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Conceptualizing the Malay World: Colonialism and Pan-Malay Identity in Malaya by Soda Naoki. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2020, 206 pp.
The history of Malay nationalism during British colonialism has been rigorously studied by many scholars from multifaceted aspects; however, it has never reached a plateau or dead end. This topic has always fascinated scholars who are interested to reconstruct the historical experience by using different methods and approaches. The findings seem to be not straightforward but rather, complex and paradoxical. Malay nationalism would never have been achieved without the significant role of education. The British government used vernacular education as a powerful weapon to control the minds of the Malays and thus sustain its colonialism in Malaya. J.S. Furnivall (1948, 393) was undoubtedly right with his analysis: it is pleasanter and cheaper to mould a literate population by appropriate and intelligent methods of education than to suppress an illiterate mob by machine guns. However, one can never anticipate the impact of education towards the colonised people, whose minds and hearts were never the same as those of their colonial master.
The concept of nationalism opposed by the Malay radicals mirrored this phenomenon very well. Many Malay students received the same education, particularly from the Sultan Idris Training College (SITC), a teacher training college. They showed their resistance towards the colonial master by reconstructing their own imagined community based on the broad concept of Pan-Malayism, as manifested in the proposals for Melayu Raya or Indonesia Raya. This aim became the ambition of many Malay radicals who had received their education from SITC, including Ibrahim Haji Yaacob. Meanwhile, the British government made rigorous efforts to improve the Malay educational system, at the same time inculcating in Malays colonial knowledge that suited their ulterior motive. Nevertheless, they could never completely control the outcome of the knowledge that brought paradoxical, contradictory consequences and inevitable opposition from the Malays themselves. Moreover, nationalist sentiment among local students was further intensified by the racism and imperiousness of many Western teachers - attitudes which often provoked spirited resistance from the students (Zinoman 2014, 52).
Having a chance to review a book on my alma mater is truly a wonderful opportunity. Entitled Conceptualizing the Malay World: Colonialism and PanMalay Identity, the book was originally...