Malaya Transformed

Abstract In response to the rapid loss of Malaya and Singapore to the Japanese during World War II, British colonial planners in London devised comprehensive reforms for Malaya underpinned by the creation of a new unified administrative structure, the Malayan Union. The sudden end of the war in 1945 caught the British unawares and resulted in a violent interregnum between the surrender of Japanese forces and the restoration of British rule in Malaya. The violence of the interregnum served as a catalyst for Peranakan opposition to Penang and Malacca’s connection to the Malay States as part of the Malayan Union in 1946. The subsequent intensification of ethnic Malay nationalism in response to the Union, coupled with Singapore’s exclusion from the new administrative entity, exacerbated Peranakan anxieties about their place in the new Malaya. Investigating the development of these concerns and anxieties, this chapter locates the origins of Peranakan political activism in the post-World War II period and highlights how this developed in opposition to the intensification of ethnonationalist sentiments during the short-lived Malayan Union experiment.