Just how does the pre-colonial culture of the Malay world influence political behaviour and political experience in Malaysia today? Some analysts seem to imply that little connection exists between the early monarchical forms of the region and modern societies. Harold Crouch (1996), for instance, seldom reaches back before the independence year of 1957 in his influential analysis of the Malaysian political system. Even some historians, although taking pains to examine the character of the pre-colonial social systems of Southeast Asia, make no connection between these and the particular structures of modern societies. Against this view, certain specialists on Southeast Asian political cultures have insisted that ideas about power and government developed in precolonial systems have a direct relevance in the region today. In the case of Malaysia, Syed Hussein Alatas (1972) has led a school of analysts who argue for the “historical continuity of attitudes and values from the feudal period to the present time” (p. 100), identifying in particular a stress on “unflinching loyalty” (p. 108). These analysts have noted the continued importance of royal titles and ceremony in modern Malaysia (Chandra Muzaffar 1979, p. 109) and the continuing stress on the heroic qualities of the Malay feudal model, Hang Tuah (Shaharuddin Maaruf 1984, p. 55). They have even suggested that the first Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman, provides an instance of the “feudal tradition re-asserting itself”(Shaharuddin Maaruf 1988, p. 127).

As he has done with respect to many other issues, Clive Kessler examines this relationship between past and present political cultures with subtlety and imagination. As he describes it, the relationship is real but deeply problematic. Drawing upon the work of Vivienne Wee, he suggests (in his 1992 essay “Archaism and Modernity in Malay Political Culture”) that the past is like “the image that we see in a rear-vision mirror of a rapidly moving car. As we move forward, we see an image of what we have been through and experienced. But this view of the past is shaped by our direction into the future”(p. 134). Our image of the past, that is to say, is “formed on shifting ground in an ever-moving present”(p. 134).