The controversy that has surrounded the question of British intervention in Malaya has turned upon a number of issues. What was the importance of economic factors? What was the significance of imperialism? What was the role of local initiative? Was the British Government bringing order to troubled native states? Was it responding to commercial pressures? Was it protecting its established interests in the Straits? In a well-known book, C.D. Cowan added to a careful analysis of such issues the suggestion that fear of foreign intervention was decisive. It affected Kimberley, the Colonial Secretary, and he impressed it on Gladstone himself.

Within the last two decades, and particularly after the Federation of Malaya achieved its independence (1957), most historical writings on Malaya (now called Peninsular Malaysia) have been inspired or influenced by a marked revisionist tendency. Such revisionism, abetted by nationalism, has led to (a) a critical reappraisal of British personalities and policies in Malaya, and (b) a relative reduction of historical interest, both professional and popular, in the ‘imperial theme’ as compared with indigenous topics. While some of these revisionist writings may be self-conscious and tendentious, they do provide a corrective to earlier colonial historiography and have encouraged a more balanced estimate of the British element in Malaysian history.

It is, to say the least, highly unsatisfactory to begin a discussion of developments in Malay society within the last century by using 1874 as the take-off point. But, in Malaysian historiography, it has been so common to accept 1874 as the all important watershed between what is generally believed to be a period of negligible advancement and a period of rapid development that any discussion which makes a sudden departure from conventional practice, without appropriate comments, may confuse more than enlighten.

Several years ago Wong Lin Ken noted that, as yet, no general economic history of Malaysia had been written. Since then a considerable number of studies in both article and bookform have appeared; too many for a comprehensive listing here. These range from specialised works on particular industries, or aspects such as immigration, to more wide-ranging analyses of the political, social and administrative structure. The periods surveyed also vary considerably, but the tendency is towards relatively short time-spans of some twenty to forty years in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Only one recent book, Economic Development of Modern Malaya by an economist, Lim Chong Yah, seeks to cover the economy as a whole over a longer period, roughly 1874–1963. But from the historian's viewpoint, much primary research still remains to be done before the pattern of changes in this period can be explained in full detail. However, the work done to date makes it possible to re-examine certain broad aspects such as the effects which can be directly attributed to the introduction of British administration. This is facilitated if some account is also taken of the very extensive literature on economic development, and colonialism, as well as on the situation in other countries with a similar historical experience. It must be emphasised that the following survey is necessarily selective in terms of the topics included and the published materials referred to.

By the mid-1920s, the spread and popularity of a Hollywood dominated cinema in Malaya, and elsewhere in the Empire, was causing the British considerable concern. The motion picture or cinematograph (as it was then called) was a rapidly growing entertainment and educative phenomenon that transcended barriers of literacy and language in its appeal and was freely accessible to all sections of colonial society. In the words of a contemporary, “it taught the mass of uneducated Asiatics about the white race.” In Malaya, the Government had acted to place controls on the cinema soon after its introduction but by the opening years of the 1920s there was a growing number of travellers and expatriate critics who felt that the authorities had not yet realized the seriousness of the ‘threat’ posed by the cinema and had not acted with enough purpose in imposing safeguards. To emerge as the leading campaigner on the subject was Sir Hesketh Bell, (late Governor of Mauritius) who visited Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies in 1926, on a private tour of the Far East.

An educational system reflects the norms and needs of the society it serves. In the Federated Malay States, a plural society, there were four separate school systems, each with its own distinctive characteristics. This paper discusses the British role in their development. The period studied extends from around 1900 to the outbreak of World War Two.

There is perhaps no more startling example in the history of the British Empire of a casual, almost imperceptible shift of attitude in the Colonial Office having such dramatic repercussions as in Malaya in 1874. Authorised to “enquire and report” into conditions in the western Malay states, the new Governor, Sir Andrew Clarke, found himself carried away by forces on the spot, which had been building up for twenty years while the British government maintained a strict policy of non-involvement. Within weeks of arriving in Malaya, Clarke made agreements with three Malay rulers for British Residents to be attached to their states, and laid the foundations for the relentless spread of British protection over the whole peninsula. These repercussions mystified Colonial Office officials at the time and left future generations of historians to unravel the mystery of what had happened and why.

Nationalism developed in a peaceful constitutional and political manner in Malaya during the 1950s. Beginning with the reactions to the Malayan Union scheme and the contrasting political attitudes towards the 1948 Federation proposals, political bargaining led to the emergence of various political parties advocating different platforms and adopting contrasting policies on the major issues facing Malaya until the first federal elections in 1955. However, it is significant that political parties were formed and party politics grew principally as the result of constitutional changes which were introduced during that period. Constitutionalism and the rise of party politics thus combined to help Malaya achieve its ultimate goal of independence and nationhood.