(DOWNLOAD) "Chinese Business in the Making of a Malay State, 1882-1941: Kedah and Penang (Book Review)" by SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Chinese Business in the Making of a Malay State, 1882-1941: Kedah and Penang (Book Review)
- Author : SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia
- Release Date : January 01, 2007
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 201 KB
Description
Chinese Business in the Making of a Malay State, 1882-1941: Kedah and Penang. By Wu Xiao An. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon 2003. 239 pp. Growing up in Kuala Lumpur, I did not often travel up the north of the Malaya Peninsula. And perhaps for that, the northern states of Kedah, Perlis, and Kelantan often seemed to me remote and exotic. In December 2005, I went up to Southern Thailand to hear the stories of ex-guerrillas of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) who have settled there after the 1989 ceasefire agreement. Their stories brought home to me the mutability of life at the border region, that lives and cultures and social certainties, not to mention the Malaysian-Thai national boundaries themselves, are in fact remarkably porous and open. Some men and women of the MCP, having lost their 'loved ones' (ai ren) remarried Thais and some adopted Thai children when they could not have any. During the Malayan Emergency (1948-60), they and their comrades crossed to and fro between Thailand and Malaysia at various points at the border undetected by the security forces. It is the postmodern geographer's wet dream. You can, in all seriousness, say that the MCP guerrillas and the Malaysian and Thai villagers on both sides of the borders make for 'flexible citizenship' of a sort. It is not the sort as Ong has described (1999), one of migration, employment with multinational corporations, and business class travelling, but less glamorously of jungle trek across the border to buy and sell, visit relatives and for a bit of smuggling and other clandestine undertakings. (Diesel is currently the favourite item to be smuggled from Thailand to Malaysia after the Malaysian authorities withdrew subsidy for users in the industries.) One wonders if the Islamic separatists among the Malays living in the southeastern Thai Provinces do not make use of the same freedom of movement and sanctuary the area offers.