Britons fail to translate their class system to Malaya

Out In The Midday Sun: The British In Malaya 1880-1960; Margaret Shennan; Published by John Marry; Singapore $39.66

JAKARTA (JP): One of the most orthodox views of the British Empire is that India, "The Raj", was "the jewel in the imperial crown". Another view has it that title should have gone to Malaya and the Straits Settlements.

When you consider how vital tin and rubber were to the world capitalist economy in the high days of empire the second view appears to gain credence. Malaya was central to both tin and rubber.

Read Margaret Shennan and you will see just how central the collection of Federated and Unfederated States that made up the bulk of British Malaya were to the largest empire ever known.

This is an extremely well-researched and in some ways highly detailed account of how it all worked. Shennan is particularly good at showing the way a combination of political manipulation -- playing the sultanates off against each other without ever interfering with religion -- entrepreneurial zeal in which the Scots played a great part and colonial hauteur made this happen.

The British, of course, translated their class system to the tropics and with it much of their culture, although for some reason they failed to impress the Malays with cricket, a great contrast to India and the Caribbean. In an excellent chapter, Pyramids of Power, Shennan shows how finely tuned, not to say oppressively obsessive, that class system was.

Quoting richly from diaries and other memoirs she gives us a close-up view of how, for example, the Club system worked: "to join the Tuan Besars at the Lake Club required status, money and etiquette .... " The snobbery was marrow-of-the-bone.

And so, of course, was the racial hubris, which was a mine under the very foundations of the project, as it would be everywhere. It was the failure to train sufficient local soldiers and defense forces that contributed greatly to the collapse of British Malaya in 1941 and 1942. Ironically, possibly the bravest resistance to the Japanese was put up by the Malay Regiment, but the British had never really got to understand the largest ethnic group under their tutelage.

Whatever the wrongs of the colonial system in Malaya something must be said, I think, for the hardy men, many of them Scots, who took up lonely postings on tin mines and plantations in the interior. This required fortitude of a kind that should not be lightly dismissed. The rigors of climate, the dangers of disease, the long absences from social contacts they could fully understand were often highly demanding. Shennan has painted this part of the story very well.

The sun has long set on the Empire and amen to that we can say. The history remains and it is richly interesting. Full credit to Margaret Shennan for documenting it so well.

-- David Jardine