The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya
Contesting Nationalism and the Expansion of the Public Sphere

This book, first published in 1995, is a study of political debate in this important Southeast Asian society.

Anthony Milner (Author)

9780521465656, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 January 1995

338 pages, 1 map
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.62 kg

' … unusual, detailed and original book .' Asian Affairs

This book, first published in 1995, is a study of political debate in an important Southeast Asian society. It re-examines the formative period in Malay nationalism and argues against using nationalism as the paradigm of analysis. By interrogating key Malay texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Anthony Milner shows how contested and problematic the sphere of nationalism was. Central to the book is the notion of politics and it explores the development of political discourse in Malaysia. By stressing the emerging tension in Malay political thinking between monarchy, religion and nationalism, the author provides an essential introduction to the politics and society of modern Malaysia.

Introduction: colonialism, nationalism and contest
1. The ancien regime: described and condemned
2. Establishing a liberal critique
3. A description of the real world: expanding vocabularies
4. Conceptualizing a Bangsa community: a newspaper of moderate opinions
5. Building a bourgeois public sphere
6. Ideological challenge on a second front: The Kerajaan in contest with Islam
7. Answering liberalism: Islamic first moves
8. Kerajaan self-reform: chronicling a new Sultanate
9. Practising politics in the mid-colonial period
10. Surveying the homeland
Sedar and dialogic processes
Conclusion: the Malay political heritage.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], History of ideas [JFCX], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Asian history [HBJF]