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Afro-Southeast Asia Archive
(1947 - ) African American Writers in Southeast Asia Archive Excerpt from “A Weekend with Richard Wright Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) The Asian and Pacific Council (ASPAC) (1966-1973) Contemporary Korean Art exhibition (1960-1961)
The Malaysia Mission vs. Maphilindo Diosdado Macapagal’s Foreign Diplomacy Robert Kennedy’s trip to the Far East (1964) Newsreels from Sabah
 



The Malaysia Mission vs. Maphilindo


“Africa Understands Malaysia”
Photo News, no. 120
27 February 27 1964
Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection
Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore      
Accession No. PO2615/2001


From January 21 to February 27, 1964, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, having been selected by Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, led a 12-member delegation comprising Chief Ministers of Sarawak and Sabah and other ministers on the Malaysia Mission to Africa. They visited 17 African states (including Egypt, Tunisia, Mali, Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanganyika and Madagascar) to explain the formation of Malaysia and its conflict with Indonesia. Maphilindo was in part based on a critique of the formation of Malaysia being a neocolonial British ploy.

Scholars such as Andrea Benvenuti and Wen-Qing Ngoei, have respectively explained that the formation of the federation of Malaysia, with Malaya absorbing Singapore and the British territories of Sabah and Sarawak, benefited the British by cost effectively providing access to military facilities in Singapore and by allaying fears that Singapore might slip into communism. Ngoei, in particular, has pointed out that the formation of Malaysia was envisioned by the Kennedy administration as creating a ‘wide anticommunist arc’ in Southeast Asia, the foundations for “a pro-West regional organization.”

The Malaysia Mission evidenced the importance of the affirmation of African nations of Malaysia’s federation-building project. As the poster Africa Understands Malaysia notes the trip was successful in turning African states such as Algeria and Mali to Malaysia’s side, such that Algeria rescinded its reservations on Malaysia from the United Nations record. The poster notes the different words of support offered by African Nations.

The trip was also valuable in establishing relations between Malaysia and African nations. Following the mission, Malaysia would make more trips to Africa and delegates from African nations would also travel to Singapore and Malaysia.

Indonesian President Sukarno, Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal, and Federation of Malaya Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman at the formalization of Maphilindo on August 5, 1963, held at the Juan Luna Hall of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila
Courtesy of the Official Gazette and the National Library of the Philippines


Far East Reporter: Some Background on United States in South East Asia: Maphilindo
1965
Maud Russell
New York


The year 1963 was an exceptional moment for the consolidation of discourses surrounding pan-Malayan political imaginations. In January 1963, Philippine Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez went to London and met with officials of the United Kingdom to discuss claims to Sabah, which was then part of the British colony. In August 1963, Maphilindo, a pan-Malayan regional confederation composed of then Malaya, the Philippines, and Indonesia, was formalized. The confederation proved short-lived and was dissolved after a month after Indonesian President Sukarno declared his resistance against the establishment of the Federation of Malaysia through Konfrontasi, a policy that aimed to “crush Malaysia” by January 1964. Sukarno viewed this development as a strategic neo-colonial ploy by the British to ensure their influence in the region.  In December 1963, after a trip to the United States for the memorial of John F. Kennedy, Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal visited Libya, Tanganyika (part of present day Tanzania), Madagascar, and Kenya as a gesture of goodwill  for the continent’s newly sovereign states and a strategy to field for votes should the Philippine claim to Sabah prosper in the tribunal of the United Nations.

These moments sketch out the intricate entanglements of claims to pan-Malayan solidarity in the context of neo-colonial anxieties and geopolitical pressures. An editorial written by Jose Ma. Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, reviews the rhetorics that inform the establishment of Maphilindo. Titled “MAPHILINDO: Afro-Asian or Anglo-American?” and published in the Far East Reporter: Some Background on United States in South East Asia: Maphilindo in 1965, the essay annotates the stakes of each party in the success of a Malayan confederation. For Sison, Maphilindo had the possibility of becoming an Afro-Asian anti-imperialist instrument or an Anglo-American method to force Indonesia into a trap with two Anglo-American client nations (the Philippines and Malaysia) effectively dampening its non-aligned and anti-imperial leverage.