1. See appendix to this article for a description of the PMS papers. The absence of extant records for the other state associations does not necessarily mean, of course, that they did not keep them. But from the available evidence it seems clear that none was nearly so highly organised and active as the PMS.

2. For detailed discussion see my The Origins of Malay Nationalism (New Haven, London and Kuala Lumpur, 1967), pp. 188ffGoogle Scholar. Some account of the history of the KMS may be found in Osman b. Hassan, Berita Pergerakan Kesatuan Melayu, 1926–1937 (Singapore, 1937).Google Scholar

3. See, e.g., the proposal made from Kuala Lipis for a Pahang association, Majlis, 25 04 1932Google Scholar. A public meeting is said (Majlis, 1 09 1937Google Scholar, and cf. also Singapore Free Press, 23 03 1938Google Scholar) to have been held in Kuala Lumpur in April 1932 to discuss the formation of a Persatuan Melayu Selangor, but no contemporary reference to this can be found.

4. The exception to this in terms of breadth of organisation was Sahabat Pena (Friends of the Pen), which, started in Penang in 1934, rapidly acquired a network of branches throughout the peninsula and beyond. But despite some British (and Malay) fears to the contrary, it was decidedly apolitical. See The Origins of Malay Nationalism, pp. 214ff.Google Scholar

5. The account that follows is based on reports in Majlis, 23 08 and 22 09 1937Google Scholar (the latter acknowledged to Warta Malaya) and on interviews with participants.

6. It seems likely that this meeting took place following an earlier and smaller cadre meeting held in the house of the first president of the PMPk, Wan Mohd. Nur b. Wan Nasir.

7. Dr. Kassim was a “Ceylon Malay” (mother Malay, father Ceylonese Muslim), born in Perak. After leaving government service he opened a clinic in Ipoh. A number of other leading members were descendants of Indian Muslim and Malay unions (i.e. lawi Peranakan).

8. Interview with Haji Mohd. Zain b. Ayob, 1967. The FMS Government Gazette for the period has not been searched. Under the Societies Ordinance, 1913, all associations of ten or more persons were required to obtain recognition from the Registrar of Societies.

9. In mid-1938, for example, a local Malay association in Chemor is reported as taking the lead in a proposal that all Malay clubs and societies in the state, none being paramount and the PMPk not mentioned, join together to ask the government to limit Chinese immigration. Warta Malaya, 15 and 21 07 1938.Google Scholar

10. The president was a nephew of the Orang Kaya Mentri of Perak, a traditional chief and “laird” of Taiping, but this did not detract markedly from the overwhelmingly commoner composition of the association, and he himself exercised no traditional authority, though he has since (1967) become OKM.

11. The account that follows is based on reports in Majlis, 2 and 21 March and in the Singapore Free Press, 23 and 24 03 1938Google Scholar, and on interviews with participants.

12. As the youngest son of Sultan Ahmad (d. 1914), Tengku Muhammad was only three years older than his nephew Sultan Abu Bakar. Before becoming Malay Secretary he had served for eight years as Assistant Commissioner of Police in Trengganu. For a brief biography, see Daud, Mohd. Mokhtar, Singgliasana Negri Pahang (Pekan, 1957), pp. 42–44.Google Scholar

13. Correspondence and minutes, Secretary PMPhg to Malay Secretary, Sultan Pahang, in File No. 65 of 1941, Pejabat Sultan, Pahang.

14. See the accounts in, e.g., Majlis, 7 and 9 08 1939Google Scholar, and 26 December 1940, and Warta Kinta, 28 12 1940.Google Scholar

15. This idea had been discussed for some time, but in view of the problems associated with forming individual state bodies, each of which had to come to terms with its own traditional establishment, any proposal to start a national association was, to say the least, visionary. For the start of the 1938 phase of this discussion see, e.g., Majlis, 24 January, 14 February, and 2, 4, 7, 9 and 21 March.

16. Tengku Ismail, from Negri Sembilan, had been educated at Malay College and then entered the Malay Administrative Service. He was sent to England in 1928 to read law, and shortly after his return was promoted to the MCS, in which he served for four years before being allowed to resign to enter private practice, first with De Silva and then shortly afterwards with R. P. S. Rajasooria.

To avoid overloading the text with footnotes, biographical information about participants in the PMS has, where possible, been removed to the appendix at the end of this article.

17. Information concerning the PMS has been derived from the PMS Papers, from interviews with many participants, and from the contemporary Malay press. The first two sources will not be cited specifically, except where the context requires.

18. The Sultan Suleiman Club, formed in 1905, had premises next to the playing fields in Kampong Bahru which were used by other Malay organisations in the capital as a kind of community centre. Information about this meeting is derived from Mohd. Yunus Hamidi [Mohd. Yunus b. Abdul Hamid], Sejarah Pergerakan Politik Melayu Semenanjong (Kuala Lumpur, 1961)Google Scholar, and from interviews with participants. Mohd. Yunus' book is useful as a memoir, but is factually rather inaccurate, despite his own active role in events

19. For the text of the invitation see Majlis, 3 06 1938Google Scholar. A long account of the meeting itself, on which the following is based, may be found in Majlis, 6 June, which prints Tengku Ismail's speech in full.

20. Two articles only are given in the Majlis account of the inaugural meeting. One says that for the purposes of the association the term “Malay” is denned as in the Malay Reservations Enactment (i.e., as “a person belonging to any Malayan race who habitually speaks the Malay language or any Malayan language and professes the Muslim religion”). The other describes the aims of the association as “To seek and to undertake means of advancing and strengthening the position of the Malay people” (Menchari dan menjalankan ikhtiar bagi memajukan dan mertegangkan perdirian bangsa Melayu). Article 13 (i), as appeared from a subsequent move to change it, provided that no serving government officer could sit on the central committee of the association.

21. The remaining members of the committee were: from Kuala Lumpur, Haji Othman b. Abdullah (manager of Majlis), Abu Hassan b. [? Abdul Manan], Haji Hashim b. Haji Ismail, and Sayyid Abdul Ghani b. Sayyid Ahmad; and from the districts, Kamaruddin (Kuala Langat), Haji Abdul Jalil (Ulu Langat), B. Ahmad Padang (Kuala Selangor), and Haji Abdul Rashid (Ulu Selangor). The Klang position was left vacant until the first committee meeting on 14 August.

22. Permit K.J.K. No. 10, dated 4 August 1938, promulgated in Warta Kerajaan, 19 08 1938.Google Scholar

23. Ahmad Padang, elected at the 5 June public meeting, withdrew later “because he thought someone better fitted should be appointed”, Warta Malaya, 8 09 1938Google Scholar. He was replaced by Raja Alang b. Raja Jalil, previously penghulu of Klang but now resident in the Kuala Selangor district.

24. Enclosures I and II to the Minutes of a Committee Meeting, 18 September 1938. Warta Malaya, 12 09 1938Google Scholar, gives the text of Enclosure I.

25. Deviating somewhat from the blue-print, Haji Othman became both chairman and secretary of the branch. Ibrahim b. Haji Yaakub, who founded the radical Kesatuan Melayu Muda in 1939, was later highly scornful of the “bourgeois feudalist” state Malay associations, but at this time was very active on the periphery of the PMS. Accounts of the formation of the Petaling-Pantai branch appeared in Warta Malaya, 27 August, and Majlis, 29 08, 1938.Google Scholar

26. Majlis, 13 09 1938.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., 19 September 1938.

28. Warta Malaya, 24 09 1938.Google Scholar

29. Ibid.

30. There is no further record of discussion in committee until, in January 1939, the fund became the Alam Shah Education Fund, as detailed below.

31. The proposal appears to have come from the first meeting of the branch, and is conveyed in a letter from Haji Othman to the secretary of the association, 2 September 1938, asking that the matter be put on the agenda for the next central executive committee meeting.

32. In the letter of 2 September referred to in note 31, Haji Othman had reported that he had in his possession several emblem designs based on adding a PMS motif to the Selangor flag (as had been agreed upon at the central committee meeting in August) and wished to have these discussed at the forthcoming September meeting. Following the decision at this meeting to use the flag “as it stood”, Haji Othman wrote to the secretary on 3 October, arguing that this was in conflict with the August decision as recorded in the minutes, and asking that the matter be reopened at the next meeting. Though it was put on the agenda for October there was no time to discuss it and it was not until November that it was raised as a matter of procedure (rather than substance), discussed at length, and then dropped. See draft speech (undated) by Haji Othman in the PMS papers, and Warta Malaya, 29 11 1938Google Scholar. Though apparently trivial, the incident raised a number of important issues about the working of the association.

33. Warta Malaya, 28 09 1938.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., 3 November 1938.

35. Higher Education in Malaya (Report of the Commission appointed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies), Colonial Paper No. 173 (London, 1939), p.v. The chairman of the Commission was Sir William H. McLean, and the remaining member Professor H. J. Channon. Raffles College, established in 1928, granted what were in effect teachers' diplomas in a restricted range of academic subjects.

36. Majlis, 24 10 1938.Google Scholar

37. See Warta Malaya, 3 11 1938Google Scholar, and cf. also the editorial in Majlis, 21 October. October issues of. Warta Malaya, which apparently carried a draft of the pamphlet in full, are not extant. For Malay views elsewhere, see, e.g., Warta Malaya, 8 November (reporting Johpre State Council) and 15 November (reporting views of Sultan Idris Training College staff).

38. During the first eleven years of the College, 58 out of every hundred students were Chinese, 22 Indian, 11 Eurasian, and 9 Malay. Higher Education in Malaya, p. 23.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., p. 63. So far as is known no state associations other than the PMS made formal submissions to the Commission, and possibly no other organised Malay body of any kind, though the evidence on this point is incomplete.

40. See above, note 32.

41. Warta Malaya, 29 11 1938.Google Scholar

42. Letter, Othman Abdullah to Othman Abdul Ghani, 30 December 1938. Cf. the annual report of the association (published in April 1939), which said that on 31 December there were 799 members, of whom 696 had paid their subscriptions.

43. For a romantic British account of the processions in Klang at this time, see the Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of Selangor for the year 1939 (Kuala Lumpur, 1940), p. 90.Google Scholar

44. Majlis, 27 01, 1939.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., 16 January 1939.

46. Ibid., 6 February 1939.

47. Ibid., 27 February 1939.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., 3 April.

50. Waria Malaya, 2 05 1939.Google Scholar

51. A full list of resolutions is given in Persatuan Melayu Selangor, Kenyataan dan Kira2 tahun 1938. [Report and Accounts for 1938] (Kuala Lumpur, 1939)Google Scholar. Details of the discussion on those dealt with is given in the Warta Malaya account cited.

52. See, e.g., Warta Malaya, 31 08 and 9 09 1938.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., 9 July, 22 September and 3 November, 1938. Cf. also, for Trengganu, Ibid., 29 November 1938.

54. Majlis, 7 08 1939.Google Scholar