Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
Communism as an ideology was first introduced to Malaya by Chinese anarchists, and not by Kuomintang Left, Indonesian communists or Chinese communists as claimed in existing scholarship.1 A handful of Chinese anarchists arrived in British Malaya during the First World War to take up positions as Chinese vernacular school teachers or journalists. These Chinese intellectuals harboured not only anarchism but also communism, commonly known then as anarcho-communism.
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2 Scalapino, Robert A. and Yu, George T., The Chinese Anarchist Movement (Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1980), reprint, pp. 35, 39.Google ScholarDirlik, Arif and Krebs, Edward S., ‘Socialism and Anarchism in Early Republican China’, Modern China 7%, 2, 04 1981, pp. 131–7.Google Scholar
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5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24 July 1919.
7 Ibid., 9 Sept. 1919.
8 Ibid., 27 Nov. 1919.
9 Ibid., 1 Dec. 1919.
10 Ibid., 5. Jan. 1920.
11 Ibid., 14 May 1920.
12 Ibid., 5 June 1920.
13 Ibid., 5 July 1920.
14 Ibid., 30 Nov. 1920.
15 Ibid., 18 Dec. 1920.
16 CO 717/41/22708, Bomb outrage at Chinese Protectorate, Kuala Lumpur 23 April 1925, see Guillemard, L. N., High Commissioner, FMS, to L.C.M.S. Amery, Colonial Office, 23 April 1925, enclosing a memorandum on Anarchism among Chinese in British Malaya, by A. M. Goodman, Secretary for Chinese Affairs, FMS, dated 26 Jan. 1925, pp. 4–5; 7.Google Scholar
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54 Ibid., pp. 6; 9.
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67 Ibid.
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77 Ibid.
78 Hanrahan, Communist Struggle, pp. 38–9.Google Scholar
79 Ibid., p. 39.
80 FO 371/17197, FO ref. F1191/61, MCIN. 75, Jan. 1933, see ‘Appendix A’, on ‘Communism in Malaya up to 1933’, p. 1.Google Scholar
81 Ibid.
82 The founding of both the Thai Communist Party in 1932 and the Burmese Communist Party in 1939 had less to do with Comintern directives.Google Scholar