V. A. TYURIN
Doctor of Historical Sciences
The 12-year period of Malay history - from June 18, 1948 to July 31, 1960 - entered the everyday language of local residents, and then migrated to the pages of scientific and journalistic publications as "The Emergency". In a narrow sense, this word refers to the armed guerrilla war waged by the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) against the British colonialists.
The "emergency" affected all aspects of life in Malaya (to a large extent in Singapore), influenced the country's independence, determined the choice of some ideological systems and the rejection of others, but it is difficult to reduce it only to the military confrontation between the British army and the police and the communist partisans.
As well as armed clashes in the countries of South-East Asia (SE) in the late 40s of the XX century. (Madiun events in Indonesia, civil wars in Burma and the Philippines)1, the "emergency" received diametrically opposite assessments in the context of the "Cold War" among anti-communist Western authors and in Soviet (and Chinese) historiography. If the first 2 put the blame entirely on the CPM, which followed the unproven and more than poorly documented "Moscow's installations", then the authors are domestic and Chinese (from the PRC)3 they laid full responsibility on the British authorities, who deliberately provoked the CPM, which was allegedly followed by the broad masses of the people, to armed resistance.
THE HOT SUMMER OF 1948
On the morning of June 16, on two rubber plantations near the town of Sungei Siput in the state (Sultanate) In Perak, CPM militants killed three European employees, and in Johor State, two Chinese foremen were killed. On the same day, a delegation of English planters met with the High Commissioner (Governor) of the Malay Federation Colony (Malaya), Edward Ghent, and demanded " immediate and merciless action." And in the afternoon, Ghent declared a state of emergency in Perak and Johor, while police in K ...
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