2025/12/22 by Koon Kein Pang · 1 voice · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Asian Studies and History #Island Studies and Pacific Affairs #Military History and Strategy
paper · doi:10.1080/03086534.2025.2597870
openalex created_date 2025/12/22 · openalex publication_date 2025/12/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
The Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) has traditionally been studied through the lens of political history, with a particular focus on the tensions between the Malayan Communist Party and the British colonial authorities. However, scholars have largely overlooked the deeper roots of the Emergency developing from a crisis of the plantation system in Malaya, triggered by the global restructuring of the rubber industry following the technological breakthroughs of the Second World War. By reconsidering the origins of the Malayan Emergency from the perspective of rubber crisis, this study aims to provide a new angle on how the plantation system evolved in post-Second World War Malaya amid the rubber crisis and how that development eventually contributed to the rise of the Malayan Emergency.