Malaysian Historiography: A Further Look

Abstract

The writer of this article takes issue with a group of younger Malaysian historians and other scholars who choose to forsake "conventional history" (descriptive/narrative) and who prefer to view Malaysian history from a different perspective. Such scholarly concern, he argues, can hardly justify itself by using theories and by following trends in Europe and America especially when gaps still exist in Malaysian historiography such as the lack of detailed accounts of the lives of Indian immigrant labourers during the colonial period, biographical studies and the history of towns in peninsular Malaysia. The main target of his critique is a recently-published work of the above-mentioned group entitled The Underside of Malaysian History.