Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 30 January 2012 issue)

There has just been a conference discussing the origins of the Malay race. Any talk about the history of a race is bound to encounter difficulties because the whole notion of race starts to dissolve as one goes back into the mists of time. I’ve only read one report about what was discussed at the conference and I’m not a historian, so I can’t comment on conclusions, but one statement in the report did catch my eye.

The report mentions the widely held theory that might be familiar to some, which is that the original Malay people came from Taiwan (I think about 10,000 years ago). They were, the report says, “Taiwanese rice growers who migrated to the archipelago, obliterated the original population.” I was struck by the word “obliterated”. It suggests that one people turned up and conquered another. It sounds dramatic and familiar, isn’t that what the Europeans did in America? We all know that story, so it must be likely that one people turned up and destroyed another. It also doesn’t sound like a very nice thing to do so which race would wish to be associated with that history? But the word “obliterated” reminds me of a history I was taught of a different people, and of recent archaeological and genetic research that has overturned old theories.

Some of the older readers of Talking Edge might know that I went to school in England (I’m sorry to keep mentioning it) where I was taught the history of Britain. A very basic run though of British history would be that first there were the people who built Stonehenge, then a new bunch turned up called the Celts, then the Romans invaded, then the Romans left and the Angles and Saxon invaded. Then there were raids by the Vikings and finally a wholly successful invasion by the Normans in 1066. With each arrival there are legends of resistance (King Arthur against the Saxons, Robin Hood against the Normans) and stories of race obliteration. I was taught how the Roman civilisation protected Britain but as soon as the Romans left, the Angles and Saxons invaded and obliterated the native Britons. There were hair-raising stories of the destruction of city walls, pillaging, mass-murder and the descent into the Dark Ages. Despite brave King Arthur’s best efforts, the native Britons were obliterated and were replaced by a new race, the English. It was scary stuff and seemed entirely plausible because the dominance of Roman Christianity had been reduced in England for a few hundred years and most importantly, everyone now spoke English. How else could you explain the disappearance of the language, religion and cities of the Britons unless it was because of violent obliteration?

Unfortunately, recent archaeology doesn’t appear to be able to back up the old theory. There is no archaeological evidence of destroyed cities or mass graves of slaughtered Britons, and there is not much evidence of families of newly arrived Saxon settlers, taking over a land empty of Britons. There are graves of Saxons but they have been found in cemeteries where the graves of Saxons are surrounded by graves of Britons. And almost all the Saxon graves are for men with very few Saxon women. Also DNA research seems to suggest that the English genes are predominantly inherited from the people who built Stonehenge, not even the Celts who came next, virtually nothing from the Romans and, most surprisingly, not as much from the Saxons as people might have expected.

The theory is that the Saxon invasion wasn’t an invasion at all. When an entire people (men, women, children, goats, horses, pots and pans) move from one place to another, it is called a “folk migration” and it is very, very rare in history. Usually the migration only involves a handful of young men who marry into the local population. If the men are lucky, they bring with them new technology (iron smelting, horses and such) and access to new trade routes or they are tough guys offering protection. It is possible that the Saxons who arrived in Britain were able to offer something useful in a world made uncertain by the departure of the Romans and the end of the international Roman economy. It might have been a takeover by a foreign elite or perhaps the native Britons wanted to live as Saxons because they were the coolest kids around. Either way, it seems that after only a few generations the native Britons chose to live as Saxons and speak English.

We should already know that it doesn’t take a mass invasion for a language to succeed. There are millions of people around the world who speak English and very few of them have a single drop of English blood in them. There were very, very few Englishmen in Malaya and yet millions of Malaysians speak English. Sometimes a culture can morph into a new culture without ever changing its race, whatever race may mean.

A history of obliteration is full of blood and gore but in a strange way, it is also comforting. It suggests that one race cannot become something else unless it is obliterated. It suggests that the potential for obliteration always remains and that a race is always potentially under threat of extinction. It suggests resistance and heroism. The dark side is that it can lead to a search for racial uniqueness and racial superiority. But history is full of unnamed people adapting for good reasons and making sensible decisions for the good of themselves and their families. If you were making a living with flint arrowheads and a guy turned up with a bronze hammer, wouldn’t you want to be part of that technological revolution? Or would you say you can’t take part in the Bronze Age because future generations won’t depict you as a hero, resisting change? You would take the bronze, start wearing a toga, buy an iPad, buy property in London, own a horse farm, have your kids speak English, holiday in Hawaii, play golf, smoke Cuban cigars and turn around and tell everyone that you are a hero and protector. After all, you need a protector if you’re under threat of obliteration.

Reprinted with the kind permission of