In the 19th century, European colonial powers routinely tried to make sense of their colonial subjects by classifying them according to “race”. In British Malaya, the most overt tool in this exercise was the census.
Author Archives: Sandra Khor Manickman
Sandra Khor Manickam is Assistant Professor of History at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She has previously held posts at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her book, Taming the Wild: Aborigines and Racial Knowledge in Colonial Malaya (NUS Press, 2015) deals with the historical construction of Malays and Orang Asli as races. Her current work deals with the history of the Japanese occupation and the history of race and genetics in Malaysia post-war. She is also Managing Editor of the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JMBRAS) under Editor Paul Kratoska. She may be reached at manickam@eshcc.eur.nl.