Christopher Pugsley, From Emergency to Confrontation: The New Zealand Armed Forces in Malaya and Borneo 1949–1966, Oxford University Press in association with the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Melbourne, 2003. 528 pp. $79.95. ISBN 0-19-558453-8.
Reviewed by Roberto Rabel, University of Otago.
New Zealand's links with Malaysia today are primarily visible in terms of trade, tourism, educational services and the like. During the quarter century after World War II, however, security considerations were paramount in defining relations with Malaya (Malaysia from 1963). In 1955, for example, Prime Minister Sidney Holland described Malaya as ‘the front-line of New Zealand's very defence system'. A decade later, when being pressed to support American military efforts in Vietnam, Keith Holyoake's government reaffirmed that Malaysia represented ‘the first priority within New Zealand's defence commitments and obligations in South-East Asia'.
There has been little historical investigation of this distinctive security relationship, which drew New Zealand into two conflicts: the Malayan Emergency and Confrontation. Christopher Pugsley's volume is a welcome effort to remedy this lacuna in New Zealand military historiography. While focusing on the activities of the country's armed forces in Malaya and Borneo, the book sets that experience in the context of New Zealand defence and foreign policies from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. Those policies in turn were framed within the larger strategic and ideological context of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, which ensured that New Zealand's actions in the region were closely coordinated with those of its more powerful allies.
The Malayan Emergency began in 1948 when the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) launched an armed insurgency to overthrow the British colonial government of the Federation of Malaya. It took until 1960 for Malay, British and Commonwealth military forces and police to suppress the security threat posed by the MCP's combat arm, the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA). New Zealand 's contribution involved all three services. Beginning in 1949, the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) deployed various types of aircraft and units at different times to conduct air transport and bombing missions. The Army's initial experience came between 1952 and 1956, when New Zealand provided commanding and non-commissioned officers for the First Battalion of the Fiji Infantry Regiment. From 1955 to 1957, Special Air Squadron (SAS) forces were committed, with infantry soldiers following between 1957 and 1959. The Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) played a minor supporting role in patrolling coastal waters during the Emergency. In addition to participating in the campaign against the MRLA, New Zealand made a significant strategic decision in 1955 by accepting an ongoing commitment of regular forces to Malaya and Singapore as part of the Commonwealth Far East Strategic Reserve.
In 1963, New Zealand was again asked for military support when Indonesia's President Sukarno adopted a policy of Konfrontasi (Confrontation) – effectively amounting to an undeclared, low-level war – against the new Federation of Malaysia. After some hesitation by the Holyoake government, New Zealand soldiers, sailors and aircrew were committed to this struggle, both on the Malay Peninsula and in Borneo. As part of their operations, SAS and infantry forces helping to defend North Borneo engaged in covert cross-border incursions into Indonesian territory.
An undoubted strength of this volume is its reconstruction of the military routines which characterised these experiences for New Zealand service personnel. Pugsley thus fulfils his stated intention of conveying ‘the detail of what it was like to be a member of the New Zealand Army, RNZN or RNZAF' in these conflicts. He vividly evokes the environmental conditions and military challenges faced by New Zealanders trudging through tropical forests, flying and servicing aircraft in the region, or serving on naval vessels in steamy coastal waters. The authenticity of his account is enhanced by extensive use of oral history interviews, although excerpts from these interviews are sometimes spliced rather inelegantly into the narrative. As well as describing the range of New Zealand operations, Pugsley offers judicious commentaries on the military effectiveness of individual units, including assessments of the performance of officers.
As his reconstruction makes clear, this was warfare on a small scale, with much time spent seeking an elusive foe. When armed encounters did occur, they usually entailed action against tiny groups – sometimes only one to three CTs (Communist Terrorists), as they were called. The nature of this conflict makes it difficult for Pugsley to endow New Zealand's Malaysian story with the dramatic quality which distinguished his well-known work on Gallipoli. At times, though, he strains to draw comparable drama out of less promising material, with analysis often giving way to overly detailed descriptions of encounters – or the lack thereof – with CTs.
Pugsley also misses some opportunities to present a richer and more variegated history of the involvement in Malaya and Borneo . For instance, his coverage of the social and cultural experiences of New Zealand soldiers and their families is limited in scope and imagination. He frequently alludes to a distinctive New Zealand approach to military affairs and highlights the martial skills of Maori soldiers, but does not critically analyse which aspects of national identity might account for that approach or why racial dynamics appeared to be so positive within the New Zealand armed forces. Pugsley says even less about how New Zealanders engaged with Malay society, with its multi-layered cultural, ethnic and religious complexities. (One laudable exception in this respect is his discussion of relations with ‘aboriginal' Malay peoples in the field.) Nor does he elucidate the major political, economic and social changes in Malaya, Singapore and Indonesia in these years, which constituted crucial contexts in determining the outcomes of the Emergency and Confrontation.
In a refrain reverberating throughout the book, Pugsley depicts New Zealand's contributions to these two conflicts as ‘small but significant'. Although the force commitments involved were modest, he correctly emphasises how they stretched the country's limited military resources and how the Malaysian experience influenced New Zealand military doctrine, both at general command levels and at the operational level for units like the SAS. The commitment to the Far East Strategic Reserve also helped shape the development of New Zealand's Regular Force structure. Diplomatically, participation in both the Emergency and Confrontation signalled New Zealand's support for its Cold War allies in pursuing the containment of communism in Southeast Asia and encouraging an orderly transition in the region from colonialism to the evolution of democratic, pro-Western regimes.
Notwithstanding the missed opportunities to write a more fully rounded history of his subject, Pugsley has produced a valuable account of New Zealand's military experiences in these two conflicts. The book provides detailed coverage of operational matters, sound assessments of the military effectiveness of those operations, some wider contextual analysis, extensive use of oral history and numerous helpful appendices. Moreover, a certain narrowness of focus is not unusual in the context of New Zealand 's official history ‘tradition'. Perhaps the book's most important achievement is to illustrate how involvement in these two conflicts was of a piece with much of New Zealand's military experience in the post-1945 period. It was embedded in a context of multinational coalition operations, enjoyed bipartisan support, was pursued frugally but with exemplary professionalism, and had a limited but positive impact on the conflict. While it was modest in scale, it is doubtful that New Zealand would have achieved more with a larger commitment. From Wellington's perspective, it was successful militarily, politically and diplomatically – exemplifying a general approach to national security which appears to have served New Zealand well.
[ Related link: New Zealand Forces in South East Asia on NZHistory.net.nz ]
