In 1500 Malay Malacca was the queen city of the Malay Archipelago, one of the great trade centers of the world. Its rulers, said to be descendents of the ancient line of Srivijaya, dominated the lands east and west of the straits. The Portuguese, unable to compete in the marketplace, captured the town. They were followed a hundred years later by the Dutch who, lured in their turn by Malacca as symbol of the wealth and luxury of the east, were to rule this port city for more than a hundred and fifty years.
It proved to be, in many ways, an empty conquest. Portuguese and Dutch governments imposed restrictions on Malacca’s trade, driving it to the newer ports in the north and south. Moreover, by the time the Dutch finally secured the town, they had established their own port at Batavia, in Java. Dutch Malacca was, by 1701, “a place of little trade.” Why then did the Dutch maintain their occupation of the port? Lewis draws on the extensive correspondence of the Dutch East India Company to examine the role the Dutch played as Malacca’s rulers in the eighteenth-century Malay world, arguing that their presence, though generally too weak to secure their own interests, disrupted the traditional political and economic organization of the Malay polities, contributing significantly to the disarray that beset the Malay world at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Malaya was first published in 1958. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
As Dr. mills points out, postwar Malaya has, in general, been typical of Southeast Asia politically and economically. This fact makes his account of Malayan developments over the last decade of special significance to anyone concerned about the future of freedom in that part of the world. He traces the changes from the prewar period, when Malaya was under British colonial rule and the bulk of the population was satisfied with its government, to the present, with its political agitation, financial difficulties, and social discontent. He presents a detailed picture of the rubber and tin industries, which are Malaya's basic source of revenue, and assesses their probable status in the future.
People’s Wars in China, Malaya, and Vietnam explains why some insurgencies collapse after a military defeat while under other circumstances insurgents are able to maintain influence, rebuild strength, and ultimately defeat the government. The author argues that ultimate victory in civil wars rests on the size of the coalition of social groups established by each side during the conflict. When insurgents establish broad social coalitions (relative to the incumbent), their movement will persist even when military defeats lead to loss of control of territory because they enjoy the support of the civilian population and civilians will not defect to the incumbent. By contrast, when insurgents establish narrow coalitions, civilian compliance is solely a product of coercion. Where insurgents implement such governing strategies, battlefield defeats translate into political defeats and bring about a collapse of the insurgency because civilians defect to the incumbent. The empirical chapters of the book consist of six case studies of the most consequential insurgencies of the 20th century including that led by the Chinese Communist Party from 1927 to 1949, the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960), and the Vietnam War (1960–1975). People’s Wars breaks new ground in systematically analyzing and comparing these three canonical cases of insurgency. The case studies of China and Malaya make use of Chinese-language archival sources, many of which have never before been used and provide an unprecedented level of detail into the workings of successful and unsuccessful insurgencies. The book adopts an interdisciplinary approach and will be of interest to both political scientists and historians.
Violence and the Dream People is an account of a little-known struggle by the Malayan government and the communist guerrillas, during the 1948-1960 Malayan Emergency, to win the allegiance of the Orang Asli, the indigenous people of the peninsular Malaya. The author argues that the use of force by both sides in their attempts to woo or coerce the jungle dwellers to support one side or the other in the conflict, caused tensions among the Orang Asli that resulted in counter violence against the interlopers and internecine killings in the tribal groups.
This study challenges the depiction of the Orang Asli as naïve innocents, unwittingly manipulated by outsiders for their own purposes. Heavily outnumbered, they looked to their own resources to survive, in the face of relocation, conscription, random bombings, and haphazard killing. Leary argues that they were shrewd enough to recognize the winning side and backed their judgment with force where necessary.
Violence and the Dream People is an important study of a much neglected facet of the Malayan Emergency and of the history of the indigenous peoples of the Malay Peninsula.
READERS
Browse our collection.
PUBLISHERS
See BiblioVault's publisher services.
STUDENT SERVICES
Files for college accessibility offices.
UChicago Accessibility Resources
home | accessibility | search | about | contact us
BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2024
The University of Chicago Press