Picturing Malaya: Colonial counterinsurgency, camera imagery and imperial imaginaries in ‘emergency’ Britain (1948-58)

Creech-Nowagiel, Rio 2024. Picturing Malaya: Colonial counterinsurgency, camera imagery and imperial imaginaries in ‘emergency’ Britain (1948-58). PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This thesis examines camera imagery related to the Malayan ‘Emergency’, a colonial counterinsurgency campaign launched by Britain against communist independence fighters in the Federation of Malaya (known after independence as Malaysia) between 1948 and 1960. Using imagery found in newspapers, magazines, advertising, film and war museums, this thesis explores mobilisations of camera imagery by supporters and critics of the campaign in metropolitan Britain (and the US). This thesis brings together visual material sourced from the Imperial War Museum’s archive and beyond, exploring an array of narratives and strategies employed by government and corporate institutions in their efforts to justify and promote the costly campaign and by anti-war campaigners in their efforts to end it. This thesis also engages with the cultural memory of the Malayan ‘Emergency’ in Britain, focusing on re-framings of the insurgency in war museums. Applying critical approaches to the archive, this thesis offers an original perspective on the theme of public imaginaries of Empire and colonial insurgency during an underexplored period of British conflict history. Paying attention to visual material highlights the critical role that visuality played in the exposure of colonial atrocities, the staging of counterinsurgency fantasies, the promotion of creation myths and the display of enemy captives in the metropolitan arena during the ‘Emergency’ era. This thesis reveals a diversity of forms of visual culture that were produced and circulated in Britain (and the US) during an overlooked period of crisis marked by ‘end of Empire’ and the onset of the Cold War, which can hold up a mirror to the present day.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Journalism, Media and Culture
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Funders:	AHRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	22 January 2025
Last Modified:	22 Jan 2025 14:07
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/175514

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