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J. M. GULLICK, Rulers and Residents: Influence and Power in the Malay States 1870-1920. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1992, xiv + 411 pp, ISBN 0-19588567-8.
In examining the changing role of the Rulers in the Malay States during the first halfcentury of British involvement, Rulers and Residents adds to John Gullick's considerable stature as a major historian of Malay society in the colonial period, building on his many previous scholarly works and his own experience as a former Malayan Civil Service official. The author challenges both High Commissioner Sir Hugh Clifford's view in 1927 that the traditional role of the Rulers had been preserved intact and also historian Rupert Emerson's counter-claim in 1937 that the Malay Rulers were mere rubber stamps whom the colonial authorities found 'a comfortable and useful fraud'. Rather Gullick suggests that the first generation of Rulers and...