Turning the Pahang Colonial Page: Narratives of Definition in Three Phases

Abstract

This article compares the colonial and post-colonial narratives of writers of Pahang. It begins with Hugh Clifford who, in Saleh: A Prince of Malaya (1926), demeans the English-educated Malay hero who resists colonial domination. On the next narrative page, in the early post-colonial work The Prince of Gunung Tahan (1934) by Ishak Haji Muhammad, the colonial plot is reversed when British explorers are deceived and a Malay hero ‘conquers’ an English woman. Finally, in Jungle of Hope (1986), Keris Mas refutes the British view that Malays were lazy, without ambition and disorganized as his characters struggle to cultivate new land and explore their identity and life's meaning.