Malaysia and the end of the Bretton Woods system 1965-72: disentangling from Sterling

This article examines the tense and complex monetary relationship between Britain, Singapore and Malaysia in the period from 1965 to 1972. It questions the assumption that Malaysia's economic significance to Britain was 'on the wane' by the 1960s. As the second largest government holder of sterling assets in the world, Malaysia should have been able to exert considerable leverage in London over the disposition of these assets. Ultimately, however, the very scale of these assets limited Malaysia's room for manoeuvre, as it could not sell off a significant proportion of them without undermining international confidence in the exchange rate of the pound and thereby precipitating the devaluation of its remaining sterling assets. The devaluation of sterling in 1967 emerges as a watershed in relations between London and Kuala Lumpur, with the Malaysians thereafter seeking to forge a more independent monetary policy. It is clear, however, that they did not actually succeed in doing so until 1972

Bordering on immoral: piracy, education, and the ethics of cross-border cooperation in the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle

The constructed and contingent nature of state borders raises a host of ethical questions regarding their legitimacy and the moral standing of the consequences they engender. This ‘ethical dimension’ is frequently central to how people living in border regions regard both the border and those living on either side of it. Studying border practices as ethical action offers important insights into borderland subjectivities and the factors underpinning the success or failure of cross-border cooperation. This argument is advanced with reference to the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle, a transnational arrangement which has been argued to herald the inception of the ‘borderless world’. Although in reality the region remains highly ‘bordered’, notions of ‘borderlessness’ endure as a normative ethical good for inhabitants of Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago. Their ethical stance subverts satisfying collaborations with Singaporeans in the fields of education and maritime security, and ironically works to propagate a sense of national cultural difference

Triangulating the borderless world: Geographies of power in the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle

10.1111/j.0020-2754.2004.00143.xTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers294485-49