Imagining Malaya : Peranakan Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Belonging at the End of Empire, 1945–1957

Abstract

Over the course of British colonial rule in Malaya, the Peranakan Chinese (hereafter referred to as Peranakan) attempted to bring to life a complex imagination of nationhood predicated on an inclusive and multi-ethnic approach to integrating Malaya’s plural society. A creolized community borne of intermarriage between Chinese migrants anqd indigenous Malays, Peranakan ideas of nationhood and belonging were influenced by their liminality. In word and deed, Peranakan political actors campaigned for the extension of citizenship rights to all those domiciled in Malaya regardless of race, class, or religion. Yet, this political history has largely been overlooked. In examining the Peranakan imaginary of the nation, Imagining Malaya explores one of the many alternatives of a Malayan nation that were imagined—and were possible at one point or another—that have yet to be studied. Centring the Peranakan into Malaysia’s story of decolonization and nation-making, it casts a new light on Malaysia’s path to nationhood and who is included—and excluded—within that story. The book examines Peranakan politics in Malaya from the arrival of the British on Penang Island in 1786 to the end of British rule in Malaya upon the latter’s independence on 31 August 1957, focussing primarily on the community’s political activities during Malaya’s complex path to merdeka (independence). This monograph reveals how seemingly disparate political acts by the Peranakan were in reality bound together by a cosmopolitan sense of identity and belonging as leading figures from the community sought to build an inclusive Malayan nation.