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9 - The state and information in modern Southeast Asian history
- from Part Three - State power, development, and the spectre of nation-building
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- By T.N. Harper, Magdalene College
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- Book:
- House of Glass
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 23 July 2001, pp 213-240
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Summary
From the nineteenth century onwards, communications embodied the idea of progress. The steamship, the railway, the telegraph attested to the supremacy of the West. They represented the harnessing of new forms of power; the triumph of steel over wooden construction; the conquest of time and distance; the intoxicant of industrial capitalism. They buttressed a complex of power relations that underpinned Europe's command of modernity — power over nature, power over people and their movement, power to more adequately predict events — above all, power to change the structure of systems (Elvin 1986).
Information and communications framed imperial technocracy. They blazoned across the globe a vision of Europe and sought to project a sense of her generosity. The ideal was a civilization “united not by force but by information” (Adas 1989, Richards 1993, p. 1). Communications underpinned the “psychological bluff” of European omnipotence and prestige. It propelled the languages of the metropolis to the remoter regions of the Earth and created a new ritual speech for their inhabitants — one that would, it was hoped, turn them immutably towards the metropolis for their tutelage. Whether it was in English, Dutch, Spanish, French, or American, new vocabularies of authority were created that inculcated the keywords of European power. The Europeans also reconfigured the status of vernacular tongues in a way that privileged some utterances and disqualified others. The attempt to frame the state in this way was not novel in itself. Throughout Asia, pre-colonial states had sought to harness ideology to the service of the centre (Reid 1993, pp. 181–83, 192–201). Their attempts to do so were bolstered in the face of the European threat and continued into the colonial period. However, their capacity to project themselves in this way diminished dramatically in the face of the blinding new innovations that radiated from the West.
New Malays, New Malaysians: Nationalism, Society and History
- from Malaysia
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- By T.N. Harper, Magdalene College, Cambridge
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- Book:
- Southeast Asian Affairs 1996
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 22 February 1997, pp 238-256
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Summary
Nineteen ninety-five was a watershed year for Malaysia. Commentators on national affairs were almost unanimous in asserting that a long period of national struggle had reached its culmination. A new post-colonial generation was entrenched in the political succession. The economic restructuring of the New Economic Policy (NEP) lay in the past, growth rates soared and Malaysia had graduated as an “upper middle income country” with a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) above that of Greece. Malaysia was looking outwards, articulating a sense of pur- pose and cultivating a new patriotism. It was a time of visionary public works, lit by the torch of technology. The world was coming to Malaysia and applauding its achievements. The April 1995 National Front electoral landslide provoked parallels with the first Alliance victory on the eve of independence in 1955. Indeed, one could see the ruling alliance surging forward in a similar wave of triumphalism, a similar promise of prosperity. One man dominated Malaysian politics to an unprecedented extent: 1995 was Mahathir's meridian. It seemed also that an era of opposition politics had come to a conclusive end. These epochal moments caused new questions to be voiced about the future. Did this represent the “end of politics” in Malaysia, the end of Malaysia's post-colonial history? Were Malaysians witnessing the demise of ethnic politics and the birth of a new kind of society — the founding moment of a new Malaysia even?
Historians tend to be wary of such talk. It smacks of bad history, the kind of rigid teleological narrative into which the histories of nations are often com- pressed. Historians now emphasize the dissonances that arise in the development of a nation or a nationalism. They chart prospective histories that look forward from the past and emphasize the variety of historical outcomes that were possible at every stage. They observe how nationalism is continually reinvented in response to new ideological challenges and social change.
II - POLITICAL OUTLOOK 1997-98
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- By T.N. Harper, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Leonard Sebastian, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Felix Soh, Foreign Editor of the Straits Times (Singapore), Naimah Talib, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Nick Freeman, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Sorpong Peou, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Tin Maung Maung Than, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
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- Book:
- Regional Outlook
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 01 February 1997, pp 17-46
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Summary
Brunei
Domestically, Brunei continues to emphasize the conservative and traditional nature of its polity. In line with its national philosophy of Melayu Islam Beraja, Islam has been given a higher profile. Like other modernizing monarchies, the Sultanate has consistently made recourse to Islamic themes in a period of rising religious enthusiasm with the aim of reducing or neutralizing the effectiveness of Islamic opposition. Since 1990, the Sultan has called for existing laws in the state to be brought more in line with the teachings of Islam. A step in this direction is the Sultan's call to implement Shariah law beyond the sphere of family law and to apply it to criminal acts. Islamic banking institutions, introduced in the last few years, have reportedly been doing well, and the newly-established Islamic Trust Fund is gaining popularity among the dominant Muslim community.
The tiny kingdom was recently reminded of the tumultuous December 1962 revolt when Zaini Hj Ahmad, an ex-rebel leader, was released from detention and given a royal pardon just a few days before the Sultan's fiftieth birthday celebrations in July 1996. Zaini was one of the leaders of the Brunei revolt and had escaped from detention to Malaysia in 1973 and remained there as an exile until his recent return to the Sultanate for rehabilitation. The year 1996 also witnessed the historic meeting of the General Assembly of the mukim and kampong, local and village, consultative councils which were constituted in 1993 with the objective of consolidating the grassroots institutions of the penghulu and ketua kampong, the local and village heads.
The Royal Brunei Armed Forces will continue its modernization programme and has signed a contract with GEC Yarrows of Scotland for the supply of three offshore patrol vessels which will be delivered in 2000. These will be used to beef up the Sultanate's naval presence in the South China Sea, where it has a long-standing dispute with China over the Spratly Islands.
Introduction
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- By Daljit Singh, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, T.N. Harper, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
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- Book:
- Regional Outlook
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 01 February 1997, pp ix-x
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Summary
The outlook for security and stability in the Asia-Pacific is more promising at the end of 1996 than it was at the beginning of the year, principally because U.S.-China relations are better, even though warier. There are several underlying security problems in the Asia-Pacific, including the Taiwan issue, but the major powers have a strong stake in the maintenance of peace and stability. Therefore, barring uncertainties on the Korean peninsula, adverse developments of a kind which could undermine the economic dynamism of the region are unlikely, at least in the near future.
The economic slowdowns in some countries of Southeast Asia do not change the underlying economic dynamism. No significant adverse political developments are expected within the countries of Southeast Asia in 1997–98, though the situation in Indonesia seems more uncertain.
In this issue of Regional Outlook we have a separate introductory section called The Asia-Pacific Context. The peace and prosperity of Southeast Asia are intertwined in many ways with the broader Asia-Pacific region and a brief assessment of this broader region, especially of the potential conflict areas, is necessary. We have also included in this section two comments on Hong Kong's transition to Chinese rule in 1997. Following this, Southeast Asia is dealt with in two parts, Political Outlook and Economic Outlook. Each part is in turn divided into two sections, first the ASEAN Six (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) and then Indochina and Myanmar.
Different authors have contributed to this volume and we would like to thank them for their contributions. We would also like to thank Mr Christopher Lee and Dr Mya Than for compiling the basic indicators of the Southeast Asian economies in the appendices. These have been obtained from various published sources and are included merely as background data that readers may find useful.
The Politics of Disease and Disorder in Post-War Malaya
- T.N. Harper
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- Journal:
- Journal of Southeast Asian Studies / Volume 21 / Issue 1 / March 1990
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 24 August 2009, pp. 88-113
- Print publication:
- March 1990
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It has become a commonplace of Malayan historiography that the period following the end of the Pacific War witnessed the establishment of a pattern of political life which has persisted in its main features into the present decade. Existing accounts have focused around the restructuring of the British presence in Malaya under a military administration and the introduction of, and opposition to, the Malayan Union scheme in 1946 and the Federal structure which succeeded it in April 1948. These years saw the emergence of an ethnically based nationalist movement and the defeat of a radical challenge to its predominance. The communal and insurrectionary violence which was a feature of the period has been represented as a constraint to subsequent political action — as a limit to what the structure of Malaya's pluralism could tolerate — and the constitutional struggles as a lost opportunity to effect its transformation. Whilst it is hard to exaggerate the importance of these events in shaping the landscape of Malaysian politics, there is a sense in which the sophistication of these political and constitutional preoccupations suggests uneven development within the historical writing as a whole. The social context which stimulated change, and the breadth of the local response which dignified it, has been marginalized in many accounts. There has been a tendency to conceive the state system and the colonial presence in Malaya within the bounds of a paradigm governed by the constitutional settlement, and the various phases of insurrection and political change as primarily the products of the subversive or nationalist imagination.
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