Imperial Propaganda and Literature: Representing the British Colonial Experience in Malaysia 1895-1940

Abstract

This dissertation examines the ways in which the literature that emerged from Britain’s experience as an imperial power in the Malay world (i.e., on the Malay peninsula and in the northwest of Borneo) functioned as imperial propaganda. The changing nature of the persuasive messages directed at the public in the United Kingdom during the high period of the British imperial experience in this region (i.e., from the Perak War and the introduction of indirect rule on the Malay peninsula in the 1870s until immediately before the Second World War) is explored through readings of the colonial administrators Sir Frank Swettenham (1850-1946) and Sir Hugh Clifford (1866-1941) and the writers Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) and Somerset Maugham (1874-1965).