Detention, Deportation and Resettlement: British Counterinsurgency and Malaya’s Rural Chinese, 1948–60

Hack, Karl (2015). Detention, Deportation and Resettlement: British Counterinsurgency and Malaya’s Rural Chinese, 1948–60. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 43(5) pp. 611–640.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2015.1083218

Abstract

To understand how empires control ‘hostile’ populations, we need to penetrate below overarching terms such as ‘counter-terror’ and ‘winning hearts and minds’, in order to understand discrete constituent techniques on their own terms. Yet technique lifecycles tend to be inadequately researched. This article examines three key techniques used to control rural Chinese during the Malayan Emergency of 1948–60. Detention, deportation and, to a lesser extent, the better-documented technique of resettlement are tracked across the campaign, individually and for their changing salience in the overall blend of counterinsurgency approaches. This approach demonstrates that the main move for each technique (and for the campaign as a whole) was not so much from counter-terror to ‘winning hearts and minds’, as from collective and poorly targeted to tightly targeted approaches. It also demonstrates how far highly repressive measures, such as large-scale deportation, continued much later into the campaign than previously recognised. Above all, it shows how key elements of even an apparently well-researched campaign are likely to be only partially understood, if not seriously misconstrued, in the absence of a technique lifestyle approach.

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