Malay society in the late nineteenth century: the beginnings of change . By J. M. Gullick. (East Asian Historical Monographs.) pp. vii, 417. Singapore, Oxford University Press, 1987. £28.00.

Abstract

The disintegration of indigenous societies under the impact of colonial administration has long been a major theme in the historiography of modern Africa and Asia: the intervention of international commodity markets, the activities of Christian missions, the establishment of western education and the demotion (if not destruction) of indigenous political structures is each said to have profoundly undermined the stability and cohesiveness of the local community. The Malays of peninsular Malaya are commonly held to be an exception here; for in the opening decades of British administration (the period from the mid-1870s through to around 1910) Malay society, it is said, experienced only the most slow change, and thus preserved its essential character and institutions. It is this phenomenon which John Gullick seeks to explore and substantiate in this book. He does so by examining, chapter-by-chapter, various aspects of Malay society in the late nineteenth century-for example, the ruler in public life; the ruler in private life; the village community; the village economy; the Malay style of living; the maintenance of order; medicine and education; the organisation of Islam; sports, amusements and recreations. His examination is built upon the assembly of a truly vast body of contemporary comment and observations scattered through the official colonial records (annual reports, journals, council proceedings and papers, official correspondence, reports and memoranda) and the large number of books and articles published by officials and other Europeans resident in the Malaya of this period and by contemporary visitors. His approach, in essence, is to allow this material, very skilfully organised, to speak for itself. The result is a richly detailed and informative study: it is a delight to read. In only one respect does it seriously disappoint: and that is that the final discussion is too brief (it extends over less than five pages) to allow for an adequate concluding consideration of the book's central concern the comparative stability of Malay society in this period. It is tempting to see this issue as primarily a political question, for it was the firm policy of the colonial administration to secure the position of the Malay sultans in the eyes of the Malay population (on ceremonial and other public occasions, British officials treated the sultans with full deference) and to avoid intervention in matters of Malay custom and religion. And yet the experience of other parts of the colonial world suggests that a close accommodation between indigenous rulers and their colonial overlords would undermine the traditional authority of the former. Why did the collaboration of the Malay ruling elite with British power (the word is employed simply as a description, and carries no pejorative implications) not destroy the structure of indigenous authority? Perhaps the comparative stability of Malay society under British administration should therefore be seen as primarily an economic question, for as John Gullick points out, the Malays were not drawn into the rapid commercial development which took hold in the peninsula in the opening decades of British rule: and it might be added that when, in the early years of the twentieth century, the Malays did enter the export economy, they did so in such a way, as smallholder producers of rubber, as to cause only a modest disturbance to the long-established patterns of rural economy and society. Perhaps this is also an ethnic issue: here the argument might be that the large-scale immigration of the commerciallyaggressive Indians and Chinese, in threatening (numerically and economically) the Malays, acted to strengthen the cohesiveness of Malay society. These are, of course, among the central issues which must concern the historian of British Malaya. In this finely-written and exhaustively-researched book John Gullick has provided in abundance the material with which they can be confronted.