East Asia (2008) 25:187–210 DOI 10.1007/s12140-008-9048-x

Illusions of Relevance? An Australian Encounter with Malay History and Southeast Asian Security Roger Kershaw

Received: 24 April 2007 / Accepted: 28 November 2007 / Published online: 2 August 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract A. C. Milner’s visiting inaugural at N.U.S. invites exploration of its author’s intellectual development, for he boldly claims a role for an Australian historian of Southeast Asia as a promoter of liberal governance for Southeast Asian societies, in face of militant Islamism. His earlier “postmodernist” commitment to “getting inside the Malay experience” constitutes some sort of precursor, but relativist scepticism fits as uncomfortably as does, in its own way, advocacy of Australian tolerance of Asian authoritarianism. In attacking Leifer’s Realism, the lecture seems ill-informed, while the post-war Oakeshott is scarcely relevant to the diverse societies of Southeast Asia. Keywords A. C. Milner . Australia . Islamism . Malay monarchy . M.Leifer . Postmodernism . Realism . S. E. Asia

Initial Thoughts It is something of a cliché of studies of modern Southeast Asia that this is a time of “transition” - subject, of course, to “continuity amidst change” - so why, in principle, should a historian not be as well equipped to chart and explain changes from what went before, as any member of the social science fraternity? At a time of Islamic revival when, arguably, Islamism (or at least its most militant variety) has come to form a major, if not for all ten ASEAN states their pre-eminent, perceived security threat, a specialist in Malay history would have to be a very ancient-history specialist indeed, not to feel tempted or challenged to address the issue of contemporary cultural transformation in Malay societies, with tangential or direct reference to mainly Malay-borne Islamist militancy on the security of the states of the region,

R. Kershaw (*) Lochinver, Scotland e-mail: [email protected]

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individually and collectively. He or she would, however, have to be alert to the factor of Islamist ideology generated and propagated externally. In other words, far more than ever in the past, the stage on which Malay history is being played out is a world stage. Local or global in its roots, the increasing insecurity around the region leaves Singapore in a condition of enforced watchfulness, thinking of the worst-case scenario of expansionist “shari’a states” arising to its north and south some years away in the future.1 It cannot be a coincidence that the Singapore Institute of Southeast Asian Studies has charted a proactive, even in some ways quite daring, course in the analysis of Islamic politics in the region. But apart from the more conventional approaches actual research-based case studies of Islamism rampant and the moderate alternative, whether in the form of single works or collaborative enterprises2 - ISEAS has published a short, single lecture on the region today by a visiting Australian historian at the National University of Singapore [29]. The present writer was prompted to obtain the text partly by previous personal acquaintance as well as knowledge of the author’s writing, but not least by the title of the lecture, which holds out a prospect of long-range historical explanation of the new crisis of security confronting parts of Southeast Asia.3 Part of the inherent challenge of this lecture resides in a certain need to intuit or investigate the intellectual route traced by Anthony Milner across the years, in other words its longer-term intellectual background, and what he himself used to call, in assessing others’ research, its “approach”. The present study is thus devoted to the task of plumbing “depth” in these two senses.Without an adumbrated background, the pretensions expressed in the lecture on behalf of the historian’s role at the present juncture in Southeast Asian affairs might appear not merely esoteric but arbitrary. At least a diachronic survey may be able to identify apparent precursors of the author’s positions, and thereby offer, in hindsight, some tentative rationalisation thereof even if one is not converted to his school. In general our aspiration must be to take this scholar seriously as an observer and interpreter of Southeast Asia, in spite of the scepticism which he has expressed across the years regarding the veracity of most research: especially but not exclusively research by non-Asian scholars, and even more especially research in one of the moulds of political science or international relations. At least, in the Singapore lecture the Milnerian critique is applied as evenly to the non-scholar officials of ASEAN who are his current target, as to scholars in other contexts. To a non-initiate, it all has a “postmodernist” flavour - though no

1 This essay has been developed from paragraphs in Kershaw [20]. Examples of Muslim insurgency around the region are adduced in paragraph 1 of that article. Our suggestion regarding a new, salient security scenario in the minds of ASEAN military planners is not meant to exclude the perception of more conventional dangers, from across shared borders or in claimed territorial waters in the South China Sea. 2 Three such titles are reviewed in Kershaw [20], as well as the work of most intriguing interest, now to be mentioned. 3

Tony Milner received his undergraduate training at Monash in the time of John Legge and gained his Ph.D. at Cornell, where he was a student of O.W.Wolters. (An attachment to University of Malaya with Khoo Kay Kim had preceded, but was interrupted by, Cornell.) After six years at the University of Kent he moved to A.N.U. in 1980, becoming latterly Basham Professor of Asian History. The lecture at N.U.S. was his Inaugural as Raffles Visiting Professor.

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doubt the very variety among the phenomena which have attracted that label should caution us against its incautious application.4

Moulding a Moderate Islam The existence of an incipient threat to Southeast Asian security is not only admitted in the lecture’s opening references to “9/11” and the mass killing of tourists in Bali, but indeed is advertised by the title. However, the threat is said to be gratuitously exaggerated if not reified by “clash of civilisations” talk, not only by Samuel Huntington but from the likes of Dr Mahathir Mohamed (Prime Minister of Malaysia, 1981–2003), who has found that the notion of an unbridgeable divide suited his own purposes as a self-appointed world spokesman for Islam. The British 19th century imperialist, Stamford Raffles, is particularly commended for his vision of a unified Southeast Asia. Helpfully, Islam today is not monolithic. But nor, it is particularly stressed, should one give credit to Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history”, in the sense of the death of ideology or religion, and the inexorable onward march of liberal democracy. When Milner refers to the “return of history”, it is particularly Fukuyama whom he has in his sights, seeing the latter as a misguided prophet of the redundancy of cultural conflict. To be bridged, the differences inherited from the past must first be recognised, in their essential durability and vitality.5 So far, so balanced. The discussion only begins to reveal a challenging side where we discover that not only are ideological, religious and ethnic factors in Southeast Asian politics continuing from the past, or at any rate reviving, but that “history” in the other sense - what historians do - can offer a vital contribution to the engineering of harmony, by interpreting their past to the political elites of the present. To our surprise, it is not meant that understanding the ancient “roots of conflict” can help ruling elites to dominate and disrupt subversive movements, but can on the contrary teach them to work tolerantly and co-existently with what threatens them. This feat can be achieved if they are helpfully apprised of the potential for harmony in their

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It is reliably reported that there is more to postmodernism than either the structuralist anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss or the nihilistic posturing about historical documents, primary or secondary, of the type exemplified by Keith Jenkins or Hayden White and so devastatingly dissected by Evans [9]. Among the best short retrospects must be Anderson [1]. The present writer confesses to having had more sympathy for the “post-Marxist” (more political – including “Marxist historiography of the state”) forms of postmodernism than the “structuralist” and “post-structuralist” (more literary and introspectively historiographical) forms (about which, see further in note 32, below; the “post-structuralist” genre does evince a strongly political orientation too). While never declaring himself to be a Marxist, students of Trotskyist tendency in the 1970s not infrequently complimented him on being one. At the same time, he feels no affinity with Foucault over the latter’s hostility towards political science, even if it has sometimes been recruited to serve an absurd post-Enlightenment faith in progress and the mazimization of the modern state power in the name of “the people”; let alone with Derrida’s pseudo-mystical faith that harmony can be achieved by recognising that each political purpose is contingent and of equal validity with every other: see the versatile coverage in Jones [15]. 5

It seems at first a little bizarre, in this context, that Fukuyama is criticised ([29], 38) for not seeing persisting difference in Southeast Asia during the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis. Milner himself admits that ASEAN unity was strengthened by the crisis. However, this was seemingly thanks to the fact that it revived memories of colonialism, not because ancient divisions are no longer relevant.

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historical heritage, or at least the historically demonstrated negative consequences of not working with it. This is the most efficacious way to divert not only ethnic separatisms but radical Islamism from their various subversive goals. One may only regret that the lecture towards its end becomes a little reticent about naming Islamism - with its ever more salient international dimensions, one would remark as the prime would-be adversary after all. This may be prudent in order not to prompt despondency but is also just a little surprising, given, for instance, the earlier warning that Islamic fundamentalists are seeking nothing less than to review the whole knowledge system of modern societies and the modern state ([29], 26).6 At the same time, one academic obstacle to the realization of the prescriptive vision of unity-through-empathy is identified as the influence of “Realist” theory in International Relations, as propounded notably in relation to Southeast Asia by the late Michael Leifer. Leifer is said to have attributed such convergence as could be found within ASEAN to the external balance of power, with special reference (as cited) to the United States (the role of China could have been given equal prominence). As a matter of fact, Southeast Asia has only experienced relative peace since an agreement among the great powers, most vitally China, to sponsor coalition arrangements without the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. But the lecture is distinctly taciturn generally on the subject of that country, which has, moreover, been known more for its killing fields than as a proving ground for would-be Southeast Asian values of harmony.7 However, those (such as Leifer, reputedly) who see no constructive results from ASEAN’s renowned proclivity for “talk” are criticised for not spotting the priceless asset of a capacity for “conversation” among the several states, to which Milner (in an apparently “neoliberal” spirit) is inclined to attribute much of the success of the regional association.8 It is then only necessary to translate this harmonising culture into a medium for the successful incorporation of rebel movements into their respective national communities, duly informed by the historian’s grasp of the underlying realities. Correspondingly, one detects a didactic, if diplomatically stated, sub-text of reproach directed at the political and bureaucratic leaders of ASEAN themselves, for a simultaneous inclination towards arrogance of power within their own territories. Yet upon reflection one may be a little troubled by the unmarked elisions in this lecture between the inter-state stage and these theatres of domestic conflict, as if the harmonising culture observed in the former is relevant and can be smoothly applied to the latter. The crucial paradox, surely, is that the “harmonising culture” of ASEAN is a culture of non-interference in each other’s affairs, which

And the final section is headed “Excess, Islam”, though “excess” is used in a highly esoteric sense, to mean the congeries of groups which have been excluded from the national consensus in any country.

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For a brief round-up of these events (though it is also not strong in direct references to PRC), see Kershaw ([19], 91–95). Cambodia – like Laos and Myanmar – joined ASEAN in 1997, after Vietnam in 1995. The classificatory term “neoliberal” is used here in place of the “Idealist” suggested in Kershaw ([20], 178), as it is more in tune with IR convention: cf Simon [38]. Clearly, however, “liberal interventionism” and “moralism” are terms to be avoided: the characterisation of intra-ASEAN relations at the end of this paragraph makes clear why.

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delivers precisely a carte blanche for the more oppressive kinds of action in defence of internal authority.9 Again with reference to Cambodia, we will remember that ASEAN’s principle of non-interference realised its strongest and most united expression in the opposition to the Vietnamese invasion and occupation from late 1979: this notwithstanding that Cambodia was not a member of the grouping, and the fact that only a Vietnamese invasion was capable of saving the Cambodian people from genocide and starvation. Incidentally, in connection with the historian’s role one might also ask how a thorough understanding of the past can be guaranteed not to deliver a legitimating validation of the authoritarian or absolutist state, and perhaps (if the focus is on events as recent as 30 years ago), of national genocide.10 There are more subtle pointers to Anthony Milner’s thoughts on both the role of the historian and the culture of cohesion in his cryptic reference to “that interesting philosopher Michael Oakeshott” ([29], 41). But as this reference is not elaborated, it is proposed to postpone further comment and elaboration till a later point, after other writing by the subject has been surveyed, but taking account also of verbal proselytisation during an “earlier existence”. If there is a postmodernist dimension lurking between the lines of the Singapore lecture, there could be quite a lot to say. International relations theory and perhaps also human rights may merit additional, and as yet unforeshadowed, commentary respectively. But meanwhile, the “sub-text” or agenda of the following section is to tease out any early warnings, as it were, of a “deconstructionist” tendency in some work on Malay history.

Penetrating the Malay mind There are tangible harbingers of Anthony Milner’s conviction that correct insights into “historic culture” and a profound sensitivity to meanings in language are the keys to understanding political dynamics in Southeast Asia, in the published revision of his Ph.D. thesis, which explores the political ideas which accounted for the victory of the winning side in the mid-nineteenth century Pahang civil war (Malay Peninsula) and for stability in the pre-colonial Sultanate of Deli (east Sumatra) [25].11 Nor is a certain taste for academic combat missing, for the book opens with a quite sharp attack on John Gullick for an alleged subservience to the mindset and models of 1950s functional anthropology, with its focus on institutions, resulting

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The accession of Myanmar demonstrated this point, in that the existing members were conscious of abetting an oppressive regime by the very act of admitting it. In this they were vocally encouraged by Dr Mahathir Mohamed who saw the accession as a way of declaring to the West that ASEAN was not signed up to universal human rights.

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How, too, would Milner classify the massacre of actual or suspected Partai Komunis Indonesia members in Java, by Muslim youth militias under tacit military protection, in the wake of the attempted PKI coup of 30 September 1965? ASEAN came into being because the Indonesian army emerged triumphant over PKI and resolved to set Indonesia on a right-wing and regionally more “neighbourly” course. Are ASEAN’s “bloody origins” quite compatible with Milner’s model of the past? 11 Revised from Milner [23].

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in Gullick’s case in an ethnocentric and essentially stultifying view of Malay government in terms of a “working system of social control and leadership” ([25], viii).12 What we are invited to grasp, conceptually, is not “real power” but rather, “the considerations that made men act”, specifically in the Malay polity called “ke-rajaan”, infused and defined by loyalty to a raja. But there is nothing intangible about the “political culture” in question, which, as an analytical tool, Milner vaunts for its utility in investigating “concrete situations”, superior in this role to the suspect methodology of proceeding by “testing models”. To the political scientist with an institutional scepticism towards the explanatory pretensions of the concept of “political culture”, and a concomitant preference for the potentially more precise “ideology”, it is astonishing to meet this position being adopted and promoted by a historian, not least one who mocks the use of models by social scientists ([26], 9)13 himself setting greater store by written words and their meanings, both on the surface and “between the lines”. One begins to sense that one has stumbled across an excellent example of a methodology misleading its user into rejecting solid research, when one notices that although Milner’s nineteenth century Malays were reputedly not interested in “real power”, the workings of the “maximisation of spiritual reward” principle seem, from the evidence in the book, to have secured political power very firmly in the hands of the ruling class, exactly as Gullick’s work had previously postulated.14 A little later in academic time, Milner was in print with an important, if polemical, essay which reiterated or elaborated two of the above positions, namely (a) the inadequacy of virtually all historical scholarship on British Malaya, owing to the “enslavement” of the scholarly community: not so much to Western-derived social science approaches as to British archival sources, which have inhibited them from seeing events from a “Malay point of view”, especially through Malay texts and newspapers - alone W.R.Roff [37] showing the capacity to read the records “against the grain” ([26], 9); and (b) (unsuspected by these blinkered scholars and thus

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The study in Milner’s critical sights is Gullick [12]. For the present writer’s more positive view of Gullick’s work, see Kershaw [17], partly devoted to Milner [1982]. Minor corrigenda to that article are noted in Kershaw ([18], 170) (this being a study of the ideology of the new Malay ruling elite in the democratic era). Or does “political culture” somehow hold out a superior prospect of “getting inside the Malay experience”? A particular bugbear of the 1970s – even though potentially applicable to monarchy – was”charisma”.

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By way of an aside, let us note, from another study, Milner’s undoubtedly very sound, and academically sober, assessment of the “spiritual reward” offered by the raja to his obedient subjects as an asset not dependent on, indeed to some extent at odds with, the divine consolations of Islam. Milner agrees with Gullick that while Islam became, for the Malays, “their religion”, shariah was not, in general, effective law in the pre-colonial period [24]. The last thing that can be attributed to Milner is a view of the traditional Malay polity as an early exemplar of “political Islam”, the extraordinary claim recently advanced on his behalf by a Malaysian scholar: cf the critical dissection of this source in Kershaw ([20], 182–184). Another excellent paper by Milner, which combines observations on the more ancient royal ideology with some analysis of the thought of its shari’a-minded critics as late as the 1980s, is Milner [27]. The present writer has unfortunately lacked access to three other articles of likely interest, on the Muslim state, fundamentalism in Malaysia, and Malay biography in postmodern perspective, respectively, listed as “1983”, “1986a” and “1991b” in Milner ([28], 308–309).

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unpredictable from their historiography) the resilience of not only the elite-sustaining “political culture” but also a good degree of corresponding ruling-class power in the era of British protection, whereby the traditional elite are seen as at least highly influential, and much more politically proactive, in the colonial system than they were supposed to be under the theory of Indirect Rule, or were admitted to be by the British records.15 Salt is seemingly rubbed into the wounds of British, and British-trained, scholars by Milner’s pointed praise for the big names in post-war American and Australian research on Indonesia, not just because they used Indonesian press sources but also, it is speculated, because they did not use Dutch archives - even having the possible advantage, he hints, that in some cases they could not read Dutch anyway.16 At the same time, the big names are praised because “they have employed models of both description and change which, like the non-European source material, can provide vantage points from which to question the colonial records” ([26], 9). There cannot be many historians today who would reject the value of dipping into disciplines such as sociology for new analytical perspectives on their material. One is only taken aback because this taunt at the “British Malayan historians” for alleged disciplinary one-sidedness comes only a few years after the aspersion on Gullick for being a captive to the paradigms of Western sociology. Another critic of Milner, in a robust riposte to the article in question, has firstly denied the charge with regard to historians of Southeast Asia generally, and secondly, suggests that if the “British Malayan historians” have neglected sociological paradigms it is not because of disdain, but perhaps rather because of an intuitive awareness of the danger of falling into the trap of speculative history of the worst kind, unless one is endowed with talent and experience of a very high order [44].17 One trap which Yeo avoids is that of diluting his response to Milner by resort to academic circumlocution or any kind of diplomatic evasiveness. The article is a model of just but absolutely cogent excoriation of a critique of questionable justice. The article restores justice because it is extremely conscientiously argued, point by point. The comment on why, if at all, sociological approaches have been avoided by the “target group”, is only one of some twenty examples. Yeo more than sustains his position that Milner is himself frequently guilty of violating the basic tenets of historical scholarship ([44], 5). His article is indispensable reading for anyone interested in this corner of Southeast Asian history. No attempt will be made at further summary, except with reference to a passage where Yeo addresses not 15

The power of the traditional elite is illustrated most saliently by reference to the decentralisation debate between the World Wars. Perhaps because of this focus, the study does not revert to Gullick [12].

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The present writer was dismayed to realize the grave risk (!) that he himself may have taken in relying on a Dutch colonial source on the prestige of the Javanese royalty in the era of Indonesia’s Independence: see Kershaw ([19], 75–76). And yet, while Milner ignores the eminent (and as much Dutch- as Indonesian-dependent) Dahm [7], he cites in his list of “approved reading” the very similarly sourced van Neil [41]. Even more surprising in light of the said strictures is the fact that Milner’s own KERAJAAN cites not a few Dutch sources. If it is necessary, in order to understand the significance of the dependence of “British Malayan historians” on British records, “to know more about the intellectual formation of the historians themselves” ([26], 8), a need is also emerging to understand what it is in Anthony Milner’s formation that equips him uniquely to avoid the reputed biases of most other specialists. 17

On “sociological paradigms and jargon” and “speculative history”, see Yeo ([44], 4–5).

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“Colonial records history” but the book, KERAJAAN. This passage could be important for the purpose of differentiating Milner’s position on power in the traditional Malay polity, from Gullick’s - if indeed there is any difference beyond ideological rhetoric.18 Yeo takes Milner to task for indulging an emphasis on the ceremonial role of the raja, to the exclusion of any consideration of who carried out the executive and other functions of the state; in fact Milner is said to treat the Malay polity as one which “ran all on its own - an oriental exotica that would no doubt fascinate the western reader”. By contrast, Gullick is said to identify and locate all these functions. The present writer, in his reading of both Gullick and Milner, finds that the former emphasizes the high degree of decentralisation in the Malay State, which meant that the raja or Sultan had effective administrative control only over his own capital district; for the rest of the State his role was indeed purely ceremonial, although this was certainly an indispensable function for the cohesion of the polity. As for Milner, he needles Gullick for having a functionalist fixation on”real power”, but it is difficult to see Milner as denying that a phenomenon of royal power emerged from those particular “considerations that made men act” or “the way in which Malays categorised their political experience”, about which Milner has his own fixation. It is true that one will not find an account of “the nuts and bolts” of administration in the book, but it does not set out to give such an account, as Gullick does. In the end (or from the start, unless one is acutely alert to nuances), Milner seems to be interpreting the Malay polity no differently from Gullick, and could not have failed to be influenced by Gullick’s seminal work at some level when selecting his research field. Indeed, Milner’s “Colonial records history” presents us with a phenomenon of power that was resilient enough to carry through into the colonial era and be able to call the tune to the British in striking degree. Thus, Milner’s perhaps faddish fascination with language as the primary spring of action (language itself, rather than social relations, being characterised by “structure”, and being the root of action rather than the learned expression of prior social relations) may have somewhat misled Yeo Kim Wah as to his real perception of power in the traditional polity.19 It is perhaps Milner’s fascination with language as the key to mind that is the philosophical dimension, not lacking an inbuilt ideological inclination, which a critic needs particularly to grasp and try to comprehend. He has followed through from his earlier, tentative applications of that conviction with a second major work, concerned with the remaking of Malay politics in the twentieth century. Here, his study of the Malay press and new political literature leads him not only to deprecate any exaggeration of colonial hegemony (as before) but to assert that the language of “kerajaan” persisted in lively, competitive interaction with bangsa (Malay nationalism) and umat (the principle of Islamic community, brought about by 18 The discussion, addressed in the following paragraph, is located in an extended note, no. 24, Yeo ([44], 27–28). 19 Gullick’s interpretation should be more closely studied, self-evidently, from Gullick [12], but a paraphrase of the key ideas is offered in Kershaw ([19], 185–187). The key issue dividing Yeo from Milner may be whether traditional power continued, in more subterranean ways, in the Federated Malay States. Milner insists that it was still present; Yeo, as one of the historians who was accused by Milner of overlooking it, is at pains to vindicate his belief in the efficacy of British control, overlaying and superseding the old structures.

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interactions with the wider Muslim world and expressing identification with it), though not without a very important - and for Milner at first not anticipated - coming together or fusion of these “languages” in a shared practice of “politics”, belief in the “public sphere” and formation of a modern nation (in which kerajaan has changed its meaning to “government” in the modern sense). With regard to the traditional ideology and proponents of kerajaan it is discovered that these have proved able to survive, indeed flourish, through adaptation to the popular politics which they once feared as a subversive force.20 And we may find it noteworthy and gratifying, if not a little ironical, that Milner has been constrained to adapt his own language to now speak of “ideology” instead of mere “political culture” or “discourse”, as a formative factor behind new social and political structure. In any case, it would hardly befit his new role as a public luminary in Australia and Singapore, to remain bound to a conceptual vocabulary which sometimes seems remote from, or sceptical about, the world of real power in which he himself hopes to be an agent for change. On the other hand, no doubt his understanding of historic Malay elite culture and its adaptations in the twentieth century is functional to his latter-day role, in so far as the twenty-first century Southeast Asian elites whom he will be in the business of interpreting to his Australian compatriots (even while offering a contrasted narrative to the Southeast Asians themselves) happen to be the moral and ideological heirs of their forerunners!21

Opening Australian Minds Australian awareness of Asia across the decades has tended to be strongly mixed with anxiety about a strategic threat, as well it might be in the era of Japanese imperialism and to a somewhat lesser extent in the phase of Chinese sponsorship of Communist movements in Southeast Asia. The fact that the menace from the north 20

The new book in question is Milner [28], a model of elegant language in its own right, but curiously, in its 297 pages of substantive text, not conveying a sense of covering as much ground – or at least new ground – as the 157 pages of KERAJAAN. Even in focusing on “ideology” rather than “groups defined by education”, the study cannot conceal a tacit affinity with Roff [37]. On an arcane point of methodology, the present critic has inferred (see previous paragraph) his inclination to see language as a reflection, not foundation, of social structure - so Malay “politics” was not exactly “invented” in the way Milner means; nevertheless, once we start to talk of ideology, we are bound to acknowledge its function in terms of swaying minds and moulding events.

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The reference to affinities between Milner [28] and Roff [37] in the previous note could be glossed to stress the continuity in elite culture between the 19th and 20th centuries, at least courtesy of British educational policy; while even more indispensable on the subject of continuities beneath a surface of apparent transformation, is to understand how the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) has justified “lordliness” and self-protection by a de facto rule of lèse majesté, by invoking the ethnic vulnerability of the Malays: Muzaffar [31] - also reviewed in Kershaw [17]; see, too, Kershaw [18]. However, Milner [28] is strictly confined to the colonial period before World War II. Even Milner (1993), which is its more modest forerunner (but includes reference to the 1980s, as has been noted), only deals with the ummah-kerajaan divide. Neither of these two studies gives the slightest hint of trouble to come, between an excessively emboldened, rather than prudently adaptive, modern royalty and the elected successor elite, in contestation for power as well as prestige, as seen in the great constitutional crises of 1984 and 1992.

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was termed at times, or typically, “The Yellow Peril” informs us of an underlying fear of racial submergence for this Anglo-Celtic outpost in the southern hemisphere a fact that is also clear from the “White Australia” principle in immigration policy. Towards the end of the 20th century, however, Australian strategic thinking began to see Asia more as a theatre of commercial opportunity. But the opportunities could not be taken for granted, some argued, in the face of either the sheer competitive drive for Asian markets among many Western (and East Asian) economies, or ethnic antipathy towards Australia as an unnatural outpost of European racial stock and culture in the Pacific.22 The notion of a natural Asian antipathy, which Australian ethnic arrogance might well exacerbate if it were not curbed, was particularly at home on the Australian Left. Serious efforts were made to live down the racist reputation of Australians which the “White Australia” policy had reputedly fostered. Not that Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating (in office, 1991–96) was renowned for curbing his tongue in face of human rights abuses and the anti-Australian jibes of his Malaysian counterpart, Dr Mahathir Mohamed. But immigration policy has been substantially liberalised and conservative thinkers on campus who expressed concern or alarm over certain predicted impacts on social cohesion and national identity, have been censored in a number of high-profile cases. Nor was the Liberal Party unaffected by the inroads of “political correctness”, in the view of some right-wing circles. This perception and the accompanying unease or anger in parts of the population even led to the emergence of a break-away from the Liberals, One Nation (1997–), with consequential adjustments thereafter to the language of the Liberal Party itself (i.e. in a “right-wing” direction) in immigration and refugee matters. These adjustments benefited that party electorally and gave Prime Minister John Howard a lease of tenure above average. Still, it is certainly plausible that the Liberal Party intelligentsia were previously “signed up” to a national-elite consensus favouring diversity. Thus, it was not only the ascendancy of the Labor Party in politics, and of the Left in the universities, that was conducive to the sponsored mobilisation of Australian academics in efforts to improve Australian “understanding” of Asia, aiming indirectly to cultivate less abrasive postures and a better national image across the seas to the north. One could even venture that a period of national reassessment in terms of “diversity” versus “definitive race” (not to mention the issue of a Republic, with all that that evokes about ancestral origins), was psychologically quite well attuned to an exercise in international relations management which was also pregnant with racial significance.23 The cardinal flaw in such a highflying aspiration is that it presumes that adjustments to cultural identity, or at least image, can deflect offences rooted in 22

For a basic sketch of trends and issues in this area of modern history, see the ground-laying passages in Ingleson [14]. 23 While the left-wing ambience and stultifying “political correctness” which has been alleged against Australian universities surely conduced to collaboration between government and academe, probably some of the more radical academics would have looked askance at any government programme aiming indirectly to foster commercial opportunities in Asia. It was surely a difficult field to play, requiring diplomatic and political skills more than primary dedication to academic values – but at the same time, no fixed political allegiance in party terms either. A physical base at the national capital would have been an indispensable qualification for the leader of the project.

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fundamentally conflicting geopolitical perspectives, not so amenable to revision.24 The Australia-Asia Perceptions Project was initiated by the Academy of Social Sciences in 1991, Anthony Milner being appointed from the Australian National University to be its Director, a position held till 1994. The goal which the Project ambitiously set itself was to re-interpret Asia to the Australian public (but with political and business elites especially in mind), overcoming ingrained ignorance and prejudice partly by inducing Australians to look at their own culture with a detached eye. This culture was therefore not treated as a norm or locus of absolute values but simply - in a highly “postmodernist” spirit, as one reviewer has put it - as one among many possible formulas for human organisation. No less than 70 writers were involved in Volume 1 via a series of small group enterprises or writing-committees, dealing comparatively with nine themes, yet the result was apparently effective beyond expectation. One theme reported to run through all three volumes is the relationship between globalisation and localism, i.e. Asia is far from homogeneous, just as the West is far from uniform in its political and legal systems, among other things. Both of these points no doubt needed to be made for the uninformed Australian public, inclined as it may well be to imagine (with Fukuyama, if it has heard of him, and is not put off by his name!) that Asian convergence on Western norms (read “Aussie norms”?) is just a matter of time, requiring no adjustment or learning of Asian languages on the part of Australians.25 What seemed most striking about the Project was the underlying confidence shown in the capacity of a group of academic Asian Studies specialists, however well led, to inaugurate a shift, not to say “revolution”, in Australian culture, not only in the direction of a more outward-looking focus but at the same time towards an introspective stance vis-à-vis itself. This is nothing less than a species of neo-Australian ideology, fired by a zeal to change the home country towards a more liberal mould (empathizing with Asian cultures), yet in the interests simultaneously of its commercial and cultural penetration of Asia, and thus necessitating empathy with authoritarian governance and non-Western conceptions of contract, not with the suffering masses denied human rights. A project to instruct Australians in this way is indeed radical, but is very far from fulfilling the criteria for radicalism in a “postmodern” sense, inasmuch as it eschews the deconstruction of constructs such as “Asian Values” in preference

24

While no doubt the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States were unprecedented, and also the supportive response of self-styled “sheriff” John Howard more emotional and vocal than that of a Labor administration might have been, it only occurred in the framework or spirit of the durable ANZUS pact. Snyder [39] offers insights into recent Australian-ASEAN tensions.

25

The writer owes most of his knowledge of the Project to Ingleson [14], but takes responsibility for all angles and emphases in this discussion. Ingleson seems a little confused about the titles of the three volumes produced by the Project, but the Internet has furnished the detail for Milner & Quilter [30] (3 volumes - as cited in the references, below). Only volume 2 offers country studies, and limited to: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Japan, and Korea, plus Australia itself. The first three systems are more democratic at the present time than most of the other Southeast Asian states (Brunei? Cambodia?), thus somewhat less than fully representative of politics in that region.

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for the legitimation of existing structures of power in the islands and continent to the north, the better to assist Australians in adjusting to them, not attacking them. This smacks of a betrayal of the postmodern tenets in historical scholarship on Southeast Asia once propagated in Southeast England! But of course, this is not scholarship, but the placing of a particular expertise at the service of politics. What the two visions still have in common is the selfconfidence to promote themselves with a degree of missionary zeal if not ideological fervour. But whereas the historical vision saw chronic unreliability in Western research (except, implicitly and necessarily, research by the propagator himself), the Australian scholarship mobilised in the service of politics is much more sure of its positions, both as to its analyses of Asian cultures and regarding its authority and capacity to effect fundamental change in Australian culture towards a better quality of dialogue or “conversation” with Asia.

Postmodernism: A False Dawn? That Milner has kept faith, in part, with the relativism of his more proselytizing years, even when promoting a political cause, is suggested by the intriguing reference in his Raffles Lecture to “that interesting philosopher Michael Oakeshott”, who is famed for having described historical experience as occurring just as much in the present (in the mind of the historian) as in the past [32].26 In fact, Milner is alluding, rather, to Oakeshott’s post-war re-incarnation as a philosopher of politics, marked particularly by his theory of “conversation” as one component in the binding cement of nations [33].27 Before tapping into Oakeshott’s authority on any terms, one really should acknowledge not only this shift to a distinctive new role, but also the fact that on the terms of his pre-war proto-postmodern views (potentially an admonition) about the intrusion of imagination into historiography, no attempt to characterise the subjective components of a national character and prescribe their preservation should have carried any credibility whatsoever. Nevertheless, at first sight it may seem apposite that Oakeshott is tapped for a political prescription for ASEAN, where Milner urges that “participants suspend for a time their exclusive claims to truth”. This is exactly what the Australia-Asia Perceptions Project called upon Australians to do. It is relatable to the original Oakeshott in that conceptions of national identity and the cultural excellence of nations are typically products of the historical imagination

26

Cited in Milner ([29], 41). The present writer has depended for his introduction to Oakeshott, the philosopher of history, on Collingwood [6], and feels no little regret that the moment has been so long delayed. However, the view so assiduously promoted from “the Cornell corner” for the present writer’s benefit some three decades ago, that no self-respecting graduate of the Oxford School of Modern History should have missed the opportunity even while at Oxford because Oakeshott had taught there, begs a few questions about the structure of that history degree in the 1950s and the perfectly worthy precedence given, on the philosophical side, to Political Theory. 27 On Oakeshott the political philosopher Anderson [2] has been found informative - and also sensitive to a degree which some may find surprising, coming from the editor of New Left Review.

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working in present time - even if not, as with later postmodern/post-Marxist theorists, the self-serving contructs of incumbent elites.28 Yet as numerous critics have wryly observed, postmodernism tends to take its thesis about subjectivity so far that it sinks into a deeply dismissive irony, even towards the claims of ethnic groups to have any objective existence. Or again, but more importantly, if after all one decides to turn away from Oakeshott the sceptic and embrace Oakeshott the prophet of cohesive nations, then for Southeast Asian purposes one has to confront the not insignificant difficulty that his interest, in the post-Second World War era, was in European states of considerable longevity, possessed of institutionalised mechanisms of mutual understanding and consensus among homogeneous nations (which Oakeshott feared modern rationalist planning would destroy), not the highly fragmented societies of Southeast Asia at which Milner’s prescriptions are directed29 - and least of all, polities under assault from a paradise-promising ideology of Middle Eastern provenance, far more ruthlessly totalitarian than anything practised in ASEAN, even by the absolutist (but of course non-Islamist) “Malay Islamic Monarchy” of Brunei. Is it possible that historians’ senses are not optimally attuned to the political novelties of the present age? Could it even be that Oakeshott’s fierce antipathy for ideology (both pre- and post-war) deters his followers from building it into their analytical models? As for pre-twentieth century Southeast Asian history itself, we are bound to muse, once more, whether the author has overlooked the norms of royal absolutism, wars of annexation, and the enslavement or massacre of whole populations. Anti-democratic though Oakeshott certainly was, this is not a form of politics that he would have recommended!30 Nor, needless to say, does Milner, given his pretensions to build an edifice of harmonising prescription on the foundations of the Southeast Asian past. But for the moment we await a suggested resolution of the necessary quandary that is posed for a postmodernist historian wondering how much faith to place, inter alia, in the

Regarding the distinction between the “structuralism” associated with Claude Lévi-Strauss and the “post-structuralism” (hence, more political or post-Marxist postmodernism) associated with celebrity revolutionaries Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, et al., it was already too well known to specialists to merit further exposition in the mid-1980s, according to one guru or erstwhile guru of postmodernism, so let it not detain us here. It could suffice to say that both of these currents are deeply stirred by the problem of “narratives” in the practice of historiography: see White ([42], 33–37). Anyone who is nonetheless interested in exploring this corner of the history of ideas might start with the discussion of how LéviStrauss first engaged with the problem of historical narrative, starting from his base in anthropology, in Goboriau [11]. This reflection is extended into note 32, below.

28

29

To be fair, Milner is not alone in the optimistic extension of the Oakshottian vision to situations of considerable pluralism. A leading visionary of multiculturalism in Britain has also tried it: see the courteous yet incredulous critique in Kelly [16]. On one minor anomaly which Milner did not avoid – apparently locating the “conversation paradigm” in the wrong decade of Oakeshott’s work - cf Kershaw ([20], 179). 30 This is of course merely to state the obvious. But one could also refer to the fascinating feature that the later Oakeshott was both at odds with postmodernism over its obsession with the mere “contingency” of political arrangements such as civil society, and in agreement with it over the oppressiveness of state managerialism. See Jones ([15], 23). As an extreme sceptic also about theories of causation (cf note 41, below), as well as being an enemy of the modern state, Oakeshott seems to be in tune with Foucault, but curiously, either the springs or the conclusions of his post-war philosophy are distinctively conservative.

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historical texts which are to underpin any political theory for modern Asian societies that is based on his own “correct understanding” of their past.31 Before engaging further, and by way of a stepping stone towards a conclusion, with this question of texts and the authority of Western historiography of Southeast Asia, one other aspect of the Singapore lecture needs to be readdressed (its unfriendly allusion to the discipline of International Relations), and also a non-aspect or unexplained lacuna (human rights). Milner does not come across particularly as a “political activist”, at least one engaged on the side of the “downtrodden masses”, albeit the durability of oppression is possibly implied by passing references to postmodern gurus Habermas, Derrida and Foucault in their guises as champions of the poor and theorists of the “negotiation of change”.32 And yet...the leaders of ASEAN seem to be cast in the tacit role of an “honorary proletariat” where it is insinuated that their capacity for inter-state harmonisation through “talk”, or their self-confidence about that, are somewhat undermined by a non-Asian academic theory that the basis of their success is not dialogue but “balance of power”. A principal carrier of this insidious “virus” of “false consciousness” (the present writer’s terms) into their midst is identified as the late Professor Michael Leifer of the L.S.E. While acknowledging Leifer’s dependence on the work of Southeast Asian native scholars, or of Westerners who worked with Southeast Asian languages, for much of his understanding of the cultural context of interstate relations, no one who knew him well could fail to be struck by his penetrating perception and the judiciousness of all his judgements, whether in “IR” or the internal dynamics (cultural and political) of the countries of the region. Without knowing any of this, one could still guess at it by extrapolation from his observable “human skills” and all other ideal

31

Another dimension which Milner ought to build into his idea of Southeast Asian history, because it would often explain the deep divisions which he wishes to see transcended, is the dimension of international competition and exogenous cultural currents. (One suspects a possible reluctance to do so, when observing Milner’s denial that an external balance of power is necessary in order to preserve stability in the present day: see next paragraph.) Regarding “outside forces” in recent history, again the compelling example of Cambodia must be cited. In case any prophet of the “uniqueness of Southeast Asia” is inclined to dismiss the Khmer Rouge as essentially an aberration due to “external factors” (Marxist indoctrination in France, Vietnamese expansionism, the prestige of Mao, and so on), it surely also needs to be said, for balance, that Southeast Asia has long been a theatre of, indeed has been formed by, competing external factors in no small degree. Aside from the question of affinities between Malay Islamic revival in the late 19th and 20th centuries, certainly the Islamic fundamentalism entering through the present “globalising” world merely builds on successive waves of Islamisation from the Middle East and India, which have made Milner’s Malay society one of the less pristine social phenomena of Southeast Asia, some may say though no less prone, for all that, to be divided by dispute between the old and the new theological tendencies, old and new absolutisms. Meanwhile, Cambodia illustrates how interpretation of the impact of foreign inroads in the past can become a basis for bitter factional dispute in the present – a feature which surely complicates the task of a foreign adviser on “the uses of history”.

32

Thus not as cynics proclaiming that the meaning of any statement is so inherent in the language of its expression that it can never be unlocked and reliably interpreted, if referring to the past (this includes both historical actors on their deeds and motives, and the historians who write about them); or translated into action, if referring to future intention, including (surely, too!) intention of a politically resistant kind (yet again a web of postmodernist contradiction!). In his A.N.U incarnation Milner has eschewed any more radical expressions of the school.

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and enviable attributes as a teacher of graduate students. The glowing tribute by the former Singapore Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, upon Leifer’s death, suggests that he had brought the same qualities to bear in his informal interactions as a political adviser, and was very far from being out of touch with Southeast Asian reality.33 Now no doubt a postmodernist critic would object that no “reality” is independent of the linguistic categories or sociological theory employed by an observer, while a perspective in a slightly earlier Marxist mould would add that Leifer was surely welcome in Singapore elite circles because he supplied ideological rationalisation for an established domestic and regional order. However, any such thoughts could be immediately refuted by referring to Leifer’s balanced acknowledgement of the existence of interstate dialogue34- a vital element in regional order yet not a sufficient condition of it in the outlook and practice of the regional states. There was no question of promoting a dogmatically “Realist” doctrine. If he had an “agenda” it would have favoured regional order, but not by any route other than what the region had pragmatically adopted and proved workable - including dialogue, though not excluding conventional defence arrangements and a certain attachment to “countervailing power” from outside.35 Noticeably, in the very act of eyeing Asia’s “next hegemon” (China) with some nervousness and toying with the need for a new multilateralism (some form of defence treaty) as the US became an uncertain quantity in the East Asian equation, the regional decision-makers showed not a little sensitivity to the possibility that China might be provoked by such a clear expression of balance-of-power thinking, so they preferred to stick with mutual engagement at a lower-than-military level. Michael Leifer did not condemn this; he simply noted that the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) was an imperfect instrument, in the present circumstances, for realizing its quite ambitious goals; the prior existence of a stable balance of power might, ironically, help these goals to be realized; meanwhile it was not unreasonable to proceed cautiously, lest a seemingly more favourable balance should turn out to add to the very uncertainty it was intended to obviate.36

33

For indulgence towards Leifer’s non-language based expertise, see Leo Suryadinata in Chin and Suryadinata (eds.) ([5], p 364). On his high standing in the eyes of Lee Kuan Yew, and a Foreign Office connection, see Yahuda [43].

Leifer described the process of intergovernmental dialogue as “a prophylactic in itself against any incidence of conflict” – though this did not amount to a “peace process”. He also stressed that ASEAN was “best understood as an institutionalized, albeit relatively informal, expression of ‘cooperative security’ which may serve as both a complement and as an alternative to balance-of-power practice.” See Chin and Suryadinata (eds.) ([5], pp 120, 122). This is all on the same wavelength as Simon [38], which speaks of two paradigms in play in ASEAN, mutually balancing rather than competing, and whereby the principal benefit of the neoliberal comprises the fact that the gains from cooperation, being absolute and not “zero sum”, are shared by all participants in the system. 34

35

While balance of power could be seen as salient, perhaps fundamental, in Leifer’s account of Southeast Asian regional affairs, he never elevated it to “an immutable law of state behaviour in an anarchic world”: Chin Kin Wah, in Chin and Suryadinata (eds.) ([5], p 25). 36 In Chin and Suryadinata (eds.) ([5], p 156). Inexplicably, the paper in question, on the merits of multilateralism, is the very same as that which Milner ([29], 6) berates as the work of a “severe critic” dismissing the “ASEAN model” as one of “multilateral dialogue”.

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On the basis of an antipathy expressed in rather few words one can hardly be confident of what really underlies it. One might be tempted to suspect, in the first instance, a streak of postmodernist prejudice towards the very precision and objectivity of Leifer’s analyses, and the lack of any clear, let alone “fashionable”, political position. As Halliday has written, “Post-modernists make much of their concern for the dominated, the marginal, the subaltern: yet this is accompanied by prescriptive vacuity and a conceit that they are the first and only people to exhibit such a commitment. Time and again the writers of this tendency resort to stylistic devices, of mannered tentativeness and the hanging apodictic, when substantive analysis, of history or concepts, seems to fail” ([13], 39). However, some lines by Michael Leifer himself, from 1996, are even more certainly apposite - almost uncannily and prophetically so. “In academic and political debate on regional security with [sic] Southeast Asia, a dismissive attitude has arisen towards the concept and practice of balance of power. The conventional wisdom is that balance of power is a mechanical contrivance of European provenance which is not suitable for regional circumstances, especially in the wake of the Cold War. Indeed, the criticism goes further in suggesting that indulgence in the balance of power would be a self-affliction best confined to the dust-bin of history along with colonialism because it would provoke confrontation and not facilitate reconciliation.” (Chin and Suryadinata (eds.), [5], p 152). True to form, a few pages later Milner mocks Realism in International Relations for seeing only a world of bitterly competing states. What seems to be at least partly in play here is a profound divergence between exponents of two disciplines - as if (rather appropriately!) they are in bitter competition too - yet one that is exacerbated by an apparent unfamiliarity, on the part of the historian, with any writing by, or about, those of the Realist tendency. Whether he has even given much attention to the work of Michael Leifer is a moot point, for he makes no attempt to distinguish between security based on one external power (US?) balancing another potential hegemon (China?); and its necessary substitute if that fails or is rejected, armed collective security among the states of the affected region; or the feature which has long characterised ASEAN, individual defence capacities designed to deter avaricious neighbours.37 Realism has, in its long history, given rise to a wealth of variation, not always totally pessimistic about human nature, yet even where it is (as, for instance in Thomas Hobbes), never committed to consolidating that unfortunate state of affairs, but on the contrary to finding ways of facing up to the challenge of “anarchy”, the

37

We saw in the paragraph before last that Leifer noted that the emergence of such an arrangement was inhibited by sensitivity towards the potential unfriendly hegemon itself. In his piece on balance of power: see Chin and Suryadinata (eds.) ([5], p 153), he also attributed this to a conviction that alliances are contrary to the “spirit of non-alignment”. It does seem incumbent on a critic of the US role in the Asia/ Pacific or ASEAN power balance to say what realistic alternative he prefers – given that, while affecting to fill the vacuum with “talk-generated political cohesion”, the ASEAN states pursue the kind of individual force modernization which bespeaks nervousness about their neighbours’ intentions, in other words about any possible vacuum in the balance of power among themselves. We intuit that the divergence between ASEAN pretension and this dimension of praxis poses a slight difficulty for anyone hoping to prescribe within the parameters of the declaratory doctrine exclusively.

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better to realize that security and stability on which the alternative values of harmony and social progress depend for their fulfilment.38 Still, in very recent history, Realism has been quite successfully and fashionably branded as a formula which perpetuates inflexible mindsets from the Cold War era and was being used by American conservatives to warn the US not to drop its guard or believe the fiction that the world had transcended the balance of power because of the sheer multiplicity of new actors and the shifting of alliances. A handful among any gathering of Asian intelligentsia might respond well to the hint that a visting academic was anti-US because he was against one of the doctrines which reputedly served American interests. But Milner may sincerely believe that Realism is far more normative than descriptive - while perhaps finding less objectionable on that score the more “harmony-emphasizing” theories, and especially the operative doctrine of ASEAN.39 One other angle that was promised, to round off the discussion of Return of History, was going to relate to the - in fact missing - dimension of international human rights. Here, even more than with the question of balance of power and Realism, one will have to resort to speculation. At any rate, it might have been expected that, given the risk of being branded an interfering “cultural imperialist” alongside the patent generic affinity of the Milner prescriptions with the aims of reform movements worldwide, the lecturer would link his discovery of the harmonizing potential of ancient Southeast Asian culture to a declaration that while admittedly he was a human rights promoter, the form of institutionalized human rights (or civil association or whatever) which he had in mind for 21st century Southeast Asia could and should take distinctively Southeast Asian forms, untainted by any origins in the Western Enlightenment or association with the Westerninspired UN Declaration of Human Rights, whether or not mediated through Australia. Milner cannot be unaware (despite the suspected lacunas in his IR reading) that a number of political scientists have addressed this task already, the better (maybe) to promote their cause by removing its negative, universalist connotations.40

A gem of modern commentary – by an “agnostic” (that is, one who appreciates the insights of Realism but does not call himself a Realist) – is Donnelly [8]. To meet a diametrically different man from the Milner image, a reading of Roberts [36] is recommended. 38

39

A stimulating essay on the image of Realism and/or balance of power thinking, published some seven months before the world-shaking event of 11th September (which in some ways perhaps shattered balance of power assumptions though still not in the minds of American “Neo-Cons”), was Freedman [10]. Incidentally, Milner’s presumed attachment to neoliberalism or liberal internationalism seems compatible in general spirit with Oakeshott’s formula for national cohesion, and the rejection of Realism is in tune with Oakeshott’s hatred of theory and ideology (see next paragraph), but as remarked earlier in this section, the “conversation paradigm” relates to nations, not international groupings of nations. At the same time (cf next paragraph, on liberalism), contempt for ideology particularly rules out indulgence towards ethnic separatisms. 40 Not least, Brown [4]; Parekh [34]; Penna and Campbell [35]. Brown sees the currently promoted universal human rights agenda as too Western-derived to have any resonance or viability in other societies, but one could wait patiently for their long-term “neo-Hegelian” evolution towards something “higher”; Parekh also recommends that cultural difference should not be defied, but instead of pure relativism one could resort to a species of minimalism which would fit all; while potentially much more helpful to Milner’s cause is Penna and Campbell’s approach from traditional rights-bestowing institutions in African societies.

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But inconveniently, an Oakeshottian cannot even promote Western liberalism with a good conscience, for his “prophet” regarded it as just one more expression of rationalist hubris - yet another theory calculated to frustrate human fulfillment!41 In the end, the case for liberalism in Southeast Asian societies (both the why and the how) may be better served, politically, by rhetoric and a cautious vagueness. It might be particularly difficult to find (in order to establish “pro-Asian credentials” in face of suspicions of “Australian cultural imperialism”) a “bogeyman” in the human rights field both as prominent and as vulnerable as the deceased Michael Leifer in International Relations. To say that the field into which Milner was venturing is full of pitholes is an understatement. He was brave to take the chance - in Singapore of all places, an intellectual power-house of “Asian Values” but defined in a distinctly non-Milnerian way - unless he was simply “an innocent abroad”!42 Among various other queries prompted by the venture is how a scholarcampaigner for rights as a “security strategy” would hope to stay in the good graces of both the Asian N.G.O.s (which generally do not find universal human rights too alien for their liking) and the security services of Southeast Asia (who tend to view human rights and civil society precisely as a big part of the problem, and are not less convinced of this when they notice how Islamists engage in civil society action too!)?43

Chimeras of Relevance The impulse to “make a contribution” beyond purely academic analysis may be not uncommonly felt by “students of the Third World”, whether their inclination is towards working with their governments and Asian counterparts, or against them as agents of Asian opposition movements. But disciplines such as history and linguistics do not lend themselves obviously to the function of “applied science”. The urge to be involved, but correspondingly the frustration, could be compounded where at any point in the life cycle an individual also begins to see attractions in a high public profile for its own sake. In this context, postmodernism comes to the rescue by extending opportunities to “progressive” scholars in the Arts to become

41

This is a point made early on in Kelly [16], by way of introducing the first note of scepticism as to why Parekh would have turned to Oakeshott for ideas. Among other antipathies of Oakeshott are found to be “political science” and even any attempt to trace and pin down historical causation: Birch [3]. The “vulnerability” of Michael Leifer, if at all such an expectation was in play, would surely not be borne out among most of the likely audience - in Michael Leifer’s former stronghold. Whether or not reflecting a conscious ploy, these passages in the lecture were not well-judged for the time and place of their delivery. As for “human rights versus Asian Values” polemics in the Singapore arena, one thinks of contributions (among many others) like Mahbubani [22]. It must have occasioned some chagrin that Milner’s Oakeshottian proposition that the “art of conversation” was a value of ASEAN diplomacy could not safely be described as an “Asian Value” in the context of domestic governance too, for it is precisely and exclusively a concept for domestic application (cf note 39, above).

42

A well-focused discussion of the dilemmas of the civil society enterprise in face of the “security discourse” of the region is Lizée [21]. At least, Milner’s seeming caution about “universal human rights” suggests a degree of alertness, which fits well with his 1990s Project for weaning the Australians off that ideology.

43

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politically engaged - through a mission to reform their disciplines themselves, these being seen as tools of vested interests, indeed of an insidious conspiracy for control of thought and suppression of freedom. However, when “Cornell came to Kent”, it brought another significant doctrine for Southeast Asianists in its baggage: the primary importance of primary records. Being sometimes enunciated in tandem with postmodernism, this doctrine must have been intended to be understood as urging the critical scrutiny of these records, i.e. their “interrogation” in a sort of deconstructionist spirit, yet not taking this to the nihilistic extreme at which the hope of ever achieving some conclusion among alternative interpretations or arbitrarily shifting meanings simply evaporated. But was there not a latent “conflict of interest” between the two doctrinal positions? The problem of losing faith in one’s very own judgments as a historian surely becomes particularly acute where the text to be parsed is in an Asian language, possibly an archaic form of it, for here the normal difficulty highlighted by postmodernism, about “obscured meanings”, is tangibly enhanced many times over by cultural ignorance and a linguistic barrier. It is observable that such disabilities do sometimes afflict historians of Southeast Asia more than social scientists, for the rather obvious, if ironical, reasons that (a) finding, reading and “interrogating” the precious texts does not necessitate a prolonged sojourn in the relevant society; (b) the society that is truly relevant to the text, having produced it, is one which no longer exists anyway. And yet, for all that, the postmodernist Western historian may cultivate the vanity that a text which is the work of single writer would be found - subject to the filter of the historian’s sceptical “interrogation”, of course - to speak for the experience of the whole society if one could be transported back in time.44 The writer of this essay has taken the liberty of “interrogating a text” of Tony Milner himself, with a view to eliciting its less conspicuous “meanings”. The writer has felt perfectly justified, from a “postmodernist” standpoint - as he understands it - in attempting to contextualize the lecture in terms of the known previous intellectual development of its author, in the hope that it yields some authority for such dynamic prescription in the present. The awful irony is that that personal past itself throws up simultaneous challenges of interpretation; it is a history in its own right. But the task cannot be shirked.

The idea behind “interrogation”, it appears, was to approach texts (the “tixts” as they came to be known, half-affectionately, to the previously uninitiated) with a willingness not to accept the meaning intended by their authors (i.e. to “read them against the grain”, or “between the lines”, in order to guess how the non-power holders may have experienced or thought about colonial policy). If done without conceit, this endeavour seems no more than what good historians might often have tried to do before. But the potential for seeing the records through an ideological prism or any other preconception – precisely what postmodernist criticism warns us against – is patent, and perhaps a simple matter of definition when the historian sets out to use the past as a foundation for bold political prescription in the direction, astonishingly, of change (see further, three paragraphs on). Quite recently a leading historian of Southeast Asia has commented, about “the injunction of Tony Milner and others to read ‘between the lines”, that “while one can ‘interrogate’ sources, they cannot answer back, and there is always a risk of finding between the lines things that are not really there” ([40], 215). 44

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Most difficult of all is to intuit an explanation of the fact that the AustraliaAsia Perceptions Project aimed to inculcate a sensitive appreciation of Southeast Asian authoritarianism, thus “off-message” from the agenda of earlier work, but only a few years ahead of a lecture which aspired to stimulate an aversion from this, in favour of an implied, broad programme of - tacitly, Australian-inspired - human rights (this Australian inspiration is very much “onmessage”; but felicitously, Southeast Asian elites have a latent affinity for that cultural complex, and only need to be reminded of it, as we have seen). Still, where the lecture advises sensitivity towards Islamic fundamentalist sentiment at the Indonesian grass-roots, quoting a point raised by another Australian academic at a seminar, it seems again to be advocating Australian adjustment to an absolutist reality, though in the guise of calling for empathy with the marginalised ([29], 36). It may be that in many cases, differing emphases are two sides of a single coin, more compatible than appears at first sight. A little analogously, Australian elites must adjust to government practices in Southeast Asia which they lack the power to control, yet an Australian academic has nothing to lose by pointing out for the benefit of Southeast Asian elites the dysfunctional aspects of the same authoritarianism within their own territories, which they do have a little power to curb by self-control, as a sequel to self-knowledge. What is more especially risible is the assumption that such a change of political culture would comprise but a small shift from historical forms. In reality, it involves as much of a “Cultural Revolution” as the prescriptions of the Australia-Asia Perceptions Project do for Australians. And we should anticipate that this will be especially difficult to achieve where, as now, Australian and ASEAN government elites are much more strategically united, in identifying the principal enemy as the super-absolutist al-Qaeda and similar organisations operating in Southeast Asia hardly the most inviting focus for the respective “understanding” or “tolerance” which the said government elites are enjoined to develop.45 Meanwhile, although it does not seem quite apposite to call the Project “postmodernist” if the detachment from established Australian norms was enjoined for the purpose of convergence on sets of established Asian norms, it is precisely a postmodernist spirit that has motivated Tony Milner in his academic career, not least in connection with his conviction that language lies at the root of all human misunderstanding. However, to set oneself up as an opponent of institutionalised academic doctrine and practice (almost more alert to distortion in the work of fellow historians than in the primary texts, though taking on political science, especially “IR”, even more aggressively!), and also as a critic of dominant political norms not only in one’s native land but in the countries which one has chosen for academic study, surely needs some special justification: (a) in face of the logical anti-postmodernist objection that

45 On the march of Islamism since “9/11”, see sources cited in Kershaw ([20], 182). With regard to the ideology of states, his target for “understanding” and “self-correction” respectively, Milner knows well the resilience of authoritarian tradition, even when not immune to the impact of modernization, from his work on Malay modernization: Milner [28] (cf the commentary in note 21, above; the ideology of kerajaan had proved its durability even where the term had acquired a new referent).

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postmodernist critics themselves may be as subject to human intellectual frailty as those “lesser brethren” in their critical sights; (b) considering (as inferred above) that the historian’s cultural-cum-linguistic skills may not (sadly enough) set him much apart from the majority of his own ethnic group; (c) taking account, where applicable, of the fact that the critic promotes diametrically opposite positions for two target groups, even while in both cases setting out to banish “misunderstanding”; and most of all, (d) when it seems that, although obliquely consistent with a “pro-Asian” orientation of the scholar’s earlier work, a prescription for Southeast Asian governance which is (however diplomatically or “non-ethnocentrically” expressed) highly emancipatory for the masses is hardly true to the bulk of evidence about the past which is supposed to legitimate it. We will recall that Milner’s own reading of 19th century records, and his critique of the readings by others, privileged the upper class of the Malays, not in fact the Malays as a whole! Yet emancipation breaks up, it does not consolidate, past structures and historic norms. Veritably, a very heavy burden is laid upon the art of reading the records “against the grain”, and a historian will need a quite exceptional self-confidence, not self-doubt, about his methodology! This is why it may be permissible to apply the principle which Tony Milner himself has enunciated in relation to the British Malayan historians and seek “to know more about the intellectual formation of the historians themselves”, not to mention “the considerations that made [this type of] men act.” Most specifically, what was it about the Cornell Southeast Asia Program which could elevate its graduates onto such a high subjective pedestal, both as masters of insight in their areas of specialization and, by semi-logical extension, mentors in cultural self-knowledge and political transformation on an international stage, including that part of it to which the insight refers? Alternatively or in combination (this is more speculative, of course, but one strives to “interrogate the material” correctly), could one perhaps enquire as to the earlier formative experiences of individual recruits to the programme: in particular, induction into university study at a time of “student revolt”, linked partly to the anti-Vietnam War movement; and, more generally, the questioning of received social taboos, conventions and institutions in all Western societies, with the heady atmosphere which that, too, engendered among segments of a rising generation? Such experiences did not need to create recruits for radical political commitment, but could conceivably foster a stronger disposition to embrace the sceptical, “post-structuralist” approach (not to be confused with the “approach from social structure”) towards Southeast Asian historical texts which reigned (if it already did) at West Avenue on the Ithaca campus, while implanting a deeper, long-term yearning for political relevance, linked to a necessary confidence in the charisma of the Alma Mater as a conduit, by contagion or osmosis, of the “gift of tongues”. The political relevance could be that of placing another, related gift - “getting inside the Southeast Asian experience” through the conceptual treasury of the chosen Southeast Asian language - at the service of the people of Southeast Asia themselves, subject to rescripting as a new medium of international persuasion, no less, if not more, ideological than the languages taught in the language labs. If there was a cost

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to pay eventually, it would not, presumably, have been felt as seriously significant. It would involve departure from the original agenda of political postmodernism and the postmodernist’s studied detachment from university procedures - dedicated as they cognately were to the subversion of “structures of power”- in the direction of a more reconciled and collaborationist position as an adviser to governments. But this could perfectly well be rationalised as service to the peoples of both Asia and Australia which those governments rule, even when the recommended “adjustments” are contradictory - a virtuously “liberal” prescription for Asian states being belied by a “reactionary” prescription for one’s own political authority in its dealings with them. At any rate, exponents of detachment from the imperatives of their own society would expect to be able to foster a gift of “getting inside the Southeast Asian experience” much more quickly in the conducive atmosphere of the Cornell campus. On the other hand, this aptitude, as some people with long memories inconveniently know, was a gift which any colonial officials who possessed it had perforce had to cultivate in long relationships with native society, though not becoming too detached from the interests (and an instrumental insistence on punctilious reporting) of the imperial bureaucracy which had put them there. This perspective, if valid, casts a slight shadow over fancies - if any such have crystallized - that a fast-track Cornell background bestows special authority for political prescription.46 No clear conclusion emerges from this extended line of ratiocination. Readers may judge, negatively, that such a lengthy “visit” to an episode in the more obscure reaches of Western intellectual history was hardly worth the trouble, at least if the “relevance” hoped for by the scholar in our sights, necessarily an elusive quality by his own theoretical lights, is never confirmed by any impact on the real world. For the present writer’s taste, one way to seal relevance would be to ask whether postmodernism, the more subtle instrument of socio-economic-political analysis and radical reform, which took the place of Marxism at the latter’s demise, is really equal to the challenge of analysing revolutionary Islamism, new enemy of both the West, and modern capitalist Asia, and their “ideological superstructures”. And whether it is conceivable that the new revolutionary force is so fundamentally new that even the most “relevant” scheme for prescription on the foundation of “lessons of the past” (even were it to extend indulgence to native absolutist ideologies persisting today) will now prove unrealizable and redundant.

46

The writer’s direct experience of Cornell comprised one month in 1967, when he was the beneficiary of a scholarship of the “London-Cornell Project” (funded on the British side by the Nuffield Foundation) in support of his doctoral research in Kelantan, N.E.Malaya. Two personalities in particular are recalled. Visiting Professor Tom Harrisson distinguished himself on campus by his vocal (and sometimes inebriate) contempt for the inflated “dichotomising” by “faculty” (the academics), and was kind enough to compliment and encourage the writer for being, as he thought, much more firmly rooted in the Southeast Asian village sphere. George Kahin made a deep impression of a different kind, with the forthright politicisation of his graduate class on Southeast Asian politics and international relations, at least on the occasion when a course paper was set on the subject of the U.S. Administration’s recent White Paper on Vietnam, and the students were left in little doubt that they would be ill-advised to dissent from Kahin’s view that the White Paper was characterised by gross ignorance of Vietnamese culture and history.

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Roger Kershaw graduated in Modern History from Oxford, 1961, and completed a Ph.D. in Political Science at SOAS, London, 1969, with a thesis on the political integration of the Buddhist Thai minority in Kelantan, Malaysia-an area with which he had become familiar, and where he had learnt Malay, while teaching history at the leading high school in the State. His first university post was in Southeast Asian Studies at Hull, 1968–70, followed by a similar position at Kent, 1970–83, and ten years in the Education Service of Brunei. He is the author of Monarchy in Southeast Asia (Routledge 2001).