Andre’s Reviews > Massacre in Malaya: Exposing Britain's My Lai > Status Update

In the end I have to say that the title is misleading.

What we now call decolonization was in reality a period of retrenchment. Empire was redefined not abolished. This reflected American pragmatism about power sharing and would have most impact in what was still known as the 'British Southern World.'

Dammit, this book seems to have fallen into the "the last 100 pages are boring" trap.

So the British once made up a story about Germans turning their own dead into glue and rubber during WWI (it was actually killed war horses)... the more I learn about the British empire the more annoying it becomes when people romanticize it.

Reading about the British concentration camps in Malaya makes me question what book I should read next. "Germany and the Black Diaspora - Points of contact, 1250 - 1914" or "Mein Kampf"?

Subterfuge was integral to British counter-insurgency. The colonial power cannot afford to appear weak, but nor must its hands be too bloody. Blood spilt must be cleaned up: the inheritance of Britain's small wars is disavowal and cover-up.

A more fundamental question is whether Thompson got right what happened in Malaya. Does the 'Malayan Paradigm' stand on strategic feet of clay?
It is certainly a puzzle that British forces in Malaya took more than a decade to quash a guerilla army that had no outside support whatsoever - and that the 'defeated' communists were capable of renewing their assault a few years after the victory was celebrated.

This is getting a tad boring.

Post-war colonial policy was driven not only by the patrician liberalism of the 'Malayan Planning Unit' but the near bankrupt British government's desperate need to exploit Malaya's resources. The colonial government was determined to crush any kind of subversion, plot or strike that threatened the profits of Malaya's mines and plantations.