ABSTRACT
This essay is about control of and resistance by plantation labourers in pre-war colonial Malaya. Despite differences in the way Indian and Chinese labourers were recruited and retained, the system of control was not fundamentally different. When the (Indian) kangani and (Chinese) contract systems replaced indenture, control was maintained through more indirect means. Under indenture resistance took the form of individual resistance, desertion being a common manifestation. With improvements in labour conditions, labour began to develop a more assertive role; collective resistance complemented individual forms of resistance.
