Vernon L. Porritt, The Rise and Fall of Communism in Sarawak, 1940-1990.

Vernon L. Porritt, The Rise and Fall of Communism in Sarawak, 1940-1990. Vernon L. Porritt, The Rise and Fall of Communism in Sarawak,1940-1990. Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2004. ISBN ISBNabbr.International Standard Book NumberISBNInternational Standard Book NumberISBNn abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m876924276. 361pp. Map, illustrations, appendices, bibliography, index. Dr. Porritt has done a distinct service to Bornean history byexpertly and clearly chronicling the Sarawak Communists' prolongedmini-insurgency. Be advised, however, that this is a precise, academicstudy, not designed to be entertaining. The author reminds the reader that he is writing about the dayswhen the Cold War raged: impolite im��po��lite?adj.Not polite; discourteous.[Latin impol invective saturated the ether; theSarawak authorities vilified their belligerent opponents, while they inturn demonized "The Imperialists." Leaving the author to itemize To individually state each item or article.Frequently used in tax accounting, an itemized account or claim separately lists amounts that add up to the final sum of the total account on claim. the several names and acronymsadopted by the Sarawak Communist Organization from time to time, I havechosen to link them together under one nom-de-guerre: O (for"Organization"), the symbol it adopted in its early years whenreproaching itself for being "Unworthy of assuming the glorioustitle of a Communist Party without first having been steeled in armedStruggle." O was a secret fraternity, made up of young, spirited, passionate,visionary Sarawak Chinese who, studying Marx/Lenin/Mao with ferventintensity, achieved a high level of, albeit biased, political maturity.Indeed it can be said that O reached a pinnacle of learning too high forits own good, because the very dynamism its disciples applied to theirclandestine studies left them neither the time nor the energy to searchfor life beyond revolutionary dogma. O might well have chosen the White Rajahs' motto, "DumSpiro Spero Dum spiro spero (Latin "While I breathe, I hope") is a motto of various places and families. States and TownsThe notable origin of the motto is St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. ," as its own. Bowdlerized by the Rajahs' savantsto mean "While we sweat we hope," the epigraph ep��i��graph?n.1. An inscription, as on a statue or building.2. A motto or quotation, as at the beginning of a literary composition, setting forth a theme. fits Operfectly. Its guerillas sweated in the jungle, where they lived in hopefor some relief from their wretched situation. The Sarawak Government was well informed about O and, for the mostpart, handled its intelligence wisely, with forbearance even. The mainsource of its information, and, indirectly, of some of Dr.Porritt's also, sprang from O's genius for secretlypublishing, as a type of crude but effective reprographics Duplicating printed materials using various kinds of printing presses and high-speed copiers. , a profusionof handwritten hand��write?tr.v. hand��wrote , hand��writ��ten , hand��writ��ing, hand��writesTo write by hand.[Back-formation from handwritten.]Adj. 1. material: advice to followers, directives, samizdats,test papers, propaganda guides, and even whole books. Lenin's WhatIs To Be Done?, for example, was translated, cyclostyled, copied andcirculated a page at a time; a laborious procedure which meant that acandidate member in, say, Kanowit, might have waited months before he orshe received the last page. On top of all this O successfully placedslanted articles in the public press. Had their intellectual talents extended beyond Marx/Lenin/Mao,O's controllers could well have emerged from their studies asprofessors of political philosophy. But for all their collectiveexpertise they failed woefully to match the practical proficiency ofother Communist insurrectionists, the Vietnamese for example. Vietnam,ablaze at the time, was the crucial laboratory for the study of"People's War"--the means by which weak, oppressed op��press?tr.v. op��pressed, op��press��ing, op��press��es1. To keep down by severe and unjust use of force or authority: a people who were oppressed by tyranny.2. societies could overcome their oppressors. Politically aware as it was,O could do little more than conjure up visions of emulating the triumphsof the Viet Cong: it could fantasize (vide Mao) about "Swimminglike fish in the sea of the masses." Whatever its scholarship andwhatever its mental imagery, it still could not change the cold factthat, so long as its own masses were limited to a small segment of theChinese population, it could only bath in a stream, not in an ocean. Similarly, from the same Mao hymn book a book containing a collection of hymns, as for use in churches; a hymnal.See also: Hymn , O learned and then preachedthe strategy of "Besieging the cities from the countryside,"without ever facing up to the stubborn reality that there were no citiesin Sarawak, and no urban proletariat, and that the Chinese populatedcountryside formed only thin strips of rubber and pepper on the forestfringes. Nevertheless, for all their failings and no matter what the (few)hawks in the Sarawak security forces and the Secretariat had to say, theChinese boys and girls boys and girlsmercurialisannua. within O were not "bandits." In theearly years at any rate they were idealists, sincerely aiming to improvethe lot of the masses. Be that as it may, they were nonetheless fired byMao's incendiary testament, "Power grows out of the barrel ofa gun." The question this call to arms raised was,"Where's the gun?" to which Mao responded, "Seize itfrom the enemy." Which was all very well except that, beforeDecember 1962, the enemy ("The Running Dogs of Imperialism,"i.e., The Sarawak Constabulary) was virtually unarmed. The solution lay in Konfrontasi. This, and Dr. Porritt is at hisbest when writing of it, was the Indonesian catchword exemplifyingPresident Sukarno's aim of destroying the newborn MalaysianFederation by force of arms. Sukarno's objective thus mirrored thatof O. Konfrontasi gave O the opportunity to "Steel itself in armedstruggle." Hence O's fledgling fighters crossed into WestKalimantan intent on soliciting weapons from their new, untried,Indonesian allies. Sadly for O, Konfrontasi's promise of actionrather than words proved to be illusory. Given its Indonesianhost's besetting be��set��ting?adj.Constantly troubling or attacking.besettingadjective chronicantipathy towards its own ethnic Chinese, O'sChinese dreams of becoming the Indonesian's comrades-in-armswithered away in the nihilism nihilism(nī`əlĭzəm), theory of revolution popular among Russian extremists until the fall of the czarist government (1917); the theory was given its name by Ivan Turgenev in his novel Fathers and Sons (1861). of West Kalimantan. At long last O's guerillas abandoned Indonesia, its raisond'etre having to all intents and purposes Adv. 1. to all intents and purposes - in every practical sense; "to all intents and purposes the case is closed"; "the rest are for all practical purposes useless"for all intents and purposes, for all practical purposes been nullified whenJakarta, together with Beijing and Moscow, recognized the MalaysianFederation. The overseer of the retreat, no matter that it may have beendisguised as an advance, was Bong Kee Chok who, way back in 1962, hadopted for a passage to Beijing rather than restricted residence inSarawak. The homeland to which O clandestinely returned hardly made itswarriors welcome. Its "Fish" found even the stream to betoxic. And so it came to pass that, just as the punctured balloon leaksair, so did the revolutionary spirit drain from O. Its guerillas shedsome blood locally, and managed to sweat it out until, in 1973, Bongfinally abandoned hope and negotiated an honorable way out. The greatmajority of O's army laid down their arms--it had steeled itselfonly for the steel to become, irretrievably ir��re��triev��a��ble?adj.Difficult or impossible to retrieve or recover: Once the ring fell down the drain, it was irretrievable.ir , corroded--though a fewzealots Zealots(zĕl`əts), Jewish faction traced back to the revolt of the Maccabees (2d cent. B.C.). The name was first recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus as a designation for the Jewish resistance fighters of the war of A.D. 66–73. soldiered on for a further seventeen years. It was greatly tothe credit of the Malaysian authorities that an accord was reached withBong allowing O to disengage, while exchanging expressions of mutualregard. This book is not an easy read, but it is not intended to be. WithThe Rise and Fall of Communism in Sarawak, Dr. Porritt has adroitly a��droit?adj.1. Dexterous; deft.2. Skillful and adept under pressing conditions. See Synonyms at dexterous.[French, from �� droit : ��, to (from Latin filled a gap in the annals of South East Asian history. (Tim Hardy,Hove, East Sussex, England).