A. C. Milner Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule

Abstract

Milner took a different approach from Gullick. He hoped to elicit malay perceptions of their political actions from the historical records from the east coast of Sumatera and the east coast of the Malay Peninsula. This study is based on two political developments in the Sumatran state of Deli and a civil war which occurred in the state of Pahang. these two political developments were chosen because they appeared to throw light on the character of malay political motivation and were well documented in European sources. The present work explains why and how the author explored malay writings in order to discover malay perceptions of their political motivation. It concludes with the explication of a particular malay text and it argues that the structure of political experience revealed in that document has implications for the understanding of political behaviour elsewhere in the Malay world.