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Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
- Review of Palace, Political Party and Power
- The case of CPM (1948-1960) – a Special Branch perspective
- Rahsia ahli Umno no. # 000006
- Malaysia and the The Global Competitiveness Report 2011-2012
- GO or no GO, Zarinah and SC under scrutiny
- All rogues lead to SC
- Mat Indera & Mat Silam
- Outrage as Taib’s Ta Ann Files Losses in Tasmania
- Demand for democracy follows socio-economic transformation
- Not only the voting processes is screwed up, but the whole world too (dwi bahasa)
- Scholars’ views on nationalists and their struggle for Merdeka
| Review of Palace, Political Party and Power Posted: 08 Sep 2011 10:28 PM PDT Never in Malaysian history had there been such a popular uprising against Malay royals as the ensuing protests. This video provides a hint of the likelihood that in a new Malaysia the most significant threat to the Malay rulers' fetish for power will come not from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) but from ordinary Malays. Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian serves as professor of history and senior fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris. She ranks among the most renowned and respected historians of modern Thailand. The latest of her many books, Palace, Political Party and Power: A story of the Socio-Political Development of Malay Kingship, sees her turn her attention to the history of modern Malaysia to provide a cogent analysis of the relationship between UMNO and the Malay rulers in their common quest for power. The book's timing is opportune, as it comes at a moment at which each of these institutions, UMNO and Malay kingship, confronts a decline in its legitimacy within a seriously divided Malay community. Palace, Political Party and Power represents a valuable addition to the literature not only on the relationship between the Malay rulers and UMNO, but also on that between the Malay rulers and UMNO on the one hand and their "subjects" – the Malays of Peninsular Malaysia – on the other. Even more significantly, it treats an important and neglected dimension of Malaysian politics – the impact of the Malay rulers on the country's affairs. Palace, Political Party and Power traces the socio-political development of the institution of Malay rulership, from the beginning of colonial times, when the Malay rulers lost power but not prestige; through the Japanese Occupation, when they lost both; to the restoration of the rulers' prestige – thanks to the new Malay elites – at independence; and in the ebbs and flows since. In narrating this story, the book achieves three principal ends. First, it reaffirms conventional analysis holding that the British residential system in colonial Malaya had great significance in modernising the institution of Malay rulership towards the constitutional monarchy of today's Malaysia. Second, it argues persuasively that it was the Japanese Occupation of Malaya that provided the platform for new Malay elites – whose members would become the leading lights of UMNO – to take the leadership of the Malay masses away from the Malay rulers but in the process also to restore the prestige of those rulers. Third, and most important, almost seventy percent of Palace, Political Party and Power focuses on the complex relationship – one of competition for and cooperation in power – between the country's two leading Malay institutions, UMNO and the rulers. Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian's central argument is that the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Japanese policies towards the Malay rulers, the new Malay elites, and the Malay community had, more than any other factor, the effect of stripping the Malay royal institution of its "aura", "mystique", "grandeur" and "authority." In consequence, Malay rulership no longer commanded the fear or undisputed reverence of members of the post-1945 Malay elite. Malaya's Japanese occupiers, through their treatment of the Malay rulers, revealed those rulers' impotence, their inability to defend themselves, and also their lack of the capacity to defend the interests of their subjects – the rakyat. This reality made clear to the burgeoning new Malay elite, which the Japanese also developed, that the existence of Malay royal institutions depended very much on the good will of those in power. It provided that new elite with a valuable lesson for dealing with difficult members of the royalty during the post-1945 period. Furthermore, Palace, Political Party and Power argues, Japan's policy of inculcating Malay society with a certain variant of Japanese values through education had the unintended effect of strengthening the Malays as one community, sharing one language and one religion. Many Malay youths were sent to schools – ordinary schools, teacher training schools, and leadership schools (kurenjo). In the leadership schools, Malay students were taught by means of an exhausting daily routine to appreciate and to live by Nippon seishin, or the Japanese spirit. This exposure to Japanese values had the profound effect of changing some Malays' outlook on life, and above all of exorcising the narrow socio-political parochialism that had previously divided the Malays into subjects of different rulers owing allegiance to different sultanates. The Japanese Occupation of Malaya also toughened members of the new Malay elite, as both the British and the Malay rulers would learn so dramatically after Imperial Japan's defeat.
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| The case of CPM (1948-1960) – a Special Branch perspective Posted: 08 Sep 2011 09:44 PM PDT
This paper incorporates the contemporaneous views of the Malayan Special Branch that have not been recorded previously. It also examines the role of Lawrence (Lance) Sharkey, the acting Secretary-General of the Australian Communist Party, who was in Singapore en route back to Australia after attending the February 1948 Conferences in Singapore, in allegedly passing instructions to the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) to revolt against the British colonial government in Malaya.
The essay1 will conclude that there is little evidence of any direct Soviet intervention in the decision made by the CPM to revolt, and it will argue that the decision to resort to armed conflict was made after its failure to establish a Communist People's Democratic Republic by "open front" activities. The background The academic world and the intelligence community have long debated the origins of the 1948-1960 communist uprising in Malaya. Was the decision to raise the standard of revolt in June 1948 part of a global revolutionary movement orchestrated by the Soviet Union as part of the Cold War in Asia, or was it instead arrived at by the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) based on the local situation in Malaya?2 Or was it rather a mix of both? Many thousands of words have been written on these questions in the intervening years, but a definitive answer will likely have to await the release of the Soviet Union documents. 3 Meanwhile, this paper presents the viewpoint of a Special Branch officer who served as a Malayan Police Special Branch officer during the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) and who participated in the discussions (referenced later) that took place at Federal Special Branch headquarters in Kuala Lumpur during the early 1949. These discussions concerned the origins of the uprising of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) against the government. Firstly, we summarise the background. The first question postulated above takes its starting point from Andrei Zhdanov's well-known speech at the inaugural meeting of the Cominform on 27 September 1947. Zhdanov argued that the world had been polarised into two opposing camps, that is, the communist bloc led by the Soviet Union and the Western capitalist countries led by the United States.4 His speech encouraged a militant approach by worldwide communist parties to propagating revolution in the Third World. The same line was repeated by E.M. Zhukov, who had attended the inaugural meeting of the Cominform with Zhdanov, in his article in the December 1947 issue of the Bol'shevik that referred to the "sharpening crisis of the colonial system" (author's emphasis) being "perhaps one of the most significant efforts to apply Zhdanov's doctrine to Asia".5 On this basis, a Soviet Conspiracy Theory has been developed that postulates that the Soviets had in some way transmitted "instructions" to the representatives of Southeast Asian communist parties attending the Communist Youth Conference, held from 19-24 Feb 1948 in Calcutta, to take advantage of the unstable conditions prevailing in Southeast Asia at the end of the Second World War to rise up against their colonial rulers.6 British forces responded by airlifting supplies to the city, and the blockade was eventually lifted in May 1949. There were two Communist conferences held in Calcutta in February and March 1948. The first was the Communist Youth Conference, held from 19 February 1948 to 24 February 1948, which was sponsored by the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) and the Conference of Youth and Students of South-East Asia fighting for Freedom and Independence.7 The other was the 2nd Congress of the Communist Party of India (CPI) held from 28 February 1948 to 6 March 1948. The conferences were well attended by a wide range of communist delegates from Vietnam, Indonesia, Ceylon, Burma, India, Pakistan, Nepal, the Philippines and Malaya, with observers from Australia, Korea, Mongolia, Soviet Central Asia, Yugoslavia, France, Hungary, Canada, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. According to what Chin Peng, Secretary-General of the CPM, told the author in Canberra in February 1999, the CPM did not receive an invitation to attend either of the Calcutta conferences,8 although Lee Soong, General Secretary of the Malayan WFDY, received an invitation to attend the Youth Conference.9 The CPM's Central Executive Committee approved Lee's attendance at the Conference.10 Lee was a Singapore-Chinese of CPM State Committee rank who, like many Singapore-Chinese, was fluent in English, the language used at the conference. Returning to the Soviet Conspiracy theory, the best known exponents of the theory are probably the US scholars Walt W. Rustow, A. Doak Barnett, and Frank N. Trager, who argued that instructions to start armed uprisings had been passed on from the Soviet "centre" to representatives of the Southeast Asian communist parties attending the Calcutta conferences.11 The leading proponent of the opposite school of thought was Ruth T. McVey, who called into question whether the Soviet Union had issued any such instructions. Over the years many, other historians followed this critical path, with Anthony Stockwell's paper "Chin Peng and the Struggle for Malaya" (2006) as a recent example.12 In her 1958 study, McVey had summed up the situation by saying that in the unsettled conditions that prevailed in Southeast Asia after the Japanese surrender at the end of the war, "it does not seem likely that the two-camp message [sic] lit the revolutionary spark in Southeast Asia though it may well have added the extra tinder which caused it to burst into flames".13 In his classic study of the Emergency, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, Anthony Short was rather more circumspect, and while he did not specifically support the Soviet Conspiracy Theory, he reasoned that while the "(Calcutta) conference did not openly declare for insurrection its mood was one of extreme belligerence towards colonial rule".14 This is undoubtedly correct as it reflects the standard communist line, and in fact during the post-war period, even the US, the leader of the Western capitalist countries, expressed reservations about the continuation of British, French and Dutch colonial rule in Southeast Asia.15 Professor Mary Turnbull's essay in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (1992) came out clearly against the "Soviet Conspiracy Theory" in the following words: "In fact the period was one of confused ambitions for the communists. Their various revolts and wars in Indonesia, Malaya, Vietnam and Burma, were not part (author's emphasis) of a grand pre-planned Soviet strategy, such as Lenin's dream of communist revolution in Asia or the Comintern's ambitious design to use China in the 1920s as the means of realising this dream. While the Soviet Union had shown little interest in Southeast Asia, apart from the 1920s Comintern interlude, the Chinese Communist Party posed a more immediate threat." 16 As of 2007 however, it was clear that the controversy was still attracting scholarly attention, as the subject was discussed again in Philip Deery's paper "Malaya, 1948: Britain"s Asian Cold War'17, which was the focus of an interesting H-Diplo review article by Karl Hack. In his review article, Karl Hack argued that the "Soviet role needs to be given at least some weight within nuanced, multi-causal models of the outbreak of the "Asian Cold War", and that the MCP did have a programme intended to end in armed revolt within months, even though the British precipitated this'.18 Nevertheless, the debate appears to have largely overlooked the fact that The Times (London) had long ago (June 1948) taken the view there was little evidence of direct Soviet intervention in the rise of revolutionary movements then taking place in Malaya and other parts of Southeast Asia, though The Times conceded that several of the revolutionary leaders, such as Aliman of Indonesia and Ho Chi-Minh of Indo-China, had spent several years in Russia or in communist service abroad.19 The Times considered instead that communist parties were taking advantage of the unsettled conditions prevailing throughout the area at the end of the war, identifying themselves with nationalist anti-West feelings and opposing landlords and factory managers as well as the colonial governments in power.20
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| Posted: 07 Sep 2011 07:30 PM PDT Ketika jejak sejarah SAMM ke Johor baru ini, telah bertemu dengan perbagai orang dan meneliti perbagai bahan berkaitan sejarah. Kami telah menemui bukan sahaja sejarah Bukit Kepong malah lebih dari itu. Sememangnya banyak sangat yang dipendam dari pengetahuan umum. Salah satunya ialah rahsia ahli nombor 6, ketika penubuhan Umno itu sendiri. Umno telah ditubuhkan dengan keahlian bukan Melayu. Ahli nombor 6 ini seorang doktor perubatan dan bukan Melayu. Dia merupakan anak kepada British and Indian descendants, berasal dari Alor Gajah, Perak. Sedikit latar belakang, Sir Harold McMichael pada tahun 1945 telah ditugaskan oleh 'London' untuk mendapatkan tandatangan semua raja-raja Melayu tetapi bila bertemu dengan DYMM Sultan Ibrahim (Johor), baginda Sultan telah tidak mahu menandatangani perjanjian tersebut. Tanpa tandatangan Sultan Ibrahim sudah tentu perjanjian tersebut tidak bernilai. Perbagai helah digunakan termasuk mempengaruhi anak Sultan Ibrahim. 
ketika inilah ahli pengasas Umno dengan keahlian nombor 6 itu muncul.  Sultan sememangnya berkeras tidak mahu menandatangani perjanjian tetapi Dato' Onn pengasas Umno berusaha bersungguh - sungguh memujuk Sultan Ibrahim sehingga menggunakan Dr. Paglar yang sememangnya rapat dengan Sultan.  Read more at: http://chegubard.blogspot.com/2011/09/rahsia-ahli-umno-no-000006.html |
| Malaysia and the The Global Competitiveness Report 2011-2012 Posted: 06 Sep 2011 07:29 PM PDT Apart from providing statistical data, the index also features data from the Executive Opinion Survey carried out by the World Economic Forum. The 2011 Survey captures the perceptions of over 13,000 business leaders from the featured 142 economies.
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| GO or no GO, Zarinah and SC under scrutiny Posted: 06 Sep 2011 07:24 PM PDT Sime Darby only purchase 30% stake in E&O from vendors Datuk Tham Ka Hon, Tan Sri Wan Azmi Wan Hamzah and GK Goh Holdings Ltd. The usual practise to require a Mandatory General Offer (GO) is 33% or more. READ MORE HERE. |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2011 07:19 PM PDT Azizan is the chairman of E & O. He was not party to the sale but considering that other E & O board members who were party to the sale had also bought E & O shares from the open market, one is left wondering: Did the Board members know of the coming "windfall"? Surprisingly, Azizan also emerged as a substantial shareholder of Kencana Petroleum Bhd in July, just days after an offcer was made to take over the company at RM3 a share! Wonder how shareholders of Ramunia Bhd felt upon finding out that their chairman was a substantial shareholder of a rival oil and gas firm? |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2011 04:21 PM PDT Mat Indera played a prominent role in the 1950 attack on the Bukit Kepong police station. The incident was eventually immortalised in a movie played by the legendary P Ramlee. In the movie, the policemen were portrayed as heroes who fought against the communists.
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| Outrage as Taib’s Ta Ann Files Losses in Tasmania Posted: 06 Sep 2011 03:11 PM PDT Ta Ann is the world's biggest hardwood timber company in terms of market capitalisation, achieving a revenue of over 800 million ringgit last year, a 25% increase on the year before. The company has also declared a 25% profit margin in its latest Annual Report. Yet, to the fury of environmentalists, the company managed to extract massive public subsidies to set up business inTasmania. It is now extracting timber from the remaining wild forest areas, amid huge controversy. And, despite those subsidies the company has just announced further losses. Yesterday the senator stated: "Since it began operation in Tasmania, Ta Ann has made a net loss of about $18 million, despite receiving $10 million in direct public subsidies and being housed in premises which cost Forestry Tasmania $22 million and which it runs at a loss….When public money is poured into poor business models in forestry, we have less to spend on our hospitals, schools and national parks" [Senator Bob Brown] Australians overwhelmingly reject logging The protest comes hard on the heals of a recent opinion poll conducted by the Green Party, showing just how unpopular logging is in Australia. 88% of people surveyed said they want all logging of their wild jungle stopped immediately and that the 570,000 hectares of native forests in Tasmania should be turned into a National Park. The Greens are therefore demanding to know why an apparently powerful lobby has nevertheless managed to extract such subsidies for Ta Ann and gain the company access to the state, only to see the money wasted? The poll was carried out late last month:
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| Demand for democracy follows socio-economic transformation Posted: 06 Sep 2011 02:40 PM PDT Although J. S. Furnivall first coined the term in his study of British and Dutch colonialism in Southeast Asia, most researchers ignore the fact that he discusses the emergence of 'plural societies', which he defines as lacking a common sense of cultural belonging, within the context of the rise of capitalism in colonial societies, dominated by a colonial power. Put another way, Furnivall situates his 'plural society' in the context of a changing society and economy. 'Plural society' explanation inadequate In this regard, although these researchers use the notion of plural society, in fact, their perspective is more closely related to the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz's notion of 'primordialism' which refers to strong ineffable sentiments and attachments based on the 'social givens' of human existence, like blood relations, kinship, tribe, race, language, dialect, religion, social customs and region. For Geertz, primordialism is invoked to provide meaning and solace to ordinary people when their societies are undergoing rapid change. In multi-ethnic societies like Malaysia, however, primordialism can lead to a heightening of ethnic group consciousness that threatens the nation-building process. Hence, an 'integrative revolution' that ushers in 'civic politics' is required, in order to prevent the break-up of these multi-ethnic nations. In Geertz's perspective, politics in a plural or multi-ethnic society is fractured along ethnic lines, and ethnic-based communities with recognisable leaders as well as common political interests and goals quite naturally emerge. It follows that electoral politics, too, is presumed to be ethnically determined and that voters, invariably, vote along ethnic lines. In a nutshell, the ethnic order of things is a 'given', almost natural. 'Consociationalism' explanations also inadequate To explain why the Barisan Nasional (previously the Alliance), a coalition of ethnic-based political parties, has ruled Malaysia since Merdeka in 1957, these researchers emphasise, or even essentialise, the BN parties and their leaders as inherently more moderate in outlook and more prepared to share power than their Opposition counterparts, who are characterised as extremist, narrow-minded and unwilling to share power. This is why the BN has come out tops time-and-time again. This is the 'consociational model' of politics, wherein the masses in a plural society are awash with communalism, the Opposition leaders are extremist and exclusivist in their views, and political stability and economic development can only be attained because of the altruistic and tolerant BN ruling elites. The theme of consociationalism is very popular, too, among researchers. Thanks to the propaganda disseminated via our schools, the mainstream media and the BN parties, the impression of a moderate BN and an extremist Opposition (Pas, DAP, PKR, PSM, etc) has also penetrated into the popular imagination of ordinary Malaysians Such a perspective underscores explanations of the BN's domination of Malaysian electoral politics. Often, references are also made to specific issues, episodes and events that occur when elections are held to explain variations in the BN's victories, sometimes spectacular, other times less so. For instance, the BN's narrow victory in the 1999 general election was attributed to the 'dual crises' which occurred in the run up to that election viz. the regional financial crisis of 1997/98 and the political crisis resulting from then deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim's sacking from Umno, both contributing towards a reformasi movement. In 2004, the BN's spectacular victory was explained in terms of the 'Pak Lah factor', namely, the ascendancy of Abdullah Badawi as Malaysia's new prime minister just prior to the 2004 polls, replacing Dr Mahathir Mohamed who had been at the helm for 22 years. It was Abdullah who led the BN into the 2004 polls and, apparently due to his more endearing political style and several reform initiatives, ensured a spectacular victory for the BN. Many Christians seemed to be taken up by the fact the Malaysian PM had for the first time sent Christmas greeting cards to church leaders. Many Malaysians were also enamoured by his catchy slogans such as "Work with me; not for me".
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| Not only the voting processes is screwed up, but the whole world too (dwi bahasa) Posted: 06 Sep 2011 01:29 PM PDT Saya terpegun tatkala membaca siding akhbar saudara Anthony Loke hari ini yang mendedahkan isteri anggota tenteta membawa IC berakhir dengan nombor ganjil (yang memang ditetapkan untuk golongan lelaki) dan mempunyai tarikh lahir yang sama dengan suami mereka. Sekiranya berlaku sekali dua kali, mungkin boleh dianggap sebagai kesilapan atau kebetulan namun mengapakah berpuluh-puluh kejadian ini menjelma serentak dalam suku tahun 2 2011 tatkala ura-ura pilihanraya akan diadakan?   They use the ordinary ICs of their husband to register but under the wives' names - a wife could still have the ordinary voter's right so she might be able to vote twice," exclaimed Loke in a press conference called to reveal the discrepancies. "The IC numbers definitely belong to men as these numbers are odd numbers, while female IC numbers are even numbers, and this clearly states that she is a voter in Rasah in the army camp," said Loke. For example, Noor Atikah Zakaria holds a male's MyKad, 840306-02-5561, and the army officer believed to be her husband, Mohd Hasbullah Abdul Wahab, has an army MyKad, T1140868 - where both are registered with the same date of birth, locality and voting district. "All these are new registrations, it can't just be a normal mistake. The roll has been updated so 19 incidents in one constituency can't be a mere coincidence," said Loke ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Are there similar cases in army camps all over the country? Call me a cynic but this looks more like systematic design rather than honest error. And EC and possibly JPN have hell a lot to explain. Adakah kes-kes seumpama ini berlaku di semua kem tentera seluruh negara? Keadaan ini nampaknya seperti hasil daripada rancangan yang teratur dan bukanlah kesilapan yang tidak disengajakan. SPR dan mungkin JPN perlu membuat penerangan teliti kepada rakyat Malaysia. And to think the big general asking his troops and the rakyat to be loyal to something that is proven to be tarnished? Ingat tak rayuan seorang jeneral besar baru-baru ini supaya tentera dan rakyat taat kepada sesuatu yang kini nampaknya sudah tercemar? Ordinary folks might shrug and say, "Oh yea, what is new? Does not impact me directly wat!" Orang ramai mungkin kurang peka terhadap keadaan ini dan tanya apakah pula hubung kait dengan hidup seharian mereka. Let's explore the possible consequences should a person can turn up with such I.C.to vote as well as other places that you and me visit on a daily basis. Who should feel afraid, very afraid? Marilah kita merenung sejenak siapakah yang harus rasa bimbang atau tertekan kini kerana sekiranya seseorang itu boleh muncul mengundi dengan IC palsu, maka beliau boleh juga bawa I.C. palsu ke merata-rata tempat (sekiranya I.C. palsu ini wujud) Bankers I can imagine bankers getting jittery. Already required by law to monitor money trails to detect money laundry activities, people running to them with fake I.C. to open bank accounts will hardly make the banks' jobs' easier. Criminals would be encouraged to commit more fraud as they can dupe people to deposit money into bank accounts controlled by them but not registered under their names. The Bank Negara Governor would be hard pressed to look respectable in international conferences that she attends. Pihak Bank Para bank harus takut kerana mereka diwajibkan undang-undang mengesan aliran wang haram. Kini dengan adanya orang membuka akaun bank dengan IC palsu, pemantauan mereka bertambah sukar. Para penjenayah pun digalakkan melakukan lebih banyak penipuan kerana mereka boleh menipu orang ramai memasukkan wang dalam akaun bank yang dikawal oleh penjenayah tetapi bukan bawah nama mereka. Gabenor Bank Negara pun tertekan tatkala menghadiri siding-sidang yang berkenaan di liar negara nanti Credit card companies It is so easy to obtain credit card nowadays so if a person with a fake I.C. can also come up with some fake payslips to dupe credit card companies into granting credit cards. The higher risk and instances of default will force the credit card companies to pass such cost of business to the genuine and law abiding credit card holders. This would create also, wide spread uncertainty to merchants accepting payments from credit cards too. |
| Scholars’ views on nationalists and their struggle for Merdeka Posted: 06 Sep 2011 12:18 PM PDT In this and subsequent posts, the Centre for Policy Initiatives reproduces various key articles written by authoritative scholars and academicians on the events and some of the main protagonists engaged in the struggle for the country's independence. I am grateful to the editorial board of the journal, Kajian Malaysia, and Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia as well as to the authors of the various pieces – C.C. Chin, Richard Mason, Leon Comber and Abdul Rahman Ismail for their permission to have their work featured in this CPI series. Other articles will be included in the series once permission has been obtained from their authors and publishers. I hope that the scholarly work provided here and from other sources can serve as the basis for more informed and historically truthful interpretations of the period leading to and immediately following the independence of Malaya in 1957 and the role of the major actors and political forces. ******************************* Revisiting 1948 insurgencies and the cold war in Southeast AsiaBy Richard Mason In 1948 left-winged insurgencies broke out in Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines. These insurgencies continued to leave their imprint on the region today. The papers in this volume discuss the significance of these insurgencies in the course of Southeast Asian history, with particular reference to the Cold War in the region. These papers are part of a larger collection that were presented at a Roundtable on the Sixtieth Anniversary of 1948: Reassessing the Origins of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, organised by the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore (NUS), 10-11 July 2008. The central concern of the Roundtable was to discuss the significance of 1948 in Southeast Asian history and to determine "in what way 1948 was – or perhaps was not – 'the beginning of the Cold War' in Southeast Asia." Were the seemingly simultaneous left-winged insurgencies that broke out in the region in 1948 Soviet-directed as part of the Cold war in Asia or did the insurgencies emerged from local circumstances affecting the strategies of the struggles of these left-wings movements in the respective counties concerned? How important were the insurgencies in affecting the course of Southeast Asian history? Did 1948 constitute a watershed in Southeast Asian history? The papers in this volume address these issues among many others. Were the left-winged insurgencies which broke out in Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines in 1948 directed by the Soviet Union as part of the Cold War in Asia? Known as the "Soviet Conspiracy Theory", the starting point for this postulation is Andrei Zhdanov's speech at the inaugural of the Cominform in September 1947 which argued that the world had been divided into two opposing camps: the Western capitalist countries led by the United States on the one hand, and the communist bloc led by the Soviet Union on the other. Zhdanov advocated that foreign communist parties should be in vanguard of spreading communism throughout the world. This line was repeated by E.M. Zhukov in an article published in the December issue of Bol'shevik, which advocated propagation of revolutions to the colonial areas. According to proponents of this Soviet Conspiracy Theory, it was at the Communist Youth Conference at Calcutta, convened 19-24 February 1948 that the Soviets passed on the "instructions" to representatives of Southeast Asian communist parties to seize the opportunity of the unstable conditions prevailing in Southeast Asia to rise against their colonial rulers. In March, left-winged insurgency broke out in Burma, followed by British Malaya in June, and Indonesia in September. Consistent with the thesis of monolithic communism, the conventional orthodox interpretation of these uprisings has it that they were Soviet-directed as part of the Cold War in Asia. Soviet interest in Southeast Asia had been notably absent before the Pacific War but by 1947 there were discernable evidence of Soviet's growing interest in the region. In 1947, the Soviet Union opened an embassy in Bangkok and this was shortly followed by the Communist Youth Conference at Calcutta in February 1948, and the subsequent the outbreak of the Southeast Asian insurgencies later that year. According to this school of thought, that these left-winged Southeast Asian insurgencies broke out almost simultaneously indeed suggest actions in response to instruction from Moscow. Predictably, both the United States and Great Britain immediately assumed that these insurgencies were Soviet-directed and formulated their responses accordingly.1
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