Abstract
Book review: The Malayan Emergency: Essays on a Small, Distant War
Highlights
The book is an attempt by an anthropologist of Malaysian origin presently teaching in Sydney to make sense of the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) by looking at the event from a Marxist perspective
At the time and the subsequent decades, the Marxist theory became fashionable among academics all over the world including Malaysia as it provides an exciting underpinning of the social sciences
The book is based on careful reading of the published sources like The Dialogue with Chin Peng which covers the communist leader’s meeting with academics from Australia and Malaysia mainly besides former Special Branch officers that was held at the Australian National University in 1999, as well as memoirs of Malayan Communist Party (MCP) leaders like Abdullah CD, former Kesatuan Melayu Muda (KMM) number two Mustapha Hussein, British milifary officer Spencer Chapman and an account by a British woman who had stayed behind in the Pahang jungles for the duration of the Japanese occupation under the care of the Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA)
Summary
The book is an attempt by an anthropologist of Malaysian origin presently teaching in Sydney to make sense of the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) by looking at the event from a Marxist perspective. For most Malaysians who are used to the official narrative, this approach offers another way of looking at the same episode in their history by providing an explanation of the failed communist (socialist) revolution in Malaya.
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