Book contents
- The Malayan Emergency
- Cambridge Military Histories
- The Malayan Emergency
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables and Charts
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Note On the Text: Language, Terminology and Measures
- Abbreviations
- Additional material
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- 2 Fatal Decisions
- 3 Terror, Counter-Terror and Pressure
- 4 Bureaucratic Counter-Terror and MNLA Main Forces
- 5 The Briggs Plan
- 6 Chin Peng and Communist Plans
- 7 Templer
- 8 Optimising Counterinsurgency
- 9 Politics, Decolonisation and Counterinsurgency
- 10 Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Emergency Statistics, 1948 to 1960
- Appendix 2 The Second Emergency, 1968 to 1989
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Templer
February 1952 to Early 1954
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2021
- The Malayan Emergency
- Cambridge Military Histories
- The Malayan Emergency
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables and Charts
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Note On the Text: Language, Terminology and Measures
- Abbreviations
- Additional material
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- 2 Fatal Decisions
- 3 Terror, Counter-Terror and Pressure
- 4 Bureaucratic Counter-Terror and MNLA Main Forces
- 5 The Briggs Plan
- 6 Chin Peng and Communist Plans
- 7 Templer
- 8 Optimising Counterinsurgency
- 9 Politics, Decolonisation and Counterinsurgency
- 10 Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Emergency Statistics, 1948 to 1960
- Appendix 2 The Second Emergency, 1968 to 1989
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter shows how Templer recognised that the MCP’s October 1951 Resolutions had shifted the strategic initiative to government, but also that it had increased the importance of winning ‘hearts and minds’. It shows how he increased both punishment and reward, and resettlement amenities and training to secure kills, until late in his term, but above all optimised the government, military and committee system, and the policy towards Orang Asli and the jungle. He created a better system and learning organisation, which in turn started to experiment with the big combined food control–Special Branch–military operations that would start to clear communist committees out of one area after another. The next chapter shows how that learning took off over 1953–4, providing a solution to the problem Briggs had not cracked: how to ‘clear’ areas. Rejecting both hagiographic and hateful accounts of Templer, it reveals the truth about the man, and about the perfecting of Malaya’s counterinsurgency apparatus and the constant refining of its recipe of ingredients.
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- The Malayan EmergencyRevolution and Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire, pp. 287 - 339Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021