To counter this, General Sir Harold Briggs developed what came to be known as the Briggs Plan. Squatters and farmers living at the edge of the jungle were rounded up and forcefully relocated into New Villages. Some 450 New Villages were established and just under half a million people were placed in them. These villages were surrounded with barbed wire fencing and police guards and were floodlit at night. Long curfews were imposed. Food supplies to these villages were severely rationed. Collective punishment was meted out to villagers. Its aim was to cut off support for the outlawed Malayan People’s Liberation Army. In 1952, Sir Gerald Templar took command of the British forces. Commonwealth troops from Australia, New Zealand, Southern Rhodesia and Fiji were brought in. The British army also began a campaign to win the hearts and minds of people to turn them against insurgents.
The Emergency, often referred to as the Forgotten War, was to last until 1960. In terms of human cost, over 6,000 guerrillas were said to have been killed as opposed to an estimated 1,300 Malayan troops and police and about 500 Commonwealth soldiers. Civilian casualties amounted to about 2,500 and an additional eight hundred were recorded missing.
On 31 August 1957, Malaya became independent. Six years later, on 9 July 1963, the Agreement for the formation of Malaysia, which comprised the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo and Sarawak, was signed. On 9 August 1965, just two years on, Singapore separated from Malaysia to become an independent and sovereign state.
Between 1963 and 1966 Indonesia’s opposition to the formation of Malaysia resulted in the outbreak of violent conflict between the two countries. This was known generally as the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation.
About the Author
Born in Kuala Lumpur, CHAN LING YAP was educated in Malaysia and the UK. She has a PhD in economics and was Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Malaya and then Senior Economist in the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in Rome. She now lives in the UK. Her novel New Beginnings won the Readers Popular Choice Award in 2014 in Malaysia while both Sweet Offerings and Bitter-Sweet Harvest were shortlisted for the award. Her fourth novel, A Flash of Water, was published in 2015. For more information visit www.chanlingyap.com.
Also by Chan Ling Yap
SWEET OFFERINGS
ISBN: 978-981-4328-44-9
Set in the late 1930s and 1960s, this is the story of Mei Yin, a young Chinese girl from an impoverished family. Her destiny is shaped when she is sent to Kuala Lumpur to become the companion of the tyrannical and bitter Su Hei who is looking for a suitable wife for her son Ming Kong … and ultimately a grandson and heir to the family dynasty. Sweet Offerings is not just a fictional story of the events that ripped one family apart, but a taste of Malaysia’s historical, political and cultural changes during its transition from colonial rule to independence and beyond.
BITTER-SWEET HARVEST
ISBN: 978-981-4351-68-3
Set in a Malaysia emerging from the outbreak of racial conflict in 1969, Bitter-Sweet Harvest tells of the difficulties and tensions of a marriage between a Malay Muslim and a Chinese Christian. Atmospheric, dramatic, action-packed and intriguing, this novel is peppered with local flavour evoking the heat, colours and sounds of Southeast Asia.
NEW BEGINNINGS
ISBN: 978-981-4408-61-5
In the southern Province of Guangxi amidst the turmoil of the Taiping Rebellion and the Opium War, a woman is kidnapped and her husband shipped out as a coolie to Singapore. Yet from despair came good fortune. Seen through the eyes of one family, this is a moving story of the scourge of opium and one man’s plight and rise in fortune in British Malaya.
A FLASH OF WATER
ISBN: 978-981-4677-76-9
The year is 1883. China is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. In the countryside antagonism against foreigners and missionaries is growing and the warlords are at large. Li Ling, a young peasant girl in China, flees to Malaya to escape being made a concubine to a warlord only to find herself tricked into becoming a second wife to a rich man with sadistic tendencies. Her life becomes intertwined with that of her rescuer, Shao Peng, in a Malaya that is rapidly transforming under British rule.
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