IKMAS seminar on 'Emergency' & New Villages

UKM's Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS) will be hosting an Occasional Seminar titled Towards A History from Below: Some Reflections on the ‘Emergency’ Resettlement and New Villages in Malaya/Malaysia (1948-60) on 24 April (Thursday) from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm at IKMAS Seminar Room in the university's Bangi campus.

The speaker will be Tan Teng Phee who is is a Post-Graduate Fellow at IKMAS from June 2007 to June 2008.

He commenced his PhD programme in April 2006 at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Western Australia. Born at Kuantan, Pahang, he have lived in several different Chinese New Villages, these life experiences have inspired him to explore the history of Chinese New Villages for his doctoral research. By adopting a social history approach, he attempting to reconstruct the other side of the historical story based on the perspectives of the New Villagers, and to examine how they responded to government policies and interacted with one another in the New Villages.

The Abstract of Teng Phee's presentation is given as follows:

"According to the British (and later the Alliance) Government, the Malayan ‘Emergency’ began on 16 June, 1948 and ended on 31 July, 1960. However, my field of study and point of entry, which entails collecting oral histories from New Villagers in peninsular Malaya/Malaysia, concerns a rather different sense of historical time and, in the process, recounts a very different story. I argue that for the rural populace of Malaya, the ‘Emergency’ only ‘occurred’ after the displacement, and relocation and resettlement of the population, largely but not exclusively Chinese. Therefore, both spatially and temporally, as well as physically and mentally, the local residents’ perspectives and experiences of the ‘Emergency’ obviously differed in perspective from the British colonial Government. Based on my one-year fieldwork, I hope to shed some revisionist light on the events surrounding displacement and relocation, using a history from below approach".

The seminar is open to all. For further information please call 8921-3205/4169 or 8921-3625.

Sole survivor of My Lai of Malaya passes away