This book breaks new ground in arguing for a longer trajectory of the Cold War tracing this phenomenon back to 1920s colonial Malaya and Sarawak.

From the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was a great deal of turmoil, tension and violence in what became Malaysia as a result of the 1963 Federation; upheavals included the Malayan Emergency of 1948・1960, the independence of Malaya in 1957, Konfrontasi with Indonesia of 1963・1966, the Philippines’ claim to Sabah, the Sarawak Communist Insurgency (1962・1990) and the Second Malayan Emergency of 1968・1989. This book breaks new ground in arguing for a longer trajectory of the Cold War, tracing this phenomenon back to 1920s’ colonial Malaya and Sarawak. Many new research findings showing how Malaysia coped with and overcame the many trials, challenges and difficulties are presented here, further enriching the historiography.

This book tells the story of the Hakka Chinese in Sarawak, Malaysia, who were targeted as communists or communist sympathizers because of their Chinese ethnicity the 1960s and 1970s. Thousands of these rural Hakkas were relocated into “new villages” surrounded by barbed wire or detained at correction centres, where incarcerated people were understood to be “sacrificial gifts” to the war on communism and to the rule of Malaysia’s judicial-administrative regime. The Hakkas of Sarawak looks at how these incarcerated people struggled for survival and dealt with their defeat over the course of a generation. Using methodologies of narrative theory and exchange theory, Kee Howe Yong provides a powerful account of the ongoing legacies of Cold War oppression and its impact on the lives of people who were victimized by these policies.

The Cold War in Southeast Asia was a many-faceted conflict, driven by regional historical imperatives as much as by the contest between global superpowers. The essays in this book offer the most detailed and probing examination to date of the cultural dimension of the Cold War in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asian culture from the late 1940s to the late 1970s was primarily shaped by a long-standing search for national identity and independence, which took place in the context of intense rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the Peoples' Republic of China emerging in 1949 as another major international competitor for influence in Southeast Asia. Based on fieldwork in Burma, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, the essays in this collection analyze the ways in which art, literature, film, theater, spectacle, physical culture, and the popular press represented Southeast Asian responses to the Cold War and commemorated that era's violent conflicts long after tensions had subsided. Southeast Asian cultural reactions to the Cold War involved various solutions to the dilemmas of the newly independent nation-states of the region. What is common to all of the perspectives and works examined in this book is that they expressed social and aesthetic concerns that both antedated and outlasted the Cold War, ones that never became simply aligned with the ideologies of either bloc. Contributors:Francisco B. Benitez, University of Washington; Bo Bo, Burmese writer (SOAS, University of London); Michael Bodden, University of Victoria; Simon Creak, Australian National University; Gaik Cheng Khoo, Australian National University; Rachel Harrison, SOAS, University of London; Barbara Hatley, University of Tasmania; Boitran Huynh-Beattie, Asiarta Foundation; Jennifer Lindsay, Australian National University

The historiography of the Cold War has long been dominated by American motivations and concerns, with Southeast Asian perspectives largely confined to the Indochina wars and Indonesia under Sukarno. Southeast Asia’s Cold War corrects this situation by examining the international politics of the region from within rather than without. It provides an up-to-date, coherent narrative of the Cold War as it played out in Southeast Asia against a backdrop of superpower rivalry. When viewed through a Southeast Asian lens, the Cold War can be traced back to the interwar years and antagonisms between indigenous communists and their opponents, the colonial governments and their later successors. Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and the Philippines join Vietnam and Indonesia as key regional players with their own agendas, as evidenced by the formation of SEATO and the Bandung conference. The threat of global Communism orchestrated from Moscow, which had such a powerful hold in the West, passed largely unnoticed in Southeast Asia, where ideology took a back seat to regime preservation. China and its evolving attitude toward the region proved far more compelling: the emergence of the communist government there in 1949 helped further the development of communist networks in the Southeast Asian region. Except in Vietnam, the Soviet Union’s role was peripheral: managing relationships with the United States and China was what preoccupied Southeast Asia’s leaders. The impact of the Sino-Soviet split is visible in the decade-long Cambodian conflict and the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979. This succinct volume not only demonstrates the complexity of the region, but for the first time provides a narrative that places decolonization and nation-building alongside the usual geopolitical conflicts. It focuses on local actors and marshals a wide range of literature in support of its argument. Most importantly, it tells us how and why the Cold War in Southeast Asia evolved the way it did and offers a deeper understanding of the Southeast Asia we know today.

The Senoi Praaq is a Malaysian special forces unit originally created in 1956 by the British colonial authorities to fight communism during the Malayan Emergency. The term Senoi Praaq, which roughly translates as war people, stems from the Semai language and is the basis of a colorful legend in Malaysia. The unit is largely comprised of non-Malay tribal peoples known collectively as the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia. Jumper details Senoi Praaq inception as a private army and its subsequent development into an affiliate of the Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) in this fast paced and often graphic account of irregular warfare as it applies to counterinsurgency. The unit began as a creature of British Military Intelligence and fought in the deep jungle as Special Air Service (SAS) protégés, eventually replacing the latter upon Malaysian independence from Great Britain. They then served as mercenaries employed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency in Vietnam and later fought on Borneo during Malaysia's own undeclared war with Indonesia. Today the unit remains under arms and heads up a large paramilitary apparatus maintained in conjunction with conventional military forces. Malaysia's capacity to project force throughout South East Asia should not be underestimated, Jumper warns. The Senoi Praaq is a unique fighting force upon which Malaysia may rely to preserve her sovereignty.

Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia draws on newly available archival documentation from both Western and Asian countries to explore decolonization, the Cold War, and the establishment of a new international order in post-World War II Southeast Asia. Major historical forces intersected here--of power, politics, economics, and culture--on trajectories East to West, North to South, across the South itself, and along less defined tracks. Especially important, democratic-communist competitions sought the loyalties of Southeast Asian nationalists, even as some colonial powers sought to resume their prewar dominance. These intersections are the focus of the contributions to this book, which use new sources and approaches to examine some of the most important historical trajectories of the twentieth century in Burma, Vietnam, Malaysia, and a number of other countries.