I have chosen to write on this topic as it falls within Professor Nick Tarling’s
area of interest. As this paper was written for the New Zealand Asian Studies
conference in Auckland held in January 2006 to commemorate his 75th
birthday, I wish to offer this essay in honour of his outstanding contributions
as a historian of Southeast Asia, especially his studies of the British Empire
in the Malay world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The communist insurgency in Malaysia ended seventeen years ago on
2 December 1989 following a peace agreement signed between the
Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), the Malaysian government and Thai
military commanders at Ha’adyai in southern Thailand. In this paper I shall
look at its impact on the various ethnic communities, especially in their early
political struggles for independence in Malaya, and in their efforts to mould a
viable nation-state. I shall also discuss the end of British rule and the politics
of nation-building in independent Malaya, focusing on social change,
democracy, human rights, urbanization and economic development. My aim
is to assess whether the communist insurgency left any enduring legacy in the
nation-building of independent Malaya and in its later enlarged form of
Malaysia. The paper will also assess briefly the impact of the 39-year-old
communist insurgency in the east Malaysian state of Sarawak, which ended
in 1990.