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Rice is a staple part of the diet of virtually every Malaysian, to the extent that in each of the major languages used in Malaysia, rice means food and food means rice. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Rice in Malaya opens with an examination of the often fragmentary evidence of rice-growing in prehistoric Southeast Asia "the original home of this all-important crop" and then considers the great changes that followed the rise of commercial agriculture in the region before and during colonial times. A pioneering work when it first appeared in 1977, Rice in Malaya successfully combined the area-by-area approach of the geographer with the period-by-period approach of the historian to give a well-balance picture of rice-growing. The comprehensive use of evidence in several languages made the study the definitive work in the field. This re-issue of Rice in Malaya makes a classic work of scholarship available to a new generation of readers. The book remains of great importance not only to geographers, historians, agriculturalists and economists but also to anyone with an interest in Southeast Asia, for it explains in great measure many of the deeply-etched patterns of life found in modern Malaysia.
Malay society of the past has usually been characterized by the presence of the peasantry, a pre-modern class of producers, tied to the land and beholden to a feudalistic or feudal-like ruling structure. In contrast, this book explores the diversity which in fact colours the economic history of the Malays. The subject of this book is a relatively unknown class of people, the handloom weavers, who played a decisive role in the economies of the eastern Malay states of Terengganu, Kelantan, and Pahang. Today, the products of these handloom weavers, the beautiful hand-woven sarongs and cloths, grace the most elegant and auspicious of occasions. What is the story behind the vicissitudes, often brutal, of textile production in the early or proto-industrial phases of the Malay economy? Why was the handloom industry, at its height, halted from realizing its full potential of trans-forming into a full-fledged industrial manufacture? What exactly is the putting-out system of production and how did men and women actualize their roles in such production regimes? Why did the putting-out system endure? In answering such questions this book explores the origins of the Malay handloom industry, its technology, its people, and its turbulent relationship with the ambitions of both the colonial and modern nation-states.