Short History of Malaysia

One of the last British colonies to achieve independence, Malaysia has been developed by its leaders as a model of rapid modernisation. From an earlier image as a romantic tropical backwater, it is now a self-conscious, rapidly developing, hi-tech nation-state stretching from Thailand to the sea boundaries of the Philippines. But the past remains a crucial part of Malaysia's present. In this concise history, Virginia Matheson Hooker takes the lives of individuals as examples of their times and d