When Is a Temporary Migrant Not a Temporary Migrant? Patrick Manning’s Relational World History Approach Applied to Interwar British Malaya

Abstract

Discussion of Patrick Manning’s legacy as a world historian must include the way he taught us to write historical narratives that not only shift between the perspectives of diverse individuals and interest groups, but also bring those perspectives into conversation with each other. This relational world history-writing methodology requires analysis of both local, transregional, and global historical forces and the experiences of people who tried to deploy or resist those forces. In the spirit of Manning’s approach, this article highlights how competing narratives about emigration from Britain and the Indian subcontinent to British Malaya from the 1920s until 1940 can be understood more clearly by demonstrating how three interest groups defined their relationship to the colony’s Malayan Indian population. Analyzing this contested discourse among British civil servants, Indian immigrant community representatives, and individuals trying to rally the Indians Overseas labor diaspora illustrates the kinds of circumstances that had the potential to promote or constrain meaningful social change for Indian-born and Indian-descended settlers in Malaya.