Malayan Spymaster

Author: Boris Hembry
Publisher: Monsoon Books
ISBN: 9814358304
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
A true story of 1930s Malaysia, of jungle operations, submarines and spies in WWII, and of the postwar Malayan Emergency, as experienced by an extraordinary man. Rubber planter Boris Hembry was a part of Freddy Spencer Chapman’s covert Stay Behind Party in Japanese-occupied Malaya, a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, and he formed the first Home Guard unit in Malaya during the Emergency. Required reading for this period of Southeast Asian history.

Spymaster

Author: Martin Pearce
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473525357
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 453

Book Description
'I cannot think of a better biography of a spy chief' Richard Davenport-Hines, The Spectator Sir Maurice Oldfield was one of the most important British spies of the Cold War era. _________ A farmer’s son from a provincial grammar school who found himself accidentally plunged into the world of espionage, Sir Maurice was the first Chief of MI6 who didn’t come to the role via the traditional public school and Oxbridge route. Oldfield was the voice of British Intelligence in Washington at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of JFK, and was largely responsible for keeping the UK out of the Vietnam War. Working his way to the top of the secret service, he took on the job of rebuilding confidence in the British Secret Service in the wake of the Philby, Burgess and Maclean spy scandals. This is the fascinating life story, told in detail for the first time, of a complex, likeable character as well as a formidable intelligence chief.

Templer and the Road to Malayan Independence

Author: Leon Comber
Publisher: Flipside Digital Content Company Inc.
ISBN: 9814620998
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Book Description
Dr Comber's account of General Templer's administration in Malaya as High Commissioner and Director of Operations (1952-54) during the Malayan Emergency departs from the usually accepted orthodox assessment of his time in Malaya by focusing on the political and socioeconomic aspects of his governance rather than the military. In doing so, Dr Comber has relied mainly on primary and other first-hand sources, including the confidential reports sent from Malaya by the Australian Commission to the Australian government in Canberra, and the private papers of some of the leading Malayan politicians of the time with whom Templer had dealings which have been deposited in the ISEAS Library, Singapore, many of which have not been used before.The evidence and facts that Dr Comber marshals in this study reflect well the reservations that were often felt about General Templer's authoritarian form of government. While he was a good general and had an impressive military record, his administration in Malaya was marred by a lack of understanding of the background to Malaya's history and the subtleties that are inherent in its culture and way of life which would have enabled him to come to terms more easily with the aspirations of the Malayan people for self-government and independence.

The Malayan Emergency

Author: Karl Hack
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110708010X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529

Book Description
The first in-depth and multi-perspective study of anti-colonial resistance and counterinsurgency in the Malayan Emergency and its impact on Malaysia.

Studies in Intelligence

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Intelligence service
Languages : en
Pages : 840

Book Description

The Boat

Author: Walter Gibson
Publisher: Monsoon Books
ISBN: 9814358959
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 87

Book Description
In 1942 a ship carrying 500 escapees from Japanese-occupied Singapore set sail for Ceylon. Halfway to safety she was torpedoed and sank. Only one lifeboat was launched—a lifeboat built to carry twenty-eight but to which 135 souls now looked to for salvation. For twenty-six days, cannibalism, murder, heroism, and self-sacrifice drifted with her. There were only four survivors.

Counterinsurgency Intelligence and the Emergency in Malaya

Author: Roger C. Arditti
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030166953
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
This book examines the full range of counterinsurgency intelligence during the Malayan Emergency. It explores the involvement of the Security Service, the Joint Intelligence Committee (Far East), the Malayan Security Service, Special Branch and wider police service, and military intelligence, to examine how British and Malayan authorities tackled the insurgent challenge posed by the Malayan Communist Party. This study assesses the nature of the intelligence apparatus prior to the declaration of emergency in 1948 and considers how officials attempted to reconstruct the intelligence structures in the Far East after the surrender of the Japanese in 1945. These plans were largely based upon the legacy of the Second World War but quickly ran into difficultly because of ill-defined remits and personality clashes. Nevertheless, officials did provide prescient warning of the existential threat posed by the Malayan Communist Party from the earliest days of British reoccupation of Malaya. Once a state of emergency had been declared, officials struggled to find the right combination of methods, strategy and management structures to eliminate the threat posed by the Communist insurgents. This book argues that the development of an effective counterinsurgency intelligence strategy involved many more organisations than just Special Branch. It was a multifaceted, dynamic effort that took far longer and was more problematic than previous accounts suggest. The Emergency remains central to counterinsurgency theory and thus this wide-ranging analysis sheds crucial light not only on the period, but on contemporary doctrine and security practices today.

Massacre in Malaya

Author: Christopher Hale
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750951818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 675

Book Description
The Malayan Emergency (1948–60) was the longest war waged by British and Commonwealth forces in the twentieth century. Fought against communist guerrillas in the jungles of Malaya, this undeclared ‘war without a name’ had a powerful and covert influence on American strategy in Vietnam. Many military historians still consider theEmergency an exemplary, even inspiring, counterinsurgency conflict.Massacre in Malaya draws on recently released files from British archives, as well as eyewitness accounts from both the government forces and communist fighters, to challenge this view. It focuses on the notorious ‘Batang Kali Massacre’ – known as ‘Britain’s My Lai’ – that took place in December, 1948, and reveals that British tactics in Malaya were more ruthless than many historians concede. Counterinsurgency in Malaya, as in Kenya during the same period, depended on massive resettlement programmes and ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate aerial bombing and ruthless exploitation of aboriginal peoples, the Orang Asli. The Emergency was a discriminatory war. In Malaya, the British built a brutal and pervasive security state – and bequeathed it to modern Malaysia. The ‘Malayan Emergency’ was a bitterly fought war that still haunts the present.

Historical Dictionary of Malaysia

Author: Ooi Keat Gin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538108852
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 687

Book Description
Malaysia is one of the most intriguing countries in Asia in many respects. It consists of several distinct areas, not only geographically but ethnically as well; along with Malays and related groups, the country has a very large Indian and Chinese population. The spoken languages obviously vary at home, although Bahasa Malaysia is the official language and nearly everyone speaks English. There is also a mixture of religions, with Islam predominating among the Malays and others, Hinduism and Sikhism among the Indians, mainly Daoism and Confucianism among the Chinese, but also some Christians as well as older indigenous beliefs in certain places. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Malaysia contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Malaysia.

The Special Operations Executive in Malaya

Author: Rebecca Kenneison
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350118575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
During World War II, agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) infiltrated Japanese-occupied Malaya. There they worked with Malayan guerrilla groups, including the communist-sponsored Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), regarded as the precursor of the communist insurgent army of the Malayan Emergency. This book traces the development of SOE's Malayan operations, and analyses the interactions between SOE and the various guerrilla groups. It explores the reasons for and the extent of Malay disillusionment with Japanese rule, and demonstrates how guerrilla service acted as a training ground for some later Malay leaders of the independent nation. However, the reports written about the MPAJA by SOE operatives just after the war failed to draw out the likely future threat posed by the communists to the returning colonial administration. Rebecca Kenneison shows that the British possessed a wealth of local information, but failed to convert it into active intelligence in the period prior to the Malayan Emergency. In doing so she provides new insights into the impact of SOE on Malayan politics, the nature of Malayan communism's challenge to colonial rule, and British post-war intelligence in Malaya.