Estranged comrades: Communism, identity politics and interwoven networks of the late colonial Malay world, 1927-1942

By Kankan Xie. In spite of the early efforts of the native Indonesian communists (PKI) in expanding their organization in British Malaya, it was their Chinese counterparts (CCP) who eventually established the South Seas Communist Party (SSCP) in 1925 under the tutelage of the Communist International (Comintern). The project examines the convergence of—and the corresponding conflicts between—the two trends of the pre-WWII communist movement in the Malay World (current Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore) in the last fifteen years of the colonial era. In his talk at KITLV, Kankan will focus on one chapter of the dissertation entitled “Dealing with Our Neighbor’s Trouble: The Dutch East Indies 1926 Communist Revolt in the Eyes of the Singapore Press.“ He welcomes critiques, comments, and suggestions on and beyond this chapter.

Kankan Xie is a Ph.D. candidate in Southeast Asian History, with a Designated Emphasis (minor) in Dutch Studies, at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include ethnicity and identity politics, left-wing movements, as well as transnational networks across the Malay Archipelago in the late colonial period.

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