Representing the British Colonial Experience in Malaysia 1895-1940
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Imperial Propaganda and Literature: Representing the British Colonial Experience in Malaysia 1895-1940 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Mulrooney, David. 2019. Imperial Propaganda and Literature: Representing the British Colonial Experience in Malaysia 1895-1940. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42106937 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Imperial Propaganda and Literature: Representing the British Colonial Experience in Malaysia 1895-1940 A dissertation presented by David Mulrooney to The Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of English Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts March 2019 © 2019 David Mulrooney All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Homi Bhabha David Mulrooney Imperial Propaganda and Literature: Representing the British Colonial Experience in Malaysia 1895-1940 Abstract This dissertation examines the ways in which the literature that emerged from Britain’s experience as an imperial power in the Malay world (i.e., on the Malay peninsula and in the northwest of Borneo) functioned as imperial propaganda. The changing nature of the persuasive messages directed at the public in the United Kingdom during the high period of the British imperial experience in this region (i.e., from the Perak War and the introduction of indirect rule on the Malay peninsula in the 1870s until immediately before the Second World War) is explored through readings of the colonial administrators Sir Frank Swettenham (1850-1946) and Sir Hugh Clifford (1866-1941) and the writers Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) and Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). iii Acknowledgements.............................................................................v Introduction.......................................................................................1 Imperial Propaganda and British East Indies Literature..........................1 British Intervention on the Malay Peninsula: A Brief Overview............16 Colonial History and State Secrecy in Malaya and Borneo ...................36 The Evolving Nature of Imperial Propaganda .....................................42 Chapter 1 Sir Frank Swettenham ......................................................................47 Malay Sketches and The Real Malay .......................................................59 Chapter 2 Sir Hugh Clifford.............................................................................72 Saleh: A Prince of Malaya .....................................................................94 Chapter 3 Joseph Conrad ...............................................................................108 Almayer’s Folly ....................................................................................112 Lord Jim.............................................................................................116 Chapter 4 Somerset Maugham ........................................................................124 Critical Reception..............................................................................133 The Casuarina Tree .............................................................................140 Ah King .............................................................................................160 Other Short Stories Set in Malaya and Borneo ...................................178 Conclusion .....................................................................................183 Works Cited ...................................................................................192 iv Acknowledgements I wish to thank my dissertation advisors—Professors Homi K. Bhabha, John Stauffer, and Kelly M. Rich—for their guidance, support, and encouragement. I am also profoundly grateful to several members of the Harvard administration for their assistance at critical moments: Gwen Urdang-Brown of the English Department; Mary Halpenny-Killip and Julia Cohn of the Mahindra Humanities Center, and Anne Brown of the GSAS Office of Student Affairs. I would also like to register my appreciation for the generous financial support I received from Harvard University in the form of the English Prize Fellowship, which was sponsored in part by the late Mr. C. Douglas Dillon, former Secretary of the U. S. Treasury. I am grateful for the assistance of the research librarians at Harvard, especially Laura Farwell Blake of Widener Library. I would also like to thank Prof. Roger E. Stoddard for his extraordinary seminar on analytical and descriptive bibliography at Houghton Library. This project was completed in Vienna and I would like to thank a number of individuals in Austria for facilitating my research and writing: Gudrun Hardiman-Pollross of the Austrian Foreign Ministry; Franz Halas of the National Library of Austria; Harald Tersch of the History Faculty Library of the University of Vienna, and Karin Lach of the English Faculty Library of the University of Vienna. This dissertation was written using the Mellel word processor, developed by RedleX, in conjunction with the Bookends reference manager, developed by Sonny Software, on the MacOS v operating system. Ori and Eyal Redler of RedleX and Jon Ashwell of Sonny Software provided excellent technical support and assistance. Thanks also to Daisy Yan of Apple Computers. I would like to thank Mrs. Cynthia H. Sunderland and Mr. Gerrit W. Zwart of Cambridge, Mass. for their kindness and hospitality during my graduate school years. My parents, Vincent and Maria Mulrooney, have been a constant source of inspiration and support throughout my life’s journey. The last word of thanks is due to my partner, Anny, to whom this project is dedicated. vi Introduction 1. Imperial Propaganda and British East Indies Literature Imperial propaganda,1 the historian John MacKenzie argues, came to “infuse and be propagated by every organ of British life” from the mid-nineteenth century until well into the twentieth century (MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire 2). Images of the empire were a prominent feature of the stuff of everyday life, from soap advertisements through “picture postcards, cigarette cards, juvenile journals, and the like” (17). The Great Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, beginning with the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, highlighted the importance of Britain’s overseas territories, exhibiting colonial products, arts and occasionally even people who were exhibited in “native villages” for the education and entertainment of the public. Institutions such as the Imperial Institute and Royal Colonial Institute gave public lectures on imperial and colonial topics, while imperial propaganda societies such as the Primrose League, founded after Disraeli’s death in honor of his favorite flower to disseminate conservative and imperial values throughout British society, aimed to promote pride in the British Empire. Heroic figures such as Gordon of Khartoum and Lord Kitchener became the subjects of cults of personality. Youth organizations such as the Boy Scouts were established to inculcate imperial and military values in the future builders of Empire. 1. As Philip M. Taylor argues, the term “propaganda” is widely misunderstood in the English- speaking world as having only negative connotations as a result of its association with the use of mass propaganda in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Reduced to its simplest terms, propaganda is “the deliberate attempt to persuade people to think and behave in a desired way” (Taylor, Munitions of the Mind 6). It is entirely possible for a work of art or literature to be useful as propaganda and to have aesthetic value: as George Orwell noted, “every writer, especially every novelist, has a ‘message,’ whether he admits it or not, and the minutest details of his work are influenced by it. All art is propaganda… On the other hand, not all propaganda is art.” (Orwell, A Collection of Essays 90) The emerging technologies of the cinema and photography were often used to represent Britain’s overseas territories, while imperial settings and themes were a prominent feature of the popular theater and the music hall. In literature, the British Empire became both an important setting and theme, particularly for juvenile adventure stories, in which “violence and high spirits became legitimized as part of the moral force of a superior race” (199). It is important to note that, at least in the British context, imperial propaganda differs from wartime propaganda in several important respects: It has often been said that propaganda does not come easily to the British, that official propaganda was contemplated only in the conditions of the First and Second World Wars, and then only reluctantly, and principally for the consumption of foreigners, allies, and neutrals. Home government propaganda was virtually unknown… [but] this was not true in the case of imperial propaganda. Indeed, imperial propaganda was the one area of official propagandist activity which seemed to be generally acceptable… But the government effort was never very considerable, largely because it was unnecessary. (2) The most significant propagandists for the British Empire