One can speak of various kinds or trends of Malay Studies, depending on what Karl Mannheim terms the ‘style of thought’ or ‘basic intention’. To state Mannheim’s idea simply, each discernible style of thought would have its own social groups as its bearer with its own vested interests, which in turn determine the radius of the group’s ideas. The group’s processes of thinking are coordinated by the basic intention of either opposing or justifying a particular social order as dictated by the group interests. The group’s interests would determine which ideas it would admit into consciousness or reject. In this way this influences the group’s angle of vision, statement of problems and its overall development or blocking of ideas. As a consequence, it is no accident that a particular group ‘discovers’ a certain perspective while “failing to grasp or understand other perspectives or points of view”.

​One notable kind or mode of Malay Studies is that founded by colonial personalities like R.O. Winstedt, Frank Swettenham, Hugh Clifford, R.A. Wilkinson, and several others. One aim or tendency of their studies is to inform would-be colonial administrators of conditions and situations in the colonies. Another aim would be to alert investors of the economic opportunities in the region. A more mundane concern was to inform the public in the mother country of the exotic aspects of culture in the colonies. On the whole it cannot be said that their works were motivated by the intention to develop a branch of human knowledge in the interests of the indigenous people in the widest sense of it. The basic tendency of their thinking and ideas is to deny legitimacy to the indigenous population and its culture, explicitly or implicitly, thereby justifying colonial rule and the moral superiority that goes with it.

​In the above lie the strengths and weaknesses of colonial writings on the Malays. They left us valuable descriptions of culture and institutions of pre-colonial days for contemporary research. We would be the poorer academically or intellectually speaking without the records left behind by the colonials. In all objectivity we can even say that they left us more records of the pre-colonial culture and society than the indigenous elite themselves. On the negative side, however, the records they left behind were greatly marred by the perspectives brought to bear on the rich materials gathered. They suffer on the interpretative aspects and the cultural meanings drawn from them. Substantially, many of the works indulge in sweeping generalisation which, because of their broad stroke, say very little really.

​It is not the aim of this short essay to be a comprehensive study or critique of colonial ideas but merely to resort to some illustrations to make its points clear. On the overgeneralisations of colonial writers to a point of obscurity, consider this description of Malay culture by Winstedt:

“Malay culture includes a fear of nature spirits, and instinctive perception of the ‘unbecoming’ rather that of the sinful and the criminal, the séance of the shaman, the Hindu ritual of a royal installation, the celebration of the Muhammadan New Year, the sermon in the mosque, the pilgrimage to Mecca, Sufi mysticism, the Hamlet of the Malay opera, the curry, football, the cinema, and the mistranslations of the vernacular press. It includes, indeed much more, but compared with (comparatively few) great cultures of the world it has been derivative, owing ideas and practices to prehistoric influences of central Asia, to the kingship and architecture of Assyria and Babylon, to bronze-workers and weavers from Indo-China, to religion and arts and literature of India, to the religion and literature of Persia and Arabia, to the material civilisation of Portugal, Holland and the Great Britain and to the remote but compelling fantasies of Hollywood.”

Those aspiring to understand Malay culture as reflected in the values and ideals of the Malays would find little to go by in the above description of Malay culture.

​To a great extent, colonial works are so interest bound that the sense of objectivity is obscured and the idea of reality distorted. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in their description and judgement of the Malays. In an official guide to the Federated Malay States, one finds many distorted ideas on the Malays. The Malays are described as very lazy people, so much so it is in their nature to sleep under the fruit trees while expecting the fruits to simply drop into their gaping mouth without any effort on their part.

The same work passed an interesting comment on the fishing traps used by Malays which is most revealing on the nature of colonial prejudice. It is remarked that the fishing trap of the Malays is so ingenious and effective, in the sense it is labour saving, it could have been invented only by the lazy Malays. There is no doubt that the writer would have heaped praises on inventors from his own civilisation, responsible for labour-saving machines or devices, which had made the life of many more pleasant. The colonial writer concerned would have attributed the invention of such machines or devices to the ingenuity of his civilisation, not to their laziness.

​Colonial prejudice influenced too the raising of problems or theorising. We have a mundane example from the travelogue of a well-known European lady writer. She contemplated on no less an intriguing subject than the Malay sarong. Noting the simplicity of the sarong, and how the Malays frequently adjust their garment, she contemplates whether it was the lazy inclination of the Malays which led them to adopt the use of the sarong or was it the wearing of the sarong which made the Malays lazy. Whatever the causal direction between the two factors, Malay laziness is taken as given. What remains to be explained is the causal relationship between Malay sarong and Malay laziness.

​The tendency to overgeneralise, bordering on caricature, can be discerned in the work of Sir Frank Swettenham. We have various descriptions of the Malays from him. That the Malays are “extravagant, fond of borrowing money, and very slow in repaying it”. It is said that they are “lazy to a degree, is without method or order of any kind, knows no regularity even in the hours of his meals, and considers time as of no importance. His house is untidy, even dirty, but he bathes twice a day, and is very fond of personal adornment in the shape of smart clothes.” The title of his work notwithstanding, The Real Malay, no people can be devoid of order and these elements altogether.

​There is a demonic character trait in the Malay. Swettenham writes:

“A Malay is intolerant of insult or slight; it is something that to him should be wiped out in blood. He will brood over a real or fancy stain on his honour until he is possessed by the desire for revenge. If he cannot wreak it on the offender, he will strike out at the first human being that comes his way, male or female, old or young. It is this state of blind fury, this vision of blood, that produces the amok.”

Such trait cannot be a universal trait for any people, though cases of it can be cited from almost all societies. Note for instance, in the United States and United Kingdom, various shooting incidents of children in school or students in university campuses had been recorded.

​Swettenham is rather sweeping too in what he sees as the life stages of the Malays. “A Malay is religious when young but avail himself of life pleasures in his youth.” Until the age of sixteen, “he is religious, studious even, open-handed, gambles, gets into debt, runs away with his neighbour’s wife, and generally asserts himself”.

​Apart from the image of the Malays as anarchic and unruly, lazy and lacking discipline, we read the image of the Malays as a simple child of nature, who needed the paternalistic intervention of the colonial power. They would not have survived history had it not been for the patronage and protection of the colonial authority. In this vein, we have the following description of the Javanese by a European lady:

“The simple Malay has not yet adopted the critical and unbelieving attitude which rubs the gilt off the gingerbread or the bloom off the plum, and his fervid faith in the mythical heroes and necromantic exploits gives him the key to that kingdom of fancy often closed to a sadder if wiser world.”

They are too simple to be capable of life plans or self-determinism, requiring the benevolence and paternalistic protection of Western civilisation. For example it is written:

“The idle gambling Malay, though an expert hunter and fisher, takes no thought for the morrow, and is protected by the Dutch Government from ruin by an enforced demand of rice for storage, according to the numbers of the family. Every village contains the great store Baru of plaited palm leaves, so that, in case of need the confiscated rice can be doled out to the improvident native, who thus contributes to the support of his family in times of scarcity. This regulation relieves want without paupering, the common garner merely serving as a compulsory savings bank.”

This idea of the indigenous requiring protection or patronage from colonial authority against themselves is prevalent in colonial works. One such remark from this lady reads: “Many salutary laws benefit the Malays, possessing, a notable share of tropical slackness, and the lack of initiative partly due to a servile past under the sway of tyrannical native princes.” See the work of Swettenham, which makes beneficial colonial rule, in contrast to the past, a central theme of his writings.

​To achieve the aim of justifying colonialism, colonial works are replete with the direct contrast between Malay rule of the past and colonial rule. Driven by the ideological need to deny legitimacy to the Malay past, while conferring it upon itself, colonial style of thought presents the contrast as basically as emerging from the Dark Ages into the dawning of enlightenment, thanks to the civilising function of Western rule.