How the idea of Malaysia unfolded

Published on: Sunday, January 24, 2021

By: David C C Lim and Syn Chew

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Tun Fuad Stephens signing the memorandum of the Malaysia Agreement. Looking on second left are Tun Mustapha, Encik Khir Johari, a Brunei representative and Mr Lee Kuan Yew.

THE headlines of The Canberra Times of 6th July, 1948, reads, “Sir Edward Gent Killed in a Plane Collision”. Sir Edward was flying in an RAF transport plane, an Avro York, when it collided with a Scandinavian Airlines’ passenger plane while in holding pattern over Northolt airport, London, under adverse weather conditions.

Sir Edward had left Singapore on 29th June, 1948. The news shocked the people of Malaya as Sir Edward was the first High Commissioner to the Malayan Federation and had also been the Governor of the short-lived Malayan Union. It should also have invoked an emotional response from some of the former officers in the service of the Rajah of Sarawak as Gent had also played a part in hastening the cession of the state to the Crown.

The report also contains an intriguing side story; “A trick of fate placed Sir Edward on the ill-fated transport command York...” It states that the plane had been assigned to Sir Hugh Lloyd and was to have left for London on July 1, carrying the Special Commissioner to Malaya, Mr Malcolm MacDonald.

Unfortunately the rest of the report is garbled and does not make much sense, save to suggest that MacDonald cancelled his flight, and Sir Edward took the plane, instead. The use of the phrase, “trick of fate” in the report, however, suggests a stormy relationship between the High Commissioner and the Special Commissioner, as goes on to quote a local report that, bitter opponents of his policy expressed tribute to Sir Edward as “a man of great sincerity and of tremendous personal courage”.

It transpired that Sir Edward was going to London to tender his resignation as a result of MacDonald’s request to London to have him replaced. It had been an awkward relationship; Gent was Governor of the Malayan Union, an entity partly conceived by him, while MacDonald the Governor-General, worked to have it replaced with a federation.

The two colonial officials, however, had shared a common experience that was to play a role in the creation of a union that was to be known to the world as Malaysia.

The “common experience” that the two men shared, and shaped in different ways, was Sarawak. Gent, a decorated soldier in the First World War, had joined the Colonial Office in 1920. He rose from being an Assistant Principal Secretary to Head of the Colonial Office’s Eastern Department in 1942. There Gent, the bureaucratic imperialist, strove to ensure that Britain’s overseas territories were administered smoothly.

Pre-War ‘British Malaya’ was made up of The Straits Settlements, the four Federated Malay States (FMS), and the five Unfederated Malay States(UMS), all of which comprised ten different administrations, headed by the Governor of the Straits Settlements who also doubled as the High Commissioner for Malaya and General Adviser to the states of North Borneo and Sarawak. This patchwork of administrations must have appeared to be most unsatisfactory to his bureaucratic instincts, and the Union that he formulated during the war years was meant to replace those in Malaya with a single administrative infrastructure.

MacDonald, on the other hand, was the son of Britain’s first Labour prime minister, and had followed in his father’s footsteps into politics. Elected as Member of Parliament, he went on to take up diplomatic posts in the government, and in 1935, and again in 1938, he was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies. Between 1931 and 1946 there were eleven appointees as secretaries for the Colonies, and it was obvious that all these political appointees had little knowledge of their areas of responsibility, much less any interest in the administration of those colonies.

Their priority appeared to be to maintain the status quo in the Empire, and to diffuse potential conflicts at all cost and with minimum inconvenience to the mother country. As for Sarawak which was a mere protectorate, R.H.W. Reece, in The Name of Brooke, Oxford University Press, 1982, observes, “None [of the Colonial Secretaries] showed any particular interest in what was happening in Sarawak”, although two of them had actually visited the state.

There is evidence, however, that MacDonald knew more about Sarawak than the others. When the issue of the successor to the aging Third Rajah of Sarawak arose in the thirties, Sir Shenton Thomas, the Governor of Singapore, had written to MacDonald expressing his opinion that Anthony Brooke, the Rajah’s nephew, was a suitable successor to the Rajah. There is, however, no record of MacDonald’s response.

Gent the Assistant Secretary was different. He had visited Malaya with the then Permanent Under-Secretary of State in 1932, but was unimpressed with the Malay sultans. As for Sarawak, he was irked by the fact that Sarawak was not only an administrative anomaly under his purview, but was also beyond the Colonial Office’s direct control.

The Treaty of 1888 between Britain and the Rajahnate made it a protectorate, and gave Britain only an advisory role in its administration. Gent, having been informed of the ‘crude administration and rudimentary financial system of the state’, thought that it was time “the Rajah faced up to his responsibilities”.

Moreover, events in the state were drawing negative publicity in the press and, in his view, tarnishing the image of the Empire.

Since its birth in 1841 the state had been ruled by its autocratic Rajah, and the Foreign Office and subsequently the Colonial Office, only saw to its foreign relations and rendered “advice” through the General Adviser. The old second Rajah who had steered the state and kept a tight ship, had died in 1917, leaving the country to his elder, but less able son, Charles Vyner. Charles Brooke had preferred the younger son, Bertram, who was born in Sarawak to succeed him, but Vyner the easy going playboy had refused to give way. So it was that the “Rajah Muda” Bertram, was given concurrent power to rule the state, but to be exercised only when his elder brother was out of the country.

The situation became more complex with the rivalry of their spouses, and the role of a Rasputin-like character, Gerard MacBryan. Their constant collective bickering and intrigues had infuriated Gent. He wrote of the Ranee Sylvia Brooke, dryly commenting that her “material place of lodging appeared to be at Hollywood”, adding:

“…and her inclination is towards an unruled malicious form of snobbishness….Her extravagant misuse of language appears repeatedly.”

Hearing from a source close to the Rajah that he might consider divesting Sarawak to the Crown for a suitable financial settlement (a sum of 5 million pounds was mentioned), Gent thought that it would be opportune to have the Rajah meet with MacDonald, at the time the Colonial Secretary, to have a private talk over the matter. A lunch was arranged to take place in a Leicester Square restaurant. However, the meeting never materialized. A disappointed Gent suggested the Rajah had shied away.

MacDonald did not seem to have registered the incident. In his book, Borneo People, (1956) he wrote as if the first time he had got to know of the conditions in the state was when, as Governor-General, representing the King he flew in from Singapore to accept the Deed of Cession to make Sarawak the last and latest colony in the Empire. (But as it turned out British North Borneo or Sabah became the last addition to the crumbling Empire).

MacDonald did not let on that he knew anything of the background of Sarawak. In Borneo People, he writes:

“The new Rajah governed according to the well-established traditions of his forebears, remaining universally popular throughout yet another long reign. When the centenary of Brooke rule approached in 1941 the third Rajah still sat on the throne, and it seemed that the dynasty was as firmly rooted as any reigning house in the world. Indeed, the White Rajahs of Sarawak appeared more secure than most royalty in these revolutionary times, when not only crowns but even several kingly heads have rolled in the dust.”

Yet, as the Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1940 he had been asked in Parliament about the deposition of Anthony Brooke as the ‘Rajah Muda’ and the resignation of some five senior members of the Rajah’s civil service. He had deflected the issue by saying that it would be inappropriate for him to comment due to the terms of the Treaty of 1888. Gent, on the other hand, thought the Treaty “unduly restrictive” and proposed a “supplementary agreement” to the Treaty under which a British Resident Adviser would be appointed to advise the Rajah on matters of administration.

Reece in The Name of Brooke says of the administration:

“an autocratic Rajah relying on the authority of a Malay elite who maintained their dominance over the non-Muslim natives; pitting ‘loyal’ Ibans against those who challenged his authority; and depending on the Chinese to generate trade and revenue.”

Not that there was much revenue generated; overseas investment was barred, and the closed economy run mainly on the meager exports of rubber and petroleum. As Reece puts it; “The worst excesses of European exploitation were avoided, largely because there seemed to be so little to exploit.”

The diplomat and the bureaucrat, each with his differing view of the state, were to meet, and clash, when both were posted to post-war Malaya; Gent as the Governor, and MacDonald as the Governor-General. The main reason for the collision of wills was that the country after the Second World War was in a mess.

After the Japanese invasion the British had retreated to Ceylon to lick their wounds. They also planned a come-back to Malaya. Among those planners, some officers of the Malayan Civil Service and some prominent Malayans, was Gent. They envisioned a post-war Malaya in which all who were born there would be equal citizens and would jointly work to build a single multi-cultural country.

When it was clear that the Japanese would be very soon defeated, the British sent a flotilla in July 1945 and planned a landing at Morib, just south of Port Swettenham. It was known as “Operation Zipper”. The bombs of August, 1945, however, caught them by surprise. Japan capitulated while they were in mid-ocean. It might have seemed propitious, for them then to land and take over the administration of the country from the Japanese, but it was not to be.

The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur ordered the British forces to stand by so that he could have a proper instrument of surrender signed on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on the 2nd of September, 1945. The delay in the take-over caused civil strife in Malaya, and probably also changed the course of history of the country.

Admiral Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander Southeast Asia, then had to rely on Force 136 and the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) to take over the administration of the country from the Japanese Army. It was during this interregnum that there were civil unrest and ethnic clashes, caused by recriminations of collaboration with the Japanese; the shortage of food, of work and of money.

In an attempt to quell the civil disorder, Mountbatten ordered leaflets to be dropped, urging the people to stop fighting one another and wait for the arrival of the British forces to restore the old order and “rebuild a new and better country, which will be a real homeland for those who live in it.”

The British Military Administration (BMA) on re-occupation found the country in chaos, with murder and ethnic violence incidents running up to an average of 31 per month. They had to move speedily to gain control of the situation but in the absence of working social and civil institutions, the Administration had to resort to censorship and repression, enforced by the military, in an attempt to quell the disorder.

Chin Peng in his book, My Side of History (2003), writes of the inept handling of the situation by the BMA:

From our viewpoint, the BMA had no interest whatsoever in the fair distribution of wealth. It was an intensely corrupt operation. Only recently have historians begun discovering the extent to which graft, exploitation, fraud and general malfeasance dominated every aspect of British colonial control at this time. The courts were corrupt. The civil service was corrupt. The military was corrupt. The police was corrupt. The troops and their commanders were trigger happy.

This unsympathetic view was, of course, the case made by the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) against the returning colonial power. Part of the reason for Chin Peng’s animosity towards the BMA was perhaps the Japanese issued “Banana money” that the CPM had hoarded was abruptly declared worthless by the BMA on re-occupation. The way the Administration attempted to pump the old money back into the economy was to encourage generous indiscriminate spending by the Army, and this might have been perceived to be corruption.

More seriously, there was violence and bloodshed against the non-Malay population and, to the lingering shame of the Administration, there was apparently a deliberate policy to let pent up passions run its course. In ‘Traditionalism and the Ascendancy of the Malay Ruling Class in Colonial Malaya, (SIRD, 2019), Donna J Amoroso, suggests the reason why the British did not act decisively to stop the violence:

British actions when they finally landed did not quieten Malay fears. Essentially powerless to stop the ethnic political violence, the British left it to the Malays to be united in their struggle to prevent Chinese political domination of their country. Malay leaders did little to prevent the violence that represented the protection for which the British could no longer be counted on to provide.

It is important to understand the violence in this way, and not as a Japanese-inspired aberration, as the colonial government and the Malay leadership later professed publicly. Without this demonstration of ruthlessness and ferocity – Chinese casualties died by the knife and children were not spared – it is unlikely that public demonstrations later on by the reputedly “peaceful Malays” would have been taken seriously.

It would appear that with their tacit support of the Malays, the British had deliberately made the Chinese the scapegoats to allow the seemingly ‘moderate’ Malays to dominate the stage, and with whom they could work with at a later stage. That is, indeed, a damning commentary on the British policy in post-war Malaya.

Meanwhile, Sir Harold MacMichael, who had served in the Sudan and Tanganyika and had been the governor of Palestine for six years, was tasked to implement the plan for the Union by getting the agreement of the sultans.

This he accomplished within a short time. MacMichael had perhaps dealt with the sultans of the Malay states a little too firmly, for later there were accusations that they had been put under some stress, whether real or perceived, to sign the treaties.

MacMichael, himself, however, was oblivious of that; he wrote to Gent: “I am surprised at the comparatively small amount of interest shown locally. [The] impression I received is that the new policy was almost taken for granted and is regarded as eminently reasonable.”

This report might have given Gent the unfounded confidence to implement and carry on with the Union doggedly when he arrived to take over the reins of administration.

The Malayan Union was inaugurated on the 1st April, 1946, with Gent as the first Governor. There was outcry from the old Malaya hands, like Frank Swettenham, Cecil Clementi and Richard Winstedt, who thought the idea was a ‘half-baked nonsense’. The Union was perceived as arbitrary, and highly prejudicial to Malay rights. The MacMichael treaties were seen primarily as an attempt to wrest the indigenous Malays’ homeland from their control, and to give equal citizenship rights to the non-Malay population.

The result was an efflorescence of political consciousness among the Malay elite who organized resistance against the post war British administration. The Union was seen as an affront to the Malays. Gent was given the cold shoulder, his installation as Governor was boycotted. In contrast, the reactions of the non-Malays, though positive, were muted.

It was not a surprise then that Malcolm MacDonald viewed his appointment as ‘The Governor-General of the Malayan Union, the Colony of Singapore and such other territories as may be placed under his direction’ with the trepidation of a man approaching a nest of hornets.

As it was with Gent’s appointment as Governor of the Malayan Union, MacDonald’s installation as Governor-General was boycotted by the sultans and the Malay officials. In MacDonald: Bringing an End to Empire, Clyde Sanger describes how MacDonald managed to break the ice with the Malay politicians of the time, and how he got them to sit down and talk with the Chinese.

It is easy now to imagine how a get-together may be organized, but in those early days of colony the “colonised” and the “colonizers” did not find it easy to socialize with one another. How the man had taken up the challenge and the role he played in the creation later on of the Federation of Malaysia as we know it today, has yet to be fully assessed by historians.

One historian, however, thought that his role had been underestimated; C M Turnbull, wrote in the Journal of Malaysian British Royal Asiatic Society, Vol.60, (1987):

“Malcolm MacDonald had all but disappeared from history books, yet, viewing the whole process of decolonization and the transition from the British Empire to the Commonwealth of Nations, he is, I would maintain, the most important single figure, often influential, sometimes decisive.”

Looking back from today’s vantage point, whether he had done well in handling the racial crisis, or whether he had simply given in to a rancorous and extremist faction while ignoring the silent majority in both groups, remains a subject of speculation.

Gent, the bureaucrat in contrast, set about his job as administrator doggedly determined to make the Union work in the face of an uncooperative civil service, thereby setting the stage for a clash with the Governor-General.

In encroaching in the executive purview of Gent, MacDonald had allowed the rights of the non-Malays to be severely compromised on grounds of “birthright”, something which the British themselves had conveniently overlooked in Australia and South Africa when it suited them. MacDonald appeared to have followed the ‘cut-and-run’ policy of the British when the situation got ‘dicey’, similar to one that Mountbatten was at the same time forcing on the independence movement in India. It must be noted, however, that the British, coming to Malaya after the Portuguese and the Dutch considered themselves more as trustees for the Malay inhabitants and less as colonizers.

Leon Comber traces the special rights of the Malays in the Federation Agreement and later the Federal Constitution to this idea of trusteeship. (13 May 1969 A Historical Survey of Sino-Malay Relationship, Heinemann Asia, 1983)

MacDonald’s initial instructions from the Colonial Secretary in London had been to work closely with the Governor for an early settlement, “within the framework of the Malayan Union Order in Council”, which included as we have seen, “laying the foundation of a truly independent and multi-racial nation.”

In retrospect then, it may be said that he had failed to carry out those instructions, by giving in to Malay sentiments that subsequently manifested in a yearning for a homeland exclusively for Malays.

To be fair, at the time, Malay sentiment against the Union was gathering steam and seemingly getting out of control. The Parliamentarian backbenchers, L.D. Gammans (Conservative) and D.R. Rees-Williams (Labour) sent to gauge the peoples’ response to the Union, found popular opposition to the Union. Gent himself had also come around to agree that the Union was unworkable.

The disaffected remnants of the MPAJA had morphed into the CPM and taken to the jungle to wage war against what they viewed as “neo- colonialism”. MacDonald worked fast to diffuse the situation. His personal opinion had to be abandoned. Malay nationalists were thus mollified. Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who was then still a medical college student, recalled:

“The Colonial Office sent out MacDonald to make sure that the Malayan Union would continue. But MacDonald appeared to be of a different mind – he wanted to listen to the views of the Malays. He came to agree with Gent [the Governor] that the Union was not workable and that a federation of Malaya as proposed by the Malays was needed instead.(A Doctor in the House, MPH Group Publishing,2011)”

Initially, the Malays were themselves split in their aspirations: the moderates led by Dato Onn bin Jafar, were in favour of a gradual disengagement by the colonial administration, to allow the proposed multi-racial nation to take wing, but the more radical wanted independence at all cost.

Tunku Abdul Rahman, on the other hand, wanted full independence, he thought the sultans had capitulated to British pressure, and was harsh in his criticism of them and Dato’ Onn:

“The sultans only enjoyed their prestigious buildings and houses built for them by the British; they didn’t even fight against the Malayan Union plan. They just signed their sovereignty away, just like that….Dato’ Onn didn’t want to join me…

He said, ‘If we are independent, the others will have the better of us because of their better education, better position and various other things in the economic and political fields.’ ….All he wanted was home rule so he could hang on to the British.”

MacDonald went with the flow. He allowed the forces for Malay nationalism to gain ascendancy at the expense of the immigrant races which at the time made up a substantial percentage of the population. A Commission (Rendel) was formed to discuss the constitution for a federation of the states.

The Commission accepted the representations of the ex-colonial officers and Umno, but rejected the proposals from the coalition of the more progressive Putera Tenaga Rakyat (Putera) and the multi-racial All-Malayan -Council for Joint Action (AMCJA) (Syed Husin Ali, A People’s History of Malaysia, SIRD, 2018).

In 1948 the MacMichael treaties were replaced with the Federation of Malaya Agreement. For this MacDonald reaped praises from some quarters, though he was later to admit that it was a “temporary tactical retreat” perhaps knowing that he had let the non-Malays down. The Tunku spoke highly of him in his book, Viewpoints:

MacDonald was really the man who gave the people of this country a sense of Malaysian [sic] consciousness; and it was he who taught the people to look ahead, with ultimate independence as a goal, and he naturally had to depend on people like Datuk Onn and other community leaders of the time, Sir Cheng-Lock Tan, Datuk Thuraisingham and a few others to give the lead.

Whether the use of the word, “Malaysia”, instead of “Malayan”, was a ‘slip of tongue’ on the part of the Tunku, the fact was that initially, the Chinese, Indian and Eurasian leaders were opposed to the proposed federation and had made that known to MacDonald. The multiracial Putera-AMCJA coalition was against the idea of a federation. According to sociologist and historian Syed Husin Ali, the coalition was ignored in the negotiations because they were seen as a threat by the British:

The colonial rulers were aware that the getting together of forces from different ethnic groups could become a great threat to their rule. Under Emergency regulations many progressive organizations were banned or closed down and at the same time many of their leaders were detained without trial.

The same fate befell the Putera-AMCJA, which was dissolved. In this way, all the efforts to forge a broad inter-ethnic coalition was crippled by the British and their Emergency rules.

The situation that eventually resulted in the “Emergency” had caused the conflict between Gent and MacDonald. There had been incidents of labour unrest and clashes, some of these having been carried over from the days of the BMA administration. Gent the quintessential bureaucrat was for strengthening the administration and tackling the problems gradually from the root up.

However, there were harsh criticisms from the British planter and miner communities, and the press; a newspaper headline at the time pointedly referring to Gent read, ‘Govern or get out.’ MacDonald reported to the Colonial Office that Gent had lost the confidence of the public in the Federation and the heads of the other services, and that it was essential that Gent be recalled at once. The Colonial Secretary, George Hall, was however sympathetic in his brief to the cabinet:

He [Gent] had an acute sense for political maneuvering. All along he knew that an Emergency would have to be imposed. But he wanted to be sure that when the clampdown came, it would be in answer to a perceived declaration of war against Britain by us….Gent had for months suffered the jibes of European planters and mining executives who demanded a show a British force to confront our increasing activism within the unions. To them, Gent was weak and indecisive. I disagree.

The result of the clash was to send one to his death, and the other, ironically, to carry on with the victim’s vision for a federation of the last colonies in the British Empire. It was a tale largely untold. Reece regrets that there has been no biography written of Gent, he observes:

He seems to have been largely responsible for the important policy decisions of 1944 which envisaged the Malayan Union and the annexation of Sarawak and North Borneo. (Reece, The Name of Brooke, p.98.)

In a strange twist of fate, MacDonald was the one who was to be instrumental in carrying the idea forward and in the end largely responsible for implementing Gent’s grand vision. In 1953, he inaugurated the convening of the Inter-Territorial Conference among the governors of these last colonies in South-east Asia, and in 1954, a provisional agreement was reached for the probable federation of the Borneo territories, to be followed with a loose federation with Malaya and Singapore.

Of all the colonial officers that served in those colonies, MacDonald seemed to be the one obsessed with the idea. Chin Peng in My Side of History, Media Masters Publishing, 2003, claimed that he had felt guilty over the death of Gent: “More recently I read declassified papers which reveal how a clearly guilt-ridden MacDonald moved to protect his position by distancing himself from any blame in the manner in which Gent was recalled.” If that were so, he had a heavy cross to bear. It was to get heavier when the new High Commissioner, Henry Gurney, with whom MacDonald also had differences, was ambushed and assassinated by Chin Peng’s men.

MacDonald’s effort towards building a confederation though was not entirely unappreciated. When the idea was about to come to fruition, he was the British choice to head the commission of enquiry that was later to be known as Cobbold’s Commission. The appointment was, however, vetoed by the Malayan members, in particular Ghazali Shafie, who advised the Tunku against MacDonald’s nomination on the grounds:

“That….he [MacDonald] had his own views of the Grand Design which might contradict the Malaysia plan we had envisaged, secondly, he had a great deal of influence among the Ibans and Chinese which might work against the wishes of the other communities…”

Matthew Jones describes the imbroglio:

Matters did not begin auspiciously, it proved almost comically difficult for the two governments to appoint a chair for the commission. This time it was the British authorities who capitulated to the demands of the Malayan contingent, which had planned for the take-over of the two Borneo territories.

In later years, MacDonald’s recollection of his role in the formation of Malaysia seems to carry a belated concern for the Borneo territories, and a touch of regret:

I have often wondered whether the eventual result could have been wider and solider if Scott [his replacement] had been allowed to continue explorations of the proposal on the lines initiated earlier, so that first a federation of the three Borneo countries would be formed, and afterwards a confederation then with Malaya and Singapore. Perhaps that is an example of my over-sanguine wishful thinking.

Thus it was that the name of MacDonald, and his ‘Grand Design’ would thenceforth in the official and conventional narrative be forever linked with the idea of the formation of Malaysia, and that of Gent, to forever remain the obscure but hardworking bureaucrat that he was.

The writers wish to acknowledge their indebtedness and gratitude to the following:

R.H.W. Reece,The Name of Brooke (OUP, 1982)

Clyde Sanger, Malcolm MacDonald, Bringing an End to Empire (MacGill-Queen University Press, 1995)

Matthew Jones, Conflict and Confrontation in South East Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2002)

A.J. Stockwell, End of Empire Papers

Syed Husin Ali, A People’s History of Malaysia (SIRD, 2018)

Donna J Amoroso, Traditionalism and the Ascendency of the Malay Ruling Class in Colonial Malaya (SIRD, 2019)

Leon Comber, 13 May 1969 (A Historical Survey of Sino-Malay Relations Heinemann Asia, 1983)

Chin Peng, My Side of History (Media Masters Publishing, 2003)

Mahathir Mohammad, A Doctor in the House ( Media Masters Publishing, 2011)