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New lessons from the story of Malaysia retold

One of the more poignant moments which many Singaporeans share, is perhaps the time Mr Lee Kuan Yew cried at the separation of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965. Even younger Singaporeans, watching flashbacks of the scene in documentaries, could feel the depth of those sentiments. The story of how Singapore separated from Malaysia, as well as the lead-up to the event is a well known story – as historian Tan Tai Yong said in the introduction to his latest book, Creating Greater Malaysia: Decolonisation and the Politics of Merger published by the Institute of  Southeast Asian Studies. What the book offers is the prequel to the story of separation – it explains how in the process of bringing Singapore and Malaya together, the seeds of break-up had already been planted.

UNFADED PAST: Assoc Prof Tan Tai Yong, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, digs deeper into the past on the formation of the Federation and Singapore’s eventual separation from Malaysia.

Assoc Prof Tan, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, says his study seeks to "historicise the formation of Malaysia in the contexts of decolonisation, domestic power struggles (especially in Singapore) and state-building". It also addresses how and why the merger take the shape and form that it did. His study addresses many hereto unanswered questions: what were the objectives of merger… why was Brunei not part of the Federation... and when were the seeds of dissension sowed that led to the failure of the merger?

Renowned historian Prof Wang Gungwu, Chairman, NUS East Asian Institute, in his review in The Straits Times, says that the author is able to show precisely where the points of weakness were and what lessons these hold for both political leaders and concerned citizens in moments of crisis. "Future crises may never be the same. But there will always be crises and every generation can learn from the lucid accounts of how previous ones were handled," says Prof Wang.

"Historians like Tan Tai Yong, are not content with letting the "sharp edges of the past fade away and think only of the good things that followed. For one thing, they know that the past, especially the recent past, has much to teach us. Malaysia will always be there and Singapore will always have a distinctive relation with it even though new regionalisms like Asean and the East Asian community may call for new kinds of partnership between the two. The more people know about earlier efforts to connect, the better able they will be to face any new ones to come..." Prof Wang says in his review.

Why, indeed, rattle old bones and feel once again, their sharp, ragged edges? Assoc Prof Tan explains in his introduction: "The broad storyline on the formation of Malaysia is relatively well-trodden ground. Many of the early accounts were written by political scientists and contemporary commentators fascinated by the emergence of a new political entity in Southeast Asia. Relying mainly on secondary sources and newspaper reports, these publications were but broad descriptions of the events that led to 1963, when the Federation of Malaysia was formed. The interest in the new state was eventually overshadowed by the greater absorption with the story of Singapore's separation from the Federation just two years after the new state was heralded.

"In a similar manner, the national histories of Singapore and Malaysia carried the inevitable episode of merger and separation, but these accounts often treated the Greater Malaysia episode in a cursory manner, as a glitch in a dominant national narrative. Without the benefit of archival documents that could throw light on the thinking and actions of the major players as well as the wider context against which the events were unfolding during these critical years, these standard accounts of Malaysia's formation, most of them published in the 1960s, could not offer anything beyond a broad recounting of the main events and issues that led up to Malaysia."

In the 1980s, autobiographies of key political figures, for example, the memoirs of the Tungku, Ghazali Shafie and Lee Kuan Yew offered useful insights, but "these personal recollections often reflected individual views and perspectives and were not always complete or comprehensive" says Assoc Prof Tan. As the London archives gradually yielded their records and documents, historians were able to construct more detailed accounts of key events of the era – however they have focused mainly on the British perspectives. There is a need to dig deeper, and in local and regional archives, so that different dimensions of the contemporary history of Singapore and its neighbours can be told, he says.

The book is a culmination of more than five years of effort of making sense of old and recent records and materials. Assoc Prof Tan said he has always been interested in the emergence of post-colonial states in the aftermath of empire in Asia. Explaining his passion in this area, he wrote: "While the formation of Malaysia has attracted the attention of scholars since the late 1960s, the contexts and processes have not been subjected to deep historical analysis that could illuminate the critical decisions that were taken during that episode in the history of Singapore and Malaysia. Although there has been a spate of books dedicated to Singapore's association with Malaysia, none has examined, in detail, the manner in which the deal was constructed by the major parties concerned – British officials on the ground and in Whitehall, the People's Action Party (PAP) government in Singapore and the Alliance leaders at Kuala Lumpur."

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