ABSTRACT
In May 1961, Tunku Abdul Rahman first publicly announced his desire to bring Malaya ‘closer together’ with Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei in ‘a political and economic co-operation’.1 For President Sukarno of Indonesia, the ‘Greater Malaysia’ project was nothing more than a ‘neocolonialist plot’. In justifying his policy of Konfrontasi (‘Confrontation’) against the new state, the veteran anti-colonial revolutionary declared that Malaysia was designed to secure tin, rubber and oil supplies ‘for the imperialists’.2 For socialist and Islamicist opposition politicians in the Federation, the Tunku’s plans were merely a cloak under which Britain would continue to dominate Southeast Asia through a sinister shift of imperial technique from ‘divide and rule’ to ‘unite and rule’. Independence, it was claimed, ‘made no sense if [Malaysia’s] economic heart’ remained lodged in London.3 Writing in the 1980s, Hua Wu Yin also regarded the final creation of Malaysia in September 1963 as a triumph for British ‘neo-colonialism’. Although Singapore split from the Federation in August 1965 while Brunei never joined, Malaysia ‘was the ideal solution to enable British imperialism to maintain its hold on the rich resources of the North Bornean states…and at the same time deal with the left-wing threat in Singapore’.4 In a similar vein, a more recent study by Greg Poulgrain views the Malaysia scheme as propelled primarily by British economic interests. The making of Malaysia proved a ‘masterstroke of…decolonization’ because it allowed Britain to secure its investments while appearing to transfer power. Brunei’s decision to stay out of the Federation was hardly disastrous since the Anglo-Dutch oil monopoly in the sultanate was secured from the end of 1962 by troops of the former colonial power. As such, ‘the dominant policy in the saga of British decolonization in Southeast Asia stemmed…from an unidentifled amalgam of oil-company executives and British intelligence personnel’.5
