グレーター・マレーシア 一九六一-一九六七-帝国の黄昏と東南アジア人-

冷戦の終焉と六〇年代性

抄録

The aim of this article is to rethink why the twin nation of Malaysia and Singapore, emerged. Malaysia is a nation that the Malay-Muslims dominate, Singapore is a nation the Chinese make its core part, but both have strong transnational linkages in Maritime Southeast Asia and the global economy. This article reviews the emergence, focusing on transformation of collaborative relationship between the British government, the Federal government (Malaya, later Malaysia) and Singapore government, which made the formal and the informal British Empire in Southeast Asia.
Malaysia and Singapore emerged at the end of Empire. What moved the Metropole and the local collaborators to make Greater Malaysia —Malaysia including Singapore— was an impulse to restructure the British Empire. Against communism in Southeast Asia, they tried to build a new united nation, which would become a new imperial collaborator. However the attempt to embed the conventional collaborator in a new federation led to conflicts among them. The Federal government and the Singapore government both had similar industrialization plans which competed with each other. However, Britain paid little attention to the old collaborators such as Singaporean, because they put more importance in the stability of a new junior partner. Therefore, Singaporean could do nothing but leave the Federation, and without the non-Muslim Singaporeans, Malaysia became more and more Malay-Muslim- oriented. The old Empire fell and a new order emerged. After the failure of Greater Malaysia, the British lost their will and power to maintain their Empire. The new rising power, the United States, did not make an empire, unlike the former imperial powers. She encouraged an anti-communism regionalism, and tried to organize people into a global economy. The Southeast Asians accepted the new power and became local collaborators of the imperialism without empire
Nationalism played little role in the formation of two nations. Rather, the Federal government and Singapore government worked for their preservation of imperial privileges as imperial collaborators. They worked for the colonial grand design for the reorganization of Empire. Singapore left the Federation to defend its economic autonomy rather than their multiethnic policy. The divided Southeast Asians decided to live as different nations in the new order supported by the new power, to utilize regionalism and globalism.
Decolonization saw its peak in 1960s. In many cases, empires advanced to decolonize with collaboration between the metroples and the local collaborators. Therefore, it was not necessarily accompanied by nation-building. The collaborators conflicted with each other. Irresponsible imperialists renounced their burden, and invented a situation of so-called quasi-states. those left engaged in nation-building and globalization, which sometimes contradict.