the summit (Athens, OH, 1979), p. 144. Ali Mohamed, ‘PAS’ platform: development and change, 1951–1986’, PhD thesis, Universiti Malaya, 1989, p. 27.
75. For example, Said Zahari, Dark clouds at dawn (Kuala Lumpur, 2001), pp. 280–81.
76. Dominic Puthucheary and Jomo K. S. (eds.), No cowardly past: James J. Puthucheary, writings, poems, commentaries (Kuala Lumpur 1998), pp. 5–6, 162.
77. Lim Hong Bee, Born into war: autobiography of a barefoot colonial boy who grew up to face the challenge of the modern world (London, 1994), p. 368.
78. Philip Hoalim, The Malayan Democratic Union: Singapore’s first democratic political party (Singapore, 1973), pp. 25–6.
79. Stockwell, ‘“A widespread and long-concocted plot to overthrow government in Malaya”’; Philip Deery, ‘The terminology of terrorism: Malaya, 1948–52’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34, 2 (2003), pp. 231–47.
80. Andrew Gilmour, My role in the rehabilitation of Singapore, 1946–53 (Singapore, 1973), p. 29; Nicholas J. White, Business, government and the end of empire, Malaya, 1945–1957 (Kuala Lumpur, 1996), p. 116; J. D. Higham, minute, November 1948, CO537/4762, TNA.
81. J. P. Cross and Buddhiman Gurung, Gurkhas at war in their own words: the Gurkha experience, 1939 to the present (London, 2002), p. 178.
82. Sir Thomas Lloyd to Gimson and Newboult, 23 August 1948, CO537/3758, TNA.
83. Ashton Wade, A life on the line (Tunbridge Wells, 1988), pp. 147–9.
84. Cabinet Defence Committee meeting, 3 November 1948, CO537/3643, TNA.
85. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, pp. 124–33.
86. Yong and McKenna, The Kuomintang movement, p. 217.
87. Datuk Mohd Yusoff Hj. Ahmad, Decades of change (Malaysia – 1910s–1970s) (Kuala Lumpur, 1983), p. 341.
88. Brian Stewart, Smashing terrorism in the Malayan Emergency: the vital contribution of the police (Kuala Lumpur, 2004), pp. 189–90.
89. R. Cole, ‘It aint ’arf ’ot’, http://members.tripod.com/Askari–MB/id47.htm.
90. Norman Cleaveland, Bang! Bang! in Ampang (San Pedro, CA, 1973) pp. 55–63.
91. Stewart, Smashing terrorism in the Malayan Emergency, pp. 49–50.
92. John Strawson, A history of the SAS Regiment (London, 1984), p. 160.
93. ‘Planters in Malaya’, The Times, 9 October 1951.
94. The Times, 9 August 1948.
95. Chui Kwei-chiang, The response of the Malayan Chinese to political and military developments in China, 1945–9 (Singapore, 1977), pp. 71–2; Richard Stubbs, Hearts and minds in guerrilla warfare: the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960 (Singapore, 1989), p. 77.
96. The Times, 26 July 1948.
97. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, pp. 142–3.
98. J. B. Williams, minute, 19 August 1948, in CO537/3746, TNA.
99. A. J. Stockwell, ‘Gurney, Sir Henry Lovell Goldsworthy (1898–1951)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33611, accessed 12 Sept. 2005.
100. Quoted in Barber, The war of the running dogs, p. 36.
101. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, pp. 136–9.
102. Quoted in Charles Allen, Tales from the South China Seas (London, 1983), p. 294.
103. Broome to Heussler, 27 August 1981, Heussler Papers, RHO.
104. Note by W. L. Blythe, Heussler Papers, RHO.
105. Gurney to Creech Jones, 8 October 1948, CO537/3758, TNA.
106. Memorandum by T. P. F. McNeice, G. C. S. Atkins and G. W. Webb, in Gimson to Sir Thomas Lloyd, 8 December 1948, in A. J. Stockwell (ed.), British documents on the end of empire: Malaya, part II (London, 1995), pp. 83–87. See Stubbs, Hearts and minds in guerrilla warfare, p. 78.
107. Gurney to Creech Jones, 26 November 1948, CO537/3758, TNA.
108. Stubbs, Hearts and minds in guerrilla warfare, p. 69, and more generally the discussion on pp. 69–77.
109. R. Cole, ‘A signalman remembers’, http://members.tripod.com/Askari–MB/id51.htm.
110. Chin Peng, My side of history, pp. 230–31.
111. Gurney to Creech Jones, 30 October 1948, CO717/152/52146/73/49, TNA.
112. Yuen Yuet Leng, Operation Ginger (Kuala Lumpur, 1998), pp. 8–9. We are grateful to Dato Seri Yuen – a Special Branch Officer in Perak at the time of the Emergency – for making this available to us.
113. S. M. Middlebrook, ‘Pulai: an early Chinese settlement in Kelantan’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, II, 2 (1933), pp. 151–6.
114. Yuen, Operation Ginger, p. 8
115. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, pp. 102–4.
116. Gurney to Creech Jones, 26 November 1948, CO537/3758, TNA.
117. McHugh, Anatomy of communist propaganda, pp. 46–47.
118. Gurney to Creech Jones, 2 December 1948, CO537/4240, TNA.
119. ‘Perak State Intelligence Sitrep for 24hrs ending 9am’, 5 November 1948, 16 November 1948, Pk. Sec3216/48, ANM.
120. Harry Fang, ‘Who are the squatters?’, Malaya Tribune, 5 February 1949; ‘The eviction at Sungei Siput’, Malaya Tribune, 7 February 1949; DSW/ER/4159/1/53, ANM.
121. Gurney to Creech Jones, 3 January 1949, CO537/4750, TNA.
122. Consul General of China to the Chief Secretary, 5 November 1948, ibid.
123. Tan Cheng Lock to Lord Listowel, 24 July 1948, Tan Cheng Lock Papers, SP13/A/12, ANM.
124. Federation of Malaya, Dept of Public Relations, Communist banditry in Malaya: the Emergency, June 1948–December 1949 (Kuala Lumpur, 1950), p. 7.
125. The Times, 4 January 1948.
126. Barber, The war of the running dogs, pp. 80–81.
127. Gurney to Creech Jones, 3 January 1949, CO537/4750, TNA.
128. See the account in Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, pp. 167–9, and also Stubbs, Hearts and minds in guerrilla warfare, p. 74.
129. Transcript: ITN, News at ten, 3 February 1970, DEFE13/843, TNA.
130. Transcript: Radio 4, The world this weekend, 1 February 1970, ibid.
131. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, p. 168.
132. Lt.-Col. A. Fletcher, ‘2SG Malaya – December 1948’, 17 February 1970; Fletcher to HQ London District, 4 March 1970, DEFE70/101.
133. Ibid.
134. Newboult to Higham 1 January 1949, WO296/41, TNA.
135. Transcript: Radio 4, World at one, 2 February 1970, ibid.
136. DPP to Sir James Dunnett, MoD, 29 June 1970, DEFE13/843, TNA.
137. For the paper chase described here, see Tony Stockwell, ‘Colonial atrocities: uncovering cover-ups’, PROphile, 16, 1 (April 2005), pp. 1–6. We are grateful to Professor Stockwell for making this available to us.
138. Jonathan Kent, ‘Past lessons for occupying forces’, 17 July 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/fromourowncorrespondent/3897147.stm.
139. ‘MCA Ministers should honour the MCA pledge a decade ago to secure justice for the 56-year Batang Kali Massacre by asking Cabinet to make public the finding of police investigations into the massacre completed in 1997’, Media statement by Lim Kit Siang, 17 July 2004, http://www.dapmalaysia.org/all-archive/English/2004/ju104/lks/lks3143.htm.
140. Kurt Bayer and Graham Ogilvy, ‘Veterans’ fury at “Malay massacre” claim’, Scotland on Sunday, 14 December 2003.
141. Reuters wire report, 4 February 1970, DEFE13/843, TNA.
142. Gurney to Creech Jones, 19 December 1948, CO537/3758, TNA.
143. Quoted in Stubbs, Hearts and minds in guerrilla warfare, p. 75; Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, pp. 168–9.
144. Cross and Gurung, Gurkhas at war, p. 204.
145. Daily Worker, 28 April 1952; see the discussion in CO1022/45, TNA.
CHAPTER 11 1949: THE CENTRE BARELY HOLDS
1. Central Intelligence Agency internal memo 208, 26 August 1949, p. 12, US declassified documents.
2. Ibid., p. 18.
3. ‘Review of Present Far East Defence Policy’ by chiefs of staff, January–February 1949, FO 371/75679, TNA.
4. Woodrow Wyatt to Cripps, 23 January 1949, CAB127/151, TNA.
5. Murray to Laithwaite, 23 June 1949, Laithwaite Papers, Mss Eur F138/74, OIOC.
6. CIA memo, 26 August 1949, p. 17, US declassified documents.
7. Bowker to Foreign Office, 27 January 1949, FO371/75679, TNA.
8. Attlee to Nu, 4 August 1949, following a series of complaints from Nu to Cripps, 20 April, 24 June 1949, CAB127/151, TNA.
9. Furnivall in Times of Burma, 10 April 1949.
10. Bowker to Foreign Office, 26 April 1949, FO371/75691, TNA.
11. Minute by B. R. Pearn on press cutting, ‘Establishment of National Economic Council by Burmese Government’, FO371/75691, TNA.
12. Nehru to Nu, 14 April 1949, in S. Gopal (ed.), Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 2nd Series, vol. X (Delhi 1990), p. 410. This correspondence is located in the Jawaharlal Nehru Papers and the Krishna Menon Papers, Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi.
13. Ibid., p. 413.
14. E.g., Hindustan Times, 9 January 1949.
15. Nehru to M. A. Rauf, 10 April 1949, in Gopal, Selected works of Nehru, X, p. 408.
16. Answer in Nehru’s Press Conference, 6 March 1949, ibid., p. 400.
17. Nehru to M. A. Rauf, 15 April 1949, ibid., pp 417–18.
18. Ibid. and fn.
19. Government of the Union of Burma, Burma and the insurrections (Rangoon, September 1949), p. 31.
20. Richard Butwell, U Nu of Burma (Stanford, 1963), p. 105.
21. Nehru to Commonwealth Relations Office, 21 February 1949, ‘Common-wealth Conference on Burma’, FO371/75686, TNA.
22. William C. Johnstone, Burma’s foreign policy: a study in neutralism (Cambridge, MA, 1963), pp. 59–60.
23. Uma Shankar Singh, Burma, 1948–1962 (Bombay, 1979), p. 57.
24. Nehru to M. A. Rauf, 15 April 1949, Gopal, Selected works of Nehru, X, p. 417.
25. Transcription of a speech to AFPFL conference by U Nu, 24 September 1955, enclosure in Rangoon to London, 12 October 1955, ‘Corruption in the Burma civil service, etc.’, FO371/117030, TNA.
26. Balwant Singh, Independence and democracy in Burma, 1945–52 (Ann Arbor, 1993), p. 106.
27. Ibid., p. 109.
28. Furnivall to Dunn, 14 August 1949, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
29. Furnivall to Dunn, 5 September 1949, ibid.
30. Ken Sutton, ‘A Guardman’s tale’, www.nmbava.co.uk/a–guardsmans%20man%20tale.hml; Kumar Ramakrishna, Emergency propaganda: the winning of Malayan hearts and minds, 1948–1958 (Richmond, 2002), p. 235.
31. The Times, 12 August 1953.
32. George Edinger, The twain shall meet (New York, 1960), p. 40.
33. Leslie Thomas, In my wildest dreams (London, 1984), p. 183.
34. Leslie Thomas, The virgin soldiers (London, 1967), pp. 13.
35. Ibid., p. 15.
36. J. N. McHugh, A handbook of spoken ‘bazaar’ Malay (Singapore, 1956 [1945]), p. 7.
37. J. P. Cross and Buddhiman Gurung, Gurkhas at war in their own words: the Gurkha experience, 1939 to the present (London, 2002), pp. 221–2.
38. Alan Sillitoe, Life without armour (London, 1995), p. 118.
39. Che Abdul Khalid, ‘Joget Modern in Kuala Lumpur’, 21 May 1952; minute, 2 June 1952, DCL Selangor/115/52, ANM.
40. Virginia Matheson Hooker, Writing a new society: social change through the novel in Malay (St Leonard’s, NSW, 2000), pp. 153–9.
41. H. B. M. Murphy, ‘The mental health of Singapore: part one – suicide’, Medical Journal of Malaya, 9, 1 (1954), p. 21.
42. Quoted in Cross and Buddhiman Gurung, Gurkhas at war, p. 186.
43. John Coates, Suppressing insurgency: an analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948–54 (Boulder, 1992), p. 62.
44. John Branchley, ‘The ambush of 4 Troop, A Squadron, 4th Hussars’, www.nmbva.c.uk/The%20ambush.htm.
45. This was mistranslated at the time as the Malayan Races Liberation Army. C. C. Chin and Karl Hack (eds.), Dialogues with Chin Peng: new light on the Malayan Communist Party (Singapore, 2004), p. 149.
46. ‘Translation of a printed MCP booklet entitled “Present day situation and duties”’, 1 November 1949, FO371/84481, TNA; Chin Peng, My side of history (Singapore, 2004), pp. 243–4, 253.
47. Federation of Malaya CID Intelligence Report, August–September 1952, appendix A: ‘MCP Auxiliary Organisation’, CO1022/187, TNA.
48. ‘Statement of ‘Liew Tian Choy’, 4 October 1949, B. P. Walker Taylor Papers, RHO.
49. Review of Chinese Affairs, May 1952, CO1022/151, TNA. Discussed in T. N. Harper, The end of empire and the making of Malaya (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 159–60.
50. P. B. Humphrey, ‘Some further items of psychological warfare intelligence as obtained from surrendered Communist terrorists in Malaya: I. Overt reasons’, 26 November 1953, WO291/1777, TNA.
51. P. B. Humphrey, ‘A preliminary study of entry behaviour among Chinese Communist terrorists in Malaya’, June 1953, WO291/1764, TNA.
52. Lucian W. Pye, Guerrilla communism in Malaya: its social and political meaning (Princeton, 1956), esp. pp. 133–90.
53. Huang Xue Ying, oral testimony in Agnes Khoo, Life as the river flows: women in the Malayan anti-colonial struggle (Petaling Jaya, 2004), p. 186. See also the discussion in Richard Stubbs, Hearts and minds in guerrilla warfare: the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960 (Singapore, 1989), pp. 88–90.
54. This is a striking theme of the testimonies in Khoo, Life as the river flows:
55. This is extrapolated from a statement in papers found on a dead Johore commander; Anthony Short, In pursuit of mountain rats: the communist insurrection in Malaya (Singapore, 2000 [1975]), pp. 104–6.
56. Statement of ‘Liew Tian Choy’.
57. Coates, Suppressing insurgency, p. 150.
58. As described in Alan Hoe and Eric Morris, Re-enter the SAS: the SAS and the Malayan campaign (London, 1994), pp. 30–31.
59. BDCC (FE), 16th meeting, 28 January 1949, CO537/4773, TNA.
60. Brian Stewart, Smashing terrorism in the Malayan Emergency: the vital contribution of the police (Kuala Lumpur, 2004), pp. 24–5.
61. Gurney to Creech Jones, 6 October 1949, CO717/162/52745/19/49, TNA.
62. Karl Hack, ‘British intelligence and counter-insurgency in the era of decolonisation: the example of Malaya’, Intelligence and National Security, 14, 2 (1999), pp. 127–9.
63. A. J. Stockwell, ‘Policing during the Malayan Emergency, 1948–60: communism, communalism and decolonization’, in D. Anderson and D. Killingray, Policing and decolonization: politics, nationalism and the police (Manchester, 1992), pp. 105–28.
64. Emergency propaganda leaflets, RHO.
65. For this assessment see the important study by Ramakrishna, Emergency propaganda, pp. 72–84.
66. Chin Peng, My side of history, p. 4.
67. Pye, Guerrilla communism, p. 187.
68. J. N. McHugh, Anatomy of communist propaganda (Kuala Lumpur, 1949). See also the interesting essay by Rui Xiong Kee, ‘Exploring the “communist” in the communist insurrection in Malaya’, Standford University, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, The Boothe Prize essays, 2004 (Standford, 2004), pp. 37–49, http://pwr.stanford.edu/publications/Boothe%20book%202004.pdf.
69. ‘Third further statement of Liew Thian Choy’, 10 October 1949, B. P. Walker Taylor Papers, RHO.
70. ‘Surrender policy’, Arthur Young Papers, RHO.
71. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, pp. 383–4.
72. Simon C. Smith, British relations with the Malaya rulers from decentralization to independence, 1930–1957 (Kuala Lumpur, 1995), p. 125.
73. Charles Gamba, The origins of trade unionism in Malaya (Singapore, 1960), p. 418.
74. ‘Cabinet – Malaya Committee: Detention procedure, memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies’, 10 July 1950, CO717/199/1, TNA.
75. ‘Detention in the Federation of Malaya’; Straits Budget, 5 April 1950, CO717/199/1, TNA.
76. Federation of Malaya, monthly newsletter no. 36, 16 December 1951 to 15 January 1952, CO1022/132, TNA.
77. Frank Brewer, ‘Malaya – Administration of Chinese affairs, 1945–57’, in Heussler Papers, RHO.
78. Khatijah Sidek, Memoirs of Khatijah Sidek: puteri kesateria bangsa (Kuala Lumpur, 2001 [1960]), pp. 89–90.
79. Tom Driberg, ‘In detention’, Reynolds News, 12 November 1950.
80. Quoted in Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, p. 193.
81. F. D. Marrable, Officer Superintending Police Circle Klang to Superintending Klang Camp, 10 October 1950, CO717/199/2, TNA.
82. N. R. Hilton, ‘Detention camp – Tanjong Bruas, visited on 1 December 1951’, CO1022/326, TNA.
83. Sir Donald MacGillivray to Alan Lennox Boyd, 6 June 1955, CO1030/145, TNA; Straits Times, 16 June 1955, 16 July 1955.
84. Ramakrishna, Emergency propaganda, pp. 65–6.
85. Gurney to Sir Thomas Lloyd, 20 December 1948, in A. J. Stockwell, ed., British documents on the end of empire: Malaya, part II (London, 1995), p. 91.
86. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, p. 191.
87. Federation of Malaya, monthly newsletter, 16 January to 15 February 1951, CO717/199/2; ibid., 16 March to 15 April 1951, CO1022/137, TNA; A. H. P. Humphreys. ‘The communist insurrection in Malaya’, A. H. P. Humphreys Papers, RHO.
88. P. A. Collin, ‘Escorting banishees to China’, in Stewart, Smashing terrorism in the Malayan Emergency, p. 234.
89. ‘Malaya: detention, repatriation and resettlement of Chinese’, 31 January 1951, CO717/199/2, TNA.
90. Quoted in Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, p. 191.
91. British Embassy Peking to Foreign Office, 14 March 1951, CO717/199/2, TNA.
92. Nan Feng Jih Pao, 6 May 1951.
93. C. F. Yong, Tan Kah-Kee: the making of an overseas Chinese legend (Singapore, 1989), pp. 328–31. See also enclosures on FO371/84480, TNA.
94. Chui Kwei-chiang, The response of the Malayan Chinese to political and military developments in China, 1945–9 (Singapore, 1977), pp. 82–4.
95. McHugh, Anatomy of communist propaganda, p. 20.
96. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, pp. 215–16.
97. Harper, The end of empire, pp. 203–4.
98. Chin and Hack, Dialogues with Chin Peng, p. 162.
99. Gurney to Creech Jones, 28 February 1949, CO537/4750, TNA.
100. Tan Cheng Lock, One country, one people, one government: Presidential address by Tan Cheng Lock at a meeting of the General Committee of the MCA held in Penang on 30 October, 1949 (Kuala Lumpur, 1949), p. 2.
101. K. G. Tregonning, ‘Tan Cheng Lock: a Malayan nationalist’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 10, 1 (1979), pp. 60–61.
102. Tan Liok Ee, The politics of Chinese education in Malaya, 1945–1961 (Kuala Lumpur 1997), pp. 104–5.
103. Gurney to J. D. Higham, 10 February 1949, CO/537/4242; Pan-Malayan Review of Political Intelligence, no. 5 of 1959, CO537/4671, TNA.
104. ‘Minutes of the Second Meeting of the Emergency Chinese Advisory Committee held at the Perak State Council Chamber, Ipoh on 11 June 1949’, SP13/A/21, ANM.
105. ‘Malayan Chinese Association’, PR/261/51, ANM.
106. ‘Minutes of the First Meeting of the Emergency Chinese Advisory Committee held at the Council Chamber, Kuala Lumpur on 5 April 1949’, SP13/A/21, ANM.
107. Heng Pek Koon, Chinese politics in Malaysia: a history of the Malaysian Chinese Association (Singapore, 1988), p. 89.
108. Gurney to Paskin, 4 April 1949, CO537/4761, TNA.
109. Monthly Review of Chinese Affairs, April 1949; Pan-Malayan Review of Political Intelligence, no. 11 of 1949, CO537/4671, TNA.
110. Khoo Salma Nusution and Abdur-Razzaq Lubis, Kinta Valley: pioneering Malaysia’s modern development (Ipoh, 2005), p. 308; McHugh, Anatomy of communist propaganda, p. 48.
111. Laurence K. L. Siaw, Chinese society in rural Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, 1983), pp. 93–103.
112. Tan Cheng Lock to Mentri Besar, Johore, 30 October 1951, CO1022/27, TNA.
113. The literature on resettlement is extensive. The key studies are, K. S. Sandhu, ‘Emergency resettlement in Malaya’, Journal of Tropical Geography, 18 (1964), pp. 157–83; ‘The saga of the “squatter” in Malaya: a preliminary survey of the causes, characteristics and consequences of the resettlement of rural dwellers during the Emergency between 1948 and 1960’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, 5 (1964), pp. 143–77; J. W. Humphrey, ‘Population resetlement in Malaya’ (PhD thesis, Northwestern University, 1971); Francis Loh Kok Wah, Beyond the tin mines: coolies, squatters and new villagers in the Kinta valley, c. 1880–1980 (Singapore, 1988). For a summary of the impact see Harper, The end of empire, pp. 176–92.
114. Keris Mas (trans. Harry Aveling), ‘A row of shophouses in our village’, in Blood and tears (Petaling Jaya, 1984), pp. 113–14.
115. Judith Strauch, ‘Chinese new Villages of the Malayan Emergency, a generation later: a case study’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 2 (1981), pp. 126–39; Siaw, Chinese society in rural Malaysia, pp. 108–16.
116. Protector of Aborigines to Asst Superintendent of Census, 9 May 1947, DO Temerloh/467/46, ANM.
117. For a fuller account, see Christopher Bayly, and Tim Harper, Forgotten armies: Britain’s Asian empire and the war with Japan (London, 2004), pp. 267–8, 348–50.
118. Tony Gould, Imperial warriors: Britain and the Gurkhas (London, 1999), p. 329–30.
119. For the search for Noone, see his brother’s account, Richard Noone, Rape of the dream people (London, 1972).
120. Reported in Malay Mail, 15 July 1949.
121. Malay Mail, 22 August 1949; for a discussion see John Leary, Violence and the dream people: the Orang Asli in the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960 (Athens, OH, 1995), pp. 74–83.
122. Robert Knox Dentan, ‘Bad day at Bukit Pekan’, American Anthropologist, 97, 2 (1995), pp. 225–31.
123. Ivan Polunin, ‘The medical natural history of the Malayan aborigines’, Malayan Medical Journal, 8, 1 (1953), pp. 55–174; P. D. R. Williams-Hunt to Del Tufo, n.d., FS/12072/50, ANM.
124. P. D. R. Williams-Hunt, An introduction to the Malayan Aborigines (Kuala Lumpur, 1952), p. 93.
125. ‘Evacuating Malayan Aborigines’, Malayan Police Journal, March 1950, reprinted in Leary, Violence and the dream people, pp. 219–30.
126. Anthony Crockett, Green beret, red star (London, 1954), pp. 185–9.
127. Gamba, The origins of trade unionism, pp. 352–73.
128. Christopher Blake, A view from within: the last years of British rule in South-East Asia (Castle Cary, 1990), pp. 94–117.
129. Leong Yee Fong, Labour and trade unionism in colonial Malaya: a study of the socio-economic and political bases of the Malayan labour movement, 1930–1957 (Penang, 1999), pp. 236–45.
130. J. B. Perry Robinson, Transformation in Malaya (London, 1956), p. 79.
131. ‘Meeting of ministers on Malaya’, 2 April 1949; Creech Jones to Mac-Donald, CO537/4751, TNA.
132. Gurney to Creech Jones, 11 April 1949, CO537/4751, TNA.
133. Gurney to Creech Jones, 30 May 1949, CO537/4773, TNA.
134. ‘Minutes of the Fifteenth Conference held under the chairmanship of HE the Commissioner-General… on 7 June 1950 at Bukit Serene, Johore’, CO537/5970, TNA.
135. Appendix B, ‘The attitude of the Malay public towards the Malayan Communist Party’, 5 April 1949, CO537/4751, TNA.
136. Paskin to Gurney, 22 December 1948, CO537/3746, TNA.
137. Sir Thomas Lloyd to Gurney, 5 January 1949, ibid.
138. Thio Chan Bee, The extraordinary adventures of an ordinary man (London, 1977), pp. 62, 66–7, 75–87; Malay Mail, 10 January 1949.
139. One of the few academic discussions is Heng, Chinese politics in Malaysia, pp. 147–56.
140. ‘Notes of discussions of the Communities’ Liaison Committee held at Kuala Lumpur, 18 and 19 February 1949’, TCL/23/2, ISEAS.
141. ‘Notes of discussions of the Communities’ Liaison Committee held at Kuala Lumpur 13 and 14 August 1949’, TCL/23/7, ISEAS.
142. ‘Notes of discussions of the Communities’ Liaison Committee held at Penang 29, 30 and 31 December 1949’, TCL/23/8, ISEAS.
143. The Times, 18 April 1949.
144. Malay Mail, 27 August 1949.
145. Tan Cheng Lock to Yong Shook Lin, 19 January 1950, Tan Cheng Lock Papers, SP13/1/19, ANM.
146. MSS/PIJ, 15 November 1947.
147. Tan Jing Quee, ‘Lim Chin Siong: a political life’, in Jomo K. S. and Tan Jing Quee (eds.), Comet in our sky: Lim Chin Siong in history (Kuala Lumpur, 2001), p. 61.
148. Sir John Nicoll to Alan Lennox-Boyd, 26 February 1955, CO1030/360, TNA.
149. A. J. Stockwell, ‘Knowledge and power; university and nation in the new Malaya of 1938–62’, paper delivered at ‘Asian Horizons’ conference, Singapore, 1–3 August 2005.
150. Patrick Anderson, Snake wine: a Singapore episode (Singapore, 1980 [1955]), p. 221.
151. Ibid., p. 155.
152. Yeo Kim Wah, ‘Student politics in University of Malaya, 1949–51’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 23, 2 (1992), pp. 346–80.
153. Malaya Tribune, 14 April 1947.
154. Anderson, Snake wine, p. 127.
155. G. I. Puthucheary, ‘Building the Malayan nation’, The Undergrad: unofficial organ of Raffles College Students’ Union, 1, 2 (24 January 1949), and other issues, 1, 3 (12 February 1949); 1, 4 (16 March 1949).
156. Cheah Boon Kheng (ed.), A. Samad Ismail: journalism and politics (Kuala Lumpur, 1987); Said Zahari, Dark clouds at dawn (Kuala Lumpur, 2001), p. 172.
157. Yeo Kim Wah, ‘Joining the communist underground: the conversion of English-educated radicals to communism in Singapore, June 1948–January 1951’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 67 (1994), pp. 29–59.
158. For this see T. N. Harper, ‘Lim Chin Siong and “the Singapore Story”’, in Jomo K. S. and Tan, Comet in our sky, pp. 1–56; Zahari, Dark clouds at dawn, pp. 275–9.
159. Malaya Tribune, 4 January 1949.
160. Mustapha Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno: the memoirs of Mustapha Hussain, translated by Insun Mustapha and edited by Jomo K. S. (Kuala Lumpur, 2005), pp. 360–67.
161. A. Samad Said, ‘1948: Dawn of a new literary era’, Between art and reality: selected essays (Kuala Lumpur, 1994), pp. 57–71.
162. Oswald Henry, ‘Singapore makes Malay movies’, Malaya Tribune, 24 December 1947.
163. Gregory Clancey, ‘Towards a spatial history of emergency: notes from Singapore’, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Working Paper 8, 2003.
164. Federation of Malaya, Political Report for January 1949, CO537/4763, TNA.
165. Malaya Tribune, 29 March, 1949.
166. ‘Translation of a printed MCP booklet entitled “Present day situation and duties”’, 1 November 1949, FO371/84481, TNA.
167. W. C. S. Corry to W. E. Rigby, 9 May 1949, BA Pahang/99/49, ANM.
168. Firdaus Haji Abdullah, Radical Malay politics: its origins and early development (Petaling Jaya, 1985), pp. 24–6.
169. ‘Translation of a printed MCP booklet entitled “Present day situation and duties”’, 1 November 1949, FO371/84481, TNA.
170. Chin Peng, My side of history, p. 262.
171. A document, purporting to be from the Malayan Communist Party, Johore–Malacca Border Committee, Death of a heretic (Singapore, 1951).
172. ‘Yap Sang, 14 October 1949’, B. P. Walker Taylor Papers, RHO.
173. Federal War Council Joint Intelligence Advisory Committee, ‘The potential of the Malayan Communist Party’, 24 October 1950, FO371/84482, TNA.
EPILOGUE: THE END OF BRITAIN’S ASIAN EMPIRE
1. Mustapha Hussain, Malay nationalism before Umno: the memoirs of Mustapha Hussain, translated by Insun Mustapha and edited by Jomo K. S. (Kuala Lumpur, 2005), p. 313.
2. From Utusan Melayu, 23 August 1947, translated and quoted in Ariffin Omar, Bangsa Melayu: Malay concepts of democracy and community, 1945–50 (Kuala Lumpur, 1993), p. 116.
3. ‘The United Kingdom in South-East Asia and the Far East’, October 1949, and cabinet conclusions on ‘South-East Asia and the Far East’, in A. J. Stockwell, ed., British documents on the end of empire: Malaya, part II (London, 1995), pp. 158–70, 173.
4. Rajeswary Ampalavanar, The Indian minority and political change in Malaya, 1945–1955 (Kuala Lumpur, 1981), p. 27.
5. George C. Thomson, ‘Political Assessment of the visit of Pandit Nehru to Singapore’, 29 June 1950, FO371/101233, TNA.
6. Anthony Short, In pursuit of mountain rats: the communist insurrection in Malaya (Singapore, 2000 [1975]), pp. 507–8.
7. Michael Calvert, Fighting mad (Shrewsbury, 1996), pp. 202–5.
8. David Rooney, Mad Mike: a life of Michael Calvert (London, 1997), pp. 134–45.
9. Tony Geraghty, Who dares wins: the story of SAS, 1952–92, 3rd edn (London, 1992), pp. 327–55.
10. The Times, 13 August 1953; Raffi Gregorian, The British army, the Gurkhas and Cold War strategy in the Far East, 1947–1954 (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 175.
11. Timothy Parsons, The African rank-and-file: social implications of colonial military service in the King’s African Rifles, 1902–1964 (Oxford, 1999), pp. 39, 93, 109, 166, 199, 212. Malcolm Page, A history of The King’s African Rifles and East African Forces (London, 1998), pp. 190–95.
12. Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, pp. 304–5. For the absence of planning see Chin Peng, My side of history (Singapore, 2004), pp. 287–9.
13. The Times, 6 December 1951.
14. A great deal has been written about these reappraisals. For Lyttelton’s report see, ‘Malaya’: Cabinet memorandum by Mr Lyttelton, 21 December 1951, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part II, pp. 319–533. Also, Short, In pursuit of mountain rats, pp. 322–44; Richard Stubbs, Hearts and minds in guerrilla warfare: the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960 (Singapore, 1989), pp. 136–40.
15. John Cloake, Templer: tiger of Malaya (London, 1985).
16. Victor Purcell, Malaya: communist or free? (Stanford, 1955), p. 16.
17. R. W. I. Bland to Heussler, 21 August 1969, Heussler Papers, RHO.
18. For ongoing controversy, see Karl Hack, ‘“Iron claws on Malaya”: the historiography of the Malayan Emergency’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 30, 1 (1999), pp. 99–125, who also argues for an early change of direction, and Kumar Ramakrishna, who restates the pivotal importance of Templer in ‘“Transmogrifying Malaya”: the impact of Sir Gerald Templer (1952–54)’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32, 1 (2001), pp. 79–92.
19. Robert Heussler, British rule in Malaya, 1942–57 (Singapore, 1985), p. 186.
20. For the coercive side of the population control from a counter-insurgency perspective, see also Hack, ‘“Iron claws on Malaya”’, pp. 115–23.
21. Johore Council of State, 4 October 1950, Sel. Sec/151/149, ANM.
22. We are grateful to Simon Winder for suggesting this image.
23. D. W. Le Mare, ‘Community development’, INF/18677/533, ANM.
24. Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating communist insurgency: experiences from Malaya and Vietnam (London, 1966).
25. Han Suyin, My house has two doors (London, 1980), p. 79.
26. Federation of Malaya, Report on the conduct of food searches at Semenyih in the Kajang District of the State of Selangor (Kuala Lumpur, 1956).
27. For this see Frank Furedi, ‘Britain’s colonial wars: playing the ethnic card’, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 28, 1 (1990), pp. 70–89.
28. Ministry of Defence ‘Malaya: defence costs’, 13 November 1951, CO1022/34, TNA. This was first brought to light by Richard Stubbs, Counter-insurgency and the economic factor: the impact of the Korean War prices boom on the Malayan Emergency (ISEAS Occasional paper no. 19, Singapore, 1974).
29. Nicholas J. White, Business, government and the end of empire: Malaya, 1945–1957 (Kuala Lumpur, 1996), pp. 51–3.
30. For an extended discussion of the ‘domestication’ of the Malayan Chinese, see T. N. Harper, The end of empire and the making of Malaya (Cambridge, 1999), chs. 5 and 6.
31. Roy Follows, Jungle-beat: fighting terrorists in Malaya, 1952–61 (London, 2000), p. 97.
32. W. Johnson (ed.), The papers of Adlai E. Stevenson, vol. V:Visit to Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, March–August 1953 (Boston, 1974), pp. 148–9.
33. Abdul Aziz Ishak, The architect of Merdeka: Tengku Abdul Rahman (Singapore, 1957).
34. Quoted in Harper, The end of empire, p. 322.
35. Khatijah Sidek, Memoirs of Khatijah Sidek: Puteri Kesateria Bangsa (Kuala Lumpur, 2001 [1960]), pp. 118, 124–5.
36. Miss P. G. Lim, ‘Radio broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party of Malaya’, 1 July, 1955, CO1030/313, TNA.
37. Francis G. Carnell, ‘The Malayan elections’, Pacific Affairs, 28, 4 (1955), pp. 315–30.
38. Sir Robert Scott to Anthony Eden, 23 October 1955, CO1030/245, TNA.
39. The Times, 3 October 1951.
40. ‘HH the Sultan of Johore’s speech’, in MacGillivray to Lennox-Boyd, 19 September 1955, CO1030/374, TNA.
41. Chan Heng Chee, A sensation of independence: a political biography of David Marshall (Singapore, 1984), pp. 93–4.
42. Said Zahari, Dark clouds at dawn (Kuala Lumpur, 2001), p. 285.
43. Ibid., p. 282.
44. Chin Peng, My side of history (Singapore, 2004), pp. 387–95.
45. Cited in Gustaaf Houtman, Mental culture in Burmese crisis politics (Tokyo, 2001), p. 267.
46. Peking to Rangoon, 4 July 1952, FO4371/101276, TNA.
47. C. W. Dunn to J. S. Furnivall, 30 August 1950, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
48. ‘A voice above the battle’, interview with Nehru, Picture Post, 49, 4 October 1950, pp. 13–15.
49. S. Gopal (ed.), Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series (Delhi, 1984), vol. XIV, Part I, p. 501, n. 4.
50. J. S. Furnivall to C. W. Dunn, 17 June 1950, Furnivall Papers, PP/MS 23, vol. I, SOAS.
51. Mary Callahan, Making enemies: war and state building in Burma (Ithaca, 2004), pp. 137–44.
52. H. Bruce Franklin, ‘By the bomb’s early light; or the Quiet American’s war on terror’: http://rutgers.edu/~hbf/Quietam.htm.
53. Cloake, Templer, p. 297; Norman Cleaveland, Bang! Bang! in Ampang (San Pedro, CA, 1973), pp. 140–42.
54. John A Nagi, Learning to eat soup with a knife: counterinsurgency lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, new edn (New York, 2005).
55. Norman Sherry, Life of Graham Greene, 1939–1955 (London, 1994).
56. New Times of Burma, 5 January 1955.
57. The Nation, 7 August 1945.
58. The Nation, 21 July 1955.
59. Norman Lewis, The golden earth: travels in Burma (London, 1952), p. 139.
60. Ibid., p. 90.
61. Khin Myo Chit, Memoir, Mss Eur D1066/1, OIOC, fos. 138 ff.
62. New Times of Burma, 18 March 1955.
63. P. Lim Pui Huen and Diana Wong (eds.), War and memory in Malaysia and Singapore (Singapore, 2000); William H. Frederick, ‘Reflections in a moving stream: Indonesia memories of the war and the Japanese’, in Remco Raben (ed.), Representing the Japanese occupation of Indonesia: personal testimonies and public image in Indonesia, Japan and the Netherlands (Amsterdam, 1999), pp. 16–35.
64. J. C. Sterndale Bennett to Sir Esler Dening, Tokyo, 12 April 1952, FO371/101233, TNA.
65. Junko Tomaru, The postwar rapprochement of Malaya and Japan, 1945–61: the roles of Britain and Japan in South-east Asia (London, 2000).
66. Shoko Tanaka, Post-war Japanese resource policies and strategies: the case of Southeast Asia (Ithaca, 1986), ch. 3.
67. Masashi Nishihara, The Japanese and Sukarno’s Indonesia: Tokyo–Jakarta relations, 1951–1966 (Kyoto, 1976), pp. 211–12; Hikita Yasuyuki, ‘Japanese companies’ inroads into Indonesia under Japanese military administration’, in Peter Post and Elly Touwen-Bouwsma (eds.), Japan, Indonesia and the war: myths and realities (Leiden, 1997), p. 152.
68. James Puthucheary, Ownership and control in the Malayan economy (Singapore, 1960); Nicholas White, ‘The beginnings of crony capitalism: business, politics and economic development in Malaysia, c. 1955–70’, Modern Asian Studies, 28, 2 (2004), pp. 389–417.
69. See T. N. Harper, ‘Lim Chin Siong and “the Singapore Story”’, in Jomo K. S. and Tan Jing Quee (eds.), Comet in our sky: Lim Chin Siong in history (Kuala Lumpur, 2001), pp. 1–56.
70. Ahmad Boestamam (trans. William R. Roff), Carving the path to the summit (Athens, OH, 1979), p. 3.