His Royal Highness Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah, Chancellor of Universiti Malaya, officiated the book launch of “Contesting Malaysia’s Integration into the World Economy” organised by the Asia-Europe Institute, Universiti Malaya on 29th September 2022.
Edited by Distinguished Professor Dato’ Dr. Rajah Rasiah, Emeritus Professor Dr. Azirah Hashim and Dr. Jatswan S. Sidhu, the book brings together a set of incisive essays that interrogate Malaysian history and social relations which began during pre-colonial times, and extended to colonial and post-colonial Malaysia. In doing so, it takes the lead from the innovative historian, Professor Dato’ Dr. Shaharil Talib Robert who argued that the recrafting of history should go beyond the use of conventional methodologies and analytic techniques.
His Royal Highness Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah in His Royal Address said that Professor Shaharil was a highly respected and eminent Malaysian historian – a legend and luminary of Universiti Malaya – deeply respected by his peers and students alike.
“His teachings and writings contributed enormously to our understanding of life in colonial Malaya, and of the Southeast Asian region more generally. As the founding Executive Director of the Asia-Europe Institute, Universiti Malaya, Professor Shaharil started new postgraduate social science courses, inspired a generation of students, and launched a very successful international student exchange programme.
“I am delighted to launch this commemorative multi-disciplinary book: Contesting Malaysia’s Integration into the World Economy, dedicated to the memory and works of Professor Shaharil. The collection of essays is enriching, challenging, and a thought-provoking interrogation of Malaysian history and social relations before, during, and after the colonial era.
“It addresses the role of economic factors, and the participation of local actors in shaping a wide range of socioeconomics and political processes. In all of the chapters we find accepted versions of the truth being questioned. We find carefully considered new evidence being applied to existing orthodoxies, or to hitherto unexplored aspects of our past and present. There is even a questioning and extension of Shaharil’s own work on the Malay aristocracy – which he no doubt would have welcomed.”
Distinguished Professor Dato’ Dr. Rajah Rasiah, the Executive Director of the Asia-Europe Institute said that Malaysia has produced outstanding historians in the past, and a number of them studied and undertook their early research at Universiti Malaya. The late Professor Dato’ Shaharil Talib Robert comes from that tradition whose focus on interrogation to review historical developments from a diversity of angles before historical judgments are made is quite well known.
“He is the type who would have easily met E.H. Carr’s mold that historians should tell the real story of what had happened, including their causes, rather than just conjecturing on what is rational.
“The book provides a fitting tribute to the life and work of the late Professor Shaharil Talib Robert in the depth and richness of the scholarship that it brings together, as well as in its range and scope. It embodies Professor Shaharil’s concept of history as being actively constructed through the critical interrogation of existing perspectives and robust use of evidence.
“This approach is what we see on display here in all the individual contributions. The broader question the book addresses - of the intersection of the national, regional and global scales - also lay right at the heart of his work,” he said.
