Probably the biggest single effect that the Emergency in Malaya has visibly accomplished has been the resettlement or regrouping of nearly 650,000 “squatters” into more than 550 “new villages.” It is the purpose of this paper to examine the conditions that necessitate the resettlement and regrouping of these “squatters”, the positive law measures utilized, and the direct and indirect results that were accomplished.

As far back as 1913, Hoesein Djajadiningrat made a critical study of one of the sources for Indonesian history. He was the first Indonesian to do so. But his work, though important, cannot be properly considered as the beginning of modern Indonesian historiography. This came later.

In 1948, the Chinese alone of the three major communities of Malaya had no single political or quasi-political organisation concerned to foster and further their interests within that country. The United Malays National Organisation had evolved under the leadership of Dato' Onn bin Ja'afar to press Malay opposition to the Malayan Union scheme, with the enfeebling of the Sultans and the modification of the special position of the Malays that it involved. Having achieved this specific aim, it remained to work for the general welfare of Malays, air their felt grievances and assert their claimed rights. Fragmentation within the Indian community along religious and racial lines was reflected in the multiplication of organisations claiming to speak for it, though by 1948 the Malayan Indian Congress was beginning to emerge as the chief of these, and to draw others within its ambit. But, although many of the more important mainland Chinese political parties, including the Kuomintang and Communists, had their branches or counterparts within the Malayan Chinese community, the political strength of the community was dispersed and it spoke with no clear voice on matters concerning it as a whole. This is especially illustrated in its failure to organise any effective counter to U.M.N.O's crusade against the Malayan Union scheme, although the Chinese stood to gain much by its retention, and lost much when it was revoked. Tan Cheng Lock, and others aware of the long-term implications of the change, made efforts to arouse the Chinese to defend their newly gained rights, but the majority remained apathetic and politically disengaged. It would seem that many of the more conservative Chinese had serious reservations about their political future within Malaya, or felt that those predominantly Chinese organisations primarily concerned with local Malayan politics were dangerously tainted with left-wing bias: yet the organisations representative of the conservative group — the Chinese Chambers of Commerce and the Chinese Assembly Halls — appeared to have little access to, or influence upon Government.

Among the more noteworthy features of the Indonesian government's current efforts to recover and accentuate what is believed to be the nation's “cultural identity” is the encouragement being given to the shift in emphasis in the writing of Indonesian history so as to bring out more fully the uniqueness and greatness of the Indonesian cultural achievement. This new “Indonesia-centric” approach is said to provide a much needed correction of the earlier, colonially oriented and “Western centric” type of historical writing about Indonesia, in which the Indonesian “identity” allegedly was obscured because of Western and Dutch ethnocentric prejudices, arid in which historical events in Indonesia were treated as mere appendages to Dutch or European history generally. As early as December, 1957, a seminar of historians in Djokjakarta, Central Java, was convened “in order to eliminate the colonial historian's presentation and restore the proper emphasis on the indigenous culture, tradition and history” in “the history books of the country”. More than five years later the problem still appeared not to have been resolved as yet, for at another historical seminar held in Medan, North Sumatra, in March, 1963, Indonesia's Deputy First Minister for Information, Ruslan Abdulgani, was reportedly still calling “on Indonesian writers to begin to ‘rewrite’ Indonesian history to cleanse it of what he called ‘West-centrism’”. Indonesian historians, Abdulgani urged, “must dare to rewrite our history so that it will no longer be West-centric but Indonesiacentric”.

The development of pre-war Indonesian nationalism may be divided into four periods. The first period witnessed the shy initial attempts to achieve improvements in the cultural, economic, political and religious fields, stimulated more or less by the then prevalent Ethical Policy of the Dutch administration. During the late tens and the early twenties the political scene was dominated by the Sarekat Islam and the Partai Komunis Indonesia, at first collaborating, later competing with each other, but, whatever their mutual relations, both responsible for an amount of vociferous agitation and political vivacity which highly upset Dutch official and private circles. The abortive communist revolts of 1926–7 led to a harsh repression of everything communist, while the Sarekat Islam was losing its hold over the masses with which it had lost contact already after it had thrown out the leftists. At this stage real nationalism began to fill the vacuum caused by the disappearance of the P.K.I, and the powerlessness of the S.I. There is no doubt that the previous agitation had been motivated by genuine nationalist feelings, but these had either been subordinated to or run parallel with more internationally inclined movements such as Islamic reformism and Marxist socialism. After 1926, however, nationalism – and professedly Indonesian nationalism for that matter – was made the basic principle of political action. This became clear when the oldest party, the very cautious, in its origins very aristocratic and hardly more than Central Javanese Boedi Oetomo decided to include Indonesian nationalism into its programme. The new trend received its most clear expression, of course, in Soekarno's Partai Nasional Indonesia, which advocated a Free Indonesia, to be achieved by non-cooperation with the Dutch administration and the broadest possible co-operation with other political parties.

One feature of the Malaysia Agreement of July 1963 was the provisions designed to restrict the political role of Singapore in the new Federation. To this end, in return for a fair measure of local autonomy, Singapore was to accept a reduced representation in the Federal legislature together with a minor disability through a dual Malaysian citizenship. While the government of Malaya, which was to assume the federal powers, was anxious to include Singapore in Malaysia so as to contain a subversive threat, it was concerned also to place limitations on a threat of a different order which seemed to be posed by the governing party in Singapore. The government in Singapore, which represented a predominantly Chinese electorate, was composed of men whose vision of a socialist society was not confined by the territorial bounds of the island-state. Indeed they had been long on record as to their ultimate objective. The government in Malaya — founded on a loose communal coalition which reflected Malay political dominance — was conservative in complexion and made little secret of its protection of traditional interests and of its advocacy of private enterprise. It could not but look with disfavour on the Administration in Singapore, while attitudes towards its Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, verged on the pathological.

Ever since its establishment Indonesia has been notorious for its disregard of international law and world opinion as expressed through the United Nations. The recent policy of confrontation to crush Malaysia is merely the culmination of a series of posturings by Asia's sawdust Caesar.

As long ago as early 1945, in the latter days of the Japanese occupation, Soekarno was outlining his views of the Indonesia to be. In February and May of that year he participated in a conference of Indonesian nationalists summoned by the Japanese to discuss the State to be created. Soekarno spoke in a way that is more expected of predatory imperialists than of anti-colonialists believing in selfdetermination. Like Mussolini, who was always harking back to ancient Rome, Soekarno referred to an ancient empire of the Middle Ages which he wished to see revived. Indonesia was to be a restoration of this, consisting not merely of the Dutch colonies which the Japanese occupied, but also of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, Borneo, Brunei, the Philippines and southern Thailand. In those days at least, Soekarno paid lip service to both international law and the realities of a political situation, recognising that in so far as Malaya, Singapore and the Philippines were concerned there might be difficulties with the United Kingdom and the United States.

Before outlining these Burmese sources, I would like to make a very brief survey of Burmese history. Burmese history proper begins with Aniruddha, A.D. 1044. From then to 1287 was the heyday of Pagan until it fell at the hands of the Mongols. From then till the time of Bayinnaung 1551–81 Burma was divided into a number of small kingdoms with the Mons in the south. The principal Burmese kingdom had its seat at Ava. Then under Tabinshwehti and his successor Bayinnaung, Burma excluding Arakan but including the Shan States and Chiengmai was unified. This kingdom lasted till 1740 when the Mons of the south broke away to form a kingdom of their own. When they gained in strength they attacked the northern kingdom in annual raids which culminated in the capture of Ava 1751. This brought an end to the Toungoo dynasty and the Mons became practically the masters of the whole of Burma proper. But not for long. U Aungzeya (later known as Alaungpaya, 1752–60), gathered round him a certain following in Shwebo which was also known as Konbaung (subsequently the name of the period): and offered resistance to the Mons. From there his power spread until he was able to crush the shortlived Mon kingdom, unify the whole of Burma proper and make successful raids on Manipur and even Assam. He led an invasion of Siam but he died before he could achieve anything. He had however begun a dynasty, the Konbaung dynasty.

From prehistoric times rice (oryza sativa linn) has been cultivated in Burma but it was only about a century ago that Burma began to develop into the chief rice-exporting country of the world. Up to about the middle of the nineteenth century rice was cultivated mainly for home consumption and for a small, irregular internal trade mainly from Lower to Upper Burma. The earliest account we have of Burma's external rice trade is probably the one by Duarte Barbosa who mentioned that much rice was shipped from Pegu to Malacca and Sumatra in the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time Pegu was an independent kingdom peopled by Mons (known also as Talaings or Peguans). Their kings appeared to have viewed trade in a more favourable light than did the Burmans for during their time trade was much less hampered than after Pegu became subject to the Burmans.

External affairs have exercised the minds and loyalties of a sizeable section of Singapore's politically articulate population ever since the first preparations towards self-government were taken in 1955. Even though questions of defence and foreign policy were until September 1963 the responsibility of Whitehall exclusively and thereupon transferred to the Malaysian central government, Singapore developed its own informal relationships with several foreign or Commonwealth states during those years and hotly debated international problems which seemed to impinge on the island's political future.

It is a commonplace that political development must be prepared for and planned for. Without adequate preparation and planning there will be chaos, perhaps approaching Congo-like proportions. The dangers are all the greater in multi-racial societies, such as Sarawak and North Borneo. A warning against the premature introduction of political parties in Sarawak was given by the Governor in 1959 only a few weeks before the Sarawak United Peoples' Party was founded. “It is … essential that party politics should not cause further divisions in our community but should have a unifying and binding effect. If a party tends to be dominated by one race or class … it may have a disintegrating effect on our community …… I frankly doubt if political parties at the present stage of development will spell faster progress in this small country …” These misgivings were echoed from North Borneo, by its Governor, some six months later. “People of like taste or like purpose are all too probably of like race, and nothing could promise greater disaster for this country than its division on communal lines.” The Governor knew of no multiracial society in the world “where as yet there has been evolved a satisfactory, stable or easy working form of fully representative Government”. Nearly four years later the next Governor of North Borneo warned of the danger of “mounting the tiger of political parties prematurely”. The formation of parties at this stage “carried the greatest danger of communal strife”.

The publication of Dr. C. D. Cowan's Nineteenth Century Malaya in 1961 was a significant landmark in the historiography of British intervention in Malaya. His view of the reasons for intervention has shown signs of becoming the newly orthodox view of a well-known crux in Malayan historical interpretation, being given prominence in a number of recent Malayan history books. After studying the London records, he came to the conclusion that “the decision to take some action in Malaya, and if necessary to intervene in the affairs of the states, was provoked not by conditions in the Peninsula, nor by any consideration of British economic interests there, but by fear of foreign intervention.” This conclusion has since been supported by another student of the Colonial Office side of things, Dr. W. D. MacIntyre, and seems to relegate previous interpretations to the limbo of historiographical curiosities.

Before the American Revolution, the economic life of Rhode Island was largely dependent on the Caribbean and African trade. But the acquisition of political independence meant also the closing of these highly profitable channels of trade. Just as the need to find means by which to purchase British manufactures had led Rhode Island to join in the famous triangular trade (between New England, the West Indies and Africa); so now the closing of this trade necessitated the search for an alternative commercial avenue. This alternative was found in the establishment of trade with the Mediterranean, the Baltic and most important of all, with the Far East and the East Indies.