Debating the Malayan Emergency: The new orthodoxy and competing interpretations

Studies of the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) over the last dozen years or so have seen the rise to prominence of a new orthodoxy to explain its outcome. This new orthodoxy argues that population control under the Briggs Plan's resettlement programme (mid-1950 to mid-1952) became increasingly effective and was the principal reason that the Malayan Communist Party was forced to change policy by issuing the October 1951 Resolutions. These events, it is contended, turned the tide in the fighting and led to the government's eventual victory. Paying particular attention to the sources used, this analysis shows how the research of a wide range of scholars over the years since the end of the Emergency, challenges the core propositions of the new orthodoxy. The analysis also illustrates that the focus on the new orthodoxy has inhibited the examination of alternative explanations for the course and result of the Emergency, which could usefully be explored.