Traditionalism and the Ascendancy of the Malay Ruling Class in Colonial Malaya

by Donna J. Amoroso

In this original and perceptive study Donna J. Amoroso argues that the Malay elites' preeminent position after the Second World War had much to do with how British colonialism reshaped old idioms and rituals - helping to (re)invent a tradition. In doing so she illuminates the ways that traditionalism reordered the Malay political world, the nature of the state and the political economy of leadership. In the postwar era, traditionalism began to play a new role: it became a weapon which the Malay aristocracy employed to resist British plans for a Malayan Union and to neutralize the challenge coming from groups representing a more radical, democratic perspective and even hijacking their themes. Traditionalism and the Ascendancy of the Malay Ruling Class in Colonial Malaya is an important contribution to the history of colonial Malaya, and more generally, to the history of ideas in late colonial societies.

276 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Ruby Jusoh · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Review) A book that compels us to review our history and reflect on the kind of persons we are as Malaysians. The writer was an American scholar who headed the Kyoto Review in Japan and was extremely well-versed in Asian studies. She was reluctant for Traditionalism to be published due to her identity as an outsider, particularly coming from the US. Nonetheless, her scholarship was too important to be missed. Originally her PhD thesis, her Filipino husband and friends developed the text into a book after her death.
.
An excellent book and I was so engrossed. Instead of using the narrative of the coloniser versus the colonised, she reminded us of the fact that the Malay ruling class were mostly paid by the Brits to do what they did. Some saw the colonisers as problem-solvers due to huge infighting among themselves. Who lost? The peasants in Malaya. The downtrodden. The people.
.
A few notes -
1. Not all Malay rulers were wise. Some of them were not very competent.
2. Most of them received allowances granted by the British colonial government.
3. The Malay upper-class presence was important to make the citizens felt like they were still living in Malay states.
4. The Brits acted as Colonial overlord. They chose not to disrupt local customs not out of respect but convenience and administrative sense.
5. The Brits used aspects of tradition and anglicised it, hence traditionalism was applied - a sort of colonial-approved Malay elitism.
6. The Brits utilised the Malay elites to better administer Malaya, consequently privileging this upper-class Malays to no end.
7. The Malay blue-bloods did not really focus on gaining independence and some were extremely Anglicised.
8. The Malay leftists and radicals were the ones championing nationalism and independent Malaya, they also envisioned a more equal and just society.
9. After the cancellation of Malayan Union, the Malay aristocrats formed UMNO and supplanted the Malay leftists, taking their nationalist language and took over the Independence movement.
10. Thus, the Malay aristocrats continued their reign in society, up till today, as we can all see. Not aristocrats per se but you know what I mean.
11. His Highness Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor was highly respected by the colonial officers as an able and visionary ruler. His views shaped and moulded what it means to be a Malay state.
12. The modern Malay monarch consists of two foundation - the western constitutional ruler and the Malay ceremonial raja.
13. The protection of ruling Malay elites' interests is something that persists to this day.
.

[Fadillah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet the survival of the Malay ruling class was not without contradiction. Once in direct control of Malaya, the British no longer needed, or believed in, the ability of Malays to become civilised. Although good government would still be brought to the Malay states, the indigenous elite itself was no longer essential to the process. Instead, it became representative of an ancient culture that had to be preserved while the world changed around it. The Malay ruling class responded to the contradiction between civilisation and preservation in ways that caused a rift to develop within it. On the one hand, it consistently lobbied the British for the right to govern, leading to the bureaucratisation of the aristocracies. Although the achievement of the new bureaucratic elite was sharply limited, it was clearly imbued with the modern, good government ethos. On the other hand, the rulers took to heart the British project of preservation through traditionalism.
- Traditionalism and the ascendancy of the Malay Ruling Class in Colonial Malaya by Donna J. Amoroso
.
.
I can’t remember where did i heard this phrase but it stated as in order to live peacefully in Malaysia, you don’t talk, discuss or argue about 3R - race, religion and royal. But being a Malay - A peasant Malay (just to match with book context), it puts you in a position to talk about all these 3 things. One can’t exist without explaining the others. The book did a good job analysing the relations of royals with colonial government either British Administration , Japanese Occupation and the attempt to establish Malayan Union , the angle that remains obscure until today. I think the strength of this book would be to unlearn and relearn the whole history of nation building from the perspective of an outsider which ironically an author’s reluctance to publish her work in the first place. The book divided into 7 chapters - and each chapter followed chronologically on the the establishment of Malays Politics and the reinvention of traditional values of the Malays in its identity. The book explored the question of whether the royals are truly protector of the Malay Peasants or are they simply reinforcing it because they needed the colonial government protection and privilege. Besides that, the book managed to navigate the issue of ‘Malayness’ in reinventing the nationalism that once was divided by the states. Other than that, Dato Onn’s paradox as a Malay Hero is demonstrated by seeing how his strategies in confronting and stifling Malayan Union BUT at the same time, his statement about his own race when they wanted to gain independence is equally baffling. Overall, this is a quite eye-opening read. The journey of understanding your own country’s history has been challenging and enlightening at the same, in my teens, i was taught that the colonisers ; either Portuguese, British and Japanese was THE bad guy, In my 20s, i learned that why Blaming these Colonisers Alone is not right as the other internal factors were present as well and In my 30s, i recognised that Malaysia could have been more equal and just nation if the British and Upper Class/Aristocrats Malays were not in Cahoots for their own benefit and the idea to revive and preserve The Malays were simply a facade. To end my review, let me share quotes from each chapter just in case you’re curious about this book.
.
CHAPTER 1 Introduction
- The Japanese wartime occupation of Malaya had shattered the traditionalistic Malay world in many ways, the most important of which were the introduction of mass politics, the decline in the status of the rulers, and the ambiguous standing of Malay bureaucrats whose continuing service to the colonial state (now Japanese) won them the wrath of the Chinese resistance. In the wake of the occupation, colonial restoration could not stop unprecedented violence between the Malays and the Chinese. The seemingly peaceful plural society could not be put back together again. The restored colonial state then made its own assault on its erstwhile allies with the Malayan Union proposals. This new constitutional arrangement would accomplish the long-sought administrative unity of British Malaya at the expense of Malay ruling class privilege. The Malay rulers would lose their sovereign status and become religious figureheads. Access to positions in the state, and all future political rights, would accrue to Chinese and Indian residents - the so-called 'Malayans - in open competition with the 'backward' Malays. Finally, the war had allowed a small group of radical Malay intellectuals to make the leap into political mass action, resulting in the establishment of the Partai Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM, Malay Nationalist Party of Malaya) shortly after the occupation came to an end and well before the aristocrats had conceptualised any response to the new situation. This party fully embraced nationalism, and drew inspiration as well as rhetoric and models from the Indonesian revolution occurring just across the poorly patrolled Straits of Malacca.
.
CHAPTER 2 British Power and the Reordering of Malay Politics
- Throughout the century, the British advanced the ideology of good government in the Malay states, first as a discourse and then in actual practice. Ironically, just as the new idiom succeeded in displacing or redefining Malay political idiom, the British seemed to lose interest in the project of conversion. Instead of indoctrinating the largely quiescent Malay ruling class further in good government, the British declined to incorporate more than a small portion of it into the administration of the states until quite a late date. What accounts for this? Hendrik Maier has identified a mid-century shift in British attitudes towards Malay culture that helps explain it. Early British observers - Maier's merchant-scientists - approached the Malay world through the eyes of the Scottish Enlightenment. These men measured the Malays according to a scale of civilisation and found them wanting; they were contemptuous of the Malays for this reason but believed that all nations were capable of progress. Just like the British, Malays could advance from simple agriculture to a complex commercial society. A later generation abandoned this belief in man's perfectibility, becoming more tolerant and fond of Malay culture, but believing it inherently and eternally inferior to the British. 'First free trade and equality of all human beings, then order and superiority of the white race?" The new attitude was no doubt encouraged by the very fact of formal colonial rule: scholar-administrators had control of the peninsula and did not have to rely on the spread of liberal ideas through persuasion.
.
CHAPTER 3 Rituals of State and the New Malay Rulers
- When Sultan Abdul Hamid of Kedah went to London far the coronation in 1911 with only Western suits, he was informed that he could take part in the official procession only if he wore traditional Malay clothes. "In a parade of imperial possessions, a Malay ruler was expected to represent oriental exotica and appear in 'national' costume, not mundane Savile Row. Yet even in Malaya, and especially at such public rituals as described below, traditional Malay attire was an important signifier of a royal culture in which high British officials might participate, sometimes by donning toyal costames themselves. Like dress. the matter of what the rulers ate and drank was influenced by British norns and the desire to ease relations. Innes described her guest as one of the more civilized of the rajas? He drank Bass pale ale, but only in homeopathic doses of half a glass per day, and he ate with his fingers, explaining that he was an old man and could not learn new ways. The sultan's son-in-law, however, the 'viceroy of Selangor, took to the new ways with a flourish, drinking brandy and champagne and eating ham." These and other contraventions of Muslim law would eventually become problematic, but for a long time British backing validated such public behaviour. Malay royalty's enthusiastic adoption of Western styles allows us to see the hybrid nature of the tradition being created. Why in fact would an avowedly traditional Malay ruler want to switch from, say, elephant to steamship? Part of the reason was simply the introduction of new products aid technologies: we should not preclude such change from a dynamic tradition But in these matters of personal comportment - clothing, furnishing, diet and transport - the rulers were presented with new models of authority emanating from Singapore. Private British businessmen and officials like the governor conducted themselves in a style calculated to apres the natives. Malay rulers rose to the challenge and implicitly accepted British notions of what was impressive.
.
CHAPTER 4 Challenges to Traditionalism
- The earliest critique of Malay backwardness' came early in the centur v from i he Islamie reform movement (Kaum Muda), a group that included Mal ys and immigrant Indonesians, as well as Peranakan Arabs and Indian Muslims who identified with and daimed to speak for the Malays. This reform movement, while imbibing ideas and impulses from abroad, was formulated in Malaya largely in response to the impact of colonialism on Islam. The terms of indirect British control left only residually-defined Malay custom and religion in Malay hands, and British encouragement of a bureaucratised traditionalism had led to an nuthoritarian form of religious administration' in which the royal houses controlled 'extensive machiner(ies| for governing Islam?' Reformists rejected the arbitrary control of the elite and insisted on the use of reason (akal) in interpreting Islamic practices (i.e. regarding usury and education for women) in order to improve Muslims' position in the world." Their analysis attacked the traditional practices which were fossilising Malay society and put the reformers in direct conflict with the traditional Malay elite. Adding to this intrinsic conflict, the reformers began to articulate a new idea: that rulers and traditional leaders had responsibilities towards their people in the areas of education, economic development and self-awareness, and that they should be helping Muslims to change in a changing world. In this regard, the reformers found the Malay leadership to be a complete failure and criticised it as well for being 'dissolute and self-indulgent? In responding to this defiance, the Malay elite was backed by colonial authority. Reformers were barred from speaking in many peninsular mosques, and reformist journals published in Singapore and Penang were denied entry into several states.
.
CHAPTER 5 Aristocratic Ascendancy and the Use of Tradition
- For the Malay rulers, the protection of a powerful outsider had been a historically valid alliance which allowed them to further their position and wealth in the Malay world. Unfortunately for them, British imperialism changed the international context and the Malay world itself, rendering their accommodations suspect, something that suddenly became visible in the signing of the new treaties. The rulers' purported status as protectors of Malay society, derived as it was from colonial protection of their own position, was irrevocably destroyed. In postwar discourse, the idea of protection itself was no longer applied to their actions; penaung (protector) and naungan (protection) were used only in relation to the British. Bitter condemnation of the rulers, in both the nationalist and conservative press, was based instead on the notion of accountability - a fledging idea that had been suppressed before the war. Because of what the rulers had done, editorialists wrote, they had shown they could not be relied on; they had let the people down." Their actions were likened to selling their states (menjual negerinya) and for that their powers should be suspended (dipecat).?? Worst of all, according to one letter writer, was that the posture assumed by the rulers showed the world the weakness of the Malay community, which extended even up to their sultans: Our esteemed rulers apparently haven't got the spirit to defend their own true rights. Rather, when the slightest bit of pressure is applied, our esteemed rulers retreat."
.
CHAPTER 6 Politics and Nationalism
- A reexamination of the loyalty owed to Malay leadership similarly downgrades the importance of the negeri. Loyalty was ideally owed to the ruler and kerajaan referred to the condition of having a ruler, not to a government or a place. An effective ruler could create in a state the circumstances conducive to good living. This is how Abu Bakar of Johor was remembered. Despite his usurpation of the sultanate, for which fellow monarchs despised him, the inhabitants of Johor remembered with pride that he created an independent Islamic state in which Europeans were held to an advisory role.& There is no other way to explain why a recent Javanese immigrant, for example, would be loyal to Johor. The colonial 'restoration' of ideal Malay states and the enhanced visibility of rulers in their states may have served to strengthen the link between loyalty to ruler and identification with place. But the visible decline in status and efficacy which the rulers suffered during the occupation may then have uncoupled this pairing of loyalty and identification. After the debacle of the MacMichael treaties, and thanks to the intervention of On, one could still be loyal to one's ruler, but choose to identify with a more effective and progressive polity and leadership than that represented by the ruler in his state. In the prevailing nationalist climate of postwar Asia, there is no reason at all why a Johor leader, purporting to represent the Malays, should not become wildly popular. And insofar as Onn stayed close to the rulers, whether in tension or in support, he successfully rearticulated a Malay leadership with historical resonance. Though both conservatives and radicals spoke of restoring the glory of the Malay past, Onn succeeded in living it, a modern-day rendition of Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat rolled into one." Despite the novelty of mass politics, Onn was as Ahmed Boestamam understood, a Malay hero.
.
CHAPTER 7 Epilogue
- As the ruling party, UMNO made few alterations to the inherited state, so the essential relationship of Malay nationalism to that state stagnated as well and continued to be articulated in terms of special privilege and protection. Aristocratic hijacking of the nationalist movement had prevented the logical next step in the development of popular Malay nationalism: a restructuring of society in which all citizens had equal access to the benefits of nationhood. The continued hegemony of the traditional leadership perpetuated the following types of ideas: that few Malays were qualified for leadership positions; that Malays were in danger of being overrun by foreigners in their own land, like the 'Red Indians of America; and that what Malays continued to need, above all, was protection. The popular Malay nationalism which survived independence was a colonial form, encouraged to look to archaisms like the rulers for validation and satisfaction.
.
P/S : Just in case you want a concise review about the book, i would totally recommend the one written by my bestie, bukuruby.

[Syed Emir Ashman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. Starts out meticulously slow, but picks up pace and excitement about halfway through. Readable and academic at the same time.

The book is a historical account of the politics of British Malaya. It zeroes in on the evolution of the dynamic relationship between Imperial Britain, the Malay Rulers, the native aristocracy and the people at large.

There is not much indication as to where the author’s ideological preferences lay - which is in my mind, an indication of veracious history. That being said, radicals will obviously appreciate her revisionist reliance on left-leaning literary concepts. The conservative however, will also value her comportment with the facts and exceptional storytelling.