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Living on the Razor's Edge:
The Rickshawmen of Singapore
between Two Wars, 1919-1939
by Jim Warren
Introduction
This article' reconstructs the world of the rickshaw pullers
of Singapore in the period from 1918 to 1939, examines the
nature of their interaction and experience with the city, and
the causes and effects of colonial policy and practice on their
working and personal lives. There has been increasing
recognition of the need to focus research on the urban work
place, labor and the everyday problems of the coolie class
under colonial rule in Southeast Asia. Such efforts, if they are
to be meaningful, must be posed, theoretically and empirically,
against a background of real life. This approach raises grave
historiographical problems, for historians, I ike anthropologists,
have tended "to graze in the fields,"2 focusing their primary
attention on rural societies of Southeast Asia. Considerable
work has been done on peasant based movements and,
opposition to colonial rule, but hardly any historical research
has been conducted on the urban laboring class, of which the
rickshaw coolies of Singapore formed a part.
The tidewater colonial capitals of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries created new modes of human experience
for immigrant Asians, but especially for singkeh, the Chinese
newcomers to Singapore.' At the end of the nineteenth century
I. This article represents work in progress that is based on a trilogy I am
currently researching and writing on the Chinese laboring classes in Singapore.
The initial volume. Rickshaw Coolie. A People's History of Singapore. is to
be published next year. The other two volumes are provisionally titled The
Social Evil: Prostitution and Venereal Disease in Colonial Singapore and
Chillese Silicide in Singapore, 1 8 8 3 ~ / 9 3 9 . I want to thank the former Registrar
General. Mr. Khoo Oon Soo. and the staff of the Subordinate Courts Library
for their kind cooperation and assistance in facilitating my researches with the
Coroner's Records.
2. The language of the late Maurice Freedman, The Study of Chinese Society
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979), p. 40 I.
3. An immigrant on landing in Singapore was called a Sin-kheh, or a new
man, or newcomer by the Teochiu, and Sin-hak by the Cantonese.
Singapore rapidly developed as a commercial center and an
entrepot port dominated by import and export firms and banks,
and serviced Britain's imperial expansion and trade-oriented
economy in Southeast Asia. This development had a profound
impact upon every aspect of economic and social relationships,
but it was most marked in the labor nexus, in the segregation
and extreme overcrowding of the lower-class Chinese who, as
rickshaw pullers, coal coolies, and stevedores provided the
sinews of empire and helped to shape the expansion of
Singapore.
Linked to the structural changes in Singapore's economy
was the social impact of mass migration on colonial Singapore,
especially on work, behavior, values and feelings of the
Chinese laborers. There was an increasing disparity between
the ever-burgeoning Chinese population and the city's ability
to deal with growth and change. Singapore's administrators
consistently chose alternatives that minimized planning costs
but created social conditions which inevitably forced rickshaw
men over the poverty line. Despite these problems Singapore,
especially at the peak of its growth around 1900, often seemed
a place of hope and betterment compared to the countryside
of China and the treaty ports.
In order to understand the impact of colonial policy and
practice in the lives of the rickshaw coolies, it is important to
describe and analyze the key social relationships within the
Chinese community between puller and owner, and between
the rickshawmen and the Europeans who were administrators,
magistrates, and coroners. The study of British policies and
attitudes with respect to rickshaw coolies will enable us not
only to penetrate the myth of the foulness of the rickshaw
quarters, of the pullers' supposed propensity to vice and
criminality, but also to understand how and why this myth was
perpetuated.
The sources for this slice of Singapore History-the life
and struggle of the rickshawmen in the inter-war years and the
,
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circumstances surrounding their ongms and demise-are
mainly official reports and documents, contemporary social
description, contemporary statistical analyses, photographs,
and oral history, "tales heard by the eyes." In these sources
an astonishing range of facts exist on all the factors at work
In Chinese coolie society, encompassing not only the relative
size of the population and the birth, marriage and death rates
but also statistics on accidental and violent deaths and suicide,
figures for morbidity and mortality from circulatory, respiratory
and sexually transmitted diseases, surveys by colonial social
investigators on the nature of urban housing, on migration and
the colonial economy, and. several studies of changes in the
economy, amount and consumption of opium. These records
can go a long way' towards reconstructing coolie life in a
Chinese city outside China and demonstrating how labor,
capital and the state came into conflict with one another.
Among the most important and interesting of these source
materials are the Coroner's Records for Colonial Singapore,
1883-1890. Neglected in a storeroom ofthe Subordinate Court,
these certificates, inquests and inquiries are a source of special
interest to historians of the urban poor.4
These records bring the rickshaw coolies, their clansmen,
kinsmen and women of a forgotten past into the historical
forefront. They provide empirical evidence on age, sex, marital
status, address, place of birth, occupation, length of time in
Singapore, diet, dress, sickness, and death. The causes of death
often depict the deprivation experienced in pulling a rickshaw.
Much also can be learned about housing, health, and poverty,
and the almost hopeless struggle to survive in times of recession
and depression.
On Leaving China
The rapid increase in the 1880s and 1890s in the number
of immigrating Chinese workers was the single most important
demographic and social development in Singapore's history.
Between 1880 and 1940, during the c o l o ~ i a l period, millions
left the two adjacent provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung in
Southeastern China by sea, bound for the nanyang. These men,
mostly under indenture, sailed from Swatow, Amoy and Hong
Kong to Singapore. Hong Kong was the starting point of the
4. When the door was unlocked for me, after several months of fruitless
searching, to a clean dry room in the modern Subordinate Courts Building, I
gained access to a collection of several hundred unclassified bound and unbound
volumes stacked on the floor against a wall to the height of three to four feet.
The records had been moved several times from one repository to another
under British rule and again as late as 1975, and this had resulted in a certain
amount of damage and loss on each occasion. Most of the volumes of inquests
and inquiries and bundles of Coroner's views lying at the bottom of a heap
or stack had suffered due to dampness. In addition to this, there had been, of
course, the ravages of white ants. Not sure where to start without a check list
or guide, I began to rummage among the stacks closest to me and soon sensed
the historiographical possibilities these documents offered for the study of
ordinary Chinese men and women. As I randomly located and read the first
inquest statements of rickshaw pullers and their kin, finding expressions of
their personal grief, of pain and frustration, of the misery that colonial rule
and the depression had inllicted on them, of an extreme structural poverty
reflected in the incidence, of the causes and meaning of suicide, and of life's
small pleasures like a special meal of chicken, rice wine and noodles shared
with friends. I realized that the contents of this repository would yield up with
skill and patience the living testimony of Chinese people who did not know
how to express themselves in print and who did not have access to people
with power.
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scheduled sailings of the passenger steamers and sailing vessels
of firms like Syme Muir and Co. and Jardine and Matheson &
Co. and principal port of call for competing German, Danish
and Dutch sailing lines. There were also junks going to the
nanyang, from harbors small and large all along the China
coast. 5
Wives of rickshaw pullers faced a basic con
tradiction in Singapore at that time: their posi
tion was central to the social and economic sur
vival of the family unit but they could not fulfill
the social role of wife and mother and the
economic role of worker at one and the same
time within the framework of the elemental
family.
Many of these peasants were driven out by periodic poor
harvests, flood-caused famines in all parts of South China and
by the rising price of rice.
6
They were also forced out by local
conditions of overpopulation and the policies of landlords. For
many survival meant escape from the impoverished domestic
economy. Understandably, a multitude of singkeh left Fukien
and K wangtung in search of better prospects. They were
indigent, barely knowing the written characters of their own
language, but they carried with them the compass of culture,
a will and a burning ambition. Their dream was one of hard
work, a decent livelihood, and a return in some comfort to
home and hearth in China.
The immigration of singkeh stamped an indelible image
on Singapore. It was a coolie town, with a heterogeneous
Chinese workforce, a disproportionate ratio of male to female,
and an abnormal age structure. At the tum of the century
Chinese males constituted over 72 percent of the total
population. Most of these men were either single or had left
their wives and children behind. Alone, indebted, jobless on
arrival, they accounted for almost all the able-bodied men of
the working population. They were aged between 15 and 59.
There were few women (except for prostitutes), children, or
old men among the Singapore Chinese in this period. A far
more noticeable feature of this population in the early part of
the century was the rate of return to China. Singkeh had come
to do manual labor, to build, but not to stay. In the late 1890s
5. Many emigrants still relied on the traditional mode of emigration from
South China to the Nanyang during the transition period from sailing junks to
steam navigation at the end of the nineteenth century. The bows of the Amoy
junks were painted green, while those from Swatow were varnished red. Hence,
the emigrant ships were popularly called the Green junks and the Red junks.
Ta Chen, Emigrant Communities in South China. A Study of Overseas
Migration and Its Influence on Standards of Living and Social Change (New
York: Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1940), p. 261.
6. Straits Settlement Annual Report, Chinese Protectorate, 1910, p. 173; 1911,
p. 173; Joyce Ee, "Chinese Migration to Singapore, 1896--1941" Journal of
Southeast Asian History. II (911), p. 34.
"jinrikisha Station" in Sago Lane
only about 10 percent of the Singapore Chinese were locally
born. The average length of time spent in the city by those
who immigrated was about seven years. Later, conditions were
more favorable when compared to those in China, especially
in the I 920s, and an increasing number of this immigrant
transient community would settle in Singapore.
After arrival in Singapore, the newcomers joined forces
within regionally based ethnic and sub-ethnic groups to carve
out an economic niche for themselves. Initially, secret societies
and later on speech groups sought to protect the occupational
monopolies of particular sub-ethnic groups in various trades
and occupations, such as the Hengwah, Hockchia and Foochow
in rickshaw pulling. The role that the secret societies and
voluntary associations played in economic and social relations
among Singapore's rickshawmen was absolutely crucial. Their
primary function was to provide financial assistance, social
welfare and security for their members. As far as Singapore
was concerned, solidarity among rickshaw pullers was forged
on the anvil of the society they knew in China. Native place
particularism and a network of voluntary associations helped
to attract overseas sojourners into Singapore, where through
their associations they maintained special ties with the
homeland as kinsmen and clansmen, and pursued special
occupational interests like rickshaw pulling.
7
The rickshaw was invented in Japan in 1869.' Originally
called jinrickshaw from the characters meaning man-powered
carriage, the "jin" was dropped from the term at the tum of
the century and "rickshaw" came into general use.
9
The
7. Freedman, The Study of Chinese Society, p. 243.
8. john K. Fairbank. Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig. East Asia.
Tradition and Transformation (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1973). pp.
524-525: "Economic Study of the Peking Ricsha Puller," China Economic
Monthly. 3. 6 (June. 1926) p. 253.
9. The invention of the rickshaw has been credited to at least three different
men; an American missionary named Jonothan Gable. Akiha Daisuki and an
out of work samurai called Yiisuke Tzumi. Rickshaws were first called
jin-riki-sha. which literally means "man-power carriages." Phonetically the
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rickshaw became a modem form of transport throughout Asia
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The
rickshaw combined new technology-superior western-styled
wheels-with cheap, seemingly indefatigable Asian labor. The
two-wheeled wooden carriage was unquestionably an improve
ment over the Chinese invented wheel barrow, the sedan chair,
and animal drawn vehicles. It is, after all, easier to pull a
passenger along at a rapid pace than to carry or push him over
a distance. Rickshaws, which required only one man, largely
superseded sedan chairs, which required the labor of at least
two, except in China's mountain resorts and in hilly Hong
Kong.
The rickshaw spread across Asia and became the most
popular way of getting around for most Asians. It soon became
a familiar sight in the streets of larger cities like Yokohama,
Peking, Shanghai, Rangoon and Calcutta. The rickshaw first
made its appearance in Peking in 1886 and twelve years later
appeared on the streets for public hire. 10 It was introduced into
Calcutta by members of its Chinese community for carriage of
goods around 1900. They later came into use for passenger
service in 1914, and "Chinese rickshawalas awaiting custom
at the roadside were a familiar part of the Chowringhee
scene. "II Rickshaws also found their way to South Africa where
they became part of the urban landscape in Durban for many
years.
The rickshaw was tried out for public transport in
Singapore in 1880. The first consignment came from Shanghai
but they were imported from Japan the following year. They
proved to be an immediate success. The apparently unheralded
arrival of the rickshaw marked the beginning of a noticeable
change in the traffic on Singapore's streets. Within a year of
word is derived from the Japanese characters jin for man, riki meaning energy
or strength, and sha for carriage. In Hokkien the word rickshaw is kan-cha
(pull carriage). Malay Mail, 27 April, 1965,
10, "Economic Study of the Peking Ricsha Puller," p, 253.
II. Rickshaws in Calcutta, UNNA YAN in association with T, H, Thomas
(Calcutta: UNNAYAN, 1981), p. I.
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Rickshaw puller taking meal at food hawker's (c. 1905)
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its advent, over a thousand of these two-wheeled carriages
were to be found plying for hire in the streets and alleyways
of the city. Rickshaws were the pride of the road at the turn
of the century. By 1924 the actual number of rickshaws active
was estimated at 28,800. An inexpensive and convenient mode
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walks of life including school children, shoppers, hawkers,
prostitutes, colonial officials and the indigent.
Most rickshawmen had been peasants in Fukien and
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Kwangtung. The pattern of their lives in village China was
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shaped by mud, rice and an old system of proprietory land
f owning. The life of the tenant farmer was locked in an endless
struggle with nature-in planting and harvesting rice, digging
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canals and dikes, embanking rivers-and with landlords and
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enemies. Hengwah and Hockchia peasants had little hope of
ever owning land, not even an acre of it. The selection of
rickshaw pulling was not necessarily a personal choice. The
economic and political conditions in Fukien and K wangtung
provinces compelled these men to go far afield in preference
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to slow starvation in their homeland. Hengwah and Hockchia
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kin followed one another forming a chain, pushed from behind
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by wretched conditions in China and drawn ahead by the
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~ remarkable economic activity of colonial Singapore, eventually
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linked to jobs as rickshaw pullers.
Estimates of the number of rickshaw pullers plying for
f hire on the streets between 1918 and 1939 vary. Pullers
themselves supplied hardly any information on their numbers
I in discussions with officials or on the rare occasions when they
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were directly questioned by special commissions or boards of
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inquiry. The figures derived from the owners with a vested
interest in the industry were not always based on the same
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calculus as that of officials, and discrepancies exist in the
estimated number of men who earned their living by pulling
rickshaws. The official statistics of the Jinrikisha Department
were calculated on the assumption that there were two coolies
to every rickshaw, and very often three by 1918.
12
It was
commonplace for words like "about," "approximately," "over"
and "exceeds" to be used in official reports to estimate the size
of this transient workforce. Any reduction in the number of
men who earned their living by pulling rickshaws was often 4 t
attributed to fewer coolies arriving from China. In 1918 there
were still over 20,000 but the numbers were coming down. 13
The coolies were not emigrating from China in the same force
as they had ten years earlier owing to the expensive passage,
low exchange value of Singapore currency, and the high cost
of living. Nevertheless, by 1921, the number of rickshaws on
the streets had increased from 8022 to 9244.14 All the pullers
were still China-born with practically no Singapore-born
coming into this kind of work.15 Even during the 1930s the
vast majority of them still started fresh from China.
The Crisis in Pay, Food and Lodging
Because rickshaw rides were cheap, monthly income was
fairly low as well, according to the Hockchia rickshaw owner,
Lee Choon.
16
The rickshaw hire was twenty cents during the
day and twenty-five to thirty cents during the night, which did
not leave the puller very much. 17 A rickshaw coolie could make
about one dollar a day (or $24 a month) in 1924.
18
He had to
12. Housing Commission Report, Singapore, 1918, evidence of Mr. Hooper,
p. B91. There were at least 15,000 rickshaw pullers in Singapore by 1897.
From that year on until 1917 the coolies were roughly estimated to number
over 20,000.
13. Ibid.
14. Singapore Municipal Annual Report, linrickisha Department, 1919, p.
2-E.
15. British Malayan Opium Commission, p. B-28.
16. Ibid., evidence of Lee Choon, p. C-47.
17. British Malayan Opium Commission, evidence of Lee Choon, p. C-47.
18. In 1908 the wages of an ordinary coolie were forty-five to fifty cents a
day, a day laborer in the tin mines earned seventy cents and one dollar a day
was the most a coal coolie ever earned. A rickshaw puller's earnings stabilized
at about one dollar a day by 1924, but the inexperienced and opium addicts
were fortunate if they could net forty cents to buy food and chandu (prepared
opium). Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States Opium Commission,
1908, pp. 32, 279; Proceedings of the Committee Appointed by His Excellency
the Governor and High Commissioner to Inquire into Matters relating to the
use of Opium in British Malaya (Singapore: Government Printing Office,
1924), pp. B-29, C-47.
buy food out of that, for which a puller spent about thirty cents
a day. That left him forty to fifty cents to buy clothes, send
money to China, pay the prostitute, and buy opium, if he
smoked. Very few pullers made more than $20 a month,
however. Since the cost of living was from $12 to $14 a month,
the puller could count on $6 to $8 clear to either remit or fritter
away on opium, daughters of joy, and gambling.
Food cost less at home, even compared to the simple
inexpensive meals eaten outside. While the average per capita
monthly food expenditure was somewhat higher when the
rickshaw men ate out, there were many who were loath to take
the time to bargain in the market and cook at home, as the
time and money saved in being the cook had to be balanced
against time lost in real wages from pulling the rickshaw.
Approximately 25-40 percent of the puller's daily income was
spent on food. Because the rickshawmen often earned irregular
incomes they tended to live on a day to day basis. Thus they
were forced to buy foodstuffs daily in small quantities from
fresh food hawkers who lived close by. Their low incomes
forced pullers to purchase primarily rice and vegetables.
Naturally, for many, except the really poor among them, it
made sense to pay a little extra to eat a meal with a bit of meat
or fish at a stall on a regular basis where the hawker could also
extend credit to his regular customers.
It was difficult enough to work so hard, but to go hungry
on top of that was a reality of life for rickshawmen in Singapore
by the 1920s. A few cents really counted at the tum of the
century. At that time a puller could eat well and still pay his
rickshaw hire.
A cup of coffee with milk was three cents in a coffee shop and
two cents from a hawker .... On the five footway, satay twice
the size of that sold today and better in quality sold at two cents
a stick; Kui-teow cost three cents for a large plateful. A big cupful
of Hokkien mee, sufficientto satisfy one for a day, costten cents. ,.
However, by 1918 the wages of rickshaw men had fallen at
least 20 percent behind the increased cost of living. This was
particularly noticeable with regard to the pattern of purchasing
and consumption of food. The increase in the cost of the food,
mostly condiments (soya sauce, sesame oil, vinegar) or
preserved food from China, was enormous. Salted cabbage,
for instance, which was one of the main vegetables, increased
from fifty cents to nearly three dollars per kilo. As a
consequence offalling wages, rising prices for basic necessities,
and acceptance of lower nutritional levels, many of the pullers
classified as offenders for being "physically weak," "decrepit"
or "ragged and dirty" were, in fact, suffering from malnutrition
-a malnutrition that was virtually non-existent among pullers
two decades earlier. It was for these really poor men who found
it difficult to muster the strength day after day to earn enough
to get a reasonable meal that some wealthy "Babas" used to
place pots of weak tea at the edge of the five footway in front
of their houses.
Two bowls, one filled with water and the other containing empty
Chinese teacups, gave the weary rickshaw pullers ... the
opportunity of refreshing themselves with a drink whenever they
walked past the homes of those Babas. The bowl of water was for
19. John Cuylenburg, Singapore through Sunshine and Shadow (Singapore:
them to wash the cups after they had their drink. This gesture of
offering relief to hardship suffered by the less fortunate stemmed
from the advice given to the Babas by priests, in whom they had
great faith. 20
Food became more expensive and difficult to obtain by
the 1920s, as did housing. Singapore with its free port status
was presented as a model of administrative and economic
success for other colonial powers and the rest of the region,
yet, the vast majority of its Chinese inhabitants including the
rickshaw pullers lived in dire poverty. The large common
lodging houses used by the pullers ought to have been called
"Dickensian." Upward of 30,000 rickshawmen lived in
lodgings during the 1920s most of which had neither running
water nor toilets nor bathrooms. According to official
The difficulties of poor wives were acute in
a society where women were considered generally
to be little better than "pieces of meat put on the
table for men to slice." Inequality in the family
combined with the wretched existence of living
in a tenement cubicle with several small children
where all were likely to suffer serious illnesses
drove women to commit suicide. Their acts must
be interpreted as an outcry against the cruelties
of Singapore life in the late 1920s and 30s.
Municipal figures, each Chinese Singapore resident had only
a tiny amount of living space. The area of some cage-like
cubicles or rooms was as little as 60 sq. ft. per man. Some
rickshaw men slept on the five footway or in the alleyway at
the back, preferring that to soaring rents and the grimness of
what was intended to be the basic accommodation for their
kind. Sometimes when space was at a premium men slept three
ways in a room-on the wooden tiers, on the floor, and on
cots,-or even, for the poorest, on the same bed with another
puller. In Peking in the 1920s rickshaw firms accommodated
on average 10.5 men for each room, although one case was
found where 16 men were living together. 21 By 1921 living
space in Singapore was at such a premium that 16 men living
in one room was common.
A principal cause of the shortage of housing by 1918 was
the proliferation of cubicles in most public lodging houses in
Chinatown, and elsewhere. Property owners found it more
profitable to subdivide their tenements rather than construct
new housing. Large houses were sub-divided into a honeycomb
of temporary single rooms, or cubicles without separate
kitchens and a common living area. This resulted in the worst
sort of overcrowding imaginable. Because of the demand, a
poor rickshawman could not afford to pay more than a share
of the rent of a lodging house cubicle. Some rickshawmen did
20. Felix Chia, The Babas (Singapore: Times Book International, 1980), p. 48.
Heinemann, 1981), p. 48. 21. "Economic Study of the Peking Ricsha Puller," pp. 253-265.
42
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New Rickshaw Station for licensing & inspection (c. 1906)
not even have a share of a cubicle, they occupied "bunk space"
in the narrow corridors of the lodging houses. Some ended up
occupying these "spaces" for years.
The difference in the amount of rent rickshaw men paid
before the First World War and after was dramatic. The effect
of changes between 1919 and 1921 in the use of buildings from
residential to shophouse and godown (warehouse), was to
concentrate more and more men in less space. Thus for the
year 1908, 1918 and 1921, a house in China Street had 20, 42
and 65 tenants and another in Macao Street 20, 27 and 49
respectively. Between 1908 and 1918 the rent increased by 40
percent while in 1923 it was 135 percent higher than 1908.
22
It was a plain fact throughout the 1920s and 1930s that there
was not enough lodging to house the number of rickshaw
pullers. The supply of housing did not nearly approach the
demand in the inter-war years, and thus there was no way to reduce
the landlord's ability to force the men to pay exorbitant rents.
Neither the private sector nor the colonial government were
prepared to shoulder the expense of increased residential
construction to ease the situation for the rickshaw pullers. The
immensity of the problem and the cost was all too apparent to
the colonial government: it simply said no. In the 1930s the
government studiously ignored the housing problem and the
vexed question of inordinate rents. This urban overcrowding
of Singapore was largely a British failure.
By 1908 rickshaw coolies were already paying twice as
much to rent a first-class rickshaw as a second-class one.
Thereafter the first-class half-day rent was to remain higher
than the second-class, whole-day rent. By 1919 the daily
takings of the pullers were estimated to be not less than 20,000
dollars. 23 The rental system made owners rich, and pullers
hard-driven, exploited and poor. As long as the ownership of
rickshaws was concentrated in the hands of small capitalists
22. No. 57, Report of a Committee appointed to consider the alleged shortage
of houses, 3 September, 1923, in Colonial Office 275/109.
there was no means for the puller to increase earnings, to save,
or to purchase a rickshaw, except to run harder and longer.
Pulling like that could kill.
The prosperity of Singapore resulted from high trade levels
in the marketing and distributing of primary products like sugar,
copra, rubber and tin. It was a cruel irony for the puller that
prosperity gave rise to the bad years with problems of acute
overcrowding in the inner city, soaring rents, rice shortages,
and falling fares. In 1919 Singapore was entering a period of
sustained prosperity based on soaring trade levels in primary
products. Singapore was fast becoming a major center for trade
in primary products, but it was strapped for warehouse space.
Something had to give. The boarding houses for pullers were
rapidly stripped and turned into godowns for bulk storage of
rice, copra and sugar. Not only were owners demanding more
for hiring out rickshaws, but housing rents were also rising,
even while pullers were being evicted from their lodgings near
the waterfront.
Putting Down the Shafts
The Hengwah men of Tanjong Pagar were the first to put
down the shafts. They were considered by the British to be the
most truculent group a m ~ m g the pullers. They lived in one of
the most dangerous districts, an area where their tenement
houses were being confiscated in the interests of the commercial
growth of Singapore. 24 The Hengwah men confronted City Hall
demanding that the Municipal Commissioner double the
rickshaw fares. But before the sanction of the Commissioners
for increased fares could be obtained, notices were posted on
the walls of various rickshaw depots in Rochore Road, Muar
Road, Victoria Street and Bain Street calling for a strike and
a fare of fifteen cents per mile.
Notice to inform our relatives and others that as things are getting
dearer day by day and we the rikisha pullers find it very difficult
to cope with the present high cost of living. The pullers of Kampong
Glam and town sections have held a meeting and are now able to
state that the fares from the 14 February 1920 would be raised to
fifteen cents per mile. On the 13th instant pullers of both Kampong
Glam and town are not to ply for hire. In conclusion we appeal
for unity. 2S
The rickshawmen wanted immediate action on the matter of
raising the fare, but the Municipal Commissioners caught
somewhat off guard by the radical nature of the demand were
not prepared to sit in conclave on such short notice to consider
doubling the rates. They wanted at least a day to deliberate,
and to have the last say on the matter. The psychology of the
moment demanded time, for the sake of prestige. Their
procrastination was a mistake. The lightning strike began on
the 13th of February, with notices ordering the pullers not to
ply for hire. For three days the majority of the public was
inconvenienced by heavy downpours which held people up for
work and dispelled the argument of some municipal officials
24. Singapore faced four major rickshaw strikes in this century in 1903,
1919-1920, 1935 and 1938. The anatomy of each of these strikes is somewhat
different, but rent capital, public authority, and the world economy were all
distinctive factors, in differing combinations. In all of these strikes the
Hengwah rickshaw coolies of the waterfront area were to playa decisive role.
23. Singapore Municipal Annual Report, Jinrikisha Department, 1919, p. I-E. 25. Singapore Free Press, 16 February 1920.
43
SINGAPORE MUNICIPALITY
1917
Rlck.haw T.n.....nt
Chin Broth.l.
~ Japan Broth.l.
I
p
Pollc. Station
R
L
Rlckahaw Station
Latrln.
r
that "walking was always conducive to heaIth."26
Striking pullers stopped other pullers from plying for hire,
especially on main thoroughfares and in the rickshaw districts
themselves. Quite a number of cases of assault were reported
in the Rochore section alone which the strikers had sealed off.
There were not more than a hundred hire rickshaws operating
in the Rochore, Kampong Kapor and Tanjong Pagar neighbor
hoods, pulled only by desperate needier men, mostly opium
smokers.
27
Another notice was posted the following day in the
various depots, calling for rickshawmen to stand firm, to unite
and to continue the strike:
This is to notify one and all that the reason we did not go out for
hire yesterday (Friday) was due to the Municipality not raising the
rikisha fares. Those pullers who are not ashamed of themselves
courtesy of lim Warren
and go out to hire today (Saturday) will be assaulted and their
rikishas damaged. We would not care, what nationality their
passengers are. We ask our people not to create any disturbance,
but to wait and not go out for hire till the fares are raised and
lastiy we plead for unity. 2.
Once again streets like Rochore Road, Victoria Street and
Bencoolen Street came under police guard in case of threat,
intimidation and violence to the public by the striking pullers.
With the exception of privately owned rickshaws and pullers
who received a monthly wage, the rickshaw men had been
enjoined to keep off the roads and they did. Singapore's streets
looked strangely empty without them.
The roads were noticeable yesterday for the dearth of rikishas upon
which so many depend for bringing them to work and which enable
others to carry out their daily round of duties in town. Although
26. Ibid., 17 February 1920.
27. Ibid., 16 February 1920. 28. Ibid.
44
there was the usual number of motor cars about, yet the streets
did not wear their wanted busy aspect, as when the two-wheeled,
man drawn conveyance plied about for hire or carried passengers,
the men between the shafts racing with one another and shouting
to people to get out of the way. One also missed the long queues
in Raffles Place, outside Johnston's Pier, and round the fountain
in Raffles Square, and was led to think that it was either a Sunday
or some holiday but that the offices were open. The news of the
men coming out [striking] was in the air the previous evening but
not so widespread as to warn people to get away early the next
morning in order to foot it and be in at business time.29
Public feeling was particularly hostile towards the pullers
for striking on the very same day that their demand had been
put to the Commissioners.
30
There had been no period of
grace-no time to arbitrate properly, all sense of decorum was
lost, and the Commissioners could not possibly avoid looking
foolish. The pullers lightning-like action alienated what little
public support there had been in favor of raising the rate before
the strike. An angry commercial community recognized much
to its chagrin that Singapore did not run an efficient tram service
through all the principal parts of the town so people could go
about their business. Instead, Singapore was dependent on the
rickshawmen.
By the late 1920s the hard facts on wages
and living conditions were grim-food and rent
for the rickshaw accounted for almost three
quarters of all that the poorest pullers spent
daily, and food meant mostly rice and vegetables.
As income continued to decline during the 19305,
so pullers ate less, and they ate worse, living on
credit. Health worsened and debts mounted.
The question of increasing the fares was brought up at the
Commissioners meeting on the afternoon of the 13th of
February and it was decided to allow an increase from five to
seven cents for every half mile, but the Commissioners insisted
on the pullers' unconditional return to work, after which the
terms would be announced. 31 By recommending to put up the
fare for the mile from ten to fourteen cents the pullers' demand
had been practically met, and the status conscious Commission
ers, who could not afford to be laughed at, refused to inform
the public of the exact nature of their decision straight away.
The strike continued much to the dismay of the public. The
Commissioners refused to convey the impression that they had
yielded to the terms as a result of the strike, fearing pullers
would take advantage of the precedent in the future whenever
they felt the need for more pay.
29. Ibid., 14 February 1920.
30. Ibid., 16 February 1920.
31. Ibid.
Outside the chambers of the municipal building, Mr.
Hooper, the Registrar of Rickshaws, was at pains to counter
a general view of the rickshaw puller as poverty stricken and
an object of humanitarian pity. He gave some hypothetical
figures on the earnings of men who had regular work at night
pulling rickshaws in the brothel quarters to "open the eyes of
those who talk ignorantly. "32 But there was ample evidence in
current reports and boards of inquiry that a puller's monthly
earnings were significantly lower and progressively declining
in real terms, despite gross takings at the rate of $1 .50 to $2.00
per day. The strike bore testimony to that harsh fact-a
dwindling income and standard of living. It was left up to Mr.
Hooper (who had more experience than anybody else with
pullers' protests and demonstrations) and several prominent
owners to deliver the terms and obtain a return to work. Then,
and only then, could the lines of the Commissioners'
recommendations be announced. The "government's" position
was explained to the strikers by him and the numbers of
rickshaws gradually increased on the roads over the course of
the next couple of days as the pullers began to sense the reality
of the situation. Within a week the last few pullers who held
out-not surprisingly, coming from the dock area where the
strike had first begun-had again taken to the shafts. The
deadlock had been completely broken. The rickshaw strike was
over.33 The pullers had won, but the clearcut settlement had to
be presented without humiliation. The tacit recommendation
of the Commissioners for increased fares was approved by the
Governor in Council on the 3rd of March. 34
The strike of 1920 had revealed to the authorities that the
pullers, who had been well organized, knew the value of the
strike weapon and were prepared to use it on a moment's notice.
Pullers united into a powerful force had wielded it successfully
on this occasion against the city fathers. Coming together from
all parts of the city, speaking different dialects and originating
from different parts of Kwangtung and Fukien provinces, but
all sharing a common purpose, the pullers acted to change their
overcrowded, unhygienic, destitute condition under colonial
rule. To be unafraid to strike against British authority and the
Towkays was an explicit political act. It was a powerful
message. And it was to be adopted on a far wider scale by
rickshawmen in the depression-ridden 1930s in Singapore to
combat colonial authority and rent capital in an effort to save
themselves.
Marriage and the Elemental Family
In the 1890s, peasants facing poverty and deprivation in
China could not keep their growing families fed. Among the
rickshawmen in Singapore, many had decided to migrate
temporarily from counties near Foochow. 35 By the mid 1920s
they had begun to put down roots for future generations. The
tendency to establish elemental families
36
and settle perma
32. Ibid., 18 February 1920.
33. Ibid., 19 February 1920,
34. Singapore Municipal Annual Report, Jinrikisha Department, 1921, p. 5.
35. See, for example, Singapore Municipal Annual Report 1898, p. 102; for
1900, p. 30; Low Ngiong Ing., Chinese Jetsam on a Tropic Shore (Singapore:
Eastern Universities Press, 1974), p. 73.
36. Despite the more pervasive pattern of a bachelor society with village links
4S
Upstairs of rickshaw tenement house (1907)
nently in Singapore came about because large numbers of single
Chinese women started to flood into the city from war-tom
China and because the British began to adopt a more relaxed
attitude toward female immigration. A gradual but perceptible
change in the nature of the rickshawmen's society began to
take place with the coming of more women. Fate in the form
of wives represented a break with the sojourning past, with
China, and what remained of "village China" in Victoria Street,
Queen Street and other like neighborhoods. For some men of
this generation there was no longer any reason to go back to
their village despite improved means of transportation. But
there was also a more immediate, deeper and even more
profound break with village ties and clansmen in the local
rickshaw houses: a married couple could not live in the pang
keng of a rickshaw house-force of circumstance and privacy
to China, between 10 and 15 percent of rickshaw pullers had families with
them in Singapore by the I 920s. These simple or elemental families were
developed on rather short notice-a decade or two at most-from the 1920s
onwards, and faced serious demographic and social problems right from the
start. They were in form and size the exact opposite of the large, joint family
in China. The simple or elemental family in Singapore among rickshaw coolies
was never likely to be larger than six or seven souls, and could be reduced in
the case of childless couples to two or even dissolution, when a husband or
wife was left in the aftermath of an accident or suicide. Some households
could from time to time include a grandmother, who child minded, and the
occasional guest, a nephew or person with the same surname and coming from
the same village, newly arrived in Singapore.
required them to find a cubicle elsewhere. A different pattern
of living arrangement went along. with being married that
increased physical and social isolation. Cubicle living forced
couples to be more highly individualized and privatized in their
dealings with other tenants along a corridor.
In these low status families interpersonal relationships
were of a different sort than in the traditional joint extended
family. The structure of these new families with their elemental
ties were characterized by a striking lack of convention and by
"poverty and powerlessness."31 A rickshawman as a father was
not a strong patriarch because he had few if any resources at
his disposal. He could not hope to have more than one son
grow to manhood, yet there was no way he could make his
grown son stay with him as in China. Brothers who married
had to stand by their families and could not readily lend support
to one another in face of crushing poverty and hard work. The
demography and economy of rickshaw families insured that
they remained elemental in structure and organization, small
scale in size, of low status, therefore weak.
The attitude of married rickshaw men and their spouses
towards birth control and family size was of crucial importance
to their way of life. Rickshaw pullers and their wives faced
economic crisis in the depression, were themselves victims
isolated in private cubicles, and did not generally desire large
families. After marriage some form of contraception was
deemed socially acceptable and necessary among rickshaw
couples. Tragically, a rickshaw household rich in children was
a household ruined, for the father could not possibly hope to
feed all of them and bring them up. The small number of
children in the families of,rickshaw pullers was also the result
of the high rate of mortalitYamong infants and pre-school age
children. Living in the cubicles of the tenement houses of
Chinatown had a terrible effect on newly born Chinese children.
Tragedy's alien face was a weary young rickshaw mother.
Many of them were malnourished and cubicle bound from
morning to night, especially if they already had one young
child at the breast. Early marriage and early death of children
were very much part of Sim Kwee Geok's life. She married
in Singapore when she was twenty and lived with her husband
up to her death at which time she was six months pregnant.
She had been pregnant the year before too, but her new born
child only lived a few days.38 Children like Sim Kwee Geok's
suffered sometimes for weeks in the dark, cramped oven-like
cubicles and the horror of malnutrition and infection were a
brutal reality for most of them. Chinese infant mortality was
well above a level which was considered normal for Singapore
in the inter-war years. The cause of death of new born Chinese
children was usually linked to some form of gastro-intestinal
disease or beri-beri. 39
In the elemental family the wife was apt to possess more
strength of character as an individual than she might in the
joint extended family, because relations were limited to
husbands and wives and on occasion wives and mothers. She
was the matriarch and had sole responsibility for the activities
and concerns of the family, that is, co-ordinating the domestic
37. Freedman, The Study of Chinese Society, pp. 235-236.
38. Singapore Coroners Inquest and Inquiry of Sim Kwee Geok in no. 619,
11/12/29.
39. Singapore Municipal Annual Report, 1938, p. 10; 1939, p. 0-55.
46
economy, housekeeping and child rearing. But these women,
who were married to pullers during the 1920s were cut off
economically and legally from their own families. Once
married a woman's interests were bound up entirely with her
husband and his people. The working out of social ties within
the elemental family often meant that a wife's sole source of
security and hope for a future was her husband. Brides from
China rarely lived out their lives among kin, except when their
brothers or fathers were rickshaw pullers. It was a lonely way
to spend a life-time, isolated from most other members of the
husband's household also living in China, and trapped in a
cubicle with a young family to rear.
Since rickshaw pullers were among the lowest paid workers
in Singapore, frequently women worked until they had children.
From the Coroner's Records it is obvious too that their desire
to work grew as their marriages were placed under increasing
pressure during the Depression. Wives of rickshaw pullers
faced a basic contradiction in Singapore at that time: their
position was central to the social and economic survival of the
family unit but they could not fulfill the social role of wife and
mother and the economic role of worker at one and the same
time within the framework of the elemental family. Rickshaw
family units began to crumble under the strain because the
woman's role as wife and mother had to be fulfilled at the
expense of working to help meet the consumption needs of the
family. Children meant an increase in the necessary labor
within the home and an increase in household expenditure. The
cost of living continued to climb while the families' existing
income was at the mercy of currency fluctuations, and future
capacity to earn waned.
Rickshawmen who were married constituted a small
percentage of the total and lived in coolie lodging houses with
far from homogeneous populations. Under such circumstances,
payment of rent was more difficult, as families could not crowd
into cramped dormitory quarters in the big compound houses,
nor sleep in shifts, to reduce rent. The lives of the rickshawmen
and their families were bounded by the cubicles they lived in.
In one spartan-like cubicle,
dark, confined, insanitary, and without comfort may live a family
of seven or more persons. Many of them sleep on the floor, often
under the bed. Their possessions are in boxes, placed on shelves
to leave the floor free for sleeping. Their food, including the
remains of their last meal, is kept in tiny cupboards, which hang
from the rafters. Their clothes hang on walls, or from racks.
40
There were no windows and no means of light in many of the
cubicles. The lodging houses were densely packed, the heat
and humidity almost unbearable at times, and visibility was
rarely more than a few steps along the narrow passage. Within
this cell-like atmosphere rickshaw men and their families
struggled to bring some sense of quality to their lives and make
their cubicle surroundings more tolerable. There was a simple
poignancy about the potted flowers and herbs with which they
decorated the window ledges and doors of those miserable
lodging houses.
The rickshawmen' s elemental family tended to break
down in the face of the nightmare attempt to scrape a living
in the Singapore streets. Witness the death of Sim Kwee Geok,
the 35 year old wife of rickshawman Lim lin San. After
quarrelling with her husband over financial matters, and
depressed by the recent death of her infant child, she drank a
quantity of liquid caustic soda while six months pregnant. 41
Lack of cash to meet the total monthly expenses offamilies
(even with the earnings of the wife) short of borrowing from
friends or pawnshops led to breakdown of marriage and family
life, ultimately to despair and death. In the cases revealed in
the Coroner's Records the collapse of the elemental family
reached unquestionable intensity. In them husbands and wives
share their grief, dreams and nightmares, and allow the
40. Barrington Kaye, Upper Nankin Street Singapore. A Sociological Study
of Chinese Households Living in a Densely Populated Area (Singapore:
University of Malaya Press, 1961), p. 2.
41. Singapore Coroner's Inquest and Inquiry of Sim Kwee Geok in no. 619,
11112/29.
Rickshaw stand in front of Raffles Hotel (1921)
47
Traffic on New Market Road in 1930,
historian of society to weave a tapestry of the agony of the
underside of Singapore in the 1920s and early 1930s. These
are the voices of the dead, recounting the details of problems
that were tearing their families apart. Rickshaw pullers were
very poor indeed between 1918 and 1921. Men were working
for next to nothing, everything they needed-food, lodging,
rickshaws-was too high and in short supply, everything that
is, except eligible illiterate women from China to marry. It
was not an era in which a rickshawman could realistically
expect to provide a woman with a proper home and family,
yet, at the very same time, events in China had initiated a
period of unprecedented female immigration to the nanyang
and Singapore which was not to end until the Second World
War. One puller knew that marriage could finish rickshawmen,
and he painted a dismal picture of the condition of married
pullers at the end of 1920.
But how could he take care of a family when he depended on
pulling a rickshaw for his living. He knew about his long-suffering
brothers in the mixed courtyards. The men pulled rickshaws, the
women sewed, the children scavanged. . .. They gnawed on
watermelon rinds dug out of garbage heaps . . . and they all went
to get handouts of rice gruel. . . .42
Poverty unleashed the violent demons of domestic
discord. Marriages stretched thin and died in disputes over
family expenses and actual expenditures. Lee Ah Toh, a
Hengwah rickshaw puller, heard his sister arguing with her
husband about some money. He lived in the same building in
an upstairs cubicle, occupying a small cubicle at the rear of
the first floor with his sister, brother-in-law, and eleven year
old son. Lee Ah Toh remonstrated with her and the matter was
settled. He did not realise that his taking his brother-in-Iaw's
part against his sister would 'hilVe fatal 'consequences. Herr
husband, Tan Moon Heng, then went out with his brother-in
law to a tea shop opposite the lodging house. By the time they
came back three hours later Ler Cho Wing had hung herself
over twenty cents, having become very depressed and
concerned about the consequences of her husband's spendthrift
behavior. Obviously, the death is attributable to their poverty.
Tan Moon Heng described the sequence of events leading to
his wife's suicide.
On the 10th July 1935 at 5 pm I returned home after pulling my
rickshaw for two hours. I went to our room. My wife was there.
I found she had been paid one dollar being repayment of a loan
to someone. I took twenty cents of this one dollar and bought a
durian. . . . My wife scolded me for taking the money and
threatened to throw the rest away. I went out again to a nearby
teashop with my brother-in-law. I returned home again after 8 pm.
. . . that evening she accused me of spending money too free I y . ,
In a similar case Gian Yeow Sun's husband refused to allow
her to work as a hawker and she became upset about it. Her
husband was concerned that she would be arrested for hawking
without a license. She stopped selling cakes about a week
before her death.
We did not quarrel about it. I am in regular employment myself.
I do not know of any other reason [apart from wanting to be
hawker] why my wife should commit suicide. I gave her all my
earnings. She enjoyed good health and behaved normally. She did
not threaten to take her own life. She was quite happy and joked
with me on the night before her death. 44
Of the 31 cases of suicide among rickshaw coolies known
to us from the Coroner's inquests, 26 occurred between 1921
and 1939. All six recorded cases of suicide of wives of rickshaw
pullers took place in the desperate years between 1929 and
43. Singapore Coroners Inquest and Inquiry of Ler Cho Wing in no. 303,
1017135.
42. Lao She, Rickshaw (the novel Lo-To Hsiang Tsu) translated by Jean M. 44. Singapore Coroners Inquest and Inquiry of Gian Yeow Sun in no. 319.
James (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1979), p. 61.
1717135.
48
1935.45 They reveal the broken and heretofore forgotten lives
of pullers and their families in close fearful touch with a world
depression. The same problems that were responsible for
increased poverty and the collapse of low status families by
strangling the puller's traditional sources of income also led to
suicide. The difficulties of poor wives were acute in a society
where women were considered generally to be little better than
"pieces of meat put on the table for men to slice." Inequality
in the family combined with the wretched existence of living
in a tenement cubicle with several small children and where
all were likely to suffer serious illnesses drove women to
commit suicide. Their acts must be interpreted as an outcry
against the cruelties ofSingapore life in the late 1920s and 30s.
Suicide was an indication of the grave social effect of the
economic blight of the 1920s and 30s on rickshawmen and
their families, but the immediate cause of suicide among
rickshawmen in the recession-depression times was loss of
work. Rickshawmen, especially middle-aged ones in the 35
to 40 age bracket, had a strong identification with their
vocation and way of life. If they lost their job through illness,
or through violent injury or accident, they frequently suffered
a loss of personal esteem, felt they were failures in the minds
of their kindred, and had nothing to live for. About half the
suicides in the Coroner's inquests were men aged 35 to 45
years of age, and they were over-whelmingly single. The
decision to kill themselves seems to have been preceded by
just that loss of personal self-esteem and of self-identity. The
rise in suicide among men over 40 was exceptionally sharp,
and definitely higher than in most other coolie occupations. As
rickshaw men became older the chances of killing themselves
increased. They realized that there was now no possibility of
ever owning a rickshaw, and thus they were sliding downhill
in a narrowing circle of poverty and debt, waiting for the end.
They kept on hiring rickshaws because it brought them more
money than hawking or pig rearing, but inside they knew the
dream of their youth was dying, as so would they shortly.
Although the rickshaw was central to the work and life
of Hengwah, Hockchia and Hockchew immigrants and
ownership of one was their ray of hope, the investment required
to become an owner remained beyond the means of most of
the men. The market value of the Japanese-made rickshaw rose
from $38 at the end of the nineteenth century to $90 in 1917.
In that same year the cost of new vehicles jumped from $90
to $160 for first class and from $45 to $75 for second class.46
The dramatic price rise was principally due to the war and high
freight rates prevailing, but the price never came down again
45. At first glance, the number of notifiable cases of suicide among rickshaw
pullers would appear to be demographically insignificant, only affecting several
hundred people at most, as compared to the massive statistics available on all
deaths in the colonial records. To make that assumption, however, would be
to commit a serious fallacy. The very few cases of suicide of rickshaw pullers
can tell us much about the complexities of life and its patterns and about the
social problem of thousands of pullers and tens of thousands of other poor
Chinese who survived. Their deaths epitomized the plight of other Chinese
who were the victims of colonial and municipal policies of unemployment,
suffered high death rates from such infectious diseases as cholera and
tuberculosis, and were hurt by the withdrawal of most funds and support for
social welfare. The statements of those who came to the inquests of deaths
labelled as suicide rise with unforgettable force above much of the illusion of
the writing in Singapore's colonial/nationalist historical genre.
to pre-war levels. By 1921 the cost of new Japanese rickshaws
had risen to $180 and in consequence rickshaws were being
made locally but, as was the case in the past, these proved
inferior to those imported.
47
Often after a lifetime of trying to
save money to buy their own vehicle, pullers still did not have
enough capital to settle their daily living expenses and debts,
let alone purchase even a second-hand rickshaw.
In order not to mortgage their dreams and land in debt
bachelors accepted a low standard of living and depended upon
kin and clansmen. They shared rented rooms in filthy
overcrowded tenements or "rickshaw houses" from landlords
who, in many instances, were primarily rickshaw owners
besides being proprietors of coolie lodges. By the late 1920s
the hard facts on wages and living conditions were grim-food
and rent for the rickshaw accounted for almost three-quarters
of all that the poorest pullers spent daily, and food meant
mostly rice and vegetables. As income continued to decline
during the 1930s, so pullers ate less, and they ate worse, living
on credit. Health worsened and debts mounted.
The Abolition Campaign
By the 1920s, the British felt that the rickshaw was a
challenge to their development policy and to the showcase
image of Singapore as a "modern city." The demand for
rickshaw transport throughout the interwar years continued,
nevertheless, as did the harsh social conditions for the pullers.
The British refused to encourage the trade, at times ignoring
it, and then opposing it with a vengeance at the height of the
depression. In the decade the rickshaw first appeared traffic
was made up of bullock carts, gharries, and steam trams, but
by the early 1930s street traffic was thoroughly mechnical,
faster, more congested, and obviously more dangerous. There
were no gharries left and a bullock cart was a rare sight.
Omnibuses and trolley buses replaced electric trams in the main
part of the city, and swiftly moving motor vehicles,
automobiles and lorries, had spread rapidly. There were still
plenty of rickshaws but the downward trend had begun.
Rickshaws were now considered to be a public "nuisance" and .
a "traffic hazard" and were gradually being excluded from the
streets. By the mid 1920s officials believed that rickshaws were
an uneconomical, slow and hazardous mode of conveyance,
and that they would ultimately have to go to improve the flow
of public transport. From this time on the city's roads were
restricted to motorized transport. The official argument was
that rickshaws were slow moving and snarled the flow of other
vehicles.
The rationale was all wrong. The plain fact was that the
rickshaws were far more maneuverable in dense traffic than
any motor vehicle, they rarely broke down like the trams and
buses, and handled most of the short distance trips on the small
congested streets and alley ways off the main roads where
motorized public transport could not penetrate. There were no
similar restrictions in these years on private cars and taxis
despite an appalling increase in motor vehicle traffic accidents.
The planners were not to be deterred. The systematic removal
of rickshaws as "slow-moving vehicles" began in 1928, but it
did not improve the traffic situation on the main roads. From
46. Singapore MuniCipal Annual Report, Jinrikisha Department, p. 8. 47. Singapore Municipal Annual Report, Jinrikisha Department, 1921.
49
this time onward the future of the rickshaw coolie was bleak.
The Rickshaw Department began to withdraw licenses while
at the same time neither issuing new ones nor renewing expired
ones. This sudden removal of thousands of rickshaws and the
services they provided caused disruption among those living
at the lowest income levels, who had to count every cent, for
there was no alternative system of transport except to walk.
For the rickshaw pullers the reductions over the next five
years meant unemployment, reduced incomes, or being forced
to return to the rural poverty and unrest of Southeast China.
On several occasions government officials had publicly stated
that they would prefer to remove rickshaws from Singapore
streets completely. Singapore's urban expansions continued in
face of the world Depression. Urban planners believed that the
march of progress was inexorable, that the antiquated rickshaw
had to make way for modern motorized transport. The
government restricted their numbers to a license quota of 4,000
and banned their movements in certain parts of the city. Social
reformers joined in urging a ban on rickshaws for humanitarian
reasons, but this would remove 90 percent of the transport used
by poorer Singaporeans. The rickshaw pullers and the users
school children, invalids, the elderly and commuters for whom
rickshaws were an essential service-were hurt badly.
By the late 1920s officials confidently predicted that the
rickshaw was on the way out. Singapore was a "modern city,"
a trading and financial powerhouse with powerful old firms,
financial institutions, thousands of little businesses and full of
fast moving vehicles. Rickshaws, symbolically, were an
unpleasant reminder of constant poverty, and the straining and
sweating Chinese labor behind it all. People were in a hurry
and the rickshaw no longer held a special place.
With admirable clarity the 1930s demonstrated the ways
in which the growing deprivation of the rickshawmen and their
families was further aggravated by the policies of a government
bent on gradually abolishing rickshaws in the interests of the
motor car. The question of control and eventual abolition of
rickshaws first came up in 1927 when the Commissioners
decided that unfit pullers and singkeh should be removed from
the roads to prevent traffic congestion and in the interests of
safety. It was hardly incidental that these men were also
considered by Europeans to be eyesores on the streets. In 1928
the reduction of rickshaws by a stipulated percentage every
year had begun, but not all pullers had time to seek another
occupation before the full force of the slump hit Singapore.
48
By 1931 there were no opportunities except hawking for
out-of-work pullers. By 1935 this weeding out process based
on automatic annual reductions had already resulted in a drop
from 9,000 to 4,000 vehicles for public hire.
49
The experience of the rickshaw pullers was in the inter-war
years one of confrontation with the government and rickshaw
owners, then "temporary peace" through mediation and
settlement, then resistance and strikes. The cycle repeated
itself several times before culminating in the coolie's display
of solidarity in the strike of 1938 when the authorities and
owners sought to end their way of life. The rickshaw puller's
future had been threatened before by owners, government
officials and planners but now they were fighting for survival.
As more rickshaws were pulled off the streets in an effort to
restrict their numbers the owners raised the rental fee. In 1938
a life and death struggle with the owners erupted over the rental
fee and manipulation of the puller's contribution to the China
Relief Fund to assist their countrymen who were then in "deep
water and scorching fire. "SO When the wage demands of the
rickshaw pullers were not met they closed ranks, demonstrating
against the owners and smashing their rickshaws.
The 1938 rickshaw strike, which began on the 4th of
October and lasted till the 14th of November, was the longest
of its kind. Yet, despite its success, it seemed in the end only
to hasten the cry for the abolition of rickshaws altogether.
During the five weeks that both sides stubbornly held out, a
large section of the travelling public suffered, particularly the
elderly and children, who had to walk to school for a change.
But Singapore was learning to do without rickshaws. The strike
led to a large increase in the number of bicycles registered,
which only pushed along the demise of the rickshaw.
Unlike past strikes the small community of Europeans did
not appear to be very seriously affected by or even care about
the absence of rickshaw transportation by then. But the question
of the strike action of the rickshawmen was an altogether
different matter. The Europeans on the whole did not have any
sympathy or respect whatsoever for the pullers and their cause.
They were just coolies, disobedient coolies, who had defied
Crown law and, once again, disturbed the city's peace and
prosperity. Although the pullers had organized themselves,
albeit temporarily, into a Rickshawmen' s Association to seek
redress for owner exploitation, they were unable to draw such
cases to the attention of the authorities, who refused to take
the issue seriously, except in regard to the use of the strike.
The pullers had stopped work because of owner exploita
tion, hard times, and the issue of the manipulation of the
monthly donation to the China Relief Fund and had expected
the Chinese public to rally to their cause. But the mass of
Chinese in Singapore remained apathetic, even hostile at times,
refusing to support them openly. The government condemned
the stoppage; the owners refused to sit down and negotiate a
prompt settlement. The owners relied on time, once all hope
of a quick resolution faded, intending to starve the pullers into
submission. They were backed by the force of colonial law,
for the police constantly assisted by patrolling affected areas,
protecting their rickshaws, and arresting strikers. The govern
ment and owner opposition did not diminish the pullers'
strength or resolution, but magnified it.
Despite a massive display of support and sacrifice from
fellow pullers, the rickshawmen had little reason for optimism.
Throughout the strike arbitration by various individuals and
groups had failed. The pullers lost tens of thousands of dollars,
and many were reduced to hunger and destitution and were
forced to take advantage of the government offer of
repatriation. Furthermore, as a result of the policies of rickshaw
abolitionists, the vast majority of vehicles remained firmly in
the hands of a small number of Towkays. Finally, and perhaps,
most importantly, the rickshaw strike did not succeed in
48. Singapore Free Press, 23 February 1935.
50. The Heng Wah People and their Development in Various Transport
49. Ibid. Trades, p. 38.
50
reaching beyond the confines of puller politics and community
to touch the concerns of other Chinese coolies in a joint struggle
to confront the power and prejudice of a colonial system that
was overwhelming them. In the end Singapore was saved the
"humiliation" of a general strike generated by the coolies'
struggle against oppression and injustice. 51 The pullers did
obtain a considerable reduction in the rates of hire for their
rickshaws, but the 1938 strike did not change anything else
the owners endured.
Conclusion
The rickshaw coolies in Singapore during the inter-war
years were victims of the changing structure of Singapore
society. The economic growth of Singapore under colonial rule
did not exist for them. For the rickshawmen in the 1920s
especially the setting was a city in decay. Singapore had one
of the highest growth rates, but also one of the highest death
rates and some of the worst health conditions and housing of
any city of comparable size in Asia. Rickshawmen and their
families suffered accidents, the violence of congested areas
and sudden attacks of illness while living in the slums of a
coolie town in the depression. The government measures and
fines against the rickshawmen made the city richer, but the
pullers' world of work pulsed with hunger, poverty, rush and
death. Then, in that furious time that stood between the two
wars rickshaws and the men who pulled them were pencilled
into the margins of Singapore's future. The puller's mad chase
after a vision of life with hope that enabled him to endure
almost anything in Singapore was halted by a deliberate policy
of abolition.
Examination of the major decisions made by the colonial
government of Singapore in regard to housing, water supply,
waste disposal and sewerage from the 1880s through the 1930s,
shows the city's rulers consistently chose alternatives that
minimized costs at the expense of the coolie population. The
51. One of the underlying reasons for the failure of other Singapore coolies,
including some Hokkien groups of pullers, to rally behind the rickshaw coolies
in 1938 was the heterogeneity of Singapore Chinese society with its numerous
speech groups and surname "c1anship" ties each with a distinctive version of
culture deriving from southeast China. Cultural differences among these
communities reflected a lack of solidarity which surfaced behind closed doors
and affected their strategy with respect to the strike. Ho Swee Bee, an elderly
clan leader from Duxton Road, pointed to clan resistance to the strike as a
root cause for the failure of Singapore's coolie class to unite.
From what I saw of the rickshaw pullers south of the river around Duxton
Road, those who supported the strike were few, very few. The reason for
this being that most of the hokien pullers were clan oriented. That is why
so few responded to the efforts of the labor organisers north of the Singapore
River. On the other side of the river, the rickshawmen were united; the
rickshaw owners were even afraid to venture out on the street for fear of
being attacked. But south of the river, in the Duxton Road area, on this
side, it was completely different. As I have just said, the reason why those
of us in Duxton Road did not aggressively support the strike was because
of our clan relationships. That is why the response from this side of the
river [was not ideal]. Rickshaw pullers from north of the river wanted
desperately to recruit people from Duxton Road for the strike but there
was no way for them to do this because of the clan relationships. The
growing militancy and organisations of the rickshawmen north of the river
was perceived as a sort of threat to the clans and as such made them
unacceptable to enter our territory to recruit for the strike.
Interview with Ho Swee Bee, Archive and Oral History Department,
tragedy was that these policies made the rickshawmen and their
families vulnerable to disease, left the pullers with very ill kin
with the only option of standing helplessly and hopelessly by.
They were well aware that their medical problems were not
just disease, but due to the social and physical environment of
the city and the government policies that undermined their well
being. They felt the need to change things, but their failure to
do so led some of them to lives which gave their kinsmen and
clansmen anxiety. They quarreled over rent, contracted
tuberculosis or syphilis, or gambled away their savings. They
cried out in anger and shame as the vision that was planted in
China swept them up and spat them out, as circumstances drove
them to the point of suicide.
Through the means of the rickshaw as their source of
livelihood and the institution of marriage, men and women
from China strove to create a better life in Singapore with
families, but their future was foreclosed by colonial policy and
practice and terminated in the Depression. The rickshawmen
and their families in the inter-war years could hardly take
satisfaction for their individual efforts and sufferings in the
glory of Singapore's future. They were consumed by trying to
earn a living pulling a rickshaw in Singapore during those two
decades of the great economic growth and crisis. *
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Teaching the Vietnam War: Objectivity in the Classroom?
by Stephen Vlastos*
Why does the issue of objectivity impose itself so
forcefully when we teach the history of the Vietnam war? What
fonus of discourse do students (and most Americans) believe
to be inherently objective? What is the rhetoric of this
"objective" discourse and how does it function? These are some
of the questions I began to ask after teaching a course on the
Vietnam war to undergraduates and after observing how the
media, which profoundly shape students' expectations, use and
misuse the rhetoric of objectivity.
Unlike my other courses on Asian history, teaching the
Vietnam war has brought me face to face with the issue of
objectivity in the classroom. Even when I consciously adopted
a neutral classroom posture and assigned texts which presented
mainstream interpretations of the war, at least some students
questioned the objectivity of the course, in their own minds if
not openly in the class.
There are some obvious reasons why students are
concerned about the objectivity of courses on the Vietnam war.
Although nearly a decade has passed since the war ended,
Vietnam is still a politically charged issue and its lessons are
publicly debated. Particularly now that the Reagan Administra
tion is engaged in new interventions in Central America, the
question of whether the Vietnam war was a noble cause which
could have succeeded if the military had been given a free
hand, as President Reagan has proclaimed, or a moral
catastrophy and terrible miscalculation, as some prominent
Democrats argue, is again front-page news. Moreover,
undisputable facts about the war-America's first defeat and
documented atrocities committed by American soldiers-chal
lenge students' fundamental myths of national omnipotence
and goodness. They are naturally on guard.
Yet there is a third reason, one that I have only recently
come to understand, which is located in the generation gap
* Acknowledgments to Mary Ann Rasmussen and Sheldon Pollock for their
generous advice and assistance.
52
that exists in most classrooms. With the exception of returning
and "non-traditional" students, undergraduates are too young
to remember the Vietnam war. Well before they graduated
from grammar school, the South Vietnamese army had been
routed and the country reunited under Communist rule. For
this generation of college students, the Vietnam war and all
that is associated with it is secondhand knowledge. In contrast, .
their teachers are likely to be veterans of the "war at home" if
not also the war fought in Vietnam, people for whom Vietnam
was a turning point in the development of political, moral, and
social consciousness. For the "Vietnam war" generation, the
political became personal and the personal political, an
experience not necessarily limited to an age group as such, but
most pronounced among those Americans whose political
consciousness was first shaped by the war.
Thus, there are good reasons why students feel that courses
on the Vietnam war are not likely to be purely academic. How,
they rightly wonder, can the teacher whose self-understanding
is tied to a particular political and moral view of the war be
open-minded? In the interest of self-validation, will not he or
she tell only one side? And these suspicions are not groundless.
Here we encounter the special burden that teaching the
Vietnam war entails. Unless students' concerns about objectiv
ity are addressed openly in the classroom, many will simply
repeat what they feel the teacher wants to hear in the hope of
getting a higher grade and soon forget what they "learned."
Under these circumstances the teacher will have failed to
promote the kind of critical thinking that is, I believe, the goal
of liberal arts education. In the worst instances, the classroom
experience will only have reinforced students' cynicism.
One strategy that a teacher may employ to allay students'
fears is to give the appearance of complete neutrality. This can
be done by assuming a classroom posture of studied disinterest,
cloaking personal feelings, playing the devil's advocate, and,
most of all, never showing emotion. The teacher may also
structure the curriculum to further the impression of objectivity.
Texts which are cautious, dispassionate, and ideologically
mainstream are read as "history," while ideologically left or
right texts are read as (mere) interpretation. Finally, he or she
must be sure to present "both sides" of every controversial
topic-here we have the hawk position, here the dove; let the
best side win.
Embodying as it does conspicuous components of balance
and fair play, such an approach will probably convince students
that the course is indeed objective. After all, isn't this how
"Nightline" and the "MacNeil Lehrer Newshour" are struc
tured?
But I would argue that all that is achieved here is the
appearance of objectivity, for the teacher has unwittingly taken
on the role of the television news anchor man, the putatively
disinterested analyst whose "objective" responses are set
against the manifestly interested views of people with
identifiable political affiliations. In fact by adopting this pose
the teacher will have accepted, sanctioned, and re-inforced that
spurious distinction between fact and interpretation that is based
on the style and rhetoric of discourse rather than its substance.
Interpretations are disguised but not eliminated, for by
providing students with two or more texts incorporating
opposing points of view, the teacher is, in effect, saying, these
are the meaningful statements and sentiments. By defining in
this way the terms of significant discourse, the teacher is still
imposing his or her own interpretation, although this may not
be the intention and surely will not be apparent to students.
But the larger purposes of liberal arts education will again be
subverted. The teacher has reinforced students' culturally
conditioned belief that presenting "both sides" of the issue is
the very essence of free intellectual inquiry. Moreover-and
this is critically important-the teacher appears as a disin
terested referee or arbiter, and his or her own voice as
determinant of the discourse will escape scrutiny.
How the conventions of objective discourse are used and
misused can be shown by analyzing a lengthy and influential
essay by Fox Butterfield titled "The New Vietnam Scholarship"
which appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine
February 13, 1983. Butterfield, as I discovered when he
interviewed me in the fall of 1982, has opinions about the war
as strong and committed as my own and is very well informed.
However, in his essay Butterfield does not forewarn the reader
of any journalistic purposes or of the moral, political, and
intellectual assumptions that inform his understanding of the
war. On the contrary, he employs various rhetorical strategies
which induce his audience to assume authorial neutrality and
accept the claim that the "new scholarship" on the Vietnam
war is value-free.
The "new" Vietnam scholarship is more objective,
Butterfield implies, because it is not influenced by political
sentiment. The scholars he interviews are described as "looking
afresh" at the war and "working quietly"; for most of them,
their purpose is "not to prove whether the Vietnam war was
or was not a noble cause ... but to find out what really
happened.'" Thus, the reader is encouraged to regard them as
disinterested social scientists concerned only about the facts,
a perception reinforced by Butterfield's claim, which serves as
the subtitle of the article, that their findings challenge the old
passions and the most cherished beliefs of both the left and the
I. New York Times Sunday Magazine, "The New Vietnam Scholarship," by
Fox Butterfield, Feburary 13, 1983, pp. 26-27.
right. The reader is further disarmed by the format: Butterfield
interviews roughly equal numbers of hawks and doves and
allows both to speak in the text, which creates the impression
that the author himself is disinterested. Moreover, because all
but the authorial voice are identified as belonging to people
with institutional affiliations, if not acknowledged political
allegiances, when the author speaks we unconsciously credit
him with ojectivity. In fact, a critical reading of Butterfield's
essay reveals him to be no less susceptible to value-laden
interpretation than those politically committed scholars whose
writings on the Vietnam war are compared unfavorably to the
"new scholarship."
Although nearly a decade has passed since
the war ended, Vietnam is still a politically
charged issue and its lessons are publicly
debated. Particularly now that the Reagan Ad
ministration is engaged in new interventions in
Central America, the question of whether the
Vietnam war was a noble cause which could have
succeeded if the military had been given a free
hand, as President Reagan has proclaimed, or a
moral catastrophe and terrible miscalculation,
as some prominent Democrats argue, is again
front-page news.
A prominent theme in Butterfield's article is the
illegitimacy of the revolutionary war in the south; and to
devalue the communist victory, he characterizes those who
resisted the United States and the Saigon regime as fanantical.
Specifically, Butterfield notes that North Vietnam sustained
very high casualty rates, reported to be three percent of the
population. Next he quotes Professor John Mueller, a political
scientist at the University of Rochester, who asserts that this
proves that "the North Vietnamese were fanatics who would
have continued the war for as long as needed to win"; while
Butterfield reminds the reader that "The Japanese, whom the
Americans regard as true fanatics, [lost] 1.4 %. "2
There are several interesting points to be made here. First,
Mueller is introduced as one of the "new" scholars; hence the
reader is predisposed to accept his assertions as objective.
Secondly, the attribution of fanaticism appears to be based on
facts, not value judgments. But can the inference of fanaticism
be drawn from the facts alone? When is the willingness to
sustain very high loss of life in pursuit of national policy
fanatical? When heroic? Would Mueller characterize French
losses in World War I, which on a yearly basis were not much
lower, or Russian casualties sustained in the defeat of Nazi
Germany, which were higher, as fanatical? Would he describe
Lincoln and his generals as fanatically dedicated to conquering
the American South, remembering the terrible carnage of the
2. Ibid. p. 60.
53
final campaigns? And why, finally, impute fanaticism to the
side that suffered such great loss of life, rather than to the side
that inflicted it? It is clear that Mueller and Butterfield believe
that the Vietnamese communists showed excessive and
uncritical devotion to their cause; however, the operative
criteria in their attribution of fanaticism are value judgments
and not facts. Could it be that the main difference between the
"new" and "old" scholarship is ideological rather than
methodological?
What lessons students learn from studying
the history of the Vietnam war may depend less
on the truth claims of the texts they read than
on their values and their openness to new ideas.
If students are concerned about the objectivity of courses
on the Vietnam war, ifthere are valid reasons for their concern,
and if my critique of popular conceptions of objectivity is
correct, what specifically should the teacher do?
Three strategies are called for, I believe. First, epis
temological issues must be addressed directly and made an
integral part of the course. If students understand how
interpretation enters into every reconstruction of the past, and
are also shown that not all interpretations warrant equal claims
on the truth, they will be better prepared to evaluate what they
hear and read, both in the classroom and outside. Second, the
teacher should make explicit the assumptions which inform his
or her own interpretation of the Vietnam war and, further, the
implications for present American foreign policy. After all,
what teacher or writer on the Vietnam war does not have his
or her agenda of "lessons"; and if so, doesn't the course or
book become propaganda if the audience is not forewarned?
Third, having, as it were, deconstructed one's own discourse,
the teacher should ask students to do the same for a variety of
texts. It is here that assigning texts which include a broad
spectrum of interpretation is entirely justified, for the course
should examine radical, mainstream, and conservative dis
course and analyze the strategies each employs.
The implications of exposing the hollowness of conven
tional conceptions of objective historical discourse are by no
means politically neutral. What I have referred to as culturally
sanctioned forms of objective discourse are inherently conser
vative, for the dominant political and cultural norms of
American society are presumed to be neutral and value free,
unlike critical discourse which is "ideological." If nothing else,
the approach I suggest will show the actual boundaries of
"non-ideological" discourse on the Vietnam war. As Noam
Chomsky has pointed out, even liberal critics of the war
invariably characterized United States political and military
actions in Indochina as "involvement" or perhaps intervention.
For even though the United States government sent over three
million soldiers into South Vietnam and dropped more
explosives than had been detonated in all of World War II, a
writer surrenders all intellectual credibility to pronounce these
to be "acts of aggression."3
Whether teaching the Vietnam war in the way I have
suggested in fact changes students' political consciousness is
an entirely different question. What lessons students learn from
studying the history of the Vietnam war may depend less on
the truth claims of the texts they read than on their values and
their openness to new ideas. In Hayden White's apt phrase,
each discourse has its own "ethical implications."4 The most
college teachers can do in their public role is to teach a method
that uncovers the values that inform historical discourse.
*
3. Noam Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War (New York: Pantheon, 1982),
p. 11.
4. Hayden White, Tropics ofDiscourse (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1978), p. 22.
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Further Bibliography on North Korea
by Jon Halliday
This list mainly comprises books and articles which have
been published since my previous bibliography on North Korea
in Bulletin Asian Scholars. vol. II, no. 4 (1979).
It also contains some items published earlier than 1979 which
have only since come to my attention, for instance, the
photographic book, Coreenes, by Chris Marker (item 49).
The list contains only items which have come to my
attention. * It is not the result of a systematic search. I have
sometimes abbreviated the full name of North Korea to
"DPRK" in the titles. Korean names are given in the form in
which they appear in the source cited. Occasional comments
and clarifications are contained in square brackets.
Completion date: August 31, 1984.
I. American Friends Service Committee. Report ofAFSC Delegation /0 North
Korea. September 1980.
2. An Tai-sung, North Korea: A Political Handbook (Wilmington, Del.:
Scholarly Resources Inc., 1983).
3. Andreyev. V., and Beryozkin, N., "How the DPRK Deals with Social
Questions," Far Eastern Affairs [FEAI (Moscow), no. I, 1981.
4. Ashurov. N., and Alexeyev, V., "Soviet-Korean Cooperation," FEA, no.
I. 1979.
5. Andreyev, V., and Osipov. V., "USSR-DPRK: Mutually Beneficial
Cooperation," FEA, no. 4, 1983.
6. Andrianov, V., and Melnikov. V., "Fruitful Cooperation Between the
USSR and the DPRK," FEA. no. 2. 1984.
7. Ashurov. N., and Alexeyev, V., "Soviet-Korean Cooperation," FEA, no.
I. 1979.
8. Brillouet, A .. "RPDC: une premiere analyse du second plan septennal
1978-84," Rel'lle d' eludes ('omparl/til'es Est-Ouest (Paris), vol. 9, no. 3 (1978).
9. Brillouet, A .. "The 6th Congress of the KWP," ibid., 12,3 (1981).
* My thanks to Bruce Cumings and Aidan Foster-Carter for additional
suggestions.
J.H.
56
10. Buzo, Adrian, "North Korea-Yesterday and Today," Transactions of
the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, vol. 56 (1981).
II. Bunge, Frederica M., ed., North Korea: A Country Study (U.S.
Government, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., 1981).
12. Chung, Chin 0., P'yongyang Between Peking and Moscow: North
Korea's InvoLvement in the Sino-Soviet Dispute, 1958-1975 (University of
Alabama Pres, 1978).
13. Chung, Chong-Shik, and Kim, Gahb-chol, North Korean Communism:
A Comparative Analysis (Seoul: Research Center for Peace and Unification,
1980).
14. Cumings, Bruce, The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the
Emergence of Separate Regimes 1945-1947 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981).
15. Cumings, Bruce, "Corporatism in North Korea." Journal of Korean
Studies (Seattle), 4 (1982-83).
16. Doublet, Maxime, "L'option non alignee de la Coree du Nord" [on 6th
Congress of the KWPI, Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris), Dec. 1980.
17. DPRK. Development ofAgriculture in Korea (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1983).
18. Ginsburgs, George, "North Korea and Partners Practice Regional
Self-Reliance," Pacific Community (Tokyo), 8, 1 (Oct. 1976).
19. Ginsburgs, George, "Soviet Development Grants and Aid to North Korea,
1945-1980," Asia Pacific Community (Tokyo), 18 (Fall 1982).
20. Glebova, M., and Mikheyev, V., "Some Aspects of Economic
Development of the DPRK," FEA, I, 1983.
21. Gryaznov, G[ennadyl V., Straite/' stva Material'no-tekhnicheskoy hazy
Sotsializma v KNDR (The Construction of the Material-Technical Base of
Socialism in the DPRK) (Moscow: Nauka, 1979).
22. Halliday, Jon, "The North Korean Enigma," New Left Review, 127 (1981);
revised abbreviated version in Gordon White, Robin Murray and Christine
White, eds., Revolutionary Socialist Development in the Third World
(Brighton: Harvester Press [U.K.I and University of Kentucky Press [U.S.A.I.
1983).
23. Halliday, Jon. "The North Korean Model: Gaps and Questions." World
Development, 9. 9/10 (1981).
24. Hendry, Peter, "Waiting ... and changing" [on agriculture in the DPRK
and China]. Ceres (Rome. FAO), 16, 4 (July-Aug. 1983).
25. Hyun. Peter, Darkness at Dawn: A North Korean Diary (Seoul: Hanjin
Publishing Co., 1981).
26. Institute for North Korean Studies, The Son Also Rises (Seoul: Institute
for North Korean Studies, 1980) [reprints of articles about the 6th Congress
of the KWP from the international press].
27. JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization), China Newsletter, no. 36
(Jan.-Feb. 1982) [full details of DPRK-China trade].
28. Juttka-Reisse, Rosemarie, Agrarpolitik und Kimilsungismus in der Demo
kratischen Volksrepublik Korea, {Agrarian Policy and Kimilsung-ism in the
DPRK] (Meisenheim: Anton Hain, 1979).
29. Kho, David, "The Political Economy of the DPRK in the post-1958
Period," Journal of Contemporary Asia, 12,3 (1982).
30. Kihl, Young Whan, "North Korea: A Reevaluation," Current History,
April 1982.
31. Kim Chin-Wu, "Linguistics and Language Policies in North Korea," Kore
an Studies (Hawaii), 2 (1980).
32. Kim, c.l. Eugene, and Koh, B.C., eds., Journey to North Korea: Personal
Perceptions (Berkeley, CA: Institute for East Asian Studies, 1983).
33. Kim, I1pyong K., and Lee, Dong-bok, "After Kim: Who and What in
North Korea," World Affairs, 142,4 (Spring 1980).
34. Kim II Sung, Selected Works (Pyongyang: FLPH), 20 volumes in English
(continuing).
35. Kim, Jung-Gun, NK: Government & Politics in the DPRK (Boulder:
Westview, 1977).
36. Kim, Kie-Taek, and Kaulins, Andis, The Foreign Policies and Foreign
Trade of the German Democratic Republic and the Korean Democratic
People's Republic (Kiel: German Korea Studies Group, 1979).
37. Kim, Samuel S., "Research on Korean Communism: Promise versus Per
formance," World Politics (Princeton), 32, 2 (Jan. 1980).
38. Kim San, "North Korea: No Deviant Thoughts," Index on Censorship
(London) no. 2, 1984.
39. Kim Sun II, "Testimonios: Una Vision del Problema Coreano," Estudios
de Asia y Africa (Mexico), 36 (1978).
40. Kim, Young-Soo, and Biissen, Friedrich, eds., Korea and Germany: The
Status and Future Prospects of Divided Nations (Kiel: German Korea Studies
Group, 1979).
41. Koh, Byung Chul, "Political Leadership in North Korea: Toward a Con
ceptual Understanding of Kim II Sung's Leadership Behavior," Korean Studies,
2 (1980)
42. Korea and World Affairs (Seoul), 6,4 (Winter 1982)
43. Korea Herald (Seoul), "Pyongnang Pingpong Diplomacy" -What
Achieved and Not Achieved (Seoul, Korea Herald, 1979) [collection of inter
national press articles].
44. Korean Review (Pyongyang: FLPH, 1982) [useful small encyclopedia of
DPRK].
45. Kurnitzky, Horst, "Chollima Korea" (Seoul, Public Relations Association
of Korea, n.d.) [English-language version of article originally in Kursbuch
(W. Germany) 30 (1972), item D 19 in bibliography in BCAS, 11,4].
46. Lee, Pong, "The Korean People's Democratic Republic," in Peter Wiles,
ed., The New Communist Third World: An Essay in Political Economy (New
York: SI. Martin's Press, 1982).
47. Lim Un, The Founding ofa Dynasty in North Korea: An Authentic Biogra
phy ofKim II-song (Japan: Jiyii-sha, 1982). [Authenticity unsure; needs evalua
tion-J.H.].
48. McCormack, Gavan, "North Korea: Kimilsungism-Path to Socialism?"
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 13,4 (1981).
49. Marker, Chris, Coreennes (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1959) [stunning photo
graphic book on North Korea in 1958; title is to be understood as "pieces
inspired by Korea"].
50. Moseyev, V., and Shubnikov, N., "Sixth Congress of the Workers' Party
of Korea; Results and Perspectives," FEA, 2, 1981.
51. Murillo, Eduardo, "North Korean Hell," Jiyu (Tokyo), June 1980.
52. National Unification Board, A Comparative Study of South and North
Korea (Seoul: National Unification Board, 1982).
53. North Korea Seen from Abroad (Seoul: Korea Herald or Korea Information
Service; P.O. Box 523, Seoul, 1976, 1977 and[?] 1978).
54. Oguri Keitaro, "Naked Face of North Korea," Korea-Scope, June-July
1979 (available from: International Human Rights Office, P.O. Box 1986,
Indianapolis, Indiana 46206, USA).
55. Park, Kwong-sang, "North Korea Under Kim Chong-il ," Journal ofNorth
east Asian Studies, 1,2 (June 1982).
56. Picht, Helga, report on 30th anniversary symposium on the DPRK, Hum
boldt University, Berlin, GDR, Asien Afrika Latein-Amerika (Berlin, GDR),
7, I (1979).
57. Pons, Philippe, "La Coree du Nord au-dela du decor," Le Monde, Feb.
17-19, 1981 [and in English in Asahi Evening News, Tokyo].
58. Rinser, Luise, Nordkoreanisches Reisetagebuch, {North Korean Travel
Diary] (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1983, revised ed.) [naive diary by W. German
writer about 3 trips to DPRK].
59. Sasse, Werner, "North Korean Language Policy Since the Division of
Korea," Koreanische Studien (Kiel, W. Germany), 4, I (Jan. 1979).
60. Scalapino, Robert A., "Korean Dynamics," Problems of Communism,
Nov.-Dec. 1981.
61. Scalapino, Robert A., and Kim, Jun-yop, eds., North Korea Today:
Strategic and Domestic Issues (Berkeley, CA: Institute for East Asian Studies,
1983).
62. Shin, Jung Hyun, Japanese-North Korean Relations: Linkage Politics in
the Regional System ofEast Asia (Seoul: Kyunghee University Press, 1981).
63. Shinn, Rinn-Sup, "North Korea in 1982: Continuing Revolution Under
Kim John II," Asian Survey, 23, I (Jan. 1983).
64. Suh, Dae-Sook, "Records Seized by U.S. Military Forces in Korea,"
Korean Studies, 2, 1980.
65. White, Gordon, "North Korean Juche: The Political Economy of Self-Reii
ance," in Manfred Bienefeld and Martin Godfrey, eds., The Struggle for
Development: National Strategies in an International Context (New York:
John Wiley, 1982).
66. Wiles, Peter, "North Korea: Isolation and the Cult of Personality under
Communism," Asian Perspective, (Seoul) 5, 2 (Fall-Winter 1981).
67. Yang, Sung Chul, "The Kim II Sung Cult in North Korea," Korea and
World Affairs, 4, 1 (Spring 1980).
68. Yun Ki-bong, North Korea As I Knew It (Seoul: Buk-han Research Insti
tute) [difficult to evaluate].
Some Neglected Sources on North Korea
in the Immediate Post-1945 Period
I. Texts in Amerasia:
I. Tralin, Hankum, "Land Reform in North Korea," vol. II, no. 2 (Feb.
1947): 55-61 [this includes the full text of the March 5, 1946, decree on land
reform (article originally in Zenei (Tokyo), May 1946)].
2. Lee Se-youl, "A Picture of North Korea's Industry," ibid.: 61-62 [author
was a professor at Seoul University who made a personal inspection of factories
in North Korea in March 1946].
3. Kim 000 Yong, "Labor Legislation in North Korea," vol. 11, no. 5 (May
1947), 156-160 [this includes the full text of the June 24, 1946, Labour Law
(article originally in Zenei (Tokyo), Jan. 1947)].
II. Other:
4. Gayn, Mark, Japan Diary (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1981 reprint), pp. 378-384 [brief
description of journey through Soviet-occupied area to U.S. outpost on the
Ongjin peninsula, October 1946].
5. Gitovich, Aleksandr, and Bursov, Boris, Mi Videli Koreyu {We Saw Korea]
(Leningrad: "Molodaya Gvardiva," 1948) [in Russian]; with photos [includes
an encounter with Kim II Sung].
6. Mirov, Z., "Zhivaya Legenda" [Living Legend], Komsomolskava Pravda,
Oct. 23, 1946 [includes an interview with Kim II Sung].
7. Pauley, Edwin W., Report on Japanese Assets in Soviet-Occupied Korea
to the President of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1946) [interesting
account of inspection visit May 29-June 4, 1946, by team headed by Pauley;
good photos].
8. Strong, Anna Louise, Inside North Korea: An Eye-Witness Report (Mont
rose, Calif., n.d. [1951] =revised ed. of 1949 original) [includes an interview
with Kim \I Sung]. Much of the material in this booklet had been published
earlier in four articles in Soviet Russia Today (New York):
(i) "First Report from North Korea," Ocl. 1947;
(ii) "Land Reform in North Korea," Nov. 1947;
(iii) "Industrial Workers in North Korea," Feb. 1948;
(iv) "Korea-The Two Zones," Dec. 1948.
9. Washburn, John N., "Russia Looks at Northern Korea," Pacific Affairs.
vol. 20, no. 2 (June 1947) [contains many useful references to Soviet sources
on the period after the Japanese defeat].
*
57
Mao, Maoism and China:
A Review Essay
by Richard Levy
In the years since Mao's death, his thought has been
undergoing a constant reappraisal both inside and outside of
China. Both Womack and Martin's works can be seen as part
of this re-evaluation, although their foci and standpoints are
quite different. In tracing the evolution of Mao's thought from
1917 to 1935, Womack attempts to demonstrate how and why
Mao's thought cannot be understood out of context while
Martin, on the other hand, attempts to demonstrate how and
why the various elements within the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) have tried to do just that in post-Liberation China. In
the process, both works provide insight into Mao's understand
ing of the relationship between leaders and led and the
transformation ofthis paradigm during Mao's lifetime and after.
The purpose of Womack's book is "to draw upon the
practical nature of Mao's writings and their political context
in order to produce an interpretation of his early political
thought in vivo" and then to use this interpretation of Mao's
thought to demonstrate how it "forms the accepted framework
of assumptions for [all post-Liberation] Chinese Communist
politics." To accomplish this goal, Womack leads the reader
chronologically through the development of Mao's early
political thought, ending with a concluding chapter in which
he pulls together the evidence he has presented to solidify his
case.
Both the strengths and weaknesses of the chronological
approach are readily apparent in Womack's book. It gives the
reader a feeling for how Mao's political thought developed in
relation to actual events, rather than imposing an ahistorical
ex post facto coherency on this thought as thematic approaches
tend to do. Although Womack does offer us numerous useful
insights on a number of issues which not only were critical for
China's revolution but also continue to be critical for
revolutionary theory in general-namely, what are the relations
between various contradictions in society; how can the masses
be mobilized to resolve these contradictions; and what kind of
leadership is necessary and possible for such mass movements?
THE FOUNDATIONS OF MAO ZEDONG'S
POLITICAL THOUGHT, 1917-1935, by
Brantley Womack. Honolulu: University Press
of Hawaii, 1982, xviii, 238 pages; and CULT
AND CANON: THE ORIGINS AND DEVEL
OPMENT OF STATE MAOISM, by Helmut
Martin. Armonk, N.Y.; M.E. Sharpe, Inc.,
1982, xi, 233 pages.
-his chronological approach seems to limit him to presenting
smatterings of these themes rather than cohesive summaries or
analyses of them.
Among those elements in Mao's thought which Womack
is willing to characterize as stable throughout the entire period,
two stand out clearly. The first is the dominance of practice
over theory. Mao chose the specific social contradictions which
he focused on not in response to an abstract theoretical
hierarchy of issues, but in response to the need for political
(and personal) survival imposed on him and his political allies
by these particular contradictions. The second is Mao's recog
nition that the key to successful national revolution was the
struggle in the villages over issues of daily survival such as
land and production, rather than alliances with different war
lords or different strata of the national bourgeoisie or even the
military conquest of different areas.
Once having recognized the centrality of the struggle in
the villages, Mao then needed to analyze society to determine
the primary force of the revolution, its potential allies, possible
means of alliance building and, finally, the need for and
methods of leadership of such a movement. Below I will
summarize and critique the frequently insightful and sometimes
contentious analysis of Mao's evolution which Womack
presents as he carefully documents the historical situations out
of which Mao's political thought developed.
Class Analysis, Allies and Alliances
Having determined by the early 1920s the centrality of
the social issue-the struggle within the villages-to the
greater issue of national revolution, Mao was forced to develop
a model of class analysis in order to distinguish clearly between
friends and enemies. Throughout the book, as he traces Mao's
works and thought on class analysis, Womack suggests that
Mao's class analysis focused more on analyzing misery in order
to determine revolutionary potential than on analyzing
58
economics or the relations of production. I would argue instead
that in doing class analysis during this period, Mao first
analyzed class in terms of the individual's (or more frequently
the family's) location in the production process-thus deter
mining long-term collective economic interests. Then, given
his position that analysis must be a guide to action if it is to
be useful, he moved on to the next step, the analysis of the
more temporary and variable relations within and among the
classes,-stratification of classes according to their level of
prosperity/misery; which classes or strata held political power;
distance from urban centers. This allowed him to determine
the immediate revolutionary potential of the various classes
and strata.
With friends and enemies clarified by class analysis, Mao
now needed to determine who the potential allies of the
proletariat and the poor peasants were and how to build
alliances with theOl. In analyzing these issues Womack is at
his best. He first traces Mao's evolution from an early anarchist
and basically pacifist orientation relying on notions of
spontaneity, groups, and consensus rather than classes and
unequal relations, to a more class based, long-term notion of
revolution requiring organized leadership. Womack then helps
clarify the circumstances under which Mao came to hold that
class struggle polarizes all involved in it, that there can be no
long-term middle group of pacifist position, and that,
consequently, every effort should be made to make one's
alliance as broad as possible (p. 47). By clarifying Mao's
implicit notion that "if there is a force present which could, if
alienated, prevent mobilization of popular power, their
nonalienation becomes a decisive guideline," Womack not only
helps the reader to understand the significance of the by-now
almost trivialized Maoist notion of building an alliance of the
"overwhelming majority," but also provides a solid basis for
understanding how this analysis of alliance building was
intricately linked to land reform policies and the related
struggles within the Party during this period.
As he traces the history of Mao's practice and thought on
the issues of mass mobilization and alliance building, Womack
brings to light early manifestations of a number of related
themes which would reappear in different forms in Mao's
thought throughout his lifetime.
He points out Mao's tendency to generalize success from
a single example (p. 118), a practice which recurred in Mao's
practice and thought repeatedly during the collectivization
campaign of the mid-fifties, the Great Leap Forward and the
Cultural Revolution, frequently with serious consequences. He
highlights and explains Mao's notion for building on the weak,
rather than on the strong, in mobilizing the masses-namely
that it allows the greatest rates of progress and minimizes the
harm from small mistakes (pp. 100, 163, 169). In later years
the notion of building on the weak would be generalized to
include economic practices as well, by such methods as
increasing investment in the poorest areas and transferring
skilled personnel from more advanced to more backward areas.
There were numerous integrated economic, political and
ideological goals for these practices, for instance developing
models of rapid change for people with the least hope, reducing
the need for localities with grain deficits to draw on central
reserves by making them self-sufficient, and reducing the
chances of polarization. However, because "building on the
weak" does not produce the most rapid economic payoffs (equal
investments in areas with higher productivity would lead to
more rapid increases in economic production, although at the
expense of possible stratification and polarization), this
approach has been widely criticized by Western scholars and
economists and rejected by the present leadership of the
Chinese government and party.
Womack also makes a useful and well documented
analysis of Mao's defense of "excesses" during a revolution,
a theme which first appeared during Mao's analysis of the
Hunan peasant movement in 1927 (which Womack analyzes
here) and reappeared during the cooperativization movement,
the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Womack
demonstrates how Mao was forced by criticism within the Party
to articulate and defend his analysis of the necessity of
"excesses"-namely that "excesses" are intrinsic to revolutions
(although not, as he said, to dinner parties); that "excesses"
are often exaggerated by those who have been their targets and
by those who oppose them; and finally, and most importantly,
that critiques of "excesses" usually reflect deeper differences. I
In this case, they reflected differences over whether the key
issue in the revolution at this time was resolution of the village
struggles (Mao's position) or the maintenance of the KMT-CCP
alliance and the unity of the forces of the Northern Expedition
(the position of Chen Duxiu and the majority of the Central
Committee). Understanding this perspective provides an
important insight for those wishing to analyze Mao's later
political practices and thought and the many "excesses"
associated with them.
Revolutionary Leadership
Womack also touches upon another critical issue in
revolutionary theory and practice which has yet to be fully
resolved either theoretically or practically by any revolutionary
group-that of the relationship between the leaders and the led
within the revolution. In this discussion Womack points out
the tension between Mao's adherence to the Leninist notion of
a vanguard party and his own notion of going outside the Party
to guarantee that it is serving the masses. Unfortunately
Womack's chronological approach and his decision to focus
discussion of the leadership issues (pp. 101-108) primarily on
three methods of eliciting the cooperation necessary for
mobilization (identification, rewards and sanctions) with only
a passing reference to the key issue of class leave his otherwise
insightful and analytical comments somewhat isolated and
difficult to pull together.
Womack begins by tracing the transformation of Mao's
early notions on leadership from a belief in a spontaneous,
unified mass uprising catalyzed by leadership with a mission
of enlightenment to a more Leninist notion of leadership based
on the recognition that the long-term nature of the struggle
between antagonistic classes required dedicated to leadership
based on a superior analysis of society. In treating Mao's
attempts to resolve the conflicts between mass mobilization
and a Leninist party, Womack clearly pinpoints the two key
I. This is true despite the many analyses which attempt to artificially separate
"excesses" from the otherwise "correct" policies, because "excesses" are
merely the logical extensions of the basic policies in specific situations. More
recently, the "excesses" at My Lai and at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps
in Lebanon are not separable from the basic aggressive and interventionist
policies which spawned them.
59
contradictions which Mao faced and his basic method for
attempting to handle them. One contradiction was between the
elitism inherent in the assumption of superior knowledge of
society based on Marxist theory and Mao's never ending
emphasis on concrete investigation if the Party was to
understand the actual immediate needs of those they were trying
to lead. The second was the contradiction of the Party as a
centralized organization trying to maximize a local mobilization
which was inherently anti-centralist. The basic method Mao
chose for handling these contradictions was the mass campaign.
Womack emphasizes that throughout the twenties and
thirties Mao insisted that the Party must be an organization
which could evoke the maximum strength and participation of
the masses and offer correct policies to facilitate the deepening
of the revolution rather than an organization which attempts to
dominate or supplant the masses or their representative
organizations (pp. 66, 129-131). The notion Mao laid out
during this period is very similar to the understanding of the
limits of Party leadership which Robert Marks has recently
described in his articles on social revolution in a South China
county.2 Womack also adroitly demonstrates the ways in which
the centralist aspects of the party can dominate the "facilitator
of mass mobilization" model of leadership put forward by Mao.
In describing the 1932 election movement and the 1932-1933
Land Investigation movement in Jiangxi, he clearly portrays
this dilemma of demanding that the very party organization
which was being criticized for commandism, bureaucratism
and separation from the masses actively mobilize the masses
in order to overcome its isolation from them (pp. 160-161). In
his discussion of Mao's summary of the Jiangxi experience,
he touches on another critical structural contradiction in Mao's
leadership model-the organizational weakness of mass
organizations vis-a-vis the Party which makes it difficult for
mass organizations to influence the Party when there are
meaningful disagreements or criticisms (p. 175). Unfortunately
instead of linking the reader to recent works of such theorists
as Bettelheim, Poulantzas, LaClau, Mouffe and Rowbotham
on the issue of leadership,' Womack summarizes Mao's
position with the generalization that "Party leadership must
prevail in clashes with mass organizations but it must reform
them rather than simply dissolving peasant organizations that
are troublesome."
Mao's method of handling these contradictions-mass
campaigns-is perhaps the most distinctive and controversial
element of his thought and practice. His life-long commitment
to mass campaigns as the means of developing "a real dialectic
2. Robert B. Marks, "Class Relations and the Origins of Rural Revolution in
a South China County," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. IS, No.
I Jan.-Feb. 1983:36-49.
3. See for example Bettelheim's series on Class Struggles in the USSR (N. Y.:
Monthly Review Press, 1971) and On the Transition to Socialism, with Paul
M. Sweezy;, (N.Y.: Monthly Review Press, 1971); Nicos Poulantzas, State
Power and Socialism (London: New Left Books, 1980) and Political Power
and Social Classes (London: New Left Books, 1973); Emesto LaClau, Politics
and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London: New Left Books, 1978); "Interview
with Emesto LaClau and Chantal Mouffe," in Socialist Review No. 66:91-113;
and Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright, Beyond the
Fragments (Boston: Allyson Publications, 1979). The Rowbotham work most
directly challenges the notion of the vanguard party and the exclusive focus
on class at the expense of other key issues, such as sexual/gender issues and
racial issues.
of leaders and led" (p. 173) has separated him not only from
bourgeois politicians and analysts but also from a large part of
the socialist and communist movements throughout the world.
The key to understanding Mao's emphasis on campaigns
lies, as Womack points out, in recognizing his position that
politics, economics and ideology are inseparable and that
campaigns qualitatively transform the patterns of political
participation of different strata within the villages and
throughout society. 4 Womack's discussion of the differences
between a traditionally organized army "in service to the
revolution" and a "revolutionary army" which has transformed
its internal political and social structures and unified its political
tasks with its own military support structures provides an
excellent example of how such an approach can push a
revolution forward (p. 130). Womack also provides another
excellent example of the utility of this approach when he first
explains how land reform cadres in the late 1940s had to educate
villagers to a consciousness of class-by demonstrating that
past oppression should be blamed on the landlord (Mr. Chen)
rather than on Mr. Chen (the landlord) and then argues that "a
modem revolutionary movement attempting to use the
peasantry as its main force would have their political education
as its central task-not the replacement of one ideology by
another but an original conceptualization of politics by the
villagers" (p. 125). Although it is something of a minor point,
this example could be improved had Womack broken with the
old "ideology Ibelief system" dichotomy, in which ideologies
are seen as overt, systematic and dogmatic and belief systems
seen as spontaneous and flexible, and recognized the incorpora
tion of politics into the world view of the peasants as the
replacement of one world view (ideology) with another. 5
Generalizing from Womack's discussion and other data
on Mao's life and political thought, it is possible to clarify his
notion of the means by which campaigns could develop this
dialectic between leaders and led. The Party, basing itself on
information gathered by local party cadres and acting as the
vanguard of the revolution on the basis of its ability to use
Marxism to correctly analyze society, would systematically
analyze the empirical data to grasp the key contradiction(s) in
society. It would then put forward policies which would help
to resolve these contradictions in a manner which requires the
masses themselves to be part of the process of resolving the
contradiction. To the extent that the Party has correctly
identified the key contradiction and correctly analyzed the
interests of the classes and strata involved, the campaign will
be a success-if the opposed strata cannot organize successfully
to block such a resolution of the contradiction. To the extent
that the analysis is incorrect and/or the contradiction(s) are not
important enough to the targeted classes and strata for them to
become wholeheartedly involved in the campaign, it will fail.
4. In short, the traditionally politically disenfranchised strata in society, i.e.,
the poorest, the least educated, would have greater opportunities to participate
politically than during non-campaign periods.
5. For a clear presentation of the "ideology/belief system" dichotomy, see
Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, Political Power: USA/USSR
(New York: Viking, 1965), ch. I. The alternative notion, in which ideology
is understood as the perceived relationship of the individual to the world in
which s/he lives, in other words, as the person's world view-regardless of
how it is institutionalized-is set out of the writings of Louis Althusser and
many other contemporary Marxist theorists.
60
Eventually, as patterns of political participation change and as
the masses become increasingly able to analyze and transform
society on their own, the need for central initiation of mass
campaigns would decrease and the basis for a self-governing
society would have been developed.
6
Since Mao's death, however, the two positions which
formed the theoretical underpinning to his support of
campaigns-the unity of politics, economics and ideology and
the commitment to changing patterns of political participation
-have been strongly criticized and largely rejected in China.
Theoretically, the Party has criticized the notion of the unity
of politics and economics as a "feudal" practice. Organization
ally it has criticized this notion by introducing increasing
division of responsibilities which has in fact undermined the
Party's ability to launch the type of campaigns which Mao led.
And in the economic, political and ideological spheres, the
post-Mao leadership has made it clear that it prefers to maintain,
if not strengthen, the pre-Cultural Revolution patterns of
political participation by emphasizing and rewarding the
participation of the most educated, most specialized and most
economically productive in order to modernize the economy
as rapidly as possible.
From the 1920s and 1930s to the Cultural Revolution
Womack's book in large part achieves its objective of
placing Mao's early political thought in context, thereby
cautioning the reader against generalizing Mao's later thought
and practice from his earlier development without carefully
analyzing the changed circumstances. At the same time it
provides the reader with an important starting point for
analyzing some of these later actions. Understanding Mao's
early appreciation and apprehension of the tendency of a
centralized party organizationally to suppress lower level party
and mass organizations' ideas and criticisms helps to
understand his later tendency to go outside the Party leadership
for support for key policies. He did this in July 1955 by calling
together the secretaries of the provincial, municipal and district
Party committees to overcome a Central Committee majority
which was opposed to his cooperativization policy, and he did
it again in the Cultural Revolution by mobilizing large sectors
of the population to outmaneuver the central Party apparatus
(at least temporarily). On the other hand, Womack also
highlights certain discrepancies between Mao's early and later
6. The understanding of campaigns put forward here is not unique, although
it is rarely stated so clearly. Whether mass campaigns were able to achieve
these lofty goals is a related issue which Womack discusses briefly. For studies
on how campaigns have been organized and what they have achieved in
concrete situations, see Marc Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971) and Charles Cell, Revolution at
Work: Mass Mobilization Campaigns in China, (New York: Academic Press,
1977).
There is some evidence in Mao's later theoretical writings to suggest that
his later criticism of such alienating practices as the work of class enemies
was based on an understanding that such errors were bourgeois practices
reflecting and necessitated by existing economic, political and social practices
rather than bourgeois practices consciously initiated by individual class
enemies. However, both the Cultural Revolution practice of individualizing
such errors and attributing them to conscious antagonistic decisions by those
individuals, and Mao's weak and still basically individual-oriented analysis of
bureaucratism reveal the limits of his analysis of this issue and of his ability
10 put some of his more sophisticated practices into action.
practices. He points out that in criticizing incorrect government
and party practices which tended to alienate the leadership from
the masses, he did so without attributing these actions to class
enemies as he did during the Cultural Revolution. How the
transformation from this earlier position to the latter occurred
is beyond the scope of both Womack's book and of this review,'
although in his conclusion Womack points out:
The historic significance of Mao's revolutionary paradigm is
that it broke the bottleneck of modem Chinese history by de
veloping a political paradigm appropriate to Chinese conditions
and yet cognizant of the trans formative potential evident in the
modem West. ... The effectiveness of such a paradigm results
from its appropriateness to existing conditions, but its success
changes those conditions and undermines its own appropriate
ness .... The second ... limitation is caused by the structural
problems that emerge when a practical paradigm becomes au
thoritative (pp. 220-221).
It is at this point that Martin's book takes over,
documenting how these limitations, particularly the second
one, affected Mao's revolutionary paradigm. Martin sheds light
on the inadequacy of the model which Mao proposed for the
further development of this paradigm, a paradigm described
by Womack as one in which there were no guarantees of
freedom of speech in the Western sense, "but a forum where
one had the freedom to risk his political future on the conviction
that his contribution would eventually be judged a 'fragrant
flower' rather than a 'poisonous weed' " (p. 204).
Martin's History of the Canonization of
Mao's Thought
Martin's book is basically a chronology of events relating
to the treatment of Mao's thought in China, with the major
focus on the period after Mao's death. The purpose of the book
is to trace the process by which "Maoism," or Mao's thought,
was transformed from a practical paradigm (although it is
doubtful whether Martin would call Mao's paradigm "practi
cal") into an ossified canon and to show how such canonization
allowed the post-Mao leadership to use Mao's canonized
thought to support their own, basically different policies.
7. A more useful structural analysis of bureaucratism is offered by Charles
Bettelheim. He argues that bureaucracy (in the sense of a social practice that
blocks effective political-economic development and ipso facto alienates the
leadership from the masses) occurs when administrative subordination goes
beyond what is socially useful and begins to substitute relations of
administrative subordination for economic relations which could better be
adapted to the actual situation by more informed local level cadres and/or
workers. In other words, when administrative structures attempt to make
decisions for which they do not have adequate information and when, in an
attempt to monopolize control, they substitute vertical control for horizontal
communication between units, information tends to become more abstract (in
the obfuscating sense) and/or more arbitrary, thus blocking effective decision
making. Moreover, when such incorrect decisions and/or data collected and
put forward by this bureaucratic structure are challenged by the lower levels,
the upper levels, in order to protect these very decision making rights, fall
back on a wide array of administrative sanctions to protect themselves from
these criticisms, thus further widening the gap between themselves and both
the lower levels and the actually necessary information. In such an analysis,
bureaucratism is seen as a structural, ratherthan individual, phenomenon which
can only be eliminated through a basic, if gradual, transformation of society
based on an analysis of the overall social process of production. See C.
Bettelheim, The Transition to Socialist Economy, (Sussex: Harvester Press,
1975), particularly pp. 62-91.
61
Martin focuses on the transfonnation of the content of
Mao's thought after his death and gives but brief treatment of
the pre-1976 canonization of his thought. Martin's best work
comes in documenting the specific methods by which the
present leadership of the CCP and their allies have transfonned
the content of Mao's thought to support their own policies.
For example, he demonstrates how the post-Mao leadership
selectively quoted from Mao to support their own positions
and how they struggled with Mao's supporters over the
selections and editing of documents for the new volumes of
Mao's Selected Works. He clarifies the various indirect methods
of undercutting Mao's stature which have been initiated since
his death. Other leaders have been allowed privileges
previously reserved for Mao alone. Their calligraphy has been
popularized, their poems published and even Selected Works
of various leaders, including Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi and, most
recently, Deng Xiaoping, have been published." Martin also
chronicles the various "immunity fonnulas" which the Party
leadership developed to allow more direct criticisms of Maoist
policies while exempting Mao personally from criticisms and,
eventually, the ways in which these "immunity fonnulas" were
abandoned in favor of direct criticism of Mao. Such direct
criticism of Mao created problems for the leadership and they
had to devise the methods to limit and control criticism. Martin
distinguishes this process of criticizing Mao from Khrushchev's
"de-Stalinization" in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, pointing
out in the process the new fonn of criticism and inner-Party
struggle-in which criticism need not spell the immediate
downfall of an official-which seems to be developing under
the new leadership.
However, for all its utility in helping to organize and
clarify this important history, Martin's book suffers from two
basic flaws. First, throughout the book, he omits infonnation
in his summaries of events in a manner which reveals a clear
bias toward exaggerating the ultra-leftism of Mao's political
thought and practice. For example, in discussing Lin Biao's
role in "absolutizing" Mao Thought, he links Lin's glorification
of Mao's Thought to the creation of Maoist splinter parties
throughout the world, ignoring the fact that these splinter
parties had been developing and had been supported and
encouraged by the CCP as a whole since the Sino-Soviet
polemics of the early 1960s (p. 30). On pages 107-108, without
any critical comment, Martin quotes a speech by a cadre in
Tiananmen Square in November 1978 criticizing Mao's policy
of "leaning towards one [the Soviet, socialist] side" and Mao's
unwillingness to establish relations with the U. S., as a result
of which "over twenty years were lost." Even if the cadre were
not aware of the efforts of Mao and the CCP to establish
relations with the U.S. in the mid and late 1940s and of the
U.S. policy of "rolling back" communism during the 1950s,
Martin should be. And it would seem to be his responsibility
to provide this history if he were to use this quote, rather than
implicitly supporting the insinuation that the failure to establish
relations was predominantly Mao's or even China's responsibil
ity alone. Elsewhere Martin falls into the common trap of
8. The publication of the Selected Works of various leaders has been carried
to the point where, on a recent trip to China, when watching the news about
the publication of Deng's Selected Works, I overheard someone at the next
table say "Even he has Selected Works too now, huh?!"
62
portraying Mao as the initiator of the anti-rightist campaign
which followed the strong criticism of the CCP which emerged
during the 1957 Hundred Flowers Campaign. This ignores
MacFarquahr's research which shows that not only did Mao
not initiate the anti-rightist campaign, but that he was attacked
by Peng Zheng," a leading member of the present leadership
coalition, as a "rightist" for giving the critics too much space
(pp.261-31O)!
Second, as with other "Kremlinological" or "Beijingologi
cal" studies, Martin's work focuses almost exclusively on the
struggles of the top leadership. It tends to ignore the remainder
of society and the relationship between the various leadership
groupings, their social bases and the basic political, economic
and ideological issues facing the Chinese people. Despite these
weaknesses, Martin's work is still a useful micro-analysis of
leadership behavior which provides further insight both into
the machinations of the past and present leadership of the CCP
in dealing with the issue of Mao's thought and into the
continuing unwillingness of the present leadership to com
pletely rectify its method of dealing with the history of the
Chinese Revolution.
In conclusion, both Womack's and Martin's books
contribute valuable infonnation on the relationship between
Mao's thought and the Chinese Revolution. Although both
provide detailed historical data, the contrast between the two
is very noticeable. Where Womack stresses the links between
Mao's thought and the key social contradictions facing the CCP
and the Chinese Revolution, Martin focuses more narrowly on
the leadership struggle over the control of Mao's legacy. Where
Womack also deals with the issue of the relationships between
leaders and led, Martin deals with the issue only implicitly.
Where Womack occassionally delves into theoretical issues,
Martin prefers to remain solely on historical turf. And where
Martin tends to at least implicitly support the present
leadership's criticisms of Mao's ultra-leftism, Womack tends
to give Mao the benefit of the doubt where ambiguous
interpretations of his thought and action are possible. For the
China scholar both are valuable reading, but for the general
reader Womack's book is more comprehensible. Hopefully
both can serve to infonn readers about different aspects of
Mao's role in the Chinese Revolution and spur on both activists
and scholars to undertake more analyses not only of Mao's
personal interventions in Chinese history, but also of the lessons
that can be drawn from these interventions which might help
in advancing the Chinese Revolution and other revolutions
around the world.
*
9. Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, (New
York: Columbia University Press), 1974.
rvwS '82
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63
Review
by Tom Grunfeld
In 1978, at the Center for East Asian Studies of the
University of Montreal, a multidisciplinary group of faculty
and graduate students was established for the purpose of
conducting research into China's minority nationalities. The
group included Denise Helly (anthropology), Chang Weipenn
(economy/demography), Lucien Divod (political philosophy),
Jacques Lamontagne (comparative education), Robert Sevigny
(sociology), and Louis Veilleux (geography).
It was decided to study three groups: the Uygurs in
southwest Xinjiang, the Kazaks in northwest Xinjiang, and the
Miao in northwest Guangxi. These groups were chosen because
it was felt their different characteristics and differing social
organizations prior to 1949 would allow for useful comparisons.
In addition, their location-in sensitive border areas-give
them particular geopolitical importance as well as economic
importance in China's current drive to achieve the "four
modernizations. "
This volume is the group's first contribution (although the
second in a series published by the University of Montreal
entitled Recherches sur l' Asie de l' Est). Specifically, the
scholars aim to study six aspects of each of the minorities cited
above. This includes examining the geographic, demographic,
ethnic, and linguistic distribution of each minority; their
traditional socio-economic states; their cultural and ideological
traditions; how they were regarded by the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) prior to 1949; the minority people's responses and
reactions to the CCP revolution; and the subsequent class
transformation which was carried out after 1949.
These are all highly commendable goals and their first
volume reflects a concerted effort to reach those lofty heights.
Unfortunately it falls somewhat short, though it is indeed a
good beginning. The apparent reason for this shortcoming is
the paucity of primary source materials. In the West, as well
as in China, the serious study of the history and culture of
ethnic minorities is in its infancy. In China there were only a
relative handful of students of minority life during the 1950s
and early 196Os. As with so much else, these studies ceased
La Chine: La Question des Minorites en Chine.
Orientations Generales, by Charles Le Blanc and
Denise Helly, eds. Montreal: Cahiers de Centre
d'etudes de I' Asie de I'Est, Universite de
Montreal, 1981, 236 pp.
altogether with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution and are
only now starting up again. Sadly, there are very few scholars
from the minority groups themselves and their training is
moving far too slowly.
In spite of these difficulties this volume is a welcome
addition to the literature with each contribution offering the
reader something different. It begins, quite appropriately, with
several charts and maps identifying the 55 ethnic minorities,
their population, their linguistic characteristics, and where they
reside in China. This is followed by a translation of a speech
by China's preeminent anthropologist, Fei Xiaotong, entitled
"Ethnic Identification in China." Given in September 1978 to
a meeting of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference,
the speech was published in English in the first issue of Social
Sciences in China (March 1980). This is an important
introduction to any study of China's minorities because it
addresses the perplexing problem of how the Chinese are
identifying and labeling ethnicity.
The next chapter is an abridged translation of a study
conducted in 1956 by eight Chinese cadres in Xiaheleke county,
a uygur domicile in Xinjiang. It is a very good account of the
class structure, land ownership, social customs, and economy
complete with charts and statistical tables. The study originally
appeared in a collection entitled Minzu Yanjiu Gongzuo de
Yuejin (Great Progress in Minority Research). I was particularly
pleased to see this translation, since during the 1950s a number
of field studies were done and published in collec;tions like
this one as well as in the journals Minzu Tuanjie (Nationalities
Unity) and Minzu Yanjuiu (Nationalities Studies). These studies
have been largely ignored by scholars outside of China to the
detriment of us all, for later articles published in the 1960s and
1970s were less scholarly efforts than polemics.
What follows next is an article by Divod and Chang on
the economy of the Uygurs prior to 1949 and its socialist
transformation in the 1950s. Admitting that the sources
available are "rare and fragmentary," the authors nevertheless
provide a solid, basic sketch of the social and economic
64
characteristics of a Uygur district near Khotan. This article is
of particular value to those unfamiliar with the economic
situation of the minorities in Xinjiang.
Another translation follows, this one from Jinri Guangxi
Shaoshu Minzu (The National Minorities of Guangxi Today)
which was published in 1978. Here we find a description of
Miaoling, a mountainous region of northern Guangxi inhabited
by the Miao people (there are 3 million Miao in China and
another Y2 million in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Burma).
Written in the jargon of the Cultural Revolution, its value is
limited because it is so heavily polemical and because so much
of the information published during that period has now been
repudiated. Nonetheless, it provides a good comparison with
the earlier translation in Chapter 2 and demonstrates the value
of those neglected earlier studies.
The next contribution is somewhat different in that it is a
translation and analysis of four myths from the oral tradition
of the Miao people. Taken from a second century Taoist book,
Huainan Zi (Master Huainan's Book), it tells the tale of an
animal trainer and the Lady Gua. According to translator Le
Blanc this is the oldest origin myth in written Chinese tradition.
The remainder of the volume-more than half-is devoted
to a study by Denise Helly on "The Communist Party and the
Ethnic Question. The Case of Xinjiang, 1920-1959." This is
intended to provide an overview of the CCP's minority policy
in light of larger historical events of the period by focusing on
the situations of the Kazaks and Uygurs of Xinjiang.
While there is little new here for the reader of previous
studies by Jack Chen, Donald McMillen, and Allen Whiting,
it is valuable for its succinctness. I have not come across a
better short introduction, although Helly has in some instances
too readily accepted Chinese sources. She underplays the
complexities of the Han-minority relationship, particularly the
hostility of the minorities towards the Han due to centuries-old
prejudice and, more recently, some wrongheaded policies. One
of the many examples I can offer of the latter was the
unwillingness of the government to grant some measure of
actual autonomy to the minorities rather than the "mere
formality" (the words used by the Chinese press) it turned out
to be in practice.
A more critical reading of the sources might have led to
further research and the avoidance of a number of historical
errors. On Tibet, for example, the Dalai Lama did not "escape"
to Sikkim in 1950 (p. 172). He never left Tibet at the time.
Nor did the anti-Han rebellions in Tibet begin in 1957 (p. 173);
they began only weeks after the arrival of the People's
Liberation Army in late 1950 and became full-blown in early
1956.
Whatever its shortcomings this volume is an important
step in furthering our understanding of the non-Han peoples
of China and an excellent departure for additional work. We
are promised that the group at the Universite de Montreal in
the future will offer us studies on the social mobility of the
non-Hans in Xinjiang, the relationship between the regional
Xinjiang and the Chinese national economies, the status of the
Hui (Chinese Muslims) before and after 1949, and much more.
I for one am anxiously awaiting the future volumes. *
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65
Review
by Elly van Gelderen
This book deals with the appalling situation that exists on
West-Papua, as it does in much of Indonesia, and is meant to
"publicise a much-neglected situation of human rights abuse
and [to] help provide the West Papuan people with urgently
needed sympathy and support" (7). It gives a short overview
of the country's history and of the UN New York Agreement
of 1962 and the 1969 Act of Free Choice. It discusses the
destruction of the Papuan community by economic exploitation
and deliberate action, human rights abuses, the Papuan
liberation movement (OPM) and the military campaigns by the
Indonesian military forces against the OPM.
West Papua' (named Irian Jaya by Indonesia) was
inhabited by Melanesians in the coastal areas and non-Melane
sian speaking groups in the highlands that appear to represent
the most ancient cultural legacy in this part of the Pacific. The
island was explored by the Spanish, Portuguese, French and
British, but it was the Dutch who established outposts. The
island was divided between Britain and the Netherlands in
1848. By the beginning of this century, it was known that the
island had oil resources, but exploitation was not begun until
1936. The Japanese occupied the island during the Second
World War and after the Allied forces (accompanied by
geological teams who found nickel, copper, cobalt and
chromite) regained West New Guinea, the Dutch returned.
There was strong opposition to the Dutch presence by Indonesia
who wanted to incorporate West Papua. The Dutch attitude to
Papuan independence had been ambivalent: on the one hand,
the Dutch were willing to hold elections in West Papua (30)
I. Throughout, I use West Papua, rather than Irian Jaya, as the latter is the
Indonesian name. I want to thank Kevin Hewison for suggestions.
WEST-PAPUA: THE OBLITERATION OF A
PEOPLE. London: TAPOL, 1983. 114pp., $4.50
plus mailing. TAPOL, 8a Treport St., London
SW182BP.
and have Papuans participate in government,
2
but on the other
hand, they had a patronizing concern with the primitiveness
and the "absence of culture" in the people.
3
The U.S. was
strongly in favor of a solution favorable to Indonesia and made
the Dutch agree to the 1962 New York Agreement, which was
reached without the presence of any Papuans. The agreement,
which was immediately ratified by the UN General Assembly,
specified that six years after Indonesia would take over, the
people of West Papua would be able to choose by the Act of
Free Choice to stay with Indonesia or to become independent.
From 1963 to 1967, however, no UN representative was present
to keep informed on the situation there.
4
In 1969, Suharto, the Indonesian president who replaced
Sukarno in 1965, announced that the Act of Free Choice would
take place. This was an improvement on his predecessor
Sukarno as Sukarno had declared in November 1962 that it
was not necessary to have an Act of Free Choice (28).5 A UN
representative, Ortiz Sanz, was appointed to observe the Act,
but the conclusions to his report were ignored by the UN (one
of the recommendations was to have Indonesian troop
withdrawal before the plebiscite). Rather than follow the
suggestion made _by Ortiz Sanz of one man-one vote, the
2. Van der Kroef, J.M. (1968) "West New Guinea: The Uncertain Future,"
in: Asian Survey, August, 694.
3. Toekomstige Ontwikkeling van Nieuw-Guinea: Rapport van de Interdepan
mentale Commissie. (1953) Den Haag: Staatsdrukkerij, e.g., 18-19.
4. Van der Kroef, op. cit., 691.
5. Ibid., 969 and May, B. (1978) The Indonesian Tragedy. London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 195.
66
Indonesian government decided that local representatives (their
number was t025) were the ones who were to vote in the
plebiscite as most of the Papuans were deemed too simple to
vote (30). The t025 voted unanimously not to become
independent. There was no doubt that they were intimidated
(31-2).6 Although the UN team during and before the voting
did not have planes, interpreters
7
or an adequate staff,8 the UN
approved the results.
The third chapter deals with the economic exploitation of
the country and how the people "benefit" from this exploitation.
For instance, in 1976 exports amounted to $350 million,
whereas imports were $1 million. Most of the exports were oil
and minerals. Initially, West Papuans were needed to work,
but their numbers were steadily reduced and all supervisory
staff was non-native. More so than with the oil, the exploitation
of minerals and lumber involved the dislocation and resettle
ment of local inhabitants. This resulted in uprisings by the
population and reprisals by the military. A major incident (38)
was the cutting of the copper-concentrate pipeline in Tembaga
pura in 1977. The military attacked with two OV -to Bronco
bombers (low-flying, slow-moving anti-guerrilla aircraft) and
burned down some villages.
Resettlement and dislocation of people occur in an
arbitrary way not only because of mineral exploitation, but
also because of a systematic transmigration of Javanese and
others. Transmigration or "Javanization" is important politi
cally ''to help crush rebellions on outer islands" (52). The
number of immigrants is estimated at between 300,000 and 1
million (54) and Vice President A. Malik is quoted as saying
that 9 million will be settled. TAPOL (5) mentions that West
Papua itself has 1 million inhabitants, but OPM has claimed
2.3 million. The newcomers are settled in the fertile parts,
whereas the West Papuans are relocated away from their land.
Apart from this influx, there is a systematic scheme to disperse
the Papuans (one Papuan family to every 9 Javanese is the
goal) (62), to make them dress "properly" and to teach them
to speak Indonesian. What do the West Papuans gain by all
this? Health services for Papuans have been described by a
doctor as "alarming" (66). And the destruction of forests for
timber has had such a terrible effect on food production that
in July and August 1982, 112 people died from starvation and
3000 were at risk (68).
In May 1963, the UN left and that is when human rights
violations started to occur. In October 1965, the KOPKAMTIB
came into existence and this organization-which operates all
over Indonesia-arrests, detains and even kills people it sees
as a threat to security. Mass killings of villagers take place
after every guerrilla attack. From 1962 to 1969, it is estimated
that 30,000 people were killed (74) and in 1981, 13,000 people
are said to have died in operation "cleansweep" (75). Since
1962, 100,000-150,000 are believed to have died (6), which
is a lot "better," percentage-wise, than the record in East Timor.
1be anti-slavery society reported that 200,000 West Papuans
have been murdered since 1962.9 Deaths in detention (for
example, by pumping water into a cell until the prisoner
tl
drowns) (76), disappearances and extrajudicial killings are but
a few of the humnan rights violations. Most political prisoners
are arrested for suspected sympathies with OPM, the movement
fighting for self-determination but few are charged or tried and
if tried the trials do not accord with internationally established
standards.
For the West Papuans, two options are left: fight or flee.
The third option, to inform the world so it can put pressure on
Indonesia to respect the rights of the people of West Papua,
has, as in the case of East Timor, failed. As to the fighting,
the OPM is said to have control over a quarter of the country
and it is claimed that 30,000 people are active in it (100). They
can survive because they are not dependent on a particular
piece of land but live on roots and plants and move around a
lot. TAPOL's discussion of the OPM is simplistic. It is
presented as a unified guerrilla movement and its ideology and
disputes are not dealt with. May'O talks about tribal unity in
fighting non-Papuans, but certainly does not make the
movement seem unified. II May ascribes the rise of OPM to a
"belief in some kind of cosmic justice"12 for which OPM
became a symbol.
Many have had to flee the country. At first, Papua New
Guinea (hence PNG, the Eastern part ofthe island) was willing
to grant asylum to West Papuans. In 1979, under Australian
and Indonesian pressure this policy changed. People qualifying
as Refugees under UN standards were sent back since the UN
Refugee official (92) was Australian and did not want to alienate
Indonesia. More recently, in April 1984, Namaliu (the foreign
minister of PNG) went to Jakarta to ask whether refugees
coming to PNG were not forced off their land undeto.
transmigration policies and whether they would be harmed on
coming back to West Papua. It is not yet clear what will happen
to the several hundreds of refugees that came in the spring of
1984: they could be sent back, given asylum in PNG or sent
to a third country. Other countries like Vanuatu and the
Netherlands are no longer willing (with a few exceptions) to
accept West Papuans, presumably for reasons similar to those
ofPNG.
The similarities with East Timor are striking and range
from bombing raids made with OV-to Bronco airplanes
supplied by the U.S. to systematic genocide. Neither country
is culturally or logically part of Indonesia. It has been claimed
by Indonesia that historically West Papua is a part of Indonesia
because it belonged to the Dutch possessions there, something
that cannot be said of East Timor which belonged to Portugal.
The book claims that the situation on West Papua is even
less known than that on East Timor (97). A small indication
of how little the world knows or cares about West Papua is
that the Carnegie Peace Prize (awarded in January 1984 in The
Hague) could be given to Van Royen, one of the Dutch
negotiators instrumental in bringing about the 1%2 New York
Agreement. One reason then for this book is to familiarize the
world with the situation on West Papua. The other is to stress
what the world can forget and how international safeguards
... clln faiteven under UN auspices when particular interests are
at stake.
*
6. Ibid., 189 and 192-3.
7. Ibid., 188 and 199. 10. May, op. cit., 175.
8. Ibid., 197. II. Ibid., 180-1.
9. Geneva: Reuters, 9 August 1983.
67
12. Ibid., 182.
Review
by Elaine Kurtenbach
Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua, in collaboration with
numerous Khmer people, have produced a unique, scholarly
volume about Kampuchea that endeavors to answer the critical
question of "why?" What are the events that precipitated the
rule of the Khmer Rouge and why did they tum against their
own people? This book is a collection of well-documented
essays, arranged in chronological order, that examines the
long-term, endemic conditions that resulted in Kampuchea's
dark age of 1975-79. Much of the work was translated from
original Khmer sources, and two of the Kampuchean writers,
"'Hou Yuon and Hu Nim, were prominent socialists who were
executed by the Khmer Rouge after 1975. Well-known and
sometimes obscure events are described through the eyes of
witnesses interviewed in Kampuchea, Thailand, Australia and
France. This book is not a diatribe against the unspeakable
horrors that befell the Kampuchean people. The facts have
their own grim eloquence.
The book is composed of three main sections. Part I is
an introduction to the peasantry of Kampuchea; their social life
and land tenure patterns. The Khmer authors demonstrate that
Kampuchean peasants were commonly deprived of most of the
value of their major produce-rice. Rice is the staple food,
and Kampuchea was a net exporter of rice. By all logic, it
should have been quite inexpensive due to its relative
abundance. Yet, purchasing rice accounted for 50 to 60 percent
of the household budget of a Kampuchean peasant family. The
economic livelihood of the peasants, ever precarious, was
further eroded by colonial exploitation. Peasants were con
sequently vulnerable to economic, hence political manipula
tion. This argument is documented with case studies and
detailed surveys of various regions throughout the country. The
overall conclusion is that far from living in a homogenous,
harmonious rustic Buddhistic sanctuary, the Kampuchean rural
population was divided into various economic groups that were
interdependent but not responsible for the welfare of the local
people. Underlying tensions became increasingly manifest as
the pressures of taxation, warfare and debt produced a
"politically significant" landless peasant class. All political
activists manipulated these social and economic cleavages
eventually to the profound disadvantage of the peasants.
The second section of the book outlines the political
struggles in Kampuchea from 1942 to 1970. The narratives of
political conflict reveal the disagreements between anti-colonial
Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1942-1981
by Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua. Armonk,
NY: ME. Sharpe, and London: Zed Press,
1982. Hardcover $35.00, paper $14.95.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
and anti-royalist leftist opposition groups that existed since the
1940s. Alternative plans did exist regarding the correct course
for Kampuchea's independent development. However, the
natural evolution of a national development plan was
consistently obstructed by foreign interference. A constructive
proposal is described by Hou Yuon in Chapter 6, "Solving
Rural Problems: A Socialist Program to Safeguard the Nation."
This plan called for the voluntary development of peasant
cooperatives to eliminate the middlemen who absorbed up to
half of the value of the produce. The plan never got off the
ground, for it would have appropriated the wealth that
supported the royalist government, among other reasons. Yet,
it is almost meaningless to speak of political development of
the peasants in Kampuchea.
This work goes further than any other study is describing
the relationships between the peasants, who would perhaps
have remained uninvolved in politics had circumstances
permitted, and political powers in Kampuchea. The chasm
between sociological inquiry and the political analysis still
remains wide. This section of the political history of
Kampuchea has as its main subjects of study the Khmer
Issareks, Prince Sihanouk, Lon Nol and Pol Pot. Considering
the paucity of information about Khmer society, this study is
indispensable, but it does raise more questions than it can
answer.
To cite a lengthy example, a critical problem in studying
Kampuchea lies in defining the power base of any political
group or politician (Sihanouk) in a given period of time.
Intellectuals alienated by political repression and often
espousing worthy ideals for a free Kampuchea developed
opposition bases in the hinterlands. They necessarily drafted
their soldiers from the dispossessed. Landless peasants, young
teenagers, and even guerrilla leaders from Thailand peopled
the ranks of the Khmer Rouge. Their years of suffering in
guerrilla warfare left indelible psychological damage, filling
the soldiers with "uncontrollable hatred" for the people who
had tormented them, and even for the people who had simply
led normal lives during their long struggle.
The peasants, true to their religious beliefs and culture,
appeared to show a constant loyalty to the "God-king," "Prince
Sihanouk. In Chapter 8, 'The 1970 Peasant Uprisings Against
Lon Nol," Kiernan produces evidence that although the
peasants may have appeared loyal to Sihanouk, they were not
68
necessarily inclined to demonstrate for his return to power.
This is a key issue in gauging the degree of support for the
Prince, as well as the politicization of the rural population.
W.E. Willmott has challenged Kiernan's thesis, suggesting
that his own evidence "indicates that the return of Sihanouk
was the single issue around which the KCP could organize
mass demonstrations.'"
The issue is more complex. The peasant population has
been the source both of the communist troops and the National
Army under Lon Nol. The relations between the local people
and political factions is automatically complicated by family
ties. In general, however, the peasants were at the disposal of
those who carried arms. Whenever possible, they continued to
farm and to dodge artillery fire and bombing. For them, the
key issue was to provide subsistence for themselves and to
hope for peace. When the Khmer Rouge were driven away by
the Vietnamese or the National Army, only those who feared
punishment for past involvement with the Khmer Rouge
followed them into the jungle. Those who could remltined
behind, generally passive.
As for Sihanouk, Kiernan points out that in 1970 when
he was overthrown, there were pro-Sihanouk demonstrations
only in two areas where the revolutionary forces were
particularly strong, Kompong Cham and Takeo-Kampot. The
support for the Prince was "rather passive" and had its political
limitations, according to Kiernan. This is unremarkable.
Although Sihanouk had managed to hold his position for many
years as the national liberator and figurehead, his image was
hardly unsullied. Sihanouk, perhaps with no better alternative,
allied himself with the lions most likely to safeguard
Kampuchea's sovereignty. He did condone the shipment of
supplies to Vietnamese communist troops through the port at
Sihanoukville. Viet Minh troops were camped along the
sparsely inhabited border regions. Sihanouk was the figurehead
not only of the traditional Buddhist culture, but also of an elite,
corrupted regime in Phnom Penh.
Kiernan quotes a commentator who wrote that "It is almost
as if Sihanouk's portrait were more important than the man
himself, suggesting that these people demonstrated their loyalty
to a traditional source of power rather than a man." Peasants,
despite their pride in tradition and religious beliefs, are practical
people. They would scarcely be compelled to actively fight to
restore the King any more than they would actively resist the
new leader, unless forced to do so.
Nonetheless, the predisposition of the peasants to favor
the rule of a populist traditional ruler was based on
well-founded intuition. Lon Nol had already established a
gruesome reputation during the Samlaut Rebellion in 1967
1968. He brought the final rain of destruction down on the
heads of the peasants, first by driving the Viet Minh deeper
into densely populated regions of Kampuchea and subsequently
by inviting the ARVN into Kampuchea, whereupon they
"swept through southeastern Kampuchea as far as Kompong
Spen and Kompong Chhnang during June and July 1970,
'pillaging, burning, raping' " as they went.
2
The Americans
followed in 1972-1973 with merciless bombing, allegedly
aimed at the Vietnamese but landing more often than not on
innocent villages. The natural result of this bombardment was
that many peasants fled to the Khmer Rouge. Those who
remained behind among the ruins naturally considered
Sihanouk to be the most likely savior from the inferno. Yet,
even if, as Willmott suggests, the return of Sihanouk to power
was the single issue around whicl1 the KCP could organize
mass demonstrations,1 this is no evidence of a true politiciza
tion of the peasants. It is a case of the mighty exploiting the
psychological propensities of the peasants in order to obtain
passive tolerance.
In the third section, an essay by Kiernan and testimonies
from people who survived the rule of the Khmer Rouge provide
some first-hand insight into those dark years. The interesting
fact that emerges is that the impact of Pol Pot's rule varied
over time and distance. The regime took power in 1975 with
savage vengeance. It embarked on an understandably ambitious
program to reconstruct the countryside according to its own
revolutionary specifications, as well as to salvage the rice
harvests. A guerrilla army, however, is not necessarily
well-prepared to carry out the tasks of governing. Rival leaders,
with differing opinions on how to conduct the revolution, posed
a threat to the monolithic rule of the Angkar or "organization."
The tasks of ruling and fighting against the Vietnamese and
opposition forces strained the resources of the regime and this
pressure weighed heaviest upon the people. Those peasants
who had enjoyed relatively favorable treatment in the early
years of 1975-1976 could not avoid the pressure any more
than the tormented former urbanites could. In 1977 and 1978
grain was removed from communal storehouses and trucked
to unknown destinations, just as it had been swallowed by
taxes in the bygone "feudal" days. The peasants suffered.
Everyone suffered.
This book does not offer an academic explanation for the
manipulation of the peasants of Kampuchea. The lack of any
artificial intellectual framework contributes to its straight
forwardness. The reader can closely examine a range of topics,
from land tenure to military strategy to revolutionary songs.
This work is therefore useful to scholars and laymen in all
fields of social studies.
Kiernan and Boua do not in any sense apologize for the
cruelty of the Pol Pot regime. Their evidence demonstrates that
this inhumanity was matched in kind, if not in degree, by the
French, by troops under Sihanouk and particularly by Lon Nol.
The capacity of a society to involute, to tum against itself, is
beyond reason, but certainly not unique to the Kampucheans.
None of the political and military leaders who so deftly and
forcefully manipulated the people of Kampuchea can claim a
moral superiority. This is particularly true of the Americans
who turned parts of tropical Kampuchea into a wasteland and
facilitated Pol Pot's takeover.
Kiernan's conclusion, "Kampuchea Stumbles to its Feet,"
is an optimistic one. Under Vietnamese occupation, Kam
puchea is staging a slow cultural and economic revival. Sadly,
forces are waiting in the wings to knock it right off its feet.
We can only hope that the experiences and "cultural
renaissance" in Kampuchea will have supplied the peasants
with a better ability to discern and direct their own future.
*
1. W.E. Willmott, "Analytic Errors of the Kampuchean Communist Party,"
Pacific Affairs 54:2, Summer 1981, p. 225.
2. Ibid. 3. Ibid.
69
Review
by Tom Grunfeld
If you can't tell by the title you only have to go as far as
the dedication to become aware of the inclination of this book,
for it
is dedicated to all those hurt by CIA covert operations. It is
especially dedicated to the Vietnamese and the Americans who
served in Vietnam.
Ralph McGehee was the perfect candidate for CIA
employment. A third generation Louisianan, McGehee grew
up during the Depression in a relatively secure environment
(his father worked as a janitor) in a lower middle class
neighborhood of Chicago. Young Ralph made the high school
honor list and was elected class president before going on to
Notre Dame where he graduated cum laude (even while playing
on three championship football teams). As he himself admits,
he "was raised to believe in the American dream-the
Protestant work ethic, truth, justice, freedom," and the divinely
inspired mission of the United States to defeat the world-wide
communist conspiracy.
In 1952 McGehee was recruited to the CIA and spent the
next 25 years slowly seeing his ideals challenged; at first they
slowly frayed at the edges, but by the end they were destroyed.
He finally left the agency in 1977 with bitterness and anger.
McGehee is only the most recent of a growing number of
ex-CIA employees who have witnessed their illusions shattered
and consequently have tried to warn their fellow citizens of
what they perceive are the dangers of the CIA. Like Victor
Marchetti, Philip Agee, Frank Snepp, and John Stockwell
before him, McGehee had his difficulties with the agency over
his book. He voluntarily submitted the final manuscript for
approval and clearance, but only after protracted disputes (all
explained in a fascinating appendix which should be required
reading for anyone interested in the CIA) was the book allowed
to be printed with minor deletions-all of which are clearly
delineated in the text.
McGehee's career with the CIA was confined exclusively
to Asia; first working on the China desk in Langley, Virginia,
70
Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA, by Ralph
W. McGehee. New York: Sheridan Square
Publications, Inc., 1983, 231 pp., $7.95.
and then working in the field in Taiwan, Thailand, and
Vietnam. Perhaps because of the secrecy agreement he signed
with the CIA, or perhaps because McGehee did not wish to
compromise himself, the book contains no revelations or
scoops about CIA activities. Most of what is discussed
concerning major CIA operations comes from secondary
sources and from previous autobiographies by former agents.
Nevertheless, for readers inclined to dislike the CIA and
its activities this book will be more grist for the mill coming
as it does from someone with a quarter of a century's personal
experience. And indeed that is McGehee's stated intent as to
how the book should be used. He sees it as a weapon, for he
concludes that his experiences have proven to him that rather
than being an intelligence gathering arm of the government,
the CIA in actuality is "the covert action arm of the Presidency"
which gathers intelligence only as it fits and supports the covert
activities it engages in. On a personal note, McGehee also
wanted to write his story to try and understand his experiences,
separating the reality that he experienced with the ". . .
fairy-tale world I was led to believe in."
While the book may not produce any new "smoking guns"
I would strongly recommend it for the personal aspects of CIA
life that it tells us about. The most interesting to me concerned
the effects on family life when one member has pledged not
to tell anyone-not even his or her spouse-anything about
hislher livelihood. McGehee could not tell his wife who he
worked for, what he did, where he went, or even when he
would be back. The strains of this rather unrealistic demand
are dealt with honestly and in a disarming fashion. McGehee
chronicles his growing realization that his wife's role is not
simply to stay at home, take care of the kids, lie on his behalf,
and not ask any questions. It becomes clear that feminism has
had its effects on Ralph McGehee.
Another strength of the book is McGehee's willingness
to let us in on the relationships within the agency itself as well
as chronicling the human foibles of some of its employees.
These relationships-between trainees, between junior em
ployees and their superiors, between the different branches of
the agency-put a more human and realistic face on the whole
bureaucracy which many of us on the outside tend to feel is
wholly cool and calculating. Of equal interest were the
descriptions of relationships between the agents and the local
liaisons which in some cases proved disastrous, some just
hilarious, and in some ominously friendly (Ray Cline, former
CIA station chief in Taiwan, was so friendly with Chiang
Ching-kuo and his wife that the couple was frequently seen in
the CIA club playing the slot machines).
While I generally agree with McGehee's conclusions I
found myself disturbed by parts of his story. McGehee
inexplicably fails to mention that the CIA does indeed have an
intelligence gathering function through the use of thousands of
employees who read all publicly available materials, materials
gathered through electronic eavesdropping, and from monitored
radio and television broadcasts. This is often directed at
countries in which the CIA is presumably not currently involved
in covert operations (for example, Canada and Britain) but is
gathered for future possibilities of covert activities as well as
to aid the U.S. government in its decision making. These
intelligence gatherers undoubtedly lead more mundane lives
than the agents in the field yet they also must make moral and
political judgements concerning the uses to which the fruits of
their labor are used. In an imperfect world every nation requires
some form of intelligence gathering, so that is not the issue.
The issue, I believe, is who benefits from this information,
who suffers as a result of its being gathered and who controls
its use. None of this is discussed by McGehee.
McGehee's frequent anecdotes of agency blunders and
short-sightedness was another aspect of McGehee's story I
found disturbing. These ranged from an inefficient filing system
that was not properly cross-indexed to the abandonment of
effective programs because their success would have con
tradicted previous CIA claims that there was no problem to
begin with. And then there was the entrepreneurial agent in
Saigon who convinced the CIA he had a network of spies
throughout China and who, for "millions of dollars a year"
supplied the CIA with information which after three years they
discovered he had been getting by clipping articles from the
local Chinese press.
My reaction to the first few of these was a smile and a
sense of gratitude that there now existed some corrective to
the widely held belief of CIA omnipotence. Yet, as they
continued with only passing mention of the CIA's "successes"
my unease increased, for out of context these blunders would
lead us to believe that the world has little to fear of the CIA
for it would probably trip over its own shoelaces on its way
to the next coup d'etat. For most of the nations of the world
this is sadly untrue.
This lack of balance could present problems, particularly
if the reader is relatively unfamiliar with CIA activities over
the past 35 years. So, if someone asks me to recommend a
single book on the CIA this would not be the one I would cite.
Yet for those initiated in the skullduggery' and counter
revolutionary activities of the agency this account of a personal
*
What are Manists doing in American universities? '!bey teach, work on WIlvssIty
committes, write boob. '!bey ..wya-in f...,inating w.ys-m.... culture, American
Imperialism, capitalist eccmomlcs, bourgeois history, folk culture, art. cinem. But have
Marxist critics of IOCiety loBI their ..J voices of opporItion In the hallowed baIls of
Acadmne? Is Manilm becoming JeIf-deltructiv-ely nspectabIe? Or do we haw what JOllIe
think is an MabIisbed &Del influential Left Academy? Is Manism, rop.....nted by pro
fe.Irs especially .t powerful universities, vigorously .t work where it is .-ded? Is the
WIivenIty, worIr:pIace th.t produca cultural oommodities, being sIgnlficand)' ebanpd
by Marxists-or are they being ebanpd by it?
Humanities in Society
..._.opeciDl double law
Marxists and the University
Robert M. Maniquis, Guest Editor
CONTENTS
Ellen Scbrecker, "The Missing Gener.tion: Academics &Del the Communist Party from
the Depression to the Cold War"
Wlllter Cohen and Peter HohendahI, "Marxist Literary Critics: Problems .nd Proposals"
Gene BeIl-Villada, "Invisible Anti-Manism: What H.ppens When American Academics
Read Latin-American Leftists..
LeIIie R.bine, "Searching for the ConnectIons: Marxist-Feminists .nd Women', Studies..
Carl Boggs, "The Intellectullls and Socilll Movements: Some Reflections on Academic
Marxism"
Ben Agger and Allen R.cblin, "Left-Wing Scholarship: Current Contradictions of
Academic Production"
Robert M. Maniquis, "PucIIl', Bet, Totalities, &Del Guerilla Criticism"
Fredric JamMOD, "Science venus Ideology"
This issue will be avallable for flO. Upcoming issues of Humoniliel in Soclety will deIIl
with SeoWity, VioIoace, -l'oraocnPbY; Race, a.., _ Culture; and lJterary East
Wert Emigration. The following recent issues are also available:
ReIipoa _ PoIltics (the influence of religion on American politics, currendy
&Del historically, te)
Foucault _ Criticlll 1'b.ry: n... V_ of I>Ucoune Analysis (applications of
Foucault', thought to various disciplines, flO)
MIlitarism &Del War (an interdisciplinary study of the history of war, the
nuclear arms ra<e, and the economic _ morIIl CIJDIIICIIM!I'C of warfare, $10)
n... PoIltics of lJteracy (a re-examination of today', literacy "crisis," te)
PsyebouIIlysis &Del IDterpretation (flO)
For. tsl one-year subocription to this q.-terly or for individual issues, make out checks
to HtmIIJfIUieIr in Soc/eIy and oend to Scott Giantvalley, Managing Editor, Center for the
Humanities, THH 326, University of Southern California, Los Auples CA 90089-0350.
Make checks payable to:
Reproductive Rights National Network
17 Murray Street
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odyssey should be read. o$8 Regular 0 $12 Supporting 0 $--Sustaining
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71
Books to Review
The following review copies have arrived at the office of the
Bulletin. /fyou are interested in reading and reviewing one or
more of them, write to Joe Moore, BCAS, P.O. Box R,
Berthoud, Colorado 80513. This brief list contains only books
that have arrived since the last issue. Please refer to that list as
well for other books currently available from BCAS.
Asian Coalition of Human Rights Organizations (ed), Human Rights Activism
in Asia (New York: Council on International and Public Affairs, 1984).
Bhabani. Sen Gupta (ed), Soviet Perspectives of Contemporary Asia (Atlantic
Highlands: Humanities Press, 1984).
Links No. 19, "Reclaiming the Earth: Development and the Environment,"
Third World First, March 1984.
Amnesty International (ed), China: Violations of Human Rights (umdon:
Amnesty International, 1984).
John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: Univ.
of Hawaii Press, 1984).
Harry Harding (ed), China's Foreign Relations in the 1980s (New Haven:
Yale Univ. Press, 1984).
Alan Jenkins & Cathy Grant, "A Teaching Guide to Films on the People's
Republic of China," Discussion Paper in Geography No. 21, Oxford
Polytechnic, 1984.
Martin J. Haigh. "Soil Erosion and Soil Conservation Research in India: An
Annotated Bibliography," Discussion Paper in Geography No. 17, Oxford
Polytechnic, 1982.
Janet Hunter, compiler, Concise Dictionary of Modern Japanese History
(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1984).
Sharon Minichiello, Retreat from Reform: Patterns of Political Behavior in
Interwar Japan (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1984).
J. V. Neustupny and Y. Sugimoto (eds) , Papers of the Japanese Studies Centre
Clayton, VIC, Australia: Japanese Studies Centre).
I. Sugimoto & Mouer, Japanese Society
2. Freiberg, Women in Mizoguchi Films
3. Henderson, Joint Ventures and Investments in Japan
4. Sugimoto, Shimada & Levine, Industrial Relations in Japan
5. Tsurumi, Japanese Conceptions of Asia
6. Mackie, Japanese Children and Politenss
7. Stockwin, The Rights and Lefts of Japanese Politics
8. Sheard, Auto Production Systems in Japan
9. Sibatani, Environment, Man, Science and Technology in Japan
10. Matsuzawa, Japanese Fascism and the Tenno Imperial State
II. Hidaka, Democracy and the "Control State" in Japan
12. Marriott, English Discourse of Japanese Women in Melbourne
13. Neustupny, Communicating with the Japanese
Frank Joseph Shulman (ed), Doctoral Dissertations on Japan and on Korea,
1969-1979: An Annotated Bibliography of Studies in Western Languages
(Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1982).
H. Paul Varley, Japanese Culture (3rd ed) (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press,
1984).
Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Libng, The War Against East Timor (London:
Zed Books, 1984).
David K. Wyatt, Thailand: A Short History (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press,
1982).
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