The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya: Contesting Nationalism and the Expansion of the Public Sphere
Cambridge University Press, 1/27/1995
EAN 9780521465656, ISBN10: 0521465656
Hardcover, 338 pages, 23.6 x 16.4 x 2.9 cm
Language: English
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.