Situated Thinking or How the Science of Race was Socialised in British Malaya

This article focuses on the contextualisation of the science of race in colonial British Malaya. I argue that though British scientists brought their ideas of race and anthropological training with them to Malaya, the application and enunciation of those ideas underwent change due to the scientists’ encounters with other ways of conceiving of human difference. The dominance of the local term for Indigenous people, Sakai, and the awareness within colonial circles of ‘tamer’ and ‘wilder’ sections of this generalized group had to be taken into account by anthropological research. Physical anthropological studies by scholars such as W.W. Skeat and Nelson Annandale had to be rationalised not only within the developments of anthropological thinking on race but also within the social circumstances of their subjects of study and the colonial situation in Malaya. The resulting science of race was thus deeply socialised in the colonial context of British Malaya.‘THINKING’, SAID HISTORIAN OF SCIENCE IN THE ARCTIC MICHAEL BRAVO,‘is always situated’.1 A corollary of situated thinking about race is the socalisation or contextualisation of the science of race in specific places, times and settings. This paper examines a particular instance of situated racial thinking in British Malaya, highlighting the interplay between the colonial context and the racial science produced by anthropologists who worked there. Such situated knowledge mediates between metropolitan racial classifications and field experience

A Russian in Malaya: Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay’s Expedition to the Malay Peninsula and the Early Anthropology of Orang Asli

This article presents a critical overview of the newly translated diary of Russian anthropologist Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay's expedition to the Malay Peninsula(November 1874 – October 1875) to study its indigenous peoples, today known as Orang Asli. At the forefront of modern anthropological practice, Maclay spent long periods of time in the field in order to study different peoples and cultures during the nineteenth century. His expeditions to New Guinea, Australia and Melanesia are well-known in the history of anthropology but his travels in the Malay Peninsula remain poorly understood and little studied. Govor and Manickam present an analysis of their new translation and annotation of the diary, highlighting its contribution to racial theories of the region and to understanding the dynamics of Malay statecraft and British colonialism on the peninsula. The diary is also one of the earliest studies of indigenous people of the Malay Peninsula, thus giving historians and anthropologists alike a glimpse into indigenous life in the late-nineteenth century. The article will present excerpts from the diary that illustrate the main themes while framing the material within the history of anthropology of Orang Asli and of colonialism in the area

Ideas of nation and Malayness in Malaya 1809-1942: A history of inclusion and exclusion

Master'sMASTER OF ART

Not Just Skin Deep: Ideas of Racial Difference in Genetic Studies on Orang Asli from the 1950s

This chapter deals with the blood-group studies carried out by medical doctors Ivan Polunin and P.H.A. Sneath in Malaya in the 1950s and connects the application of this new technology to earlier ways of classifying indigenous people. The first part of this chapter traces the development of classification schemes for indigenous peoples of the Malay Peninsula from the 1800s until the 1930s when indigenous people became firmly divided into three groups and separated from Malays. Following the background into the basis and history of the tripartite division of indigenous people, I then delve into the blood-group studies of the 1950s and examine the rationale behind using blood-groups as a basis for a seemingly more objective classification of indigenous groups. The chapter ends with an assessment of the results of blood-group anthropology, and it positions these studies as the precursor to DNA studies of Orang Asli, which have burgeoned in the twenty-first century