Revisiting Colonialism and Colonial Labour

The South Asian Working Class in British Malaya

Sivachandralingam Sundara Raja, Shivalinggam Raymond, Sivachandralingam Sundara Raja, Shivalinggam Raymond

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781032283098
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000918236
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book argues that the prevailing view of colonialism – that it was a negative and destructive phenomenon – needs to be rethought. It focuses on the experiences of the South Indian working class, large numbers of which came to Malaya in the early years of the twentieth century, emigrating from socially, economically, and environmentally inhospitable south India. It examines the opportunities which colonialism presented for these people, highlighting also the British approach to colonialism in Malaya, an approach which emphasised conservativism and tradition, and which protected the interests of the Malay aristocrat classes and, by extension, the Malay masses in order to compensate for European economic dominance and the influx of a non-Malay labour force. Overall, the book demonstrates that the South Indians, a class whose identity, social existence, and prospects were inextricably linked to imperial processes, benefitted from colonialism, and should be viewed as an active transnational entity within a constructive system, rather than as passive victims of repressive, destructive forces.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Introduction by the Editors
• 1 Repurposing Colonialism: Historical Intellectuality, Postcolonial/Decolonial Encounter, and the Colonial Labour History in Malaysia
• 2 Colonialism’s Postcoloniality/Coloniality, Historical Epistemology, and a Case for Malaysian South Indian Labour Historiography
• 3 Global Colonial Economy, South Indian Labour Immigration, and British Colonial Institutions and Practices: A Historical Perspective
• 4 The Inception and Internal Workings of the Tamil Immigration Fund in British Malaya, 1907–1938
• 5 Towards the Interaction between the Chettiar Financial Capitalist and the South Indian Working Class in British Malaya
• 6 Indian Agents of the Government of India and the Conception of a Transnationalist Context of the South Indian Labourers of Malaya
• 7 Colonial Exigency and Labour Self-Agency: Colonial Policy, Labour Agricultural Land Settlement, and South Indian Response from the 1900s to the 1930s Great Depression
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index