‘British Imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia’: Making World History from the Margins of Empire: History Making at the University of Malaya in the 1950s and 1960s

This is a hybrid seminar.

Register here: https://tinyurl.com/ntuhist1701

Abstract:

Through the writings and private records of two generations of historians at UM: Kennedy Gordon Tregonning, Cyril Northcote Parkinson and John Bastin; and Wang Gungwu, Eunice Thio, and Wong Lin Ken, this paper argues that we should understand the history making of the History Department at UM in the 1950s and 1960s as a school of history that adopted a Malayan-centric approach to the study of World History, what John Smail would later term as ‘autonomous history’. In so doing, this paper argues that the ‘UM School of Autonomous History’ pioneered an innovative approach to the study of World History from the margins of the British Empire. It contributes to the study of the disciplinary history of World History as a subject and method globally. It also contributes to the study of the disciplinary history of Southeast Asian History, by capturing the formation of one of the first ‘Schools of History’ in Southeast Asia. Finally, it historicises the intellectual contexts in which ‘autonomous history’ as a historical approach emerged.

Speaker: Benjamin Goh (University of Cambridge)

Benjamin Goh is a historian of Singapore and Southeast Asia with interests in the global histories of education and youth. He is presently a candidate in the MPhil in World History at the University of Cambridge where he is working on a dissertation that examines the history making of the History Department at the University of Malaya in the period of decolonisation. Benjamin completed his undergraduate degree at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, where he completed his honours thesis on the global history of post-independence Singapore’s first sex education programme between 1966 and 1980. He tweets at @BenGohsToSchool and serves as a host on the New Books in History podcast.