The British in Malaya
British Malaya since 1786 has become the home of many different races, whose harmonious union, writes C. Northcote Parkinson, would offer an example from which the rest of the world might profit.
No one seems to know what motive force will drive a community into a phase of aggressive expansion. It is not even known what causes bring such a phase to its inevitable end. All the historian can do is to record the acknowledged facts, one of which is the date from which the withdrawal began. So far as the British in the Far East are concerned, the tide of empire may be said to have begun to ebb in 1908.
That may be why the boundaries of British Malaya, fixed in 1909, fell so far short of expectation or common sense. In the story of the British Empire, therefore, Malaya has its place as almost the last deliberate acquisition, an eleventh-hour conquest, the result more of habit than conviction.
So brief has been the British heyday in Malaya that the whole story falls within the span of a single life. One man, Frank Swettenham, saw the work through almost to its completion, and then, in retirement, watched it crumble and collapse.
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