Reading Material

I found an excellent book at Kinokuniya in KLCC, titled The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur, by Ziauddin Sardar. I am almost finished the first essay, which begins with an evocative description of how the jungle is still heard and felt in the city today, but which goes on to explain (in a very literary way) how the Europeans intruded on the spice trade as they slowly figured out how to get their boats into this part of the world, and then basically destroyed a centuries-old trading network that they found incomprehensible in its fluidity. I found this fascinating because it wove together many narratives I have heard and read in a way that really made sense.

It's not a simple story of the Europeans deliberately trying to destroy a culture. That was a by-product of their desire to control the spice trade. Their idea of control was a very European or Western idea, and its incompatibility with the way things were done here is what really chipped away the foundations of what had long been a multicultural marketplace.

Ziauddin urges the reader to turn to the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) to gain a real understanding of the old history of this region.

Another enjoyable read I found here was a novel, A Bit of Earth, by Suchen Lim. It follows the life of one immigrant tin miner from China who comes to Perak as a teenager and makes his fortune in a time parallel to the tightening of the British grip on Malaya (the peninsula). To my great pleasure, along the way the central character makes close ties with a Malay leader (menteri besar), a wealthy Straits-born Chinese, and an Indian Muslim trader, so the story manages to illustrate the interlocking relationships that formed the culture here.