Menace in Malaya – Harry Miller (1954) (1st ed)

S$160.00

Menace in Malaya – Harry Miller (1954) (1st ed)

S$160.00

Title: Menace in Malaya

Author: Harry Miller

Publisher: George G. Harrap & Co., London, 1954. First edition.

Condition: Hardcover, with dust jacket wrapped in plastic. Good. Foxing to pages and prelims. Text clean, binding tight. Black-and-white photographic plates. 248pp., 8.5″x5.5″.

About the book (from dust jacket):

Here is the story of the six-year war that has been – and still is being – fought against Communist terrorists in Malaya by British, Gurkha, Malay, and Chinese men.

Much has been heard of the Malayan Communist Party, the enemy, but never the inside tale of its birth, its machinations, its ramifications, its plans to establish a Soviet Republic in British Malaya. This history is told fully for the first time, and we meet the remarkably clever and cunning Secretary-General of the Party who had 31 aliases, including the Western name of “Mr. Wright”. His trail in Malaya of pre-Occupation days several times crossed that of Ho Chi-Minh, the man behind the Viet Minh war in Indo-China, who had a lot to do with the spread of Communism in Malaya and elsewhere in South-east Asia.

The book gives a pen-picture, too, of the present Secretary-General, Chen Ping, who during the Japanese occupation of Malaya was the most trusted friend of British guerrillas in the jungles.

The events leading up to the outbreak of Malaya’s Emergency, the narrow escape the country had in the early weeks from being dominated by the Communist insurgents, the harsh measures that had to be adopted to fight them, the amazing social experiment called “resettlement” in which more than 600,000 people were moved from hearth and home into new villages in the name of security, are dealt with in the book.

The advent of the dynamic General Sir Gerald Templer as High Commissioner, and what he did in his two years in the country to reduce terrorism, restore confidence, and start the country on the road to self-government, bring the book to a close. The concluding chapters sum up the future of this Malayan war, the political and social trends, and pose the question of whether Malaya will be able to exploit General Templer’s successes and move on to self-government with peace between the two predominant races, the Malays and Chinese, between whom tension exists today.