Right, now it's been confirmed that I'm going to be stuck indoors for at least two more days I have the time to respond to this.
When the Chinese made up just shy of half of the population that isn't exactly the case. We don't know how much of the Chinese population supported the Communists, either directly or indirectly, but the figure usually bandied around is something like half at peak. This diminished in time, with a solid core of perhaps as much as 15% of the population involved in direct or indirect support roles even after the Briggs Plan swung into full effect.
I'm not sure how relevant that is to a discussion of a primarily rural issue. Both the MCA and UNMO can be said to be national parties, rather than urban parties, only after the 1954 elections and that was as a result of the Emergency more than anything.
That doesn't make it better and really only serves to demonstrate my point.
Next to nil. They had some residual functions in their role as religious leaders. But no practical power to speak off, and that had been the case from the 1910s onwards.
I'm not actually sure how you could have thought I was talking about anything else.
It wasn't actually. They had mishandled the situation from 1945 onwards. The collapse of the Malayan Union was a massive boon to the Communist and, if anything, made them a national problem. And before we start blaming the UNMO et. al. for the crisis, we need to remember that most, if not all, of the British civil service in Malaya openly opposed it as well. And it was the latter and not the former that made the situation untenable in the first place. Everything else was basically a catch-up game where the British played coy and refused to grant basic ethnic Chinese basic rights they had been promised beforehand. Hardly an optimal solution to a problem that was indissolubly linked to securing those self-same rights.
This is awfully reductionist. The struggle was not between two racial camps. On the contrary, it was between one part of one camp who rejected the legitimacy of the political process and parts of both camps that did not. And even that is an oversimplification.
Neither for that matter was the average urban Chinese...
... Yes. People don't go out into the jungles for years because some dude showed up and read them a sermon from the Little Red Book. For that to work, it needs to gel with experience and most of the MCP recruits were already living hard lives.
Right towards the end, which isn't the point. That they didn't have them to begin with is.
You need to read my position more carefully. I never said that military intervention was unwarrented. I'm on the record however saying that the Emergency should never have happened. Malaysia was not Burma. There was no reason for the MCA to become as big a problem as it did. The fault lies firmly at the feet of the British for failing to do anything about the plight of ethnic Chinese and for mishandling the Union. And unless we're time travelling I fail to see how this is relevant in the first place.
No rights; British. Failure of Union; British. Mishandling the UNMO; British. Repudiating promises made to Chinese; British. The latter the MCP freely admits made them.
Great, that's fine. But the British were still in the driving seat. And were hardly an ex-colonial power.
It isn't impossible. But those intiatives hardly reached outside the towns, which were not, usually, MCP supporters anyway. And in any case, for those to work you need to provide security first. Its not good to have a hospital if the MLNA are going to attack it. And even then, its no good to have a police station if the police are going to treat you as second class citizens. The easiest option would have been to approach the Union of Malaya more cautiously, take heed of the concerns of the parties involved and move towards a slower implementation timetable and perhaps increase the time taken to become a citizen. It wouldn't have made a material difference if the 10 out of 15 years rule before 1942 was jigged a little bit more. You could put it back to Mukden and it wouldn't have made much of a difference to anyone but the newest immigrants and those were hardly likely to get all that worked up about it, providing they got assurances that when the time came they could become citizens and in the meantime got treated fairly. And this is hardly utopian, it was the policy of a fair amount of the movers and shakers both British, Malay and Chinese.
Flying Pig said:
When the Chinese made up just shy of half of the population that isn't exactly the case. We don't know how much of the Chinese population supported the Communists, either directly or indirectly, but the figure usually bandied around is something like half at peak. This diminished in time, with a solid core of perhaps as much as 15% of the population involved in direct or indirect support roles even after the Briggs Plan swung into full effect.
Flying Pig said:
I'm not sure how relevant that is to a discussion of a primarily rural issue. Both the MCA and UNMO can be said to be national parties, rather than urban parties, only after the 1954 elections and that was as a result of the Emergency more than anything.
vogtmurr said:
That doesn't make it better and really only serves to demonstrate my point.
vogtmurr said:
Next to nil. They had some residual functions in their role as religious leaders. But no practical power to speak off, and that had been the case from the 1910s onwards.
vogtmurr said:
I'm not actually sure how you could have thought I was talking about anything else.
vogtmurr said:
It wasn't actually. They had mishandled the situation from 1945 onwards. The collapse of the Malayan Union was a massive boon to the Communist and, if anything, made them a national problem. And before we start blaming the UNMO et. al. for the crisis, we need to remember that most, if not all, of the British civil service in Malaya openly opposed it as well. And it was the latter and not the former that made the situation untenable in the first place. Everything else was basically a catch-up game where the British played coy and refused to grant basic ethnic Chinese basic rights they had been promised beforehand. Hardly an optimal solution to a problem that was indissolubly linked to securing those self-same rights.
vogtmurr said:
This is awfully reductionist. The struggle was not between two racial camps. On the contrary, it was between one part of one camp who rejected the legitimacy of the political process and parts of both camps that did not. And even that is an oversimplification.
vogtmurr said:
Neither for that matter was the average urban Chinese...
vogtmurr said:
... Yes. People don't go out into the jungles for years because some dude showed up and read them a sermon from the Little Red Book. For that to work, it needs to gel with experience and most of the MCP recruits were already living hard lives.
vogtmurr said:
Right towards the end, which isn't the point. That they didn't have them to begin with is.
vogtmurr said:
You need to read my position more carefully. I never said that military intervention was unwarrented. I'm on the record however saying that the Emergency should never have happened. Malaysia was not Burma. There was no reason for the MCA to become as big a problem as it did. The fault lies firmly at the feet of the British for failing to do anything about the plight of ethnic Chinese and for mishandling the Union. And unless we're time travelling I fail to see how this is relevant in the first place.
vogtmurr said:
No rights; British. Failure of Union; British. Mishandling the UNMO; British. Repudiating promises made to Chinese; British. The latter the MCP freely admits made them.
vogtmurr said:
Great, that's fine. But the British were still in the driving seat. And were hardly an ex-colonial power.
vogtmurr said:
It isn't impossible. But those intiatives hardly reached outside the towns, which were not, usually, MCP supporters anyway. And in any case, for those to work you need to provide security first. Its not good to have a hospital if the MLNA are going to attack it. And even then, its no good to have a police station if the police are going to treat you as second class citizens. The easiest option would have been to approach the Union of Malaya more cautiously, take heed of the concerns of the parties involved and move towards a slower implementation timetable and perhaps increase the time taken to become a citizen. It wouldn't have made a material difference if the 10 out of 15 years rule before 1942 was jigged a little bit more. You could put it back to Mukden and it wouldn't have made much of a difference to anyone but the newest immigrants and those were hardly likely to get all that worked up about it, providing they got assurances that when the time came they could become citizens and in the meantime got treated fairly. And this is hardly utopian, it was the policy of a fair amount of the movers and shakers both British, Malay and Chinese.
