Racial conflict in Malaysia: against the official history

According to the official history, the `race riots' of May-July 1969 were a spontaneous outbreak of conflict between Malays and Chinese - Malaysia's two largest ethnic groups - and the violence was prompted, if anything, by opposition parties rejecting the status quo. In this article, the official account is challenged using recently declassified documents held at the Public Records Office, London, which suggest that the riots represented a coup d'etat. With its ideology of Malay dominance, the faction that came to power in May 1969 represented the interests of the then emergent Malay state-capitalist class. Since then, this faction has continued to hold power and has regularly invoked the spectre of racial conflict to counteract demands from non-Malay communities for civil rights.