The origins of Malay nationalism, 1900-1941

Abstract

The purpose of this study has been to trace the growth of communal, ethnic and national feeling among the Malays of Peninsular Malaya in the first four decades of this century, and the expression of this feeling in voluntary associations of a modern and potentially political-nationalist kind. The study opens with a brief examination in Chapter I of the social organisation of the traditional Malay polity as it was at the time of British intervention in the internal affairs of the western states in the 1870s, and of the first effects upon Malay society of patterns of British rule formed during the early years of the Residential system. A second introductory chapter deals with the growth in the peripheral Straits Settlements, and particularly in Singapore, of a distinctive and heterogeneous urban Malayo-Muslim community, which acted as the focus in the latter part of the nineteenth century for the cultural and economic energies of the Malaysian world as a whole, and as a notable stimulant for subsequent Malay social change in the peninsular hinterland. The main body of the thesis spans the years 1900 to 1941. No attempt has been made to present a detailed account of British policy and administration in Malaya during the period.