Malaysia - A lot happens in 50 years. Chronicle of Malaysia records the newsworthy events.
Forget all those aphorisms about history: that knowing the past will help us make sense of the present, that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it, or about taking stock as an anniversary rolls around. Those who were expecting a scholarly discourse on the events that shaped this country from Chronicle of Malaysia (1957-2007): Fifty Years of Headline News would be better served by more authoritative history texts.
This hefty volume, however, will inform readers on major events since Independence and regale them with quirky stories and images of Malaysian life. As coffee-table books go, this one fares very well indeed. Filled with an estimated 2,000 stories and 1,500 pictures, including previously published and 18 specially commissioned illustrations from the ever-insightful Lat, it will certainly inspire conversation and alleviate boredom. Information is presented in short prose and very little jargon is used. It is a light read from a heavy tome.
The book`s 30-strong research team worked its way through more than 18,000 issues of local newspapers and magazines, including those no longer in print, and foreign magazines like Time, Newsweek, the Far Eastern Economic Review and Asia Magazine. Also included were press reports on Malaysia from Australia, Britain and Singapore.
Photographs and illustrations were selected from a number of sources, including foreign ones and private collections. The team also had access to the archives of The Star, The New Straits Times, Utusan Malaysia, Bernama, the National Archives, the Federal Information Department and Filem Negara.
Their task was to select stories of significance covering the whole spectrum of the Malaysian experience in the past 50 years and to present it in easily digestible news capsules.
“Reading the book is like standing in the grandstand and watching a parade of Malaysia`s past,” editor-in-chief Philip Mathews told The Star in an earlier report.
Chronicle of Malaysia certainly provides a view into many important events – the raising of the Malayan flag, the Emergency, the formation of Malaysia, Confrontation, the 1969 riots, political upheavals, financial crises, judicial landmarks, great sporting moments and cultural delights.
It begins with an introduction by historian Cheah Boon Kheng who gives a short but authoritative history of the Malay lands from early times to Independence.
Along with the year-by-year review of major news stories from Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore (from 1963 to 1965) and the Borneo states, there is also a timeline of international events, including developments in other parts of the region.
What the book hopes to do, as editorial committee chairman Tun Mohamed Hanif Omar has stated, is to “create a sense of nostalgia among older readers, while containing revelations for a younger audience”.
A favourite newsmaker who appears in the better part of Chronicle of Malaysia is our first Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman. There`s the iconic picture of the Tunku proclaiming Independence, his April 1963 Time cover portrait (which he was not very pleased with), a capsule together with a Lat classic of a bushy-moustachioed man asking a barber to trim it in the style of the Tunku`s and myriad other news items, images and quotes until his passing in 1990 at the age of 87.
The pictures in Chronicle of Malaysia, even if many of them are no bigger than postage stamps, are definitely a slice of history. This is where the book gets interesting. For example, big-name Malay actresses eating with chopsticks what could only be “Chinese” food in 1959, the Tunku saying hello the Maori way in 1960, and 1974`s protesting Universiti Malaya students (whose activities Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, then an untitled education minister, likened to those of Communist terrorists), are especially telling of the “liberalism” of the past.
Then there are pictures that could have come from a personal album or scrapbook: a very young and multi-racial group from an early batch of women police officers (1959); a Malay wedding procession whose finery is marred by surgical masks to protect against the haze (1997); and Siti Norma Yaakob, 24, the first Malay woman barrister appointed assistant in the Federation Registry of the Supreme Court in Kuala Lumpur in 1963, who appears again in 2005 (now a Datuk), when she was appointed Chief Judge of Malaya, another first for a woman.
Chronicle of Malaysia is a book that will reveal much if you take your time with it. The front page of The Straits Times of May 13, 1969, is filled with news of the sad events of the day. Bizarrely, in a corner of the page is a panel ad with a picture of a toothy boy and the words, “He`s smiling and so he should be. He`s looking forward to a happy future”.
Source: thestar.com.my (26 Maret 2008)
