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Sir Henry Gurney as High Commissioner during the Malayan Emergency, Oct. 1948 - Oct. 1951 : a critical assessment
Author
Ng, Ngee Seng
Supervisor
Hack, Karl
Abstract
Sir Henry Lovell Goldsworthy Gurney was High Commissioner of Malaya from 6 October 1948 to 6 October 1951. During these critical years of the Emergency, Gurney played a key role in formulating policies for counterinsurgency and decolonisation in Malaya. Yet, to date, there has been no detailed study of Gurney's tenure. This study aims to provide a critical evaluation of Gurney's performance and lay the essential foundations by examining English-language sources.
It uses these to examine the historiographical questions and contradictory interpretations of Gurney's role against archival and other secondary sources. The stage-by-stage analysis of Gurney's tenure suggests that Gurney's contributions have been underestimated. This thesis argues that Gurney developed a highly successful counterinsurgency model, which was endorsed as the strategy for conducting the campaign against the communists. He also applied a class and communal analysis of the Chinese population, which was, ironically, more effective than that of the communists.
In particular, this thesis will show that Gurney's counterinsurgency paradigm was much more highly sophisticated than previously thought. It involved a conscious balancing of almost draconian control measures with encouragement initiatives, now usually called 'hearts and minds' measures.
Once this is understood, the thesis argues, the way is clear for further research to understand even more about the complexities of Gurney's period, by further integrating Chinese, Indian and Malay sources with English language texts.
It uses these to examine the historiographical questions and contradictory interpretations of Gurney's role against archival and other secondary sources. The stage-by-stage analysis of Gurney's tenure suggests that Gurney's contributions have been underestimated. This thesis argues that Gurney developed a highly successful counterinsurgency model, which was endorsed as the strategy for conducting the campaign against the communists. He also applied a class and communal analysis of the Chinese population, which was, ironically, more effective than that of the communists.
In particular, this thesis will show that Gurney's counterinsurgency paradigm was much more highly sophisticated than previously thought. It involved a conscious balancing of almost draconian control measures with encouragement initiatives, now usually called 'hearts and minds' measures.
Once this is understood, the thesis argues, the way is clear for further research to understand even more about the complexities of Gurney's period, by further integrating Chinese, Indian and Malay sources with English language texts.
Date Issued
2002
Call Number
DS597 Ng
Date Submitted
2002