Essays

In this section, users can read short essays by members of the COTCA Team about specific images or collections which are included in the COTCA Digital Archive. Some essays are also built around general events, people, or institutions which correspond with specific themes, items or events appearing in the case studies.

Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with the art collective Fraud

This conversation with Fraud will explore their work Carbon Derivatives, an art-led enquiry into forest and foreshores as salvage sites for carbon incorporating questions such as salvage accumulation, waste management, indentured labour and slavery. Participants Ariadne Collins is a Lecturer at the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Her work lies at the intersection of climate change governance, environmental policy and international development. More specifically, she analyses the interplay between market-based conservation and postcolonial development. Her work features an emphasis on processes of racialisation and histories of colonialism, and their challenge to the successful enactment of forest governance policies in the Global South. Ariadne was awarded a PhD (Summa cum laude) from Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, in May 2017. She holds a Masters in Research (Distinction) from the University of Westminster and a Bachelors from the University of Guyana. Prior to joining the University of St. Andrews, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin. She was also a visiting researcher at the Centre for Space, Place and Society at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. She has given talks on colonialism, environmental histories, raw material and climate change at exhibition spaces in Berlin and the United Kingdom (publications). FRAUD is made up of the duo Audrey Samson and Francisco Gallardo. Critical spatial practitioners, they develop modes of art-led enquiry, which examine the processes of financialisation through extractive practices, and cultivate critical cosmogony building. They are currently exploring the extractivist gaze of the Critical Raw Materials Initiative with their project EURO—VISION. Audrey (b. Canada) leads the Digital Arts Computing programme and is a Critical Studies Lecturer in the Art Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. Somerset House Studio alumni, the duo has been awarded the State of Lower Saxony – HBK Braunschweig Fellowship (2020), the King's College Cultural Institute Grant (2018), and has been commissioned by the Contemporary Art Archipelago (2020) and the Cockayne Foundation (2018). Francisco (b. Spain) is an architect who completed a PhD in the School of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London, he was awarded the Wellcome Trust People Awards (2016) and authored Talking Dirty, published by Arts Catalyst (2016). FRAUD's recent work includes: "Carbon Derivatives" that has been namely presented at the Salon Suisse (the 57th Venice Biennale), the Whitechapel Gallery (2018) and the Somerset House (2018); "Shrimping Under Working Conditions", that was shown at Kunsthall Trondheim (2017) and the Empire Remains Shop in London (2016); and "Goodnight Sweetheart / the Right to Happiness" which was exhibited at Fotomuseum Winterthur (2020-21), the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju (2019), and has been featured in "Behind the Smart World", Radio Canada, and Asia Art Pacific. The duo's work is part of the permanent collections of the European Investment Bank Institute (LU) and the Art and Nature Center - Beulas Foundation (SP) (their website and see also). Theo Reeves-Evison is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Birmingham School of Art, where his research focuses on the critical imbrications of art, ecology and speculation. He is the editor (with Jon K. Shaw) of Fiction as Method (Sternberg, 2017), and has published recent articles in journals such as Parallax, New Formations and Critical Inquiry. In 2018 he edited a special issue of the journal Third Text with Mark Rainey on the theme of "ethico-aesthetic repairs". His monograph Ethics of Contemporary Art: In The Shadow of Transgression was recently published by Bloomsbury Academic (his website).

Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Abdessamad El Montassir

This conversation with artist Abdessamad El Montassir will explore his projects about the micro-histories, non-material archives, forms of natural resistance and cartographies of invisible lives in Western Sahara. Participants Joanna Allan currently works at Northumbria University. She holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship for a project investigating how imaginaries of wind and sun impact on politics mediated by energy systems. More widely, she is interested in nonviolent resistance movements, resistance poetry and the gender of authoritarianism and resistance. Regionally, Joanna's work has focused on Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea, and on the Equatoguinean and Saharawi diaspora communities in Spain. Joanna's first book Silenced Resistance: Women, Dictatorships, and Genderwashing in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea (Wisconsin University Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 African Studies Association Fage and Oliver Prize for best book on Africa, and was runner up in the 2020 International Studies Association's biennial Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Book Prize. The book has been reviewed in the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Africa Review, Midwest Book Review, Nomadic Peoples Journal and the International Journal of African Historical Studies. Before beginning her PhD, Joanna worked at National Energy Action, the UK Consortium on HIV/AIDS and International Development and London Councils European Service. She has been part of the Saharawi solidarity movement for years, including as President of Western Sahara Resource Watch until 2017. Omar Berrada is a writer, translator and curator whose work focuses on the politics of translation and intergenerational transmission. He is the author of Clonal Hum, a book of poems on "invasive species" (2020), and the editor or co-editor of several books, including Album: Cinémathèque de Tanger, a multilingual volume about film in Tangier and Tangier on film (2012); The Africans, a book on racial dynamics in Morocco (2016); and La Septième Porte, Ahmed Bouanani’s posthumous history of Moroccan cinema (2020). His writing has been published in numerous exhibition catalogues and essay collections, as well as in anthologies such as The University of California Book of North African Literature (2013) and Poetic Justice: An Anthology of Contemporary Moroccan Poetry (2020). Currently living in New York, he teaches at the Cooper Union where he co-organises the IDS Lecture Series. Sébastien Boulay is an anthropologist, and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Paris (Faculty Societies and Humanities), and member of UMR 196 CEPED (Centre Population & Développement). He has been conducting ethnographic field research since 1999 in Mauritania, and in Western Sahara since 2011. His current work focuses on the role of artistic productions (notably satirical and humorous, but also elegiac) and new media in the political struggles at work since the 1960s in the region. He has just devoted several years of research to collecting, translating and analysing a corpus of poems and songs paying tribute to deceased figures of West-Saharan political life, and in particular to figures of martyrs, a corpus that allows him to apprehend the West-Saharan political field from an original angle. He is also very interested in the evolution of the place of Moorish griots in political and media life since the 1950s and in the sense of the political commitment of West Saharan artists, whether griots or non-griots. He co-founded the International Academic Observatory of Western Sahara in 2016 and recently headed with Francisco Freire Culture et Politique dans l’Ouest saharien: Arts, Activismes et État dans un Espace de Conflits (L’Étrave, 2017); with Francesco Correale Sahara Occidental: Conflit Oublié, Population en Mouvement (PUFR, 2018); with Sylvie Fanchette, La question des Echelles en Sciences Humaines et Sociales (Éditions de l’IRD, 2019). He has just made a first film with Michel Tabet on the meaning of martyrdom in the Saharawi revolutionary tradition (SAHARA-Les Voix des Martyrs, 2020, 75’). Taous R. Dahmani is an historian of photography, a PhD researcher and a critic, working between Paris and London. She is interested in the links between photography and politics. She regularly gives talks at Les Rencontres d’Arles, Paris Photo and Tate Modern. She is on the editorial board of MAI:Visual Culture and Feminism and co-editor of The Eyes magazine. She regularly contributes to 1000 Words Magazine. Her recent articles include "Bharti Parmar’s 'True Stories': Against the grain of Sir Benjamin Stone's photographic collection", in PhotoResearcher (no°30, November 2018) and a chapter on Polareyes, a 1987 Black British female photographic journal in Feminist and Queer Activism in Britain and the United States in the Long 1980s (forthcoming). In October 2020 she organised and convened the conference "Let Us Now Praise Famous Women: Women's Labour to Uncover the Works of Female Photographers" at the Weston Library, Oxford. Abdessamad El Montassir is a multi-disciplinary artist. His research is centered on a trilogy: the right to forget/being forgotten, fictional and visceral narratives, and the trauma of anticipation. In his body of work, the artist invites us to rethink histories and cartographies through collective or fictional narratives and immaterial archives. His projects explore the ways in which traumas affect the behaviours and socio-political contexts of individuals and reveal processes of story-telling and history-writing. Abdessamad El Montassir takes stock of the knowledge on/of non-human identities (plants, wind, landscapes) in order to spark new ways of thinking about our environment. Abdessamad El Montassir has participated in several national and international exhibitions, including Ce qui s’oublie et ce qui reste (curated by Meriem Berrada and Isabelle Renard at National Museum of Immigration History in Paris); Surgir des cendres (in the frame of Chroniques - Biennale of Digital Imagination in Aix-Marseille); Invisible (curated by Alya Sebti for the 13th Biennale of Contemporary African Art of Dakar and for ifa-Galerie in Berlin); Leave No Stone Unturned (curated by Clelia Coussonnet at Le Cube - independent art room in Rabat); De liens et d’exils (La Villa Empain - Fondation Boghossian in Brussels); Al Amakine (11th Rencontres de Bamako); Saout Africa(s) (in the context of DOCUMENTA 14 at SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin).

Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Hyunhye (Angela) Seo

This conversation with artist Hyunhye (Angela) Seo will explore how colonialism and occupation not only shape the occupied culture, but how that culture, adapts, inherits and responds, and the melding of native/original culture and coloniser culture into something familiar yet new. Participants Hyunhye (Angela) Seo is an artist exploring experimental composition and expression of sound and its manifestations within space and body. She is a member of the musical group Xiu Xiu, in which she extends the band’s visual themes to immigrant diaspora, post-colonial spirituality and ritualism, and exotification/fetishisation via videos that have been featured in film festivals around the world. She has performed in collaboration with various artists spanning the visual and performance world, including with Danh Vo ("Metal" at The Kitchen, and "Deforms the Unborn" at the Guggenheim NYC), and the Berlin-based Cheap Collective (featuring Vaginal Davis, Susanne Sachsse and Marc Siegel). Recently, her solo album, Strands, explores abstract soundscapes built with processed percussion, improvisational piano, and dark ambient material. Her sound installations in relation to this work create an immersive territory that compels the listener to question how they carry the immediate and lingering impact of sound (her website). Russ Skelchy is an interdisciplinary scholar specialising in the popular musics of Indonesia and Malaysia. He received his PhD in Ethnomusicology (2015) and MA in Southeast Asian Studies (2010) from the University of California, Riverside. His research interests include multiracial studies, sound studies, popular music (sub)cultures, decolonisation and gender. He was a recipient of a Fulbright US Scholar grant (2017-2018), Fulbright Institute for International Education Fellowship (2011-2012) and the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program Fellowship (2011-2012), and he was an ERC Research Fellow on the COTCA Project from 2017 to 2020. His work has been published in the Journal of Popular Music Studies, South East Asia Research, Sound Studies and various other international journals.

Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza

This conversation with artist Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza will cover her project "Speculations" (on how to enter and exit a forest) (2018), the spectral presence of colonial occupations, and their resonance with present-day political situations Participants Zuzanna Dziuban is a 2019-2024 Senior Postdoc on the ERC Consolidator project "Globalized Memorial Museums: Exhibiting Atrocities in the Era of Claims for Moral Universals" at the Austrian Academy of Science. She received her PhD in cultural studies in 2009 at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. She has been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz and research fellow at the Amsterdam School for Heritage and Memory Studies, the University of Amsterdam, with a position founded by the DAAD/Marie-Curie cofound program P.R.I.M.E (2015-2017) and a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture, University of Amsterdam, and Freie University of Berlin, iC-ACCESS /HERA "Uses of the Past" Project (2017-2019). Zuzanna has been a Fritz-Thyssen Stiftung fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin and House of the Wannsee Conference (2012), Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung Fellow at the University of Konstanz and Humboldt University of Berlin (2012-2014), Postdoctoral Fellow at the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem (2013), Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (2014-2015), and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study, Kulturwissenschaftliches Kolleg, University of Konstanz (2016-2017). Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza was born in Quito, Ecuador, and works and lives in Paris. She works with different languages and medias (installations, video, photography, actions). Her practice has been constantly motivated by interrogations related to her own displacements and relocations, between her country of origin and the one in which she is established. This situation has driven her to explore, in a wide spectrum, notions such as territories, migrations, frontiers, memory and history, visibility and invisibility (her website).

Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Nontawat Numbenchapol

This conversation with the film director Nontawat Numbenchapol on his movie Boundary (2013), which follows a young soldier called in Bangkok to break up the "red shirts" protest (2011) to his hometown in Sisatek, a zone of conflict between Thailand and Cambodia due to the ongoing political dispute between the two countries over the Preah Vihear Temple. Boundary was funded by Busan International Film Festival and Art Network Asia. Numbenchapol received the Young Filmmaker award from the Bangkok Critics Assembly and Boundary screened across many film festivals such as Berlin International Film Festival, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), and Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. Nontawat Numbenchapol's movie Boundary (2013) will be accessible online on 5 October for 48 hours. Participants Brian Curtin is an Irish-born art writer, lecturer and curator of contemporary arts. He holds a PhD in studio art from the University of Bristol and has been based in Bangkok since 2000. Brian's work explores dialogues between contemporary art, Queer theories and studies in visual and material cultures. His commentary, essays, interviews and reviews have been published in Art Journal, Artforum, Art Asia Pacific, Circa, Craft Research, Flash Art, Frieze, Journal of Curatorial Studies and Parachute and elsewhere. Published profiles of artists include Alice Maher, Paul Pfeiffer, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Collier Schorr, Jakkai Siributr, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His monograph Essential Desires: Contemporary Art in Thailand was published by Reaktion Books in 2021. Brian's research addresses challenges in thinking through hierarchies and antagonisms that limits critical approaches to modern and contemporary art; and published essays in this respect explore the art-historical marginalising of "decoration" and also problems of national identity as a frame for recent art. Brian has presented at conferences and symposia in Kuala Lumpur, Kyoto, London and Singapore. He has held writer's residencies in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur. Curated exhibitions include China, New York, Korea and Britain as well as regionally in Southeast Asia. He managed the experimental venue H Project Space in Bangkok from 2011 to 2018 which now functions under the mantle Brian Curtin Projects. Curatorial work has been funded by the Arts Council England and Australia Council for the Arts. Brian has been a nominator for the Prix Pictet award in photography, the Sovereign Art Prize, and collaborations with Saatchi Gallery London. He has lectured in art history, visual culture and studio courses at the Faculty of Architecture of Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, since 2006. In 2018 Brian led Uncommon Pursuits: A Temporary School for Emergent Curators in Southeast Asia at Sàn Art, a non-profit in Ho Chi Minh City (his website). May Adadol Ingawanij is a writer, curator, and teacher and Professor of Cinematic Arts at University of Westminster, where she co-directs the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media. She works on decentered histories and genealogies of cinematic arts; avant-garde legacies in Southeast Asia; forms of potentiality and future-making in contemporary artistic and curatorial practices; aesthetics and circulation of artists’ moving image, art, and independent films in, around, and beyond Southeast Asia. Ingawanij's recent publications include articles on the Karrabing Film Collective, Nguyen Trinh Thi and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook. Her curatorial projects include Animistic Apparatus and Lav Diaz: Journeys. She is writing a book entitled Animistic Medium: Contemporary Southeast Asian Artists Moving Image. Nontawat Numbenchapol (b. 1983, Bangkok) is a Thai film director and television screenwriter who is widely recognised for his documentary work. He graduated from the Visual Communication Design Department, Faculty of Art and Design, Rangsit University. Numbenchapol's second documentary By the River, about the Klity villagers affected by water lead contamination. It became the first Thai film to receive the Special Mention award from the Locarno International Film Festival.In 2016 Numbenchapol created an hybrid docu-fiction #BKKY, a story of a teenage girl, "Jojo", questioning life and identity. Jojo's character is a compilation of 100 teenagers interviewed in Bangkok about their loves and dreams and coming-of-age just after graduating high school. It premiered in October 2016 at the Busan International Film Festival before it received the Jury Award for best feature- length film from Lesbisch Schwule Filmtage Hamburg, Germany. His Mobile Lab Project experiments and researches on new ways of human visual and sound perception different from normal human perception. The project researches historical, social, and political information recorded over many generations until they became living belief systems. The project aims to change the perception of those beliefs via recording and expression onto visual and aural media. The purpose is to open the minds of people who receive communications from Mobile Lab, so that there is always the another side of established beliefs and new beliefs can rise up.

Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Shaq Koyok

This conversation with artist/activist Shaq Koyok will cover art and the issues faced today by Indigenous communities in Malaysia (including land rights, deforestation, poverty, racial discrimination and religious conversion). Participants Gaik Cheng Khoo obtained her BA (English) from The University of Texas (Austin), then she moved to Canada for her MA (English) and PhD (Interdisciplinary Studies) at the University of British Columbia. She spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI-NUS) in Singapore in 2004-05, where she built up invaluable networks in the region before becoming a lecturer at the Australian National University, where she taught gender, cultural studies and Southeast Asian cinema (2005-2012). She is currently the Director of the University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute, Malaysia. Gaik's work focuses on cinema and independent filmmaking in Malaysia; cosmopolitan spaces including public eating places like kopitiam and mamak stalls; race, religion and the politics of identity; multiculturalism and food. She is focusing on Korean migrants in Malaysia as exemplary of generational and attitudinal changes among South Koreans. As transnational migrants on the move for studies, work, play, or retirement, they register in complex, layered and sometimes contradictory ways, a kind of resistance to traditional stereotypes of South Korean middle class aspirations and status. Gaik is interested in how temporality, modernity and happiness figure in their migration and settlement. Her most recent research is on a political economy of the Malaysian durian, focusing on the supply chain. Shaq Koyok (b. 1985 Kampung Pulau Kempas in Banting, Selangor, Malaysia) is a contemporary artist from the Indigenous Temuan tribe of Selangor. He started painting with oil pastels at five years of age to express his feelings. He went on to pursue Fine Art at Universiti Teknologi MARA. In was the trauma of watching land developers encroaching onto the jungle around his village and plundering the forest in the 1990s and early 2000s that fueled his passion for art and activism. Shaq produces works that reflect his growing concern about the world, environmental degradation and the fate of the Orang Asli people (which translates as "Original People") in Malaysia. Specialising in portraits, his work has been shown in Britain, Australia and the United States, as well as Malaysia. In 2017, Shaq won the Merdeka Award for International Attachment. Simon Soon is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. He researches across of a range of interests in modern and contemporary art and architecture in Southeast Asia, further to completing a PhD at the University of Sydney, which examined left-leaning political art movements in the region from the 1950s to the 1970s. He was a participant in "Ambitious Alignments: New Southeast Asian Art Histories", funded by the Getty Foundation's Connecting Art Histories initiative and is currently a co-investigator for the project "Decolonial Art Histories of Southeast Asia" funded by a British Academy Newton Mobility Grant. Simon is co-editor of Narratives in Malaysian Art Vol. 4 and a member of the editorial collective of the journal Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia.

Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Khvay Samnang and Vuth Lyno

This conversation with artists Khvay Samnang and Vuth Lyno will explore different forms of corporeal occupation, resistance and transformation in Cambodia (including political violence, extractivism and international justice). Participants Pamela Nguyen Corey researches and teaches modern and contemporary art history, focusing on Southeast Asia within broader transnational Asian and global contexts. She received her BA (Studio Art) from the University of California, Irvine, and her PhD (History of Art and Visual Studies) from Cornell University. She will join Fulbright University Vietnam in January 2021 from SOAS University of London, where she has been teaching since receiving her PhD in 2015. She is the author of The City in Time: Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia (University of Washington Press, 2021), and her writing is featured in numerous academic journals, exhibition catalogues, and platforms for artistic and cultural commentary. She is a guest co-editor of "Voice as Form", a special issue of Oxford Art Journal (2020), which introduces material from her new research into the use of voice and sound in contemporary artworks from Southeast Asia and its diasporas. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Program and the Center for Khmer Studies, and most recently by the British Academy for a Newton Mobility Grant project entitled "Constructing Decolonial Art Histories of Southeast Asia" in collaboration with the University of Malaya. Khvay Samnang (b. 1982, Svay Rieng) graduated from the Painting Department at the Royal University of Fine Art in Phnom Penh, where he lives and works today. Khvay's multidisciplinary practice offers new views on historic and current events as well as on traditional cultural rituals using humorous symbolic gestures. In his work, which includes all media, he focuses on the humanitarian and ecological impacts of colonialism and globalization. The development of each body of work is based on thorough research and investigation of local specificities, structures and conditions. Khvay is a founding member of Stiev Selapak, an art collective dedicated to reappraising and remembering Cambodian history and exploring continuities in visual practices disrupted by civil war and the Khmer Rouge regime. In 2010-11, Stiev Selapak set up two nonprofit art spaces in Phnom Penh: Sa Sa Art Projects, for experimental residencies, knowledge-sharing and community-based programmes; and SA SA BASSAC - a gallery, resource centre and reading room. Khvay teaches Contemporary Art Class to emerging Cambodian artists under the programme of Sa Sa Art Projects. In 2016 he was nominated for the Future Generation Art Prize, Ukraine. In 2015 he was nominated for Prix Pictet Prize; AIGA AGO Photography Prize Long List, Canada; the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, Hong Kong; and Prudential Eye Awards Best Emerging Artist in Asia Using Photography, Singapore. In 2014-15 he was a grant holder of KfW Stiftung for the 12-month programme "Artists in Residence" in collaboration with Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. In 2017 he was invited by KfW Stiftung as an alumnus to participate in a think tank with the world-renowned dancer and choreographer Akram Khan. In 2019 he was artist in residence at Delfina Foundation, London. Khvay has exhibited at numerous art centres, biennales and galleries worldwide, including Haus der Kunst in Munich, Orange County Museum of Art in California, Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Jeu de Paume in Paris, CAPC in Bordeaux, Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan, DOCUMENTA 14, Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok, Biennale of Sydney, Kadist Foundation in San Francisco, Singapore Biennale, and ZKM | Center of Art and Media in Karlsruhe (his website). Annie Jael Kwan is an independent curator and researcher whose exhibition-making, programming, publication and teaching practice is located at the intersection of contemporary art, art history and cultural activism, with interest in archives, histories, feminist, queer and alternative knowledges, collective practices, and solidarity. As co-director of Something Human, a curatorial initiative, she has presented live art projects across the UK and Europe, and launched the the pioneering Southeast Asia Performance Collection (SAPC)with over 27000 digital items that represent 50 artists from the region at the Live Art Development Agency during the 2017 M.A.P. (Movement x Archive x Performance) project. In 2018, she curated the exhibition and public programme, UnAuthorised Medium, that explored artistic responses to the "archive" featuring thirteen artists working in relation to Southeast Asia at Framer Framed, Netherlands. In 2019, she co-curated the Archive-in-Residence "Southeast Asia Performance Collection" exhibition, along with the Pathways of Performativity in Contemporary Southeast Asian Art conference at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany. Kwan leads Asia-Art-Activism (AAA), an interdisciplinary, intergenerational research network that has been in residence at Raven Row since 2018. In 2019, she curated the live art programme, Being Present, at the Manchester Art Gallery, and its digital adaption for the Paul Mellon Centre’s British Art Studies Issue 13; in 2020, she led and co-curated the expansive digital programme, Till We Meet Again IRL, and in 2021, launched Tools to Transform (co-initiated with Joon Lynn Goh), a project focused on creating resources for Asian and diaspora organising that received the European Cultural Foundation’s Culture of Solidarity grant in 2020. For the 2021 London, Asia, Art, Worlds conference convened by the Paul Mellon Centre's Studies in British Art, she curated the online programme, QueerAsias, and was part of the curatorial committee for the Korean Cultural Centre UK's A Screening Room. She is the instigating council member of Asia Forum, along with Hammad Nasar, Dr Ming Tiampo and John Tain, that was launched on 14 May with a programme featuring Patrick Flores, Ho Tzu Nyen, Anna Tsing, Lantian Xie and Shilpa Gupta. Asia Forum is scheduled for a digital gathering in October 2021, and a one-day programme at the Venice Biennale on 23 April 2022 at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia. She was the co-editor of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia's guest issue: Archives. She is a recipient of a Diverse Actions Leadership Award 2019, and currently teaches Critical Studies at Central St Martins, University of the Arts, London, and co-teaches Writing and Curating at KASK, School of Art, in Ghent, Belgium. Vuth Lyno (b. 1982, Phnom Penh) is an artist, curator and educator interested in space, cultural history and knowledge production. His artworks often engage with micro and overlooked histories, notions of community, place-making, and production of social relations. He works across various media, including photography, video, sculpture, light, and sound. He often constructs architectural bodies as situations for interaction. He introduces human stories and knowledge within these installations by drawing on a wide range of materials such as original interviews, artifacts, and newly made objects. His artistic and curatorial practice is participatory in nature, engaging mutual and communal learning, experimentation, and aims to share multiple voices in the production of meaning. He believes in the potency of collectivity, storytelling, and the agency of cultural objects as potential pathways to reimage our sociality. Alongside his individual artistic practice, he is also a member of Stiev Selapak collective which founded and co-runs Sa Sa Art Projects, a long-term initiative committed to the development of contemporary visual arts landscape in Cambodia. Together with the collective, he teaches, initiates, and innovates art programs facilitating a growing and more critically conscious community. Vuth has presented his artworks in Cambodian and international venues, including at major exhibitions and festivals such as the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Biennale of Sydney, Singapore International Festival of Arts, and Gwangju Biennale. His artworks have appeared at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Metropolitan Museum of Manila; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta; Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou; Osage Gallery, Hong Kong; and Chiang Mai City Arts & Cultural Centre. He holds a Master of Art History from the State University of New York, Binghamton, New York, a Fulbright Fellowship (2013-2015), and a Master of International Development from RMIT University, Melbourne, supported by the Australian Endeavour Award (2008-2009) (his website).

Bodies of Occupation: Roundtable – Frankenstein in Baghdad

Roundtable on Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad Ahmed Saadawi’s novel Frankenstein in Baghdad (Oneworld Publications, 2018 [2013]), a take on Mary Shelley's famous book, serves as a metaphor for cyclical violence and the precariousness of daily life in Iraq under American occupation. It tells the story of the Whatsitsname, a creature made of the limbs of people who died in terror attacks in Baghdad. Prompted by the death of a friend, junk dealer Hadi collects and sows these body parts together to form a "complete" body that can be given a proper funeral. Unsurprisingly, his attempt goes awry. Possessed by the spirit of one of the dead, the Whatsitsname goes on a killing spree to avenge the innocents whose flesh it is composed of. When the revenge has been carried out, the body part drops off and must be replaced with fresh ones. As the line between victims and perpetrators becomes murkier, the Whatsitsname realises that its mission is just an endless and pointless task. Saadawi’s creature is more than the sum of its parts. It is a monstrous, more-than-human body whose ongoing reconfiguration reflects the ever-changing reality of occupation itself. As such, the Whatsitsname is not only an alternative epistemology or a stratigraphical instrument of exploration, but also the entry point into the becoming of occupation. Participants Jonathan Luke Austin is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Copenhagen. He is also Lead Researcher for the Violence Prevention (VIPRE) Initiative at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. Austin’s research agenda is currently orientated around four main axes: i. the ontology and microsociology of political violence; ii. the relationships between technology, design theory and world politics; iii. the political status of aesthetics, and; iv. the contemporary state of scientific critique. Alongside these foci, Austin possesses a decade of research and field experience in the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq) and regularly consults for NGOs and the media on current events. He has contributed to essays collections, reports, and journals such as Frame: Journal of Literary Studies, Security Dialogue, European Journal of International Relations, and International Political Sociology. He is currently working on two books, Small Worlds of Violence: A Global Grammar for Torture and Unmaking Global Violence (his website). Dom Davies is a Senior Lecturer in English at City, University of London, where he is also the Programme Director for the BA English. He holds a DPhil and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Oxford. He is the author of two books, Imperial Infrastructure and Spatial Resistance in Colonial Literature, 1880-1930 (2017) and Urban Comics: Infrastructure and the Global City in Contemporary Graphic Narratives (2019), along with many articles and book chapters broadly in the field of colonial and postcolonial writing, visual culture, and critical infrastructure studies. He is the co-editor of Planned Violence: Post/Colonial Urban Infrastructure, Literature & Culture (2018) and two other edited collections. He is currently writing a trade book about the cultural, regional, and post-imperial politics of the British government's "levelling-up agenda", which is due out with Lawrence & Wishart in 2022 Kobi Kabalek is Assistant Professor of Holocaust Studies and Visual Studies in Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures and Jewish Studies, Penn State University. He earned his PhD in history from the University of Virginia, with a dissertation on "The Rescue of Jews and the Memory of Nazism in Germany" (2013). In 2014-2017, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as part of the ERC project "Experience, Judgment, and Representation of WWII in an Age of Globalization", and examined conflicting perspectives concerning the war in Mandatory Palestine and their impact on the postwar historiography of Israel and Zionism. His research focuses on historical perceptions, moral sentiments and memory in film, literature, auto/biography, oral narratives, art, etc., in German, Israeli, and global Holocaust history. He currently explores marginalized and extreme phenomena in Holocaust testimonies, historical writing, and popular culture – with special attention to the role of fantasy, imagination, and horror – and their impact on our understanding and representation of the Holocaust. Rúben Leitão Serém is an Assistant Professor in History at the University of Nottingham since 2019. He specialises on the social history of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, General Franco's dictatorship (1939-1975), and its traumatic legacy in present-day Spain. A fan of microhistory and memory studies, Rúben has studied the origins, course, and reverberations of this brutal conflict in southern Spain, subsuming it into the wider historiography of nationalism in twentieth-century Iberia. More recently, Rúben has focused his research on the so-called "memory wars" in twenty-first-century Spain, in particular, on their social and cultural ramifications, and their use to feed several – and antipodal – nationalistic waves within the country (Spanish and Catalan nationalism). With around 100,000 victims of the civil war still lying in mass graves all over the country, from roadside ditches to mines and wells, Spain is presently only second to Cambodia in the total number of disappeared citizens. Deep and bitter divisions persist on how to deal with these bodies, for their presence and visibility has the power to erode the political consensus established during Spain’s transition to democracy during the 1970s. At a social level, the undignified status of the dead has only served to augment the trauma experienced by survivors and their descendants. In this respect, Franco’s project to instil fear and divide the nation lives on long after the death of its architect, finding nourishment on its executed victims. Rúben is the author of Conspiracy, Coup d’état and Civil war in Seville, 1936-1939: History and Myth in Francoist Spain (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2017). More recently, he has published "Muerte y miseria en la «Ciudad de Dios»: El virreinato de Queipo de Llano en Sevilla" in Del Arco Blanco, Miguel Ángel (ed), Los «años del hambre»: Historia y memoria de la posguerra franquista (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2020). Rúben is currently working on the involvement of the ultranationalist Portuguese Estado Novo dictatorship in the Spanish Civil War. Annie Webster studied English and Related Literature at the University of York and Arabic at the University of Edinburgh before completing her Wolfson-funded PhD on post-2003 Iraqi fiction at SOAS in 2020 with a thesis titled Stories of Creative Destruction in post-2003 Iraqi Fiction. She has since been teaching modern Arabic literature at King's College London and the University of Cambridge. She has published a number of articles on contemporary Iraqi literature, including "Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad: A Tale of Biomedical Salvation?" in Literature and Medicine (2018), "Indexing War: The Craft of the Catalogue in Sinan Antoon's The Book of Collateral Damage" in Wasafiri (2021), and a chapter on literary depictions of occupied Baghdad forthcoming in The Routledge Companion of Literary Urban Studies. She has also contributed pieces to the TORCH blog, the MULOSIGE blog, and Arablit.org. More recently, she has developed an interest in contemporary Iraqi art which she has written about for ArtsCabinet.org, and is working with the artist Hanaa Malallah on the forthcoming exhibition "Co-Existent Ruins" (SOAS, 2022). She is currently preparing a monograph from her thesis which explores how contemporary Iraqi literature commemorates the human and environmental fallout of the 2003 Iraq War. Investigating how these texts have been incorporated into the international literary marketplace and framed by neoliberal paradigms of empathy, she draws attention to the various modes of linguistic, cultural and material translation that these texts undergo. She also highlights intertextual links with classical Arabic literature that have thus far been overlooked. More broadly her research explores political and literary ecologies of war.

The Malayan Emergency: Bibliography

This bibliography provides details about publications in English relating to all aspects of the Malayan Emergency, as well as details about important archival and library collections. Historiographical Overviews Hack, Karl. “‘Iron Claws on Malaya’: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 30, no. 1 (March 1999): 99-125. Keo, Bernard Z. “A Small, Distant War? Historiographical Reflections on the Malayan Emergency”, History Compass 17, no. 3 (March 2019). Books Arditti, Roger C. Counterinsurgency Intelligence and the Emergency in Malaya. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Barber, Noel. The War of the Runnings Dogs: How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas 1948-1960. London: Cassell, 1971. Bartlett, Vernon. Report from Malaya. London: D. Verschoyle, 1955. Bayly, Christopher, and Tim Harper. Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain’s Asian Empire. London: Allen Lane, 2007. Belogurova, Anna. The Nanyang Revolution: The Comintern and Chinese Networks in Southeast Asia, 1890-1957. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Carruthers, Susan L. Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the Media, and Colonial Counter-Insurgency, 1944-1960. London: Leicester University Press, 1995. Cheah Boon Kheng. Masked Comrades: A Study of the Communist United Front in Malaya, 1945-1948. Singapore: Times, 1979. Cheah Boon Kheng. Malaysia: The Making of a Nation. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002. Chin, C.C., and Karl Hack, eds. Dialogues with Chin Peng: New Light on the Malayan Communist Party. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004. Chin Peng. My Side of History. Singapore: Media Masters, 2003. Cloake, John. Templer: Tiger of Malaya. London: Harrap, 1985. Clutterbuck, Richard L. The Long Long War: The Emergency in Malaya 1948-1960 (London: Cassell, 1967. Clutterbuck, Richard L. Riot and Revolution in Singapore and Malaya, 1945-1963. London: Faber, 1973. Coates, John. Suppressing Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993. Comber, Leon. Malaya’s Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008. Comber, Leon. Templer and the Road to Malayan Independence: The Man and His Time. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2015. Cormac, Rory. Confronting the Colonies: British Intelligence and Counterinsurgency. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Corry, W.C.S. A General Survey of New Villages: Report to His Excellency Sir Donald MacGillivray, High Commissioner of the Federation of Malaya. Kuala Lumpur: Government Printing Press, 1954. Fakeh, Shamsiah. The Memoirs of Fakeh, Shamsiah: From AWAS to 10th Regiment. Kuala Lumpur: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, 2009. Francis Kok Wah Loh. Beyond the Tin Mines: Coolies, Squatters, and New Villagers in the Kinta Valley, Malaysia 1880–1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Giukon, Asoka. A People’s History of Malaya: The New Emergency. Oldham: Bersatu, 1980. Hack, Karl. Defence and Decolonisation in Southeast Asia: Britain, Malaya and Singapore 1941-68. Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001. Hack, Karl. The Malayan Emergency: Revolution and Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Hale, Christopher. Massacre in Malaya: Exposing Britain’s My Lai. Stroud: The History Press, 2013. Hanrahan, Gene Z. The Communist Struggle in Malaya. New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1954. Hara, Fujio. Malayan Chinese and China: Conversion in Identity Consciousness, 1945-1957. Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 1997. Harper, T. N. The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Heng Pek Koon. Chinese Politics in Malaysia: A History of the Malaysian Chinese Association. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1988. Jackson, Robert. The Malayan Emergency: The Commonwealth’s Wars 1948-1966. London: Routledge, 1991. Lee Ting Hui, The Open United Front: The Communist Struggle in Singapore, 1954-1966. Singapore: South Seas Society, 1996. Leow, Rachel. Taming Babel: Language in the Making of Malaysia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Lowe, Peter. Contending with Nationalism and Communism: British Policy Towards Southeast Asia, 1945-65. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Markandan, Paul. The Problem of New Villages in Malaya. Singapore: D. Moore, 1954. Miller, Harry. The Communist Menace in Malaya. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1954. Miller, Harry. Jungle War in Malaya: The Campaign Against Communism 1948-60. London: Arthur Barker, 1972. Nagl, John A. Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. Nonini, Donald M. “Getting By”: Class and State Formation among Chinese in Malaysia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. Nyce, Ray. New Villages in Malaya: A Community Study. Singapore: Malaysian Sociological Research Institute Ltd., 1973. Parkinson, C. Northcote. Templer in Malaya. Singapore: Donald Moore, 1954. Purcell, Victor. Malaya: Communist or Free. London: Gollancz, 1954. Pye, Lucian W. Guerrilla Communism in Malaya: Its Social and Political Meaning. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956. Raj, Dato’ J.J. The War Years and After: A Personal Account of Historical Relevance. Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publications, 1995. Ramakrishna, Kumar. Emergency Propaganda: The Winning of Malayan Hearts and Minds 1948–1958. Richmond: Curzon Press, 2002. Rayner, Leonard. Emergency Years (Malaya 1951-1954). Singapore: Heinemann Asia, 1991. Robinson, J.B. Perry. Transformation in Malaya. London: Secker and Warburg, 1956. Short, Anthony. The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948-1960. London: Frederick Muller, 1975. Singapore Art Museum. From Words to Pictures: Art During the Emergency. Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 2007. Stockwell, A.J. British Documents on End of Empire: Malaya, 1942-1957. Three Volumes, London, 1995. Strauch, Judith. Chinese Village Politics in the Malaysian State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Stubbs, Richard. Counter-Insurgency and the Economic Factor: The Impact of the Korean War Prices Boom on the Malayan Emergency. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1974. Stubbs, Richard. Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: The Malayan Emergency 1948-1960. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989. Sunderland, Riley. Army Operations in Malaya, 1947-1960. Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, 1964. Sutton, Alex. The Political Economy of Imperial Relations: Britain, the Sterling Area, and Malaya 1945-1960. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied. Radicals: Resistance and Protest in Colonial Malaya. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2015. Thompson, Sir Robert. Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam. New York: Praeger, 1966. Wang Gungwu. Community and Nation: Essays on Southeast Asia and the Chinese. Singapore: Heinemann, 1981. White, Nicholas J. Business, Government and the End of Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Yao, Souchou. The Malayan Emergency: Essays on a Small, Distant War. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2016. Articles Ang, Timothy. “Lessons from the British: Counterinsurgency Strategies Applied in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus”. Pointer: Journal of the Singapore Armed Forces 39, no. 2 (2013): 49-57. Arditti, Roger and Philip H.J. Davies. “Rethinking the Rise and Fall of the Malayan Security Service, 1946-48”. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 43, no. 2 (2015): 292-316. Bennett, Huw. “‘A Very Salutary Effect’: The Counter-Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949”. Journal of Strategic Studies 32, no. 3 (2009): 415-444. Carruthers, Susan. “Two Faces of 1950s Terrorism: The Film Presentation of Mau Mau and the Malayan Emergency”. Small Wars & Insurgencies 6, no. 1 (1995): 17-43. Chiu Man Yin. “Violence and Comedy: The Malayan Emergency in the Malaysian Novels of Lloyd Fernando and Anthony Burgess”. Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies 2, no. 1-2 (Spring/Fall 2013): 87-91. Comber, Leon. “‘The Weather… Has Been Horrible’: Malayan Communist Communications during ‘the Emergency’ (1948-60)”. Asian Studies Review 19, no. 2 (1995): 37-57. Deery, Phillip. “The Terminology of Terrorism: Malaya, 1948-52”. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34, no. 2 (June 2003): 231-247. Deery, Phillip. “Malaya, 1948: Britain’s Asian Cold War?” Journal of Cold War Studies 9, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 29-54. Dixon, Paul. “‘Hearts and Minds’? British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq”. Journal of Strategic Studies 32, no. 3 (2009): 353-381. Fernando, Joseph M. “British Colonial Policy and the Development of Political Parties in Malaya, 1945-1957: Taming the Shrew?” Sejarah 16, no. 16 (2008): 105-121. Gregorian, Raffi. “‘Jungle Bashing’ in Malaya: Towards a Formal Tactical Doctrine”. Small Wars & Insurgencies 5, no. 3 (Winter 1994): 338-359. Hack, Karl. “British Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency in the Era of Decolonisation: The Example of Malaya”. Intelligence and National Security 14, no. 2 (1999): 124-155. Hack, Karl, “The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm”. Journal of Strategic Studies 32, no. 3 (2009): 383-414. Hack, Karl. “Negotiating with the Malayan Communist Party, 1948-89”. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 39, no. 4 (2011): 607-632. Hack, Karl. “‘Everyone Lived in Fear’: Malaya and the ‘British Way in Counter-Insurgency’”. Small Wars & Insurgencies 23, no. 4-5 (2012): 671-699. Hack, Karl. “Detention, Deportation and Resettlement: British Counterinsurgency and Malaya’s Rural Chinese, 1948-60”. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 43, no. 4 (2015): 611-640. Hack, Karl. “‘Devils That Suck the Blood Out of the Malayan People’: The Case for Post-Revisionist Analysis of Counter-Insurgency Violence”. War in History 25, no. 2 (2018): 611-640. Harper, T.N. “The Politics of the Forest in Colonial Malaya”. Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 1 (February 1997): 1-29. Hee, Wai Siam. “Anti-Communist Moving Images and Cold War Ideology: On the Malayan Film Unit”. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 18, no. 4 (2017): 593-609. Ho, Kee Chye. “Returning to Malaya: The Strategy and Significance of the Communist Party of Malaya’s Southward Advance”. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 16, no. 1 (2015): 56-66. Johnstone, Michael. “The Evolution of Squatter Settlements in Peninsular Malaysian Cities”. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12, no. 2 (September 1981): 364-380. Katagiri, Nori. “Winning Hearts and Minds to Lose Control: Exploring Various Consequences of Popular Support in Counterinsurgency Missions”. Small Wars & Insurgencies 22, no. 1 (2011): 170-195. Ladwig, Walter C. “Managing Counterinsurgency: Lessons from Malaya”. Military Review 87, no. 3 (2007): 56-67. Lee Boon Thong. “Petaling Jaya: The Early Development and Growth of Malaysia’s First New Town”. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 79, no. 2 (2006): 1-22. Lee Kam Hing. “A Neglected Story: Christian Missionaries, Chinese New Villagers, and Communists in the Battle for the ‘Hearts and Minds’ in Malaya, 1948-1960”. Modern Asian Studies 47, no. 6 (2013): 1977-2006. Low Choo Chin, “The Repatriation of the Chinese as a Counter-Insurgency Policy during the Malayan Emergency”. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 45, no. 3 (October 2014): 363-392. Low Choo Chin, “Immigration Control during the Malayan Emergency: Borders, Belonging and Citizenship, 1948-1960”. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 89, no. 1 (June 2016): 35-59. Kratoska, Paul H. “The Peripatetic Peasant and Land Tenure in British Malaya”. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 16, no. 1 (March 1985): 16–45. McGregor, Katharine. “Cold War Scripts: Comparing Remembrance of the Malayan Emergency and the 1965 Violence in Indonesia”. South East Asia Research 24, no. 2 (2016): 242-260. Musa, Mahani. “Women in the Malayan Communist Party, 1942-89”. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 44, no. 2 (June 2013): 226-249. Nonini, Donald M. “‘At That Time We Were Intimidated On All Sides’: Residues of the Malayan Emergency as a Conjunctural Episode of Dispossession”. Critical Asian Studies 47, no. 3 (2015): 337-358. Opper, Marc. “Gene Z. Hanrahan: Elusive Historian of the Malayan Emergency”. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 90, no. 2 (December 2017): 71-95. Paget, Steven. “‘A Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut’? Naval Gunfire Support During the Malayan Emergency”. Small Wars & Insurgencies 28, no. 2 (2017): 361-384. Ramakrishna, Kumar. “‘Transmogrifying’ Malaya: The Impact of Sir Gerald Templer (1952-1954)”. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32, no. 1 (February 2001): 79-92. Ramakrishna, Kumar. “‘Telling the Simple People the Truth’: The Role of Strategic Propaganda in the Malayan Emergency”. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 75, no. 1 (2002): 49-68. Ramakrishna, Kumar. “‘The Southeast Asian Approach’ to Counter-Terrorism: Learning from Indonesia and Malaya”. Journal of Conflict Studies 25, no. 1 (2005): 27-47. Sandhu, Kernial Singh. “The Saga of the ‘Squatter’ in Malaya: A Preliminary Survey of the Causes, Characteristics and Consequences of the Resettlement of Rural Dwellers during the Emergency between 1948 and 1960”. Journal of Southeast Asian History 5, no. 1 (March 1964): 143-177. Scheipers, Sibylle. “The Use of Camps in Colonial Warfare”. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 43, no. 4 (2015): 678–698. Sendut, Hamzah, “The Resettlement Villages in Malaya”. Geography 47, no. 1 (January 1962): 41-46. Sioh, Maureen. “Authorizing the Malaysian Rainforest: Configuring Space, Contesting Claims and Conquering Imaginaries”. Ecumene 5, no. 2 (April 1998): 144-166. Sioh, Maureen. “An Ecology of Postcoloniality: Disciplining Nature and Society in Malaya, 1948–1957”. Journal of Historical Geography 30, no. 4 (October 2004) 729-746. Sinclair, Georgina. “‘The Sharp End of the Intelligence Machine’: The Rise of the Malayan Special Police Branch 1948-1955”. Intelligence and National Security 26, no. 4 (2011): 460-477. Smith, Simon. “General Templer and Counter-Insurgency in Malaya: Hearts and Minds, Intelligence, and Propaganda”. Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 3 (2001): 60-78. Stockwell, A.J. “British Imperial Policy and Decolonization in Malaya, 1942-52”. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 13, no. 1 (1984): 68-87. Stockwell, A.J. “Insurgency and Decolonisation During the Malayan Emergency”. Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 25, no. 1 (1987): 71-81. Stockwell, A.J. “ ‘A Widespread and Long-Concocted Plot to Overthrow Government in Malaya’? The Origins of the Malayan Emergency”. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 21, no. 3 (1993): 66-88. Stockwell, A.J. “Malaysia: The Making of a Neo-Colony?” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 26, no. 2 (1998): 138–156. Strauch, Judith. “Chinese New Villages of the Malayan Emergency, A Generation Later: A Case Study”. Contemporary Southeast Asia 3, no. 2 (September 1981): 126-139. Stubbs, Richard. “The United Malays National Organization, the Malayan Chinese Association, and the Early Years of the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1955”. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 10, no. 1 (1979): 77-88. Tan Teng Phee, “‘Like a Concentration Camp, Iah’: Chinese Grassroots Experience of the Emergency and New Villages in British Colonial Malaya.” Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies 3 (2009): 216-228. Tan Teng Phee. “Oral History and People’s Memory of the Malayan Emergency (1948-60): The Case of Pulai”. Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 27, no. 1 (April 2012): 84-119. Taylor, Jeremy E. “‘Not a Particularly Happy Expression’: ‘Malayanization’ and the China Threat in Britain’s Late-Colonial Southeast Asian Territories”. Journal of Asian Studies 78, no. 4 (November 2019): 789–808. Tilman, Robert O. “The Non-Lessons of the Malayan Emergency”. Asian Survey 6, no 8 (1966): 407-419. Ucko, David H. “Countering Insurgents Through Distributed Operations: Insights from Malaya 1948-1960”. Journal of Strategic Studies 30, no. 1 (February 2007): 47-72. Ucko, David H. “The Malayan Emergency: The Legacy and Relevance of a Counter-Insurgency Success Story”. Defence Studies 10, no. 1-2 (2010): 13-39. Ucko, David H. “Counterinsurgency as Armed Reform: The Political History of the Malayan Emergency”. Journal of Strategic Studies 42, no. 3-4 (2019): 448-479. Voon Phin Keong and Khoo Soo Hock. “The New Villages in Peninsular Malaysia: A Socio-Economic Perspective”. Malaysian Journal of Tropical Geography 14 (December 1986): 36-55. Weiss, Meredith L. “Legacies of the Cold War in Malaysia: Anything but Communism”. Journal of Contemporary Asia 50, no. 4 (2020): 511-529. White, Nicholas J. “Government and business divided: Malaya 1945–57”. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22, no. 2 (1994): 251–274. White, Nicholas J. “Capitalism and Counter-Insurgency? Business and Government in the Malayan Emergency, 1948-57”. Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 1 (February 1998): 149-177. Zhou Hau Liew. “Ecological narratives of forced resettlement in Cold War Malaya”. Critical Asian Studies 52, no. 2 (2020): 286–303. Book Chapters Barrett, Colby E. “War-Stopping and Peacemaking During the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960)”. In Stopping Wars and Making Peace: Studies in International Intervention, eds. Kristen Eichensehr and W. Michael Reisman, 121-146. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Belogurova, Anna. “The Malayan Communist Party and the Malayan Chinese Association: Internationalism and Nationalism in Chinese Overseas Political Participation, c. 1920-1960”. In Decolonization and the Cold War: Negotiating Independence, eds. Leslie James and Elisabeth Leake, 125-144. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Bloom, Peter J. “The Language of Counterinsurgency in Malaya: Dialectical Soundscapes of Salvage and Warfare”. In Colonial Documentary Film in South and South-East Asia, eds. Ian Aitken and Camille Deprez, 63-79. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Caldwell, Malcolm. “From ‘Emergency’ to ‘Independence’, 1948–57”. In Malaya: The Making of a Neo–Colony, eds. Mohamed Amin and Malcolm Caldwell, 216-265. Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1977. Erwin, Lee. “Britain’s Small Wars: Domesticating ‘Emergency’”. In The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century British and American War Literature, eds. Adam Piette and Mark Rawlinson, 81-89. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Hack, Karl. “‘Screwing Down the People’: The Malayan Emergency, Decolonisation and Ethnicity”. In Imperial Policy and SE Asian Nationalism: 1930-1957, eds. Hans Antlov and Stein Tonnesson, 83-109. London: Curzon Press, 1995. Hack, Karl. “‘Between Two Terrors: People’s History and the Malayan Emergency”. In A People’s History of Insurgency, ed. Hannah Gurman. New York: Free Press, 2013. Hor, Michael. “Law and Terror: Singapore Stories and Malaysian Dilemmas”. In Global Anti-Terrorism Law and Policy, eds. Victor V. Ramraj, Michael Hor, and Kent Roach, 273-294. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Khoo, Gaik Cheng. “Filling in the Gaps of History: Independent Documentaries Re-Present the Malayan Left”. In Cultures at War: The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia, eds. Tony Day and Maya H.T. Liem, 247-264. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2010. Leong Kar Yen, “Memory, Trauma, and Nation: Contestation over the Batang Kali Massacre in Malaysia”. In Oral History in Southeast Asia: Memories and Fragments, eds. Kah Seng Loh, Stephen Dobbs, and Ernest Koh, 119-136. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Maguire, Thomas J. “Interrogation and ‘Psychological Intelligence’: The Construction of Propaganda during the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1958”. In Interrogation in War and Conflict: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Analysis, eds. Christopher Andrew and Simona Tobia. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. Marston, Daniel. “Lost and Found in the Jungle: The Indian and British Army Jungle Warfare Doctrines for Burma, 1943-5, and the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960”. In Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and Lessons of War in the Twentieth Century, ed. Hew Strachan. London: Routledge, 2006. Muthalib, Hassan. “The End of Empire: The Films of the Malayan Film Unit in 1950s British Malaya”. In Film and the End of Empire, eds. Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe, 177-196. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Ng, Jason Sze Chieh. “Nostalgia and Memory: Remembering the Malayan Communist Revolution in the Online Age”. In The Asia-Pacific in the Age of Transnational Mobility: The Search for Community and Identity on and through Social Media, ed. Catherine Gomes, 169-196. London: Anthem Press, 2016. Ramraj, Victor V. “The Emergency Powers Paradox”. In Emergency Powers in Asia: Exploring the Limits of Legality, eds. Victor V. Ramraj and Arun K. Thiruvengadam, 21-55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Stockwell, A.J. “Policing During the Malayan Emergency”. In Policing and Decolonisation, eds. David Anderson and David Killingray, 105-126. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992. Zakaria Haji Ahmad and K.S. Sandhu. “The Malayan Emergency: Event Writ Large”. In Melaka: The Transformation of a Malay Capital, c. 1400-1980, eds. Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1983. Works of Fiction Boyd Anderson, The Heart Radical (2014) Anthony Burgess, Time for a Tiger (1956) Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958) Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (1959) Chin Kee Onn, The Grand Illusion (1961) Lloyd Fernando, Scorpion Child (1976) Han Suyin, And the Rain My Drink (1956) Archives Malaysia: 1. Arkib Negara Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur Arkib Negara Malaysia is the most comprehensive repository for archival material related to the Malayan Emergency. The archive includes federal records from the British colonial government in Malaya, local and state records, newspapers and other periodicals, as well as a selection of private papers. The archive houses materials in a variety of languages, including English, Malay, and Chinese. A selection of materials that are keyword searchable are now available digitally via the Arkib Negara Malaysia website. United Kingdom: 1. British Film Institute, London The British Film Institute (BFI) holds a variety of original films and newsreels related to the Malayan Emergency, particularly those produced by the Malayan Film Unit. These items are held on site in London, although many are also available online. 2. British Library, London The British Library is home to the largest collection of English-language secondary materials related to the Malayan Emergency. The British Library also holds the papers of the British Association of Malaysia and Singapore, along with a variety of newspapers, trade journals, directories, and magazines focused on Malaya during the Emergency period. 3. Cambridge University Library, Cambridge Cambridge University holds the Royal Commonwealth Society Library collection, which includes the British Association of Malaya papers as well as the personal papers of a number of colonial officials who served in Malaya, such as Sir George Maxwell. 4. Durham University Library, Special Collections, Durham Durham University Library holds the papers of Malcolm MacDonald, who served as the Commissioner-General for the UK in Southeast Asia between 1948 and 1955. 5. Imperial War Museum, London This museum holds a variety of archival materials related to the Malayan Emergency, including the personal papers of a number of British officers who served in Malaya, periodicals, as well as a large collection of material culture and ephemera from the conflict. In addition, the IWM holds one of the largest collections of photography from the Emergency, some of which is available digitally online. 6. King’s College London, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, London The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives holds the personal papers and photographs of a number of former British officials and police officers who served in Malaya during the Emergency. The most comprehensive of these papers are those of Major General Dennis Edmund Blaquière Talbot, which contains maps, training materials, and correspondence related to the Emergency. 7. London Metropolitan Archives, London This archive holds the papers of a number of mining and rubber companies that operated in Malaya during the Emergency period, as well as the archives of trade groups such as the British Association of Straits Merchants. 8. The National Archives, London Along with Arkib Negara Malaysia, the National Archives of the United Kingdom is home to the largest and most significant collection of archival materials related to the Malayan Emergency. Records relating to the Emergency can be located in the papers of the Colonial Office, the War Office, the Foreign Office, the Cabinet, and the recently released Foreign and Commonwealth Office records, among others. The archives also hold a variety of maps from the Emergency period, as well as government gazettes at the state and federal level. 9. National Army Museum, Templer Study Centre and Archive, London The National Army Museum, which houses a reading room named after Sir Gerald Templer, contains the records of a number of former British officials and civil servants who served during the Malayan Emergency. The most significant of these papers are those of Sir Rob Lockhart, who served as Director of Operations during the Malayan Emergency between 1951 and 1952. 10. Oxford University, Rhodes House, Oxford Oxford University holds the personal papers of a number of important civil servants and British officials who served in Malaya during the Emergency. This includes Sir William Goode, Sir Ralph Hone, and Arthur Young, among others. 11. School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Library, Special Collections, London In addition to the fact that the SOAS library houses a great number of secondary materials related to Malaya and the Emergency, the special collections department also holds British Military Administration (Malaya) press summaries as well as company records from a number of rubber and mining firms that operated in Malaya during the Emergency period. Singapore: 1. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore The ISEAS holds a number of important archival collections related to the Malayan Emergency, most significantly the papers of the businessman and first President of the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), Tan Cheng Lock. 2. Singapore National Archives, Singapore The Singapore National Archives holds a variety of archival materials related to the Malayan Emergency, including papers from the British Military Administration (BMA), the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, and the British Public Relations Office. In addition, the Singapore National Archives holds cartographic materials from the Emergency period, as well as a significant collection of oral histories about the conflict, much of which is available digitally online. Australia: 1. Australian War Memorial, Canberra The Australian War Memorial contains a number of archival records related to the Emergency. This includes oral histories from Australian officers who served in Malaya and a large collection of photographs from the Emergency period. Some of this material available digitally online. 2. National Archives of Australia, Canberra The National Archives of Australia holds a variety of records related to the Emergency, particularly those concerning Australian and other commonwealth officers who served in the conflict. United States of America: 1. Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University The Hoover Institution holds a number of archival records related to the Emergency, including personal papers of British officers who served in the region along with cultural materials related to the Malaysian Chinese Association and Malayan Communist Party. 2. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries The UWM holds the American Geographical Society Library (AGSL), which contains a large collection of photographs from the Malayan Emergency. The most important such collection is from the photographer Harrison Forman, which is available online.

The Malayan Emergency: Digital Map

Introduction Spaces of the Malayan Emergency is a digital map created as part of the ERC-funded COTCA Project. It is an interactive map of British Malaya in the 1950s, and is the first such map to ever be compiled using data related to the spatial dynamics of the Emergency and its related resettlement policies. The map is designed to highlight the variety of spatial and cartographic features that were hallmarks of the Emergency period in Malaya, including White and Black Areas, New Villages, Regrouping Areas and Detention Camps. Each layer of the map includes clickable data points that contain information about each spatial feature, including population figures, village class types and the source materials that list each location. In its totality, the map provides an approximation of how Malaya’s spatial environment was transformed under British colonial rule during the Malayan Emergency, and the ways in which the geography of Malaya was reshaped by British policies during this period. The data for this map was gathered from archives in Malaysia, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, as well as from a wide range of published secondary historical materials. We have made the geodata and map layers for this project publicly available. Users can access the data files by clicking on the red “View Map” button below. View map The map was generated using Mapbox. Dr David Baillargeon is the lead organiser, researcher and “map maker” for this phase of the COTCA Project; his work with the data provided in this map will appear in an article entitled “Spaces of Occupation: Colonial Enclosure and Confinement in British Malaya”, forthcoming in the Journal of Historical Geography. Spatial Categories The spaces that are covered in this digital map include the following: 1. Black Areas / White Areas Black Areas and White Areas were created in September 1953 under the direction of Sir Gerald Templer. Black Areas, which on the digital map are symbolised using a single polygon feature, were areas in Malaya that represented high-risk environments for anti-colonial “terrorist” activity. These spatial zones were subject to a variety of repressive government policies, including but not limited to curfews, food restrictions and travel bans. White Areas, however, existed in opposition to Black Areas. While the denotation of a “White” area meant the relaxing of some repressive restrictions enacted under the Emergency orders – mainly curfews and food controls – it was also meant to symbolise to the public the benefits of resisting communism and working closely with the colonial authorities. With time, however, the government expanded the programme, pronouncing large areas across Malaya “White” in an effort to instill hope for Malaya’s population. Such declarations were accompanied by the publication of a map in local periodicals and government gazettes that included the precise contours of the area in question, as well as literature about the new “White” area regulations, written in both Chinese and Malay. While information about White and Black Areas can be found in a variety of locations, the specific details of the Black Areas polygon in the digital map is copied from data found at The National Archives (London), Colonial Office files, CO 1030/1, Emergency Regulations: Declaration of “White Areas”. 2. New Villages The British colonial government in Malaya created New Villages to relocate the colony’s large rural ethnic Chinese population into more concentrated and governable spaces. The government took these actions beginning in 1950 under the Briggs Plan in an effort to cut off supplies – mainly food, money and military provisions – to the MCP and MNLA, who were largely based in the jungle. These New Villages, which were initially labelled as “resettlement areas”, were then sectioned off using barbed wire and perimeter fencing, and all movement in and out of the villages was strictly controlled. British planners incorporated a number of common buildings and communal sites across New Village spaces, including schools, community centres and garden plots. Although statistics on these resettlement efforts vary, the British forcibly relocated approximately 500,000 people into around 450 New Villages across British Malaya. The vast majority of those resettled in New Villages were ethnic Chinese “squatters” who, until the Malayan Emergency, had been living throughout the Malay interior. Although statistics related to resettlement sites exists in a variety of published and archival sources, the most comprehensive list of New Villages is found in W. C. S. Corry’s 1954 study, A General Survey of New Villages. This list provided the data source for the New Villages detailed in this digital map. It should be noted that while most layers within the digital map have limited statistical information, New Villages are an exception. This is because the data for New Villages is far more robust than for other spatial categories within the map. Because of this, rather than simply providing the name and source information for each site, the clickable data box for each New Village contains information about the place name, approximate population, type of local government, and “category” of construction. While most of this data is self-explanatory, it should be noted that the “category” designation for each New Village represents the following: (A) refers to New Villages that were entirely new in their creation; (B) refers to New Villages built around smaller old villages that were then absorbed into the New Village; and (C) refers to New Villages that were suburbs or appendages to already existing towns or large villages. The definitions for these categories was found in Arkib Negara Malaysia, ANM, 1979/0006541, Statistical Information Concerning New Villages. 3. Regrouped Malay Kampongs One spatial designation rarely discussed within the historiographical literature on the Malayan Emergency is the Regrouped Malay Kampong. According to Paul Markandan, whose 1954 book, The Problem of New Villages in Malaya, represents one of the few secondary sources on this topic, the regrouping of Malay kampongs (or villages) began across the colony after 1952 in an effort to resettle Malay rural dwellers closer to main roads and police protection. There were many differences between these regrouping spaces and New Villages. First, Regrouped Malay Kampongs primarily consisted of Malay people, rather than those in the Chinese community. Second, the regrouping of Malay people occurred voluntarily instead of forcibly, and many Malay people who resettled were compensated for doing so. Third, and perhaps most importantly, these spaces were not subject to spatial control in the same ways in which New Villages were. In fact, instead of barbed wire fencing, perimeter lighting and the construction of recreation and educational centres, Regrouped Malay Kampongs contained few if any of these attributes, and local Malay villagers often had to finance the building of their own dwellings and communal institutions. Security for these villages was provided by the colonial Home Guard. Although statistics about Regrouped Malay Kampongs are limited and colonial administrators did not record their numbers in every state, the data for regrouping areas included in the digital map were found in the Arkib Negara Malaysia, ANM, 1979/0006541, Statistical Information Concerning New Villages. Data is provided for the states of Johore, Kelantan, and Pahang. 4. Labour Regroupments Another spatial category novel to the Malayan Emergency that receives little attention in the scholarly literature is the Labour Regroupment. Labour regrouping occurred at large rubber plantations and mining sites, most of which were owned by Western companies. The British colonial government considered labour regrouping necessary because, at the onset of the Emergency, many workers at these extractive and agricultural sites – whether Chinese, Malay or South Asian – lived in rural areas outside the boundaries of the company lease. Labour regrouping meant that companies were required to resettle their workers within the grounds of their estate to prevent them from being attacked by communist insurgents or, conversely, to prevent them from aiding the MCP and MNLA. Labour regrouping, however, was controversial, especially within the commercial community. Because regrouping forced firms to construct new living quarters and other amenities for their workers, many companies appealed to the colonial government to help finance such measures, which the British administration was reluctant to do. Nevertheless, labour regrouping occurred on a large scale throughout the colony. Unfortunately, the only statistics that we’ve discovered for such measures exist for the state of Pahang. This data, which is made available in the digital map, was found in the Arkib Negara Malaysia, ANM, 1979/0006541, Statistical Information Concerning New Villages. 5. Detention Camps The final spatial designation rendered in the digital map is Detention Camps. Although few in number and most often located in Malaya’s urban centres, Detention Camps operated as sites of incarceration, rehabilitation or “repatriation” throughout the colony. This category, it should be noted, is varied in its orientation. Although five of the spaces defined as “Detention Camps” were noted to exist in 1951 – one in Tanjong Bruas (Malacca), one in Majeedi (Johore), one in Pulau Jerejak (Penang), one in Ipoh (Perak) and one in Kluang (Johore) – there are two other sites listed in this category that are not strictly Detention Camps. This includes a “Transit Camp” in Port Swettenham and a “Rehabilitation Camp” in Taiping. The latter such facility was noted as housing Chinese people between the ages of 16 and 40 who were specially selected from the other Detention Camps to receive four to six months of vocational training. These inmates would later be re-released into the general population. In total, in December 1950, approximately 10,241 people were noted as being in detention. Data for these camps was found in The National Archives (London), Colonial Office files, CO 537/7270, Malaya: Detention, Repatriation and Resettlement of Chinese. Limitations of the Map The Spaces of the Malayan Emergency digital map provides an interactive tool to investigate and visualise the spatial features of the Malayan Emergency. Nevertheless, the map has a number of limitations that are worth noting. Rather than operating as a StoryMap or a map that reveals change over time, this map provides a visual snapshot of a particular moment in time during the Malayan Emergency. Roughly speaking, that moment is the year 1954. We chose to create a “static” map for a variety of reasons. First, the data and statistics related to the Emergency – particularly the names and locations of New Villages – were best reported and most readily available for the period around 1954. We thus chose this moment as being representative of a time when many of the Emergency’s unique spatial features were all in place territorially – for example, a moment when most New Villages and Regrouping Areas had already been built - but prior to a time when some other significant spatial categories – mainly Black Areas – still existed on a map. In other words, while prior to around 1952, many New Villages and Regrouping Areas had yet to exist in the colony and are therefore unable to be mapped, after around 1955, many Black Areas in Malaya had turned into White Areas. These realities also make the creation of a StoryMap difficult. While the strength of a StoryMap is in its focus on temporality, the data and statistics that are available in the archival record about these spatial features – with the possible exception of New Villages – is largely incomplete. While there is therefore much value in showing how British administrators created New Villages in the colony over time, it would be nearly impossible to do so while also including other spatial categories created during the Emergency, including Regrouped Malay Kampongs and Labour Regroupments. In addition, because the exact cartographic contours of White and Black Areas shifted rapidly over the Emergency period, the data available in the archival record would make it difficult to accurately track these variations over time. Even still, the use of a “static” map creates the appearance that the geography of the Emergency was “fixed” in its spatiality, which most certainly was not the case. This map merely represents an approximation of the spatial transformation that occurred in Malaya during the Emergency period. In other words, the map should not be considered a final statement on what the Emergency “looked like” during the 1940s and 1950s, but rather a visual tool designed to help scholars and the public better understand the scale of the spatial transformation that occurred during the conflict. The other major limitation of this map is related to data. While in some cases – such as for New Villages – statistics and information about different sites of occupation is readily available, that is not the case for all spatial designations referenced in the digital map. Statistics for Regrouped Malay Kampongs and Labour Regroupments, for example, were not always reported by British officials in the colony, and the available information depends heavily on how particular state administrators – i.e. officials in Johore, Pahang, or Perak – listed particular sites. This latter point on reporting data is important. Although a certain site may have been listed as a New Village in one source, for instance, that same site may be listed as a different spatial category elsewhere in the archive. In such cases, we relied on published sources – particularly Corry’s A General Survey of New Villages – to provide a more final assessment of how a site should appear in the digital map. Nonetheless, it should be noted that data points in the digital map are fluid in their orientation, and that British officials and members of the local community may have defined that site differently than what exists in the archival record. Similarly related to issues about data, there are questions involving the location of certain place names within the map. While some New Villages, for example, remained inhabited and even grew in population and territory over the post-colonial period, others – particularly those in more rural spaces – were later abandoned. Some others changed their names. This means that while some sites are easy to geolocate (and, it should be noted, this represents the vast majority of these spaces), others are much more difficult to find. In some cases, when a place name may have gone out of favour but road names and commercial enterprises happened to retain the earlier place name, we used guesswork to estimate the location of a particular space. However, it should be noted that not all locations are in the precise place where they may have existed originally. Finally, we chose not to include photographs of specific sites that are listed in the map. This is because although there are a number of excellent online digital databases that include photography from the Emergency period, very little of that material is catalogued as being from a particular location. In other words, there are many photographs of “New Villages” in the archival record, but few that record the actual place name of each New Village site. Because of this, and because visual materials could only be found for a tiny fraction of the sites included in the digital map (less than 2 per cent of the locations featured in the map), we decided against including photographic representations in our database.

The Daminhui: A propaganda agency in occupied China

The Daminhui (lit., "Great People's Association") was organised by the Japanese special service in Shanghai in 1938,[1] but was officially directed by the veteran Kuomintang member Wen Zongyao in Japanese-occupied east and central China.[2] It has been described as the "flagship enterprise of the Reformed Government [of the ROC]."[3] The Daminhui was responsible for a variety of propaganda work, and learnt its skills directly from propaganda organisations in north China, especially the Xinminhui. Within the Daminhui's Propaganda Department worked Chinese graphic artists, journalists, dramatists, and activists. The Daminhui made a particular name for itself in mobilizing local communities for pro-occupation celebrations.[4] Much of the propaganda work undertaken by the Daminhui (and reproduced in its house pictorials like New China) looked remarkably similar to the "salvationist" (jiuguo) propaganda that had been developed by the Chinese resistance in Wuhan in 1938.[5] This was because a number of the Daminhui's affiliated agencies were specifically designed to emulate what the Japanese saw as effective methods of persuasion developed by the Chinese resistance early in the war. Nonetheless, the Daminhui developed its own "brand." It operated under a logo comprised of a five-pointed star and a crescent moon. The influence of the Daminhui would continue to be felt in occupied east China through until 1945, as many of its members joined the ranks of Wang Jingwei's government at its formation in 1940. [1] T'ien-wei Wu, "Contending political forces during the War of Resistance," in China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937-1945, eds., James C. Hsiung and Steven I. Levine (Armonk, NY: East Gate, 1992) , 66–67. [2] Wen Zongyao, "Daminhui Wen huizhang gao minzhong shu" [Letter from Director Wen of the Daminhui to the people], Xin Zhongguo 2, no. 11–12 (December 1939): 2–3. [3] Timothy Brook, "Occupation state building," in China at War: Regions of China, 1937–1945, eds. Stephen R. MacKinnon, Diana Lary and Ezra F. Vogel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 35. [4] Liu Jie, "Kangzhan chuqi Huadong lunxianqu qin-Ri qunti yanjiu: yi Daminhui Zhenjiang lianhe zhibu wei zhongxin de tantao" [A study of pro-Japanese groups in occupied areas of east China in the early stages of the War of Resistance: A discussion of the Daminhui's branch office in Zhenjiang], Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo jikan 98 (2017): 89–114. [5] As detailed in Stephen R. MacKinnon, War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China: Wuhan, 1938 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008).

“Angel of Peace (heping tianshi )”:
Icon of Occupation in Wartime China

In pre-WWII Shanghai, one of the most recognisable landmarks on the city's Bund had been Henry Fehr's art nouveau Allied War Memorial, first erected in 1924, and featuring at its top a statue of a winged Victory. According to Robert Bickers, the monument was so dominant a sight in Shanghai that it made its way into the city's culture. It even made an appearance in the 1937 film Street Angel (Malu Tianshi), directed by Yuan Muzhi.[1] This may help explain why the statue came to be referred to colloquially in the city either as the "Angel of Peace" (heping tianshi) or the "Victory Angel" (shengli tianshi) during the 1930s. As Paul Bevan has shown, the figure was also utilised in social and political cartoons by the likes of Zhang Guangyu in this same period.[2] Following the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, however, Fehr's Victory was given a new significance for a variety of Japanese client states. Even prior to the establishment of the Reorganised National Government (RNG) in 1940, for example, the figure was worked into occupation propaganda in eastern China, with the notion of an "angel of peace" resonating with both Japanese client states set up in 1938 which promoted a negotiated peace with Japan, and with Wang Jingwei's "Peace Movement" (Heping yundong) after 1939. Fehr's figure was appropriated in the same year as into the cover design for one of the main vehicles for the Peace Movement in Shanghai, the periodical Gengsheng (Rebirth). Under the RNG, Fehr's figure was transformed into an "goddess of peace" (heping nüshen), and was regularly featured in depictions of the Shanghai streetscape in RNG-sponsored graphic art. Indeed, the RNG "angel of peace" motif into the visual landscape of the RNG well beyond Shanghai, and wherever references to anthropomorphised peace were useful. In some instances, children dressed up as the "angel of peace" when publicly commemorating important dates on the RNG calendar. Elsewhere, Fehr's monument was re-imagined in rural Chinese landscapes by RNG artists as a harbinger of RNG notions of peace. Ironically, with the "return" of the foreign concessions to RNG rule in 1943, the Japanese ordered that symbols of Western imperialism be removed from Shanghai's streets. This, of course, included Fehr's Allied War Monument (with Victory herself being removed, but her plinth left intact). The "angel of peace" thus provides us with an insight not simply into the eclectic origins of many of the symbols adopted by the RNG, and the creative ways in which this regime appropriated pre-war symbols of peace into a wartime cultures of occupation. It also illustrates the limits of RNG autonomy when it came to constructing visual cultures under foreign domination. [1] Robert Bickers, "Moving Stories: Memorialisation and its Legacies in Treaty Port China", in Max Jones, et al (eds), Decolonising Imperial Heroes: Cultural Legacies of the British and French Empires (London: Routledge, 2016). [2] Paul Bevan, A Modern Miscellany: Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938 (Boston: Brill, 2016), 267.

Essays

Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with the art collective Fraud

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Abdessamad El Montassir

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Hyunhye (Angela) Seo

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Nontawat Numbenchapol

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Shaq Koyok

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Khvay Samnang and Vuth Lyno

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Bodies of Occupation: Roundtable – Frankenstein in Baghdad

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The Malayan Emergency: Bibliography

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The Malayan Emergency: Digital Map

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The Daminhui: A propaganda agency in occupied China

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“Angel of Peace (heping tianshi )”:
Icon of Occupation in Wartime China

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with the art collective Fraud

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Abdessamad El Montassir

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Hyunhye (Angela) Seo

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Nontawat Numbenchapol

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Shaq Koyok

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Bodies of Occupation: Conversation with Khvay Samnang and Vuth Lyno

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Bodies of Occupation: Roundtable – Frankenstein in Baghdad

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The Malayan Emergency: Bibliography

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The Malayan Emergency: Digital Map

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The Daminhui: A propaganda agency in occupied China

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“Angel of Peace (heping tianshi )”:Icon of Occupation in Wartime China

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“Angel of Peace (heping tianshi )”:
Icon of Occupation in Wartime China