Jean Marshall’s Pahang Letters, 1953-54: Sidelights on Malaya during The Emergency
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“Life generally is a bit hedged in with precautions at the moment,” Jean Gray wrote, with characteristic understatement, to her parents in England. Twenty-seven years old, Jean was in rural Malaya working as a field officer with the British Red Cross for a year in 1953–54.
At that time, Malaya was in a state of Emergency. Communist insurgents, using the jungle as cover, engaged in guerilla war against the colonial state. Under the Red Cross scheme, Jean was appointed to provide medical and welfare services in the New Villages—guarded settlements of villagers relocated from the jungle fringes in a government move to cut off aid to the militants.
From west Pahang, where she was posted, Jean wrote weekly to her family and occasionally to her friends, sharing with them her impressions of Malaya and minutiae of her daily life and work while reassuring them that she was safe.
These all-but-forgotten letters with accompanying photographs were rediscovered and returned to their sender after 60-odd years. As historical documents, they illuminate the social and professional world of a young and perceptive Englishwoman who was in small-town Malaya at a historically critical time—during the Malayan Emergency and the last days of empire.
Jean Marshall’s Pahang Letters, 1953-54: Sidelights on Malaya during The Emergency
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